Declining contracts in 1.0.5 career mode now costs you rep?

[Sanic]

Wait, WHAT?!?!?

I must immediately fire up KSP and verify this! I really hope it isn't true, because that would indeed break Career Mode and does indeed sound stupid.

It is true. Though I was a major contract farmer

[Damien_The_Unbeliever]

From a realism perspective, it's just dumb; nobody would run a business that way

Remember, we're talking Rep here, not money. Most businesses have no means of measuring their "rep" anyway. But if you set up a business that offers to do lots of space work, and people come to you asking you to do space work, and you keep turning them down, are you sure that "word of mouth" about your business isn't going to turn somewhat negative?

[T-Bouw]

I must say, it's doing the trick for me.

Declined like crazy until I got the contracts I wanted.

Now, I haven't declined a single one.

Instead, I do some other contract that is also still fun but, you know, different.

I'll bet we'll get a wider range of skills because of this alone.

[Hotaru]

I like the idea of this, in the sense of giving me a reason not to play mission control roulette until I get exactly the job I'm looking for. I that contracts give me reasons to do things I wouldn't have done otherwise, and I like the idea of finding more sources of and uses for rep, but in practice there are just too many contracts that are boring, pointless, impossible, or unprofitable for it to make sense. (At least in 1.0.2, where my current career save is; maybe 1.0.5 with the contextual system is better.)

Personally, in 1.0.2 I tend to accept basically any contract that makes any kind of sense at all unless I have a pretty good reason not to ($150,000 for a flag? Sure, sounds goo--oh, you want it on Eve? Nice try, Kerlington Paper Products, Inc., but I like getting my Kerbals back, thank you very much!). Even so, I'd say I end up declining more than half of them, including pretty much all mining contracts ($200,000 and you want me to move how much ore from Moho to Eeloo exactly?), which in 1.0.5 would represent a substantial enough hit to my rep that I'll probably end up turning off this option next time I start over in career.

All that said I haven't actually tried a 1.0.5 career yet, so I might be wrong about this; it's a pretty small penalty (I think a flat -1 per declined contract by default) so maybe combined with the contextual system it actually will work as a useful incentive to try a wider variety of tasks without being unbelievably frustrating. As I said, I like the theory, I'm just skeptical of the practice.

[Torquemadus]

I always disliked the way that contracts could be spammed, it was clearly an exploit. The fact that the rep penalty is small means that players are not excluded from declining contracts if they wish to do so.

I play Career Mode on custom difficulty to make it more challenging. Choosing contracts can add interesting dilemmas to the game, as there is always a risk that I might not be able to pull them off and could therefore loose money.

[Stoney3K]

Exactly. -1 rep is such a tiny, meaningless amount it only serves to combat heavy exploitation of the function. People declining dozens of contracts in a row looking for something specific.

The exploit: If you have a satellite in orbit around Duna, for example, previous to 1.0.5 you could could decline every contract on the board over and over until some 'Collect Science In Orbit Around Duna' contract comes up. You're already in position for it, so you accept it and complete it immediately. The contract cost you nothing and you rake in the cash. It's a technical exploit but only one that can work if you're declining dozens of contracts in a row.

That could be prevented by the contextual contract system. If you have a flight in Duna orbit, it would mean "collect science from Duna" contracts would not be offered because, you've already done it. It would get replaced by another celestial body, or, it would be augmented with a "Launch a new vessel" clause.

Yes, declining serious contracts would cause a rep hit in real life, however if a company knowningly offers contracts with ridiculous goals, they shouldn't whine if those contracts get rejected. It's just the way of a contractor (you, the space agency) to say "What you are offering is so preposterous that we won't even consider it".

Contract rejection should be a mechanism which the user can use to "down-vote" a specific type of contract so any stupid contracts (like landing launch clamps on the sun) would not be offered anymore in the future.

That information may even be offered back to Squad so the contract system can be improved, since they can get a good inventory of the "too stupid to do"-contracts that are accidentally generated.

[cantab]

Provide us with more interesting contracts and less grindy ones, and the contract system will stop being used as a slot machine

The problem there is that one man's interesting contract is another man's grind. My last career I enjoyed cruising around Kerbin in planes doing science survey contracts, whereas many players won't touch those with a bargepole. And one of my most fun creations was a whacking great engine KASed onto a plane for a part test contract, again the kind of thing that gets heavily criticised.

