Contract pre-selection

[Kerbart]

The introduction of contracts has been a wonderful addition to KSP, giving the average player a good amount of focus in career mode. However,

, we are a bunch of ungrateful dogs who quickly take the new functionality for granted and start complaining how awful it is. And I'm no exception.

There's no hiding that, as amazing as the current contract system is, it hasn't reached the level of perfection that we're used to from Squad. So we spam the contract slot machine and keep hitting “decline†until we finally get a good contract. The developer's reaction to address this issue has been... ...unsatisfactory.

As has been pointed out in the thread about this subject, contracts can be declined for many reasons. Maybe you're not into flying halfway around Kerbin for three temperature measurements. Maybe you have no inclination to go to Duna. Then it dawned on me.

Why not make contract choices part of the administration building?

We already set strategies there, wouldn't the choice of contracts be a strategy? You could simply set sliders with percentages of what kind of contracts you're after:

• Science on Kerbin
  
• Tourism
  
• Rescue missions
  
• Launch Satellites
  
• Space Exploration
  
• Asteroids
  

I'm sure the list can be refined, and maybe have some sub-settings. But you choose to be this “fly around Kerbing and science the roof out of it†space agency, or a “tourist agency†or whatever. Perhaps the choices would also reflect the rewards. A specialized tourist company would get higher rewards for tourist contracts than an asteroid-busting specialist. Or perhaps the other way around to promote diversity?

[tntristan12]

Not much I can add to this idea, but it makes a lot of sense to me! I can see why the devs added the penalization from a gameplay perspective: mission control wants you to do a job whether you like it or not. Of course, this would give you some way of influencing the exact nature of that job. Seems like a good middle ground to me.

[Joonatan1998]

I think it would be better solution to the "slot machine" problem if declining or failing some type of contract reduced the change of getting a contract like that.

For example, refusing or failing a Jool space station contract would reduce the changes of getting Jool-related contracts or space station contracts. (and maybe also base and satellite contracts.)

And completing one increased the change of getting similar contracts.

But to promote diversity, maybe make it so that if you only complete certain type of contracts the rewards become smaller.

Getting a small reputation hit when you tell a company that you aren't going to test launch clamps when landed on the Sun is understandable. Different corporations continuing to ask for the same thing and damaging your reputation each time you say "no" is not.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Joonatan1998

[Claw]

Well, it's only 1 point for declining, but I also get the whole "don't punish the player for lack of interactive tools."

The typical response here is to say "go edit the .cfg," but that also feels unsatisfactory. I also don't exactly like the idea of a tweakable GUI, but that's a better step.

I more agree with a natural way of the game to track yser preference. Such as tracking a counter (of sorts) that increments when you accept a contract type, and maybe decrements it when you decline a contract type (simplified view).

That way, over time, if you ignored or declined something like tourist contracts, the game eventually lowers the frequency of tourist contracts. Maybe not quite to zero, but something very low. And if you kept doing "expand station" contracts, the game would offer more types, and possibly with increasing difficulty/demands.

[Alshain]

Well, it's only 1 point for declining, but I also get the whole "don't punish the player for lack of interactive tools."

The typical response here is to say "go edit the .cfg," but that also feels unsatisfactory. I also don't exactly like the idea of a tweakable GUI, but that's a better step.

I more agree with a natural way of the game to track yser preference. Such as tracking a counter (of sorts) that increments when you accept a contract type, and maybe decrements it when you decline a contract type (simplified view).

That way, over time, if you ignored or declined something like tourist contracts, the game eventually lowers the frequency of tourist contracts. Maybe not quite to zero, but something very low. And if you kept doing "expand station" contracts, the game would offer more types, and possibly with increasing difficulty/demands.

The only problem with an adaptive system like that is cases where you just don't want to do them, right now. Early rescue contracts for example are painful. Until you get the Mk1-2 Command pod, getting Kerbals back from space requires ugly hard to fly designs. You can't just slap a Mk1 Crew cabin below a Mk1 cockpit, it will cause it to flip on re-entry and burn up. You can put it on top of the command pod but that is ugly and harder to control. So, what do you do? I wait till I have a bigger command pod to take those missions. Later I do it with planes anyway, but that is even further in the tech tree.

The problem with the adaptive system is if you decline too many of the contracts you will then have a hard time finding a new one when you do want it and even then you will have to do enough of them to overpower the averages.

[Kerbart]

(...)Early rescue contracts for example are painful. Until you get the Mk1-2 Command pod, getting Kerbals back from space requires ugly hard to fly designs. You can't just slap a Mk1 Crew cabin below a Mk1 cockpit, it will cause it to flip on re-entry and burn up. You can put it on top of the command pod but that is ugly and harder to control. So, what do you do?

I just slap an okto on top of a Mk1 Cockpit (gives it a more Mercurial shape so to say) so I can send an unmanned rocket up. But I agree with you that there are many cases where you don't want a contract yet for a variety of reasons.

[Joonatan1998]

Maybe the adaptive system could somehow take tech progress level into account somehow?

For example each tech* you unlock could take the probablities a bit towards the default values.

*or building upgrade, and maybe planet visits also.

One other thing is that it should work a bit like reputation, the further you take the probability of some type of contract from the default the harder it becomes to increase/decrease the probability even further and the easier it becomes to go towards the default.

If you have a long history of not doing tourist contracts completing just one succesfully would increase their probability a lot.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Joonatan1998

[Alshain]

I just slap an okto on top of a Mk1 Cockpit (gives it a more Mercurial shape so to say) so I can send an unmanned rocket up. But I agree with you that there are many cases where you don't want a contract yet for a variety of reasons.

I play RemoteTech By the time I have a ComSat Network in place, I should be close enough to a Mk 1-2 anyway. I know, I say it all the time... stock development shouldn't depend on mods, but as you said there are other examples.

[samwiseiam25]

Maybe it would work better if the ability to select contract types was something that could be unlocked through upgrading the admin building. Right now, the third upgrade to the admin building allows "unlimited" contracts, which can be unsatisfying for some since at the moment, "unlimited" means 15 IIRC. If the third upgrade to the admin building allowed those 15 contracts and the ability to purchase a particular type of contract with reputation it might provide a more satisfying experience and give player a reason to upgrade the admin building fully.

Also, using reputation to purchase contracts you want might give an incentive to care about an in-game currency that is otherwise fairly nebulous and give players some sort of positive choice as to what they can do with this resource rather than the small negative one rep penalty that has been implemented currently. This way, the sort of contracts that introduce a player to the game in career mode, such as launch your first rocket, get to orbit, and test x part in y conditions remain in place, but if later a player dicides that they want to get paid for building and expanding a space station in LKO, setting up infrastructure for later, they can trade some reputation in order to get contracts that finance this.

[tater]

Yeah, "Strategies" should allow the player to set the relative abundance of contract types. Say my Strategy is to be a space tourism business. Then I move the slider for that strategy over to the right as far as it goes. If my goal is a real (NASA) space program, then I move that all the way to zero. Have a few meta types available. Tourism, Space Science (NASA/ESA model), Commercial launches (ULS/SpaceX/etc), Resource extraction? They'd all have sliders, and the relative abundance of contracts varies based upon the strategy you pick.

[Pthigrivi]

Tater I really like that method.