how do I not break the story mode?

[Kergarin]

Hello,

I was playing ksp for a long time.

After 1.0.5 came out, I have started a new career.

I usually take the kerbin world firsts record missions as a main storyline.

Everything started normally with these contracts:
Launch first vessel
Orbit kerbin
Flyby minmus and mun
Orbit minmus and mun

And then came none of them.

So I took some random contracts in the kerbin system.
Waiting for the next contract, like land on the mun, like it usually came up.

After a few days came "land on eve"
I'm sure there should have been more missions before.

What did I do wrong?

[Geher]

[quote name='Kergarin']Hello,

I was playing ksp for a long time.

After 1.0.5 came out, I have started a new career.

I usually take the kerbin world firsts record missions as a main storyline.

Everything started normally with these contracts:
Launch first vessel
Orbit kerbin
Flyby minmus and mun
Orbit minmus and mun

And then came none of them.

So I took some random contracts in the kerbin system.
Waiting for the next contract, like land on the mun, like it usually came up.

After a few days came "land on eve"
I'm sure there should have been more missions before.

What did I do wrong?[/QUOTE]

I don't know if this is still happening in 1.0.5, but:
Did one of your crafts go interplanetary (leave Kerbins SOI)? Because then the contract system realizes that the Kerbin System is already too boring for you and you want to go to other planets.

[Streetwind]

[quote name='Kergarin']I'm sure there should have been more missions before.

What did I do wrong?[/QUOTE]

Welcome to the forums! :)

You did nothing wrong, you simply expected something different than what the game is giving you. There is no "story mode" as such. Career mode lets you play with missions to earn money and science, but there is no linear, overarching story going on.

It may not look like it at the beginning, because your reach into space is limited, and you get very specific missions in small steps... but in truth, the largest part of contracts in KSP are procedurally generated based on your current gameplay progress. You do not get a contract to land on the Mun because it was a storyline, but rather because the game generates you one based on the simple fact that you have never landed there before. After you land there, the game then remembers this and no longer generates you contracts to land on the Mun for the first time (but it may still generate contracts to do stuff on the surface of the Mun, since it knows you are capable of getting there).

This also means that you can skip ahead - like, you can land on the Mun without having a contract for it. The game remembers that you can land there, and simply starts generating more advanced contracts instead. The same goes for sending a spacecraft out of Kerbin's sphere of influence into solar orbit. Then the game will consider you an experienced player and generate you missions to do stuff in solar orbit instead. Which includes missions to visit other planets. In such a case you will never see a "land on the Mun" contract at all. By going into solar orbit, you showed the game that you are interested in grander things. ;)

It's perhaps not a 100% flawless system, since in rare cases a new player will accidentally fling themselves out into solar orbit by mistake... but then again, the game needs [I]some[/I] way of tracking your progress, and the ability to dynamically challenge even experienced players who want to choose their own path rather than grind through the same set of basic missions every new savegame. Edited November 20, 2015 by Streetwind

[Norpo]

[quote name='Streetwind']This also means that you can skip ahead - like, you can land on the Mun without having a contract for it. The game remembers that you can land there, and simply starts generating more advanced contracts instead. The same goes for sending a spacecraft out of Kerbin's sphere of influence into solar orbit. Then the game will consider you an experienced player and generate you missions to do stuff in solar orbit instead. Which includes missions to visit other planets. In such a case you will never see a "land on the Mun" contract at all. By going into solar orbit, you showed the game that you are interested in grander things. ;)[/QUOTE]

Hm, this is somewhat annoying, as one of the first things I did after reaching a Mun flyby was fling a one-way probe into solar orbit so it could transmit some cheap science points.

...Oh well. >.>

[Streetwind]

Well, they're constantly tweaking the contract parameters. In 1.0.5 too they changed a lot about how contracts determine when they should generate... if enough players feel like solar orbit should not be considered "further ahead" than a Mun landing, then perhaps it can be changed too.

[BoilingOil]

Thanks for starting this topic, Kergarin! Now I've been warned.

I've found sending a probe into solar orbit to be surprisingly easy; most of the time it's sufficient to just pack enough fuel to accelerate out of Kerbin orbit without a target. But if that bypasses the low end missions, I'm going to be careful not to do that too soon in career mode.

[Mastikator]

Landing on Eve is not as hard as it sounds, you can put heat shields on a probe core with batteries, chutes, a science part and an antenna and you can land on Eve. It takes something like 1100m/s delta-v to get to Eve, with two layers of heat shields you could even do aerobreaking and land on a single go.

