A plethora of rescue missions?

[eddiew]

Anyone else getting an excess of "rescue Idiot Kerman from orbit around Kerbin"? I currently have four active simultaneously, and have already gained six crew from previous rescues. Feels like rather lot - although I admit they are profitable when grouped up and done with a hitch hiker container ^^;

Anything I can do to bump the frequency down a little? I've landed on Mun and have two interplanetary probes. Doesn't seem to be an excuse for the game to not believe I can do more than Kerbin LKO...

[Captain H@dock]

Anyone else getting an excess of "rescue Idiot Kerman from orbit around Kerbin"? I currently have four active simultaneously, and have already gained six crew from previous rescues. Feels like rather lot - although I admit they are profitable when grouped up and done with a hitch hiker container ^^;

Anything I can do to bump the frequency down a little? I've landed on Mun and have two interplanetary probes. Doesn't seem to be an excuse for the game to not believe I can do more than Kerbin LKO...

I have 50 peoples in my roster, and I've never hired any Kerbal. So it's all relative!

And since rescuing four of them cost me around 2,000 credit and 30 mn (20 for the takeoff/landing + 3mn per RDV), it is definitely free money. Plus it allows me to do some space plane flying from now and then. But I rarely have more than two of these spawn at the same time, sometime three. You can always bring some orbit tourists in the remaining seats, though.

If I had a complain, that would more be regarding the un-randomness of the kerbal class. Everybody seems to be getting different, yet fairly imbalanced distributions. I'm quite low on engineer (5 out of 50), which isn't good for the end game.

Edited July 22, 2015 by Captain H@dock

[FancyMouse]

Once you know how useful they are - you'll want to increase the frequency.

Then once you have too many kerbals - you'll want to decrease the frequency again.

Well since you can reject for free, just use rejection to adjust the frequency, then.

[Sharpy]

Hiring is expensive. Seriously, spending the amount of cash needed to get one kerbal hired you can send 7 deorbiting/landing probes (in one launch) resulting in 7 kerbals, good 80+ % of the initial investment returned in recovery (possibly more as you recover the cabins too), and contract money for 7 LKO rescue contracts. And one rescue can take 10-15 minutes if you have the deorbiter vessels in the orbit already.

Seriously, the game throws free goodies at you and you're complaining.

[eddiew]

Lol, it's not a complaint about the free crew, it's that I'd quite like an "explore" mission once in a while. So far I've had Mun, and that's it. I'm just going other places on my own volition now...

[ClF3]

If you have the cash, upgrade the building so you can have more active contracts. Then you can pick up the rescue contracts and stow them away until a convenient time (or combo with another contract) and still progress through some more exploration stuff

[Mikki]

Consider yourself happy having plenty Kerbals outside the door for free to ... hire... for free!

The I..ots in my career tend to get lost around ...ike ...eve ... duna ... and so on. Allready Bop and other remote places...

Quite a work to hoard them together, but very satisfying having them working for me later .

So get them, now!

Greetings mikki

[capi3101]

The fun ones are rescue contracts around Mun and Minmus, IMHO. Those can also be quite lucrative; made nearly √450k for two Minmus rescue contracts just this past weekend, got me to the point where I could upgrade the R&D to Level 3 (finally).

[Snark]

Lol, it's not a complaint about the free crew, it's that I'd quite like an "explore" mission once in a while. So far I've had Mun, and that's it. I'm just going other places on my own volition now...

So there are two things that could be getting in the way here:

1. "I'm not getting the contracts I like because the rescue spam is flooding the list of available missions."

2. "I'm not getting the contracts I like because they're not unlocked yet."

#1 is easy; just click on the uninteresting contract in Mission Control and choose "decline", and it will immediately be replaced by another (random) contract.

#2 is a bit more involved. The game only makes certain contracts available depending on your reputation score. The "explore planet such-and-such" missions show up at higher reputation levels, so if you're not getting them, it's not because "there are too many rescue contracts"-- it's because you haven't unlocked them yet, and the game is handing you lots of rescue missions because those are among the few things that are unlocked yet. To get the other contracts to start showing up, do things that boost your reputation.

[PrivateFlip]

On 7/22/2015 at 8:39 PM, Snark said:

....

#2 is a bit more involved. The game only makes certain contracts available depending on your reputation score. The "explore planet such-and-such" missions show up at higher reputation levels, so if you're not getting them, it's not because "there are too many rescue contracts"-- it's because you haven't unlocked them yet, and the game is handing you lots of rescue missions because those are among the few things that are unlocked yet. To get the other contracts to start showing up, do things that boost your reputation.

That explains a lot, am having the same phenomenon, where the moment I rescue two new rescue contracts pop up shortly after. How could I've known about the reputation contract unlock? Is it explained in the game somewhere?

[bewing]

Well, the very first paragraph in KSPedia (elided) says, "The rewards ... will vary depending on your ... reputation."

Edited August 6, 2016 by bewing

[FullMetalMachinist]

3 hours ago, PrivateFlip said:

That explains a lot, am having the same phenomenon, where the moment I rescue two new rescue contracts pop up shortly after. How could I've known about the reputation contract unlock? Is it explained in the game somewhere?

Contract rewards being based on your reputation is in KSPedia, as @bewing says. However, that's just talking about the reward, not what contracts are offered. 

The rules for that have changed since this thread was started over a year ago. Update 1.1 added a new weighting feature to contracts, meaning that the more of a certain type you do, the more likely it is to show up again. 1.1 also reworked the conditions for which "explore" contracts are offered, but I'm afraid I don't know exactly what the new rules are, though I believe they are supposed to come up more often. 

