Make contract requirements clearer

[Greenspan]

I think the enjoyability of KSP could be improved by making the requirements for contracts clearer and more obvious to the player. I've had a couple of missions go south after investing a lot of time/resources only to realize I forgot an antenna or something; this is extremely frustrating and usually reason enough to quit for the day.

Obviously, I can only blame myself for not reading the requirements thoroughly; however I would argue KSP shouldn't be about reading requirements and is not the most enjoyable aspect of the game; I think some simple UI changes could be made to make it clearer to the player what they need to do. For example, have a tab to pull up the entire contracts in the VAB and in flight so you can easily pull up all the details of the contract in flight or when your building your ship; there is a dropdown tab right now but it lacks details.

I think in general the contracts could be worded better and/or more explicitly. KSP is a game about thinking outside the box, and hacking together a unconventional design to meet some crazy objective, it's hard to do that when your unsure of what exactly the contract requires and you might get there only to realize you missed some random detail.

Maybe all that information is already there, but it has been my experience that it is not made very obvious to the player; and usually a successful mission will require several trips to mission control to check, double check, triple check, and then write down the requirements of a contract just to make sure you don't forget something silly.

[Guest]

however I would argue KSP shouldn't be about reading requirements

It's obviously not about reading the contracts either, judging by how incoherent they are...

Anyway, +1, the conditions should be much clearer, perhaps in a brighter font color than muted-grey.

[manaiaK]

... usually a successful mission will require several trips to mission control to check, double check, triple check, and then write down the requirements of a contract just to make sure you don't forget something silly.

Exactly!

Glad I'm not the only one who has to do this.

I have two folders on my desk these days: "space flight reference", which has things like the vis-viva equation and the formula for orbital period with worked examples; and "KSP", which has my notes for the 3 saves I'm playing alternately. Especially contract details.

I'm starting to wonder whether this is a game...

[Greenspan]

Anyway, +1, the conditions should be much clearer, perhaps in a brighter font color than muted-grey.

Yeah exactly what I was thinking, highlight the key points with bright text or something, super easy fix to make it obvious.

Pictures/Graphics would help a lot too. E.g. put a picture of the desired orbit, that is incredibly more intuitive than the orbital parameters.

I recently moved an existing satellite into a really challenging orbit, since the satellite was from before I accepted the contract it was not valid. How am I supposed to keep track of stuff like that? The contracts tab is really the only way but that is very limited/hard to keep track of the contracts

Edited November 3, 2015 by Greenspan