It may seem overwhelming but you can do it. (but use lots of heat shields, Eve is hell)

[More Boosters]

[quote name='Streetwind']Well, they're constantly tweaking the contract parameters. In 1.0.5 too they changed a lot about how contracts determine when they should generate... if enough players feel like solar orbit should not be considered "further ahead" than a Mun landing, then perhaps it can be changed too.[/QUOTE]

This! Nothing I hate more than solar orbit giving more science or a throwaway "station" in solar orbit making ridiculous money.

If possible just remove solar stations, there's no rhyme and reason for them. Asteroid-based stations can simply make way more money when brought to the target SoI instead.

[Snark]

Another thing that may be a factor in your confusion:

The "World Firsts" missions are still there. In fact, they've been greatly extended, which is great. However, 1.0.5 made a change so that they're now automatic (which is good) and somewhat hidden (which IMHO is bad; for one thing, it leads people to not realize that they're there or how cool they are).

It used to be that World Firsts were handled through the contracts UI, so they were fairly visible-- you could really see them and see "what comes next."

What Squad has done now is to move them out of the contracts window entirely. Instead, they are automatically granted to you every time you get a new achievement. And Squad has greatly extended the list of new World Firsts, so there's actually a lot [I][U]more[/U][/I] of a "story" than there was before. First time in Kerbin orbit? First time to dock two ships in orbit? First Mun flyby? First Mun landing? First return from the Mun? First Duna flyby? And so forth. Basically, for just about every new thing you can accomplish, there's a corresponding World First achievement that rewards you with science, reputation, and (crucially, in the early game) cash.

It's a great idea, and long overdue. I'm glad that Squad did this.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of warts in the execution, which leads to some player confusion and (in your case) disappointment.

The first problem is that the achievements are rather hidden now. So well hidden, in fact, that often you don't see that you've done it and aren't aware that it's happening, thus your confusion. It [I][U]is[/U][/I] possible to find, but it's so inconspicuous that lots of people don't even discover that it's there. Go to the "completed contracts messages" display that's been in KSP since 0.24: that stack of green buttons up in the top right corner of the display. You know, the one that's just useless clutter that you never bother to look at, unless you go and clear the messages out once in a while. It now has a new, bright-blue button at the bottom of the list, with a globe icon on it. (You may have to scroll down the list of green buttons for the blue one to become visible.) Click on that, and you get a pop-up dialog that lists all your accomplished World Firsts going back to the start of your career. [I][U]Be very careful not to delete it[/U][/I] (for example, the "delete" button is right next to the "dismiss from the screen" button), since if you delete it, there's no way to get it back and the only way to look at your accomplished World Firsts after that is to go open up your save in a text editor.

Aside from the fact that they're too inconspicuous (and easy to inadvertently and permanently delete), the other problem is that they're no longer browsable in advance. There's no way for you to go and look at "what [I][U]could[/U][/I] I do next" as a way of driving storyline. I think that's the thing that's bugging you here. That doesn't actually bug me that much, personally, because Squad has done such a good job of adding achievements for practically everything that I just take it on faith that "if I go somewhere new, I'll get kudos and rewards for it". However, I can totally see that this could be a bigger deal for someone else.

The good news, I think, is that these problems with World Firsts represent [I][U]missing[/U][/I] features rather than actually [I]wrong[/I] ones. I think Squad is taking the game in a good direction, it's just that the current implementation of World Firsts is basically just 1.0 of the new design and they need time to iterate on it. They have a pretty good track record in the past of coming back to features that are initially very sketchily implemented, and fleshing them out later. So give them some time and I expect they'll improve it.

Personally, the best idea I've heard here came up on a thread in the "suggestions" forum. Someone suggested adding a World Firsts tab to the "Archive" UI on the science R&D facility. You can go there now to browse all the various places you've been, biomes, science you've gathered from various situations, etc. Put the World Firsts there. It's a natural fit with the UI, and those are really more of a sciency thing than a contracty thing anyway. That could make them much easier to look at in useful ways, and if done right you could make the UI able to browse "what haven't I done yet?" types of contracts easily, to give you back your "story mode." Edited November 20, 2015 by Snark

[wreckreation]

Check out the Final Frontier mod. It rewards your kerbals with ribbons for all sorts of accomplishments (first orbit, first eva, first landing, etc., etc.), you don't need a contract, and you can do them in any order that fits in with your story.

