Persistent tourists

[stenole]

In career mode, I've noticed that when you bring tourists back to Kerbin, they gain some experience. But once they have seen everything they want to see they disappear along with all the experience.

My suggestion is to remember the tourists after completing the missions and that the same tourists will spawn new missions. If you accept the mission, you will get the tourist back at the experience level he was at before. That would give you a reason to keep picking tourist missions. You could progressively "train" your tourists by picking their missions.

To make this feature not completely pointless, it would be cool if they received abilities and bonuses like the other kerbonaut classes. An example would be getting additional reputation when visiting new sites, also those that are originally not part of the mission. Higher level tourists receive higher rewards. Higher level tourists will also demand more difficult destinations.

This adds to the stakes of tourist missions. Not only are you risking failing the mission, you might also lose Tourfred Kerman, the level 4 tourist.

[BlkBltChemie]

This is a really cool idea!  I especially like the suggested bonuses for making it more worthwhile, in particular the additional reputation for visiting sites not in the original itinerary (which would be very useful for the multi-tourist missions where each one wants to go somewhere else).

[royying]

High level tourist should able to EVA on surface, reward a lot of rep and money

[Skalou]

14 minutes ago, royying said:

High level tourist should able to EVA on surface, reward a lot of rep and money

Yeeah !! and take pictures of anomaly too! (to give more rep. )

...but you have to make short trip without waiting too long time, or they will be irritated and your rep. going down daily (until it reach the last limit time of the contract that should be no too long),

 and so you have to plan it better and shorten interplanetary  trips: no more full Homann transfert, it will cost you more fuel to save time!

Edited December 5, 2015 by Skalou

[Der Kosmos]

It would be nice if Tourists ever asked to spend set amounts of time in a space station in orbit. Perhaps with contextual contracts they might ask to visit a specific space station.

[Rath]

Yes please.  Maybe high level tourists could request to do EVAs for extra money in a specific 'seennic' spot (drew canyon, mobile cool veiw of Jool on laythe ect)

[Hotaru]

I'd be in favor of pretty much all of these suggestions! I would also add that it would be nice if tourists (even level-0 ones) could EVA at least on planetary surfaces, mainly to allow transfers between landed spacecraft without resorting to mods, the claw, or annoyingly tricky surface dockings. I get why they're more limited than regular kerbonauts, but it's just getting out one airlock, walking a bit, and getting in another. It's not, as they say, rocket science. 

[Andem]

Yas. Plz. Now (pr 1.1).