What is "new" as far as space station contracts go.

[davidpsummers]

I have a contract to put a space station around Minmus. I already ahve a little one that doesn't match the requirements for the contract. If I add to it, will I get credit?

Edited September 30, 2015 by davidpsummers

[Alshain]

Nope. The entire construction must be new.

[Streetwind]

The reason being that two vessels docked together become merged into a single vessel. The new part that you launched will cease being new (i.e. mission timer start is more recent than the contract) because the merged vessel is likely goingto inherit the age of the old one.

In addition, if you launch a new station and then dock something older to it, there's a chance that this happens, too - even if the part you added seems insignificant. You might end up "aging" your newly launched station and it becomes unable to complete the contract. So the rule of the thumb is: launch something new, period. Anytime you dock something older, there's a chance that things break. It's not worth trying to cheat your way through

[Champ]

Personnally, i "cheat" on this.

I complete my existing station, and when the "new" station meets all requirements, Alt+F12 => Contract completed.

In order to balance this, I only accept contracts if they need a significant update to my existing stations (going from 5 kerbals to 12 kerbals + lab, for example)

[davidpsummers]

Thanks guys!

[SpeedDaemon]

Is MET all that counts for "new craft" regarding contracts?

If so, then based on this thread, it would seem that if you can get the root part of your station to be some small, insignificant part (not critical to contract completion) separated by docking ports from the rest of the station, you can reset the MET for most of the rest of the station by un-docking it from the root part, at which point it should get it's own MET reset to zero.

So the procedure would then be:

1. Dock updated hardware to station

2. Un-dock from root (contract completes)

3. Re-dock to root

Not sure how the root part of a station moves around as you dock/un-dock, though.

[FancyMouse]

But since now every part tracks launchID, if the game choose to traverse all parts of a ship to find the single oldest part on the ship, and then compare it with the contract, all those root parts trick will just not work - and it's possible and not even hard to implement this. This still doesn't contradict the linked thread above - that was dealing with MET, different from contract requirements.

My whole point is, playing with root part may not work at all, and if so you'll have to keep all parts new.

Of course, you can always Alt-F12, or edit save file to make the launchID of the contract to 0.