Is hiring new kerbals too expensive?

[tranenturm]

I've noticed that over time (a day or so), my list of kerbals available to be hired changes, whether or not I've hired or rescued. So no need to buy kerbals to refresh the list.

[Nich]

First off you never launch a new design with a kerbal in it. Secondly the cost of hard is just a grind all of the contracts are easy to do profitibilly of 100 percent or higher the problem is that profit is only two percent of what you need to do anything

[samstarman5]

That moment when you come back the next day to a thread you tried to post something helpful in, looking to see if it helped anyone...

Oh KSP forum, you never cease to amaze me

On topic: Yearly budgets can be made to work if they're mission specific. Think of it a bit like NASA's budget. They get a ton of money, but they also cannot use it at will - they have to declare what they want to use it for, and then use it as declared. (And it would be a good system if non-scientists wouldn't meddle in it, but let's leave that particular discussion for another thread.)

Imagine that you couldn't accept contracts at any time, but rather only once per ingame period X. A year might not be very playable, so let's say per month. At the start of each month (and only then), you get presented a large list of contracts. You then pick as many as you like (perhaps with some restrictions from your mission control building), and declare that those are your goals for the following month(s). If you accept a contract to land a Kerbal on the Mun, then you better do that before the end of the decade month, because the contract won't give you a 10 year allowance like it does now. It wants that Kerbal to have its flag planted by the due date, or you fail the contract and get penalized.

More advanced missions could be multi-month missions. For example, a mission to Jool might stipulate several intermediate goals as well as ongoing funding. Example:

- Each month, receive X funds (could be variable to start out with a lot but decrease over time)

- By the end of the first month, conduct at least one launch that you attach to this contract (would obviously require that capability)

- By the end of the second month, have a vessel on a Jool intercept trajectory

- By the end of the third month, have a manned vessel on a Jool intercept trajectory (can be the same as #2, but also gives the option of sending an unmanned probe that arrives ahead of the main mission vehicle to practice insertion burns and aerobraking if you've never been to Jool before or set up a commsat relay for RemoteTech etc.)

- By the end of the fourth month, still have a manned vessel on a Jool intercept trajectory (so if you play with life support and forget to bring any and your Kerbals die two weeks into the mission, the contract fails at the next checkpoint)

- By the end of the X'th month, have a vessel in Jool's SoI

- And so on

Each intermediate goal would make the whole contract fail if not achieved on its due date.

Not sure if such a system would actually be good for KSP, but it's a possible implementation for time-based budgets.

That would be a good reason to keep your Mission Control at 2nd tier build, to keep your max contracts down to 7. Pick the contracts you can do or at least start within a set time, like a month, and that way you can't pick up anymore until you have finished the ones you currently have. With unlimited it is too easy to take on any contract that looks good to you, forget you have some, and then watch your reputation and funds go bye-bye as they expire.

[Goddess Bhavani]

It is kind of a drag not knowing what they will be before you rescue them. My program demands pilots dangit!

In 1.0.2 I had a lack of pilots so I hired a couple off the AC.

In 1.0.4 I had so many pilots I wondered what to do with them, maybe make dual cockpit setups for each ship, Pacific Rim style.