I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement, but we can't make every contract liked by everyone.

[Warzouz]

I've always liked the idea of the player submitting mission proposals and the game assigning appropriate rewards. Might me a good end-game way of doing contracts.

That would be a goo idea, a bit like in real life when you explain you project and get a budget, or not.... The reward would be depending on the tech level and a bit of luck

[Stoney3K]

The problem there is that one man's interesting contract is another man's grind. My last career I enjoyed cruising around Kerbin in planes doing science survey contracts, whereas many players won't touch those with a bargepole. And one of my most fun creations was a whacking great engine KASed onto a plane for a part test contract, again the kind of thing that gets heavily criticised.

I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement, but we can't make every contract liked by everyone.

I can see your point. I think the most important type of "bogus contract" wee need to prevent are either: Things the player has already done so they offer no game progression (the afore-mentioned "collect science from your already-existing satellite over Duna") and otherwise, contracts that are impossible from a gameplay perspective (Plant a flag on Jool and return alive).

For me, part testing contracts can be challenging, science surveys are hit or miss since cruising in a plane across the entire planet (pretty much point the plane in the general direction, hit SAS and do something else for an hour) are not necessarily my idea of 'fun', but survey areas nearby can be really cool. Tourists are just a boring grind. They are too easy right now IMO, since there is no requirement to carry X tourists in a single flight, if you have a mission that involves 4 tourists, you can do 4 separate flights to complete the contract. That would become a lot more challenging if they would need to be carried simultaneously.

[Warzouz]

The real question around contract is WHICH contracts do we accept and don't accept. Do we like short contract or long contracts ?

Personally, I'm very specific about contracts. I find the contract stuff a nice addition, but I agree that many contracts are not fun. The 4th space station around Mun, or a 6 tourists contract which each wants to visit 3 planetary systems (different for each tourists)... Part testing doesn't feel "epic". If Part testing makes sense around Kerbin, I'm not too found of testing parts on Mun or Laythe. Also recovering parts requires specific craft. Even Crew recovery only ends when landing on Kerbin. Space stations aren't a valid contract end, so we keep the mission for a very long time.

Hopefully, this feature can be disabled. I'm sad that KSP doesn't offer to modify or change difficulty after career starts.

I agree with others that, despite the work of Squad, the contract system isn't as great as most of KSP is.

[KSK]

I really like this feature. As the Patch notes said, it is there to prevent "Slot Machine abuse".

About not accepting "stupid" contracts: Then just timewarp or go do something else. There is always stuff you can do. Most proposals expire in a few days.

Right. This entire, farcical feature can be avoided by timewarping. Which 99% of the time has no other effect on gameplay, so players can use it at will, thus negating the rep penalty by adding a tedious workaround. Plus in a largely sandbox game, "There's always something else to do" is a shoddy excuse for not letting players do what they want to do.

About IRL: First, you DO take a rep hit if you decline things, as many have noted. Second: If you have a company, do you think there is an unlimited supply of contracts for you, just waiting for you to pick them? Do you think you can just send away customers until you can finally pick one that you like? No, that's not realistic.

Certainly not. On the other hand if I have a company then I'm generally the one going out and finding the contracts rather than waiting for them to come to me. And sending away customers (politely) who either have no idea what your company is offering, or are proposing something that is entirely implausible or unreasonable for your company to be doing, is perfectly realistic strategy. Far from lowering the reputation of your company, it might actually improve it, since the company is clearly being run by somebody with a clue.

Edit: Quick question for all the 'realism' proponents. Is there any practical real-world reputation difference between declining an offer and ignoring it in the hope that the offerer will just go away? Personally, I would say 'no there isn't', so again, this penalty makes no sense.

In game, if Reputation was done on a per company basis, then this penalty might make some sense and introduce some interesting gameplay choices. At the moment it adds neither to gameplay nor realism.