[bewing]

8 minutes ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

Contract rewards being based on your reputation is in KSPedia, as @bewing says. However, that's just talking about the reward, not what contracts are offered. 

 

It also says the "goals" of the contracts are based on your reputation. So it all comes down to what your exact definition of "rewards and goals" is. There is nothing anywhere that says that contracts have "types". That is us making classifications for things. (And the deal about explore contracts was that there was a bug preventing them from hardly showing up at all pre 1.1. Now they show up just as often as other high-rep contracts.)

[Spricigo]

9 hours ago, bewing said:

 There is nothing anywhere that says that contracts have "types". That is us making classifications for things. 

Us making classifications because we noticed how Squad used some types(/templates/models/...)  may not be exactly the same we figured out but clearly is a real thing. 

Anyway... Semantics 

[PrivateFlip]

11 hours ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

Contract rewards being based on your reputation is in KSPedia, as @bewing says. However, that's just talking about the reward, not what contracts are offered. 

The rules for that have changed since this thread was started over a year ago. Update 1.1 added a new weighting feature to contracts, meaning that the more of a certain type you do, the more likely it is to show up again. 1.1 also reworked the conditions for which "explore" contracts are offered, but I'm afraid I don't know exactly what the new rules are, though I believe they are supposed to come up more often. 

Okay, thanks for the explanation! This weighting does explain the behaviour I'm experiencing in game. I don't take up a lot of contracts, only the once which fit in with what I was already planning to do. Rescue missions however feel obligatory to me, so I take them up whenever one is in the queue and complete them as soon as possible. The free astronauts are nice, but it was getting a bit out of hand.

[swjr-swis]

22 hours ago, bewing said:

There is nothing anywhere that says that contracts have "types". That is us making classifications for things.

No, the game does actually have classes or types of contracts, that are defined by certain sets of 'rules' specific for each class of contract (asks for such and such part, or asks for a kerbal, or asks for science experiments, or some specific action, etc).

You can see the different classes and the defining rules by opening GameData\Squad\Contracts\Contracts.cfg: any main node past MODULE_DEFINITIONS is a type of contract. (asteroids, satellites, science, surveys, part tests, tourism, outpost/station constructions, flag planting, progression, grand tours, and yes, the discussed rescue and recovery type).

You can also see this in the in-game debug screen (Alt-F12 on PC), on the Contracts tab, under the button 'Add'. Every line you see there is a different class/type of contracts, that correspond to the list mentioned above (in stock, cause mods can modify this).

[bewing]

1 hour ago, swjr-swis said:

the game does actually have classes or types of contracts

You're missing my point. The question was: in the text/tutorials/etc. that a user can see from inside the game, is there a reason to expect that reputation will have an effect on the number of kerbal rescue missions that you end up being offered?

Subquestion: Does the text inside the game say that there are types of contracts? No it does not. That is meta-information.

Does the game say that the contract goals that you will be offered depends on your reputation? Yes, it does.

[Spricigo]

3 hours ago, bewing said:

You're missing my point. The question was: in the text/tutorials/etc. that a user can see from inside the game, is there a reason to expect that reputation will have an effect on the number of kerbal rescue missions that you end up being offered?

Subquestion: Does the text inside the game say that there are types of contracts? No it does not. That is meta-information.

Does the game say that the contract goals that you will be offered depends on your reputation? Yes, it does.

Well,  no offense but I think it's a moot point.  While there is no inequivocal statement of the existence of contract types it isn't needed either.  What really matters it's that types exist,  and we know it. Knowledge is power. 

Some people find this important info because of the Metadata (wiki, forums,  game files, etc),  other just figured it out while playing  and other yet just didn't notice.  This is the answer to the question how could I've known about the reputation contract unlock?  

[magnemoe]

I would like more of them as kerbals are expensive, at high reputation they tend to spawn at other places, two on Gilly, one in low solar orbit one in Duna orbit both required craft recovery too. 
Then one in Bop orbit, and one with craft in Minmus orbit. 

[eonmoon]

heh, using extraplanetary launchpads and uks systems. i got a small number of probe driven small recovery capsule ships to retrieve kerbals. late term having a  few  ships carrying a tree of small ships to other planets to await more retreval missions

[klesh]

I dont care for rescue missions at all.  I mean, if I am the only space program on Kerbin, where did these astronauts come from?  How did they get there?  Its kind of silly, to me at least. 

They basically boil down to an orbital rendezvous practice mission with a free Kerbal as your reward.   

[tmbomber]

I've run into a problem where I haven't been offered a single rescue mission. I have the tech tree complete through the 90 point nodes along with a few of the 160's. When I go to mission control and select "all" I don't even see rescue missions as a possibility.

I'm about to create a new career game and remove the mods that might effect things, but that's going to be a pain I'd rather avoid.

I have coherent contracts, contract configurator, and contract pacs: Bases & stations, kerbal academy, remote tech, scansat, & tourism plus as well as several mods that bring contracts along for the ride.

Anybody ever see this behavior?
 

[bewing]

The only requirements in stock for being offered rescue contracts are: T2 Astronaut Complex, T2 Tracking Station, and must have gone beyond LKO once. So it's definitely one of your mods -- but I don't know which one.

[tmbomber]

Well, I have T2 Astronaut Complex , T2 Tracking station & done Mun & Minmus flybys. So I guess it'll be the hard way...

(I hate this process)

[Superfluous J]

8 hours ago, tmbomber said:

contract configurator

That mod has the ability to disable contracts by type. Perhaps you inadvertently disabled rescue contracts?