Disappearing Contracts

[LTrotsky]

Twice in one career playthrough, I've had the entire batch of active contracts wiped out and disappear.

I saw one other short thread on this which was of no help, and is now about 6 months old.

Both times the active contract slate disappeared happened during missions to Minmus, in particular when a spacecraft is attempting to fulfill two contracts at the same time. In the most recent disappearance event, I was attempting to fill two 'position satellite' contracts with a single launch, by loading a vehicle with two new probes, and splitting them just before Minmus SOI, with maneuvers for each to get them close to the target orbits. On entering Minmus SOI, the AN/DN markers were in the wrong place (right on the craft in the map view), and the contract target orbits were still there, but no longer had AP/Pe/AN/DN markers. When I went back to the space center, the contracts were gone.

Edit : I am also interested to know if anyone does these kind of missions, two probes in one vehicle for two separate contracts.

Has anyone else had disappearing contracts problems similar?

Just guessing, but I think it has something to do with the code that requires a 'new' probe to be constructed for the contract. The vehicle in this case had three probe cores, one for the main guidance and control of the delivery vehicle, and one for each of the probes that were to be deployed (kind of MIRV'd) once in Minmus SOI.

This is a pretty annoying bug in career mode because your entire space program is kind of structured by the contracts since thats the only way to get money. Having to start all over again with contracts is very frustrating, very much a waste in terms of the career track and getting money for more missions.

If you have seen this, please post it here.

Edited November 1, 2015 by LTrotsky

[TheXRuler]

Sorry to hear that, sounds like a really annoying bug :c If nothing comes up here I'd suggest going over to stock/modded support

[LTrotsky]

It's actually more annoying than the bugged docking ports, since Claw's workaround worked. Around. There's no fix or even a discussion about the contracts disappearing problem, which has now happened twice in the same way so it's not some random glitch.

[FancyMouse]

I've heard multiple people from the forum seeing that. However I haven't encountered (I'm running heavily modded and I also do batched missions).

Another reason you should save often, not for your own mission fault (in which case I'm actually totally fine hitting F5 after making the mistake), but mostly for the game itself screwing up for whatever reason.

[LTrotsky]

I've heard multiple people from the forum seeing that. However I haven't encountered (I'm running heavily modded and I also do batched missions).

Another reason you should save often, not for your own mission fault (in which case I'm actually totally fine hitting F5 after making the mistake), but mostly for the game itself screwing up for whatever reason.

I'm not very good at remembering to quicksave or save in general, unfortunately. I design functional craft with precise loads which are heavily tested before a real flight. Things still go wrong, but when they do redundancies make recovering from the error a fun challenge. These types of things, however, I can't fix. But you are right, I really need to save frequently for these types of things. I suspect in this case if I had saved just before the error, it would be repeatable. My lesson from this is something about the new probe requirement makes probe specific orbit contract attempts highly risky if you try a twofer. The code might not recognized the split craft as a 'new' probe, but something about that doesn't just not get recognized, it wipes the whole slate out.

[magnemoe]

I have had this from time to time but not in 1.04, overall I probably earned on it as you keep the up front money.

Yes if you have build a lot of stations and launched on the way to their destination it would not be good.

Did not know about the MIRV probe problem. It might explain my problem too, has not used the mirv method in 1.04 yet, yes you can reuse probes but combining an satellite and an base contract makes lots of sense and I have done it many times.

[mabarry3]

I had this happen once shortly after installing Kerbal Construction Time mod. I went to upgrade my stuff and check out how the mod worked, then moved over to a ship that was about to land on Minmus for a contract and suddenly all my contracts disappeared.

I luckily saved on a frequent basis, so I could get my contracts back and barely lost any game time.

[LTrotsky]

Thanks for the replies guys. My conclusion from what has been said here is that this is a bug, which is much more frequent depending on style of contract fultillment and ship design related to that. It seems that my style of attempting to fulfill as many contracts as possible with a single launch increases the probability of this error.

[magnemoe]

Thanks for the replies guys. My conclusion from what has been said here is that this is a bug, which is much more frequent depending on style of contract fultillment and ship design related to that. It seems that my style of attempting to fulfill as many contracts as possible with a single launch increases the probability of this error.

True, it might be worth to try to trigger it using an mirv probe setup.

And yes as anything else this can be exploited, take an lots of contracts with high up front payment then force an reset and get new contracts.

As you don't plan to do the contracts only up front payment matter, take ore from Eve to Gilly take an E-class asteroid to Moho and so on

[Provisional Name 12]

I have had this bug happen a lot since 1.0.5 when I started playing, I was pretty suspicious that the cause of the bug is from switching between vessels within or outside of range.

I know it happens to the persistent file first, but can't find the cause at all. It is hard to notice. If squad isn't going to fix this we need a mod that will alert us to the fact that our contracts are empty.

I frequently just accept similar contracts and use alt+f12 to fix my standing with the contracts as well as completing them. Been looking at this mod called S.A.V.E. that I might try for it.

 

Edited December 16, 2016 by SpaceCommunism

[bewing]

The devs need a reproducible error to debug. A savegame in a stock version of KSP from just before the contracts disappear, and a list of steps. Otherwise they can't debug it.

I have never once seen the error you mention. My contracts always stay until they complete.

 

[Kryxal]

Seems quite the necro, but at least a useful mod was suggested...

[Provisional Name 12]

I was trying to find solutions to the problem and found the lack of proposed solutions frustrating so it is good to necro threads with potential solutions for others who come across the problem, even if it is too late to solve this individual's specific problem. That said, a month and a half is not particularly necro, is it?

[bewing]

A year and a month and a half.

[Provisional Name 12]

oh lol your right, my bad.

[KillSwitchX]

I'm running into the same problem in 2019! And yup... it's at Minmus... it's so frustrating because I spent a ton of time and completed 3 other contracts after the one that disappeared, I can go back and try to recover my disappeared contract but honestly at this point its not worth redoing all I did at minmus now before returning home and realizing that the contract is just gone...so annoying.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, KillSwitchX said:

I'm running into the same problem in 2019! And yup... it's at Minmus... it's so frustrating because I spent a ton of time and completed 3 other contracts after the one that disappeared, I can go back and try to recover my disappeared contract but honestly at this point its not worth redoing all I did at minmus now before returning home and realizing that the contract is just gone...so annoying.

If you have that save game (which you seem to) then it can't hurt to open a bug report with it. Maybe there will be some clue in it as to the problem.

The problem will never get fixed if it's not reproducible.