Edited November 13, 2015 by KSK

[NecroBones]

I think a -1 rep hit is pretty reasonable. It's nothing. It won't prevent you from declining contracts here and there. It will stop you from declining 100 contracts in a row though, so as a means to discourage the "slot machine" abuse, it should be pretty successful. But I agree, the contextual contracts is something that was needed for this as well. If they added the penalty, but still gave you just as many absurd contracts, then it would be irritating.

[KSK]

I think the idea that "slot machine abuse" is a thing in the first place is absurd, let alone the idea that it's something that needs to be discouraged.

How a player chooses to make their money should be up to them, ergo, the contracts that they choose to accept should be up to them. Yes there are easy contracts, yes there are hard contracts. Great - let the player choose the level of difficulty they wish to work with. Why should anybody give a rats behind whether players are grinding easy contracts or going for riskier, higher reward contracts. It makes no difference to anything else in the game, therefore I really can't see how "slot machining" the contract system can be considered any kind of abuse.

Besides, if a feature is broken to the extent that players are "abusing" their way around it, the correct response is to improve the feature rather than punish players for it's alleged "abuse".

[MaxwellsDemon]

What exactly happens if you lose reputation? I've been playing for almost 500 hours, tons of fun, but never once paid attention to my reputation score. Just opens up some obscure admin strategies? Does anyone actually use those?

I'm sort of in this boat. I've noticed I have a nice, high rep score on my current campaign but I have no earthly (or Kerbinly) idea what it's good for, other than to make me feel good.

[tater]

Awful contracts now made obligatory? The rep hit for not accepting would be OK if the contracts were not almost universally awful, or even if the player had the ability to use... let's call it "strategies" to define what kinds of contracts they might see. Some people might want a space tourism business, for example, those people could select a "tourism" strategy that would result in them seeing such contracts. Those of us who never take those would rarely ever see them. Maybe there's a "random tours of kerbin" strategy that results in those survey contracts. Don't take that strategy, and you don't see those, etc. The amount you commit would determine the relative abundance of such missions.

Now, instead of declining them, you warp ahead a few days.

[cantab]

Edit: Quick question for all the 'realism' proponents. Is there any practical real-world reputation difference between declining an offer and ignoring it in the hope that the offerer will just go away? Personally, I would say 'no there isn't', so again, this penalty makes no sense.

In the real-world, if you turn a customer away you don't magically get another one with different wants straight away. But you can over time expect a decent steady stream of customers if your company is any good.

The rep hit for not accepting would be OK if the contracts were not almost universally awful

If you think the contracts are "almost universally awful", have you considered playing a game mode that doesn't involved them?

It does seem like the majority of people criticising this change to career are criticising career anyway. If you don't like it why play it?

[tater]

If you think the contracts are "almost universally awful", have you considered playing a game mode that doesn't involved them?

It does seem like the majority of people criticising this change to career are criticising career anyway. If you don't like it why play it?

Because career mode should not be awful?

When a new patch comes out, I always play an unmodded career, so I can provide constructive feedback. The career mode has some decent bones, but is arguably the very worst part of KSP (still). Perhaps if they renamed it from career" to "random challenges mode" I'd have a different reaction to it (it makes perfect sense as random challenges mode).

The point of any campaign/career (in any game like KSP) mode is twofold.

One, to give a sense of story arc to gameplay.

Two, to create novel situations/problems for the player to solve in a context.

It succeeds a tiny bit at #1 (though the fact that you've never flown on day one, and a few weeks later you're heading for Duna compresses it quite a bit), and not at all on #2 when you include "in a context." Send a probe to Duna, and you start getting rescues at Duna. What's the context, that I lost the space race, and the competing program(s) now have so many kerbals at Duna that I have a few different crafts to rescue?

The bones are there, but it's still terrible.

[Xavven]

/agree with tater. Career is not the "tycoon" game mode that Squad said they were going to make, but they're getting closer to that goal with each patch IMO. There's still one thing missing that would change the game drastically, and IMO for the better, and that is annual/monthly funding and expense. There are two problems that would solve immediately:

1. There would be a consequence for warping ahead to get new contracts. Only this combined with the contract decline penalty would achieve what Squad intended -- stopping contract "slot-machine" cheese. Only half the problem is solved as it stands.

2. You couldn't complete the whole tech tree literally without leaving LKO once unlocking the mobile processing (science) lab.

