How to tell if my ship is "newly launched"?

[Mitchz95]

I have a contract that wants me to put a space station into orbit around Duna. One of my new ships fulfills the requirements, but I can't remember whether I launched it before or after accepting the contract. Is there a way to tell whether it counts as a "newly launched" vessel?

[CalculusWarrior]

Not off the top of my head. Is it possible to see how long ago you accepted the contract and compare it to when you launched the ship?

EDIT: After testing a bit, it seems like there's no way of telling when you accept a contract, neither in the config files nor the Mission Control building.

Edited July 24, 2015 by CalculusWarrior

[kurja]

Switch to the vessel and click the 'contract button' on top right, if it counts as a new vessel then that condition is going to be checked in green, if it doesn't count as new the text will be just gray as usual.

[Nich]

Does that work if you have 3 stations two of which do not fulfill the contract and a third that does? i.e. from station 1 and 2 it is grayed out and from station 3 it is green? I always thought all you need is a ship in your fleet to meet the requirements even if it is not the ship you are controlling.

[kurja]

Does that work if you have 3 stations two of which do not fulfill the contract and a third that does? i.e. from station 1 and 2 it is grayed out and from station 3 it is green? I always thought all you need is a ship in your fleet to meet the requirements even if it is not the ship you are controlling.

No, met / unmet requirements are shown for the active vessel. I just tried this to make sure; I launched "a new satellite with an antenna to a specific orbit", after liftoff the "launch a new"... bit goes green, then focused another vessel, it got grayed out.

[Snark]

Does that work if you have 3 stations two of which do not fulfill the contract and a third that does? i.e. from station 1 and 2 it is grayed out and from station 3 it is green? I always thought all you need is a ship in your fleet to meet the requirements even if it is not the ship you are controlling.

Just to elaborate on kurja's response: Fulfilling a contract means that you are CURRENTLY satisfying ALL the contract requirements with the CURRENTLY controlled ship.

Note that contract requirements are not a thing that you "check off and you're done". They're live status indicators, that will gray out again if you stop meeting the condition. For example, suppose you have a contract that says "Be in orbit around the Mun" and also some other condition. To fulfill the contract, you have to be in orbit around the Mun while you satisfy the other condition. It's not like you can send a ship, orbit the Mun, okay that's done, then leave Mun orbit and satisfy the other condition. The "Mun orbit" requirement would light up green the moment you enter Mun orbit... and would then gray out again as soon as you leave Mun orbit.

It also only applies to the currently controlled ship. Suppose the contract is to "launch a new station on a solar orbit." You build your station, and it satisfies all the conditions (have a docking port, etc.) except "be in orbit around the Sun" since you haven't gotten that far yet. You launch it on an escape trajectory from Kerbin, and then you go off to work with other ships. The contract won't automatically get fulfilled when the ship leaves Kerbin's SoI, since you're not currently controlling it. The contract will stay live... until you eventually switch to the ship, and then it will complete.

[Nich]

Thanks good to know but not necessarily true

Others have stated for the Mine ore on Eve and deliver it to Guilly contracts that you can mine ore on Eve and then deliver different ore (I am assuming with a different ship) to guilly

[kurja]

It is true regarding your original question about the stations. I haven't tried ore mining missions so I don't know exactly how those work.

[FancyMouse]

If you care how to complete a contract - just check contract window, as mentioned before.

If you care about the implementation details - it's done by tracking the launchID of the parts versus the contract. Each click of launch button will increment launchID, and the newly launched vessel has all parts associated with that ID. When you accept a contract, it also records the current launchID. This way the game can track whether it's newly launched (relative to contract acceptance) or not. Docking makes this matter more complex, but seems not scope of discussion here.

This also explains the Ore situation as Ore is just a resource and there's no launchID for it, so game has no way to rigorously check whether it's the same ore or not. Plus in real life if you have such contract, you also only care whether you've mined the given amount of ore and send back a given amount of ore, regardless of whether the two sets of ore are indeed the same or not, right?

[Kryxal]

I think some contracts require simultaneous completion of conditions, while some are not (like tourist / explore / survey).

[Claw]

I will check (because I can't recall for certain), but I think the mechanic was changed. It just used to be "launch any new ship." But I think it now check the launch date of the vessel you're in control of when attempting to fulfill the contract. So it's comparing the ship's launch time to the contract's start time.

Cheers,

~Claw