Contract only science?

[SpacedInvader]

So this is just an idea at this stage, but I'm thinking about trying to make a mod which would replace science farming entirely with contract driven science. The basic premise would be set all experiment rewards to zero and then instead have the science rewards come from contracts which would be generated based on current tech level and mods installed.

My reasoning is that the current science farming system really hurts game immersion (at least for me) as there is no real direction beyond "go places and get science points" and comes with several significant drawbacks. First, its repetitive, basically consisting of stuffing as many different experiments onto a craft as possible, sending it to a new location, and then rinsing and repeating until the tech tree is complete. In addition to this, the system gives you no reason to return to any location (planet / biome) unless you get a new experiment somewhere down the line, and even then its often not worth the effort to send a craft there for just a single experiment when there are so many other locations where you could run all of the experiments. Finally, it has made rovers little more than toys thanks to the fact that, unless you land right on the edge of two biomes, rovers simply can't cover enough terrain to justify their use to get more science points.

The contracts I'm thinking of would fix all of these issues, first by putting a story behind each mission / experiment, then by creating / enforcing variety in mission implementation. Individual contracts would require specific experiments to be run under specific conditions such as location, orbit altitude, or even day/night (if this is even possible), and could even include time displacement, so that the same experiment would need to be revisited after a month or a year. Rovers could be made useful again by creating missions with multiple target locations close enough together to justify a rover over a rocket hopper, though I might even go so far as to include a wheels but no rockets requirement. I would also want to try creating contracts based on the completion of another contract, which could present the situation where a new mission would need to be sent back to the same location to gather additional data through a different experiment.

Anyway, this brings me to this post and why I'm writing it... Obviously, I wouldn't want to attempt something like this if it already exists, so I'm curious if something like this does already exist. If not, I am in need of technical and creative guidance, as I've never attempted to write a contract for KSP before, let alone one which allows for technology, location, and situation variables. Is there a guide somewhere that addresses any / all of these things? Finally, I'm curious if this is even worth trying as I really wouldn't want to have to write a hundred individual contracts to accomplish the goals because there wasn't a way to automatically generate them. Plus, it would be nice if someone else was interested enough to use it when its finished...

[hab136]

[URL="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/101604"]Contract Configurator[/URL] should help you write new contracts. Check out [URL="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/123892"]Field Research[/URL] which already defines a bunch of contracts using Contract Configurator.

There's also already stock contracts for "do a temperature scan at location X"; you can just boost the science return. The back story is automatically generated nonsense, but it is there.

Changing all the experiments to return zero science should be easy with a ModuleManager config:

[code]
@EXPERIMENT_DEFINITION[*]
{
%baseValue = 0
%scienceCap = 0
}
[/code]

[Valerian]

I really like this idea, if it's done well and the contracts are all carefully balanced from the beginning to the end of the tech tree it would be really great!

 

The only plugin I know that is a bit in the spirit of your idea is Better Than Starting Manned, which makes transmitted science experiment always to be 100%, and removes meaningless grindable experiments like taking samples from all Kerbin biomes.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Valerian