[passinglurker]

I for one will be turning the penalty off until we get something like separate contract slot machines for each planet so that I can at least pick my own destination

[r_rolo1]

I'm sort of in this boat. I've noticed I have a nice, high rep score on my current campaign but I have no earthly (or Kerbinly) idea what it's good for, other than to make me feel good.

Good rep gives you better rewards for your contract proposals ... and bad rep does the oposite

Back on topic, first things first. no one is forcing you to acept all the contracts... you're just being punished by giving a bald face "No" to the proposals. That leaves you with the option of simply letting the proposal to die out, that so far is not punished ( IMHO this is a unreasonable situation, but well, it is what we have ATM )

Second, if this game career mode is about managing a space program ( sort of Space program Tycoon ) like SQUAD used to say in their site ( since 1.0 than that reference is not there, mind that ), then this measure is a step in the good direction, but given the lack of other features ( like , say, a coherent contract proposals system ), it sticks out like a sore thumb because it punishes a player by weeding out bad outputs of a flawed contract system actively ( in spite of the 1.0.5 contract system being better than the previous ones ) and because it offers the player the option of simply time warping out the problem ( and, let's be honest, encouraging the player of your game to skip the game it self is a strange idea IMHO. It is one thing to be forced to enable time warp due to the game context ... but encouraging the player to do so ... ). In other words, I'm ok with the measure in itself, but I'm not OK with this measure in the current game context :/

Edited November 13, 2015 by r_rolo1

[Stoney3K]

/agree with tater. Career is not the "tycoon" game mode that Squad said they were going to make, but they're getting closer to that goal with each patch IMO. There's still one thing missing that would change the game drastically, and IMO for the better, and that is annual/monthly funding and expense. There are two problems that would solve immediately:

1. There would be a consequence for warping ahead to get new contracts. Only this combined with the contract decline penalty would achieve what Squad intended -- stopping contract "slot-machine" cheese. Only half the problem is solved as it stands.

2. You couldn't complete the whole tech tree literally without leaving LKO once unlocking the mobile processing (science) lab.

In other words, enabling time as a limited resource so warping to expire contracts becomes impossible.

That would be easier to accomplish by implementing life support features.

[MrOsterman]

I for one will be turning the penalty off until we get something like separate contract slot machines for each planet so that I can at least pick my own destination

Yeah, the more I read about this (I just saw the rep hits with this thread; I'm too busy sciencing up right now to worry about contracts too much) the more I think I'll find that toggle to flip (if I can in my current save game; I don't want to start over). Some of these contracts are for things I'm just not up for trying yet. I could feel pressured to finally learn how to space walk but I'd rather focus on learning to land on the Mun at the moment thank you.

Even just letting me set a focus "exploration" vs "rescue" vs "research" would be nice.

[MrOsterman]

In other words, enabling time as a limited resource so warping to expire contracts becomes impossible.

That would be easier to accomplish by implementing life support features.

But that could mess with other things. While realistic, it can take years to line up the right orbit to put a probe on Duna, and that can create some odd situations with other projects you may have waiting (such as rescuing a lost kerbalnaut)

[mabarry3]

1. There would be a consequence for warping ahead to get new contracts. Only this combined with the contract decline penalty would achieve what Squad intended -- stopping contract "slot-machine" cheese. Only half the problem is solved as it stands.

So, if I warp 20 days ahead because I don't have any other missions up and running, but I want to finish this mission to, say, Eeloo, but I have 5 contracts that are "available", does that mean that I should take a rep hit (1 per contract per 2-3 days of warp) for not intending to ignore contracts, but rather just to finish a mission?

[Stoney3K]

But that could mess with other things. While realistic, it can take years to line up the right orbit to put a probe on Duna, and that can create some odd situations with other projects you may have waiting (such as rescuing a lost kerbalnaut)

I suspect in the "lost Kerbalnaut" case it's actually more realistic to have proper life support, since that little green guy/girl is not going to stay there forever.

Get to him too late, and it means certain death, mission failure. It's not like he's up there in his pod with unlimited air and snacks, just watching TV shows until someone comes over for a taxi service. It's a rescue mission after all.