[Arsonide]

[quote name='Snark']The "World Firsts" missions are still there. In fact, they've been greatly extended, which is great. However, 1.0.5 made a change so that they're now automatic (which is good) and somewhat hidden (which IMHO is bad; for one thing, it leads people to not realize that they're there or how cool they are).[/QUOTE]

Actually the World First contracts do still exist alongside passive milestone rewards, but they do respond to your progress in a procedural manner. There is a strict order per planet for which objectives are presented, but of course if you visit the planet, this order changes. The landing on Eve contract should not appear before you've at least done a flyby and an orbit of Eve. Solar orbits will not unlock World Firsts for any particular planet, only progressing on that planet will.

Do note that just because you have two planets progressed, this does not mean the higher planet will be chosen for every World First. If you've done a flyby of Eve, but have landed on the Mun, you are just as likely to be asked to do a surface EVA on the Mun as you are to orbit Eve. Progressing on the second planet simply opens up more possibilities for the system, but the per planet order is still followed.

The idea is that, the passive rewards are available for everything, but have lighter rewards than the contracts because you can choose what you want to do at any given time, and you are guaranteed to get all of them. If you follow the contract line, you'll be following a semi-random string of active objectives one at a time, so the rewards there are a bit higher.

[Snark]

[quote name='Arsonide']Actually the World First contracts do still exist alongside passive milestone rewards, but they do respond to your progress in a procedural manner.
...
The idea is that, the passive rewards are available for everything, but have lighter rewards than the contracts because you can choose what you want to do at any given time, and you are guaranteed to get all of them. If you follow the contract line, you'll be following a semi-random string of active objectives one at a time, so the rewards there are a bit higher.[/QUOTE]

Thank you for the clarification! I had been conflating the contracts with the passive milestones.

However, from the player's point of view, the fact remains that tracking what these are and what has been done is a pain point. Which is a pity, since having these in the game is such a great feature-- they're just not surfaced very well.

The World Firsts (especially the passive milestones) are, in effect, a simple "achievements" system for KSP. It's a great idea, players really really like this, it's why achievements are such a popular mechanic in so many games.

Given that they're [I][U]in[/U][/I] the game, it sure would be nice if they were surfaced better. :) It makes total sense that the interaction with the contracts is in the contracts UI, but when a user wants to browse history of "where have I gone and what have I done," that's something that works the same (as far as the player is concerned) with a contract or with a passive milestone. Players care about World First contract history in a way they don't about other random contracts. The former becomes part of the "story" of a career; the latter is just something to grab some money/science/rep and then forget about.

Please, please give us some UI for browsing this stuff. The "archive" UI on the R&D facility seems like a great fit to me. If you can think of something better, then great, but we'd really like a way of going back and looking at this stuff. I know I sure would, and I've heard similar from lots of players in the forums. :)

[Streetwind]

Snark, this was content originally planned for 1.1, which then got accelerated into an earlier release. 1.1 meanwhile has the whole Unity 5 UI rework thing. I would be surprised if they didn't take this opportunity to add a way to display your world firsts.

[Kergarin]

Yes I left kerbin soi, but it was world firsts contract too: orbit the sun.

Those new passive milestones and the world firsts missions seem to overlap a little.


And I see these problems:
-the player gets to much money, if he completes world firsts and gets the milestone rewards too ( making the game way to easy)
-It's really sad to not get those historical contracts like land on the mun, and the litte two lines in the milestones Window does not give you this "yeah, I made it!!" feeling. (especially for players new to the game)
-you can't see what milestones are coming up and what you have achieved
-most of my friend are sitting in front of the game and ask "what should I do next?" "that's up to you!" "hm... =/ "
-Still the game should be dynamical playable, so experienced players don't get bored.




I think this would be a good solution:

- the passive milestones should always be visible (the upcoming and the achieved ones).
Maybe they should be listed in a historical/fictional order, in the way of the progress of the real world's space program was and might be.
- they still can be achieved in every order you want, just the listing gives you a litte "red line" to follow - if you want.
- In addition the dynamical generated contracts should stay like they are, but without the world firsts contracts, since they just overlap with milestones, and missing one of them makes many people sad.



So you will end up with these:

- Milestones to achieve in the predefined order, or in your own. Rewarding you for the big things in you space Programm progress.
- a contract system, to get some extra money/fun/challenges, to boost your space Programm
-a clear separation of these two different types without overlap (space program progress / fulfilling contracts)



Just my ideas ;)

[Kergarin]

Is there a list of all possible 1.0.5 contracts?