Where are these new contract changes? I see no difference.

[leocrumb]

There are supposedly contextual contracts in 1.05 but I see no difference, I have 30+ ships, bases, sataelites etc in my game. I tried fast forwarding years, declining contracts. nothing works
 I havnt seen one contextual contract. Has anyone else seen one?

[Streetwind]

There are certain thresholds you need to exceed. For example, you won't see any contextual station contracts until you have at least two stations in orbit of the same body. If you have one station each around Kerbin, Duna and Jool, you will not receive a contextual station contract; but if you have two around Kerbin and one around Jool, then you will (but only for the Kerbin stations). Other contextual contracts work similarly.

You can see and even change these tresholds by editing contracts.cfg in the Squad folder under Gamedata. (I recommend ModuleManager instead of directly editing stock files.)

[Kobymaru]

2 hours ago, Streetwind said:

There are certain thresholds you need to exceed. For example, you won't see any contextual station contracts until you have at least two stations in orbit of the same body. If you have one station each around Kerbin, Duna and Jool, you will not receive a contextual station contract; but if you have two around Kerbin and one around Jool, then you will (but only for the Kerbin stations). Other contextual contracts work similarly.

You can see and even change these tresholds by editing contracts.cfg in the Squad folder under Gamedata. (I recommend ModuleManager instead of directly editing stock files.)

What is a "station" actually? Is it a vessel that's labeled with the Space Station symbol? Or is it a vessel with a Cupola Module? Or a science Module?

[Streetwind]

I don't know how the game detects it, but I would guess that it means things built as part of a "construct a station" contract.

[Farex]

My suggestion: the game "flags" the ship you used to complete the contract as station. If a cupola/lab/whatever is part of the station determines the contract (of course).

So complete two stationquests with two different ships, they are hence flagged as station and this triggers the contextual.
 

[Geschosskopf]

27 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

What is a "station" actually? Is it a vessel that's labeled with the Space Station symbol? Or is it a vessel with a Cupola Module? Or a science Module?

There are at least 2 definitions of "station", one used by contracts and one used by milestones.

The contract definition is just putting something with the specified parts in orbit around the specified planet.  It always needs to have a docking port (plus whatever other parts the contract wants) but does NOT have to ever use it.  The entire thing can be launched in 1 hunk and still satisfy the contract, and thereafter other contracts will treat it as a station.

OTOH, milestones consider ANY 2 things that dock together to be a "station", regardless of the parts involved.  All the milestones care about is the 1st time you dock within a given SOI.  For instance, I recently Klawed an asteroid that was still in solar orbit.  As soon as I did, I got a milestone award congratulating me for  beginning the construction of my 1st station in solar orbit :D.  The ship involved was a small probe just doing a DMagic contract to get science from the asteroid and had nothing on it that anybody would think of as a station component.

3 hours ago, Streetwind said:

There are certain thresholds you need to exceed. For example, you won't see any contextual station contracts until you have at least two stations in orbit of the same body.

That's disappointing.  I thought the whole point of contextual station contracts was to prevent having multiple stations in the same place.  After all, why would you want to anyway?  I hope this is one of the parameters you can edit

[Kobymaru]

25 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

There are at least 2 definitions of "station", one used by contracts and one used by milestones.

The contract definition is just putting something with the specified parts in orbit around the specified planet.  It always needs to have a docking port (plus whatever other parts the contract wants) but does NOT have to ever use it.  The entire thing can be launched in 1 hunk and still satisfy the contract, and thereafter other contracts will treat it as a station.

 

25 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

OTOH, milestones consider ANY 2 things that dock together to be a "station", regardless of the parts involved.  All the milestones care about is the 1st time you dock within a given SOI.

Thanks for the explanation! So in order to be eligible for the contextual station contracts, do I need two previously launched stations? Or do I need to fulfil the milestone "twice"?

 

[Just Jim]

3 hours ago, Streetwind said:

For example, you won't see any contextual station contracts until you have at least two stations in orbit of the same body.

 

Respectfully, I have to disagree.  I have only one station over Kerbin, one over the Mun, and one over Minmus, and I've already gotten several contextual contract offers to expand each of them.

[Streetwind]

Really? Odd. I was fairly sure that the threshold for stations was 2...

Unless it really does count all stations, not just the ones on the same body.

[Just Jim]

55 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

Really? Odd. I was fairly sure that the threshold for stations was 2...

Unless it really does count all stations, not just the ones on the same body.

Perhaps... or maybe just having more than one in the Kerbal planetary system, so either the Mun or Minmus stations count as the second???

Honestly, I don't remember if they started before or after I launched my Mun station (which would be the second one).

Edited December 10, 2015 by Just Jim

[MrOsterman]

I'm still sorting out why I got a contract offer to expand an abandoned station.  (I know why but it's funny to me that I got a request to literally "Expand abandoned KS-2")

[Snark]

Some examples of contextual contracts that I've seen:

• Add on to a particular station (in LKO, this is my only station)
• Move a particular probe (which is currently in solar orbit en route to Eve) into a specific solar orbit
• Collect temperature measurements near a particular probe that's landed on the Mun

FYI, a word of caution about "add to station" contracts:

I saw a post from someone in this forum that they ran into a snag:  they had a space station to which their shuttle was docked, then they accepted an "add to station" contract for that station, then they undocked their shuttle... only to discover to their chagrin that the game decided that their shuttle (and not the station core) was "the station" and therefore was the thing that needed to be added to.

So if you accept an "add to station" contract, be aware of that if you have any plans to undock anything from the station that was docked at the time that you accepted the contract.  The game can be arbitrary about deciding which part "the station" is when you undock.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Snark

[Gooru]

4 hours ago, Kobymaru said:

What is a "station" actually? Is it a vessel that's labeled with the Space Station symbol? Or is it a vessel with a Cupola Module? Or a science Module?

3 hours ago, Streetwind said:

I don't know how the game detects it, but I would guess that it means things built as part of a "construct a station" contract.

I had a expansion contract for my first and for my 2nd station around kerbin, that weren´t build for contracts.

I also have "reposition satelite" contracts for satelites i didn´t place for contracts.

So i guess it has nothing to do with a contract.

 

2 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Really? Odd. I was fairly sure that the threshold for stations was 2...

Unless it really does count all stations, not just the ones on the same body.

The lines in the config read:

        ContextualChance = 75 // The maximum chance for a station expansion request
        ContextualAssets = 2 // The amount of stations required around the planet to reach that chance

this doen´t necessarily means the chance to get a contextual contract is 0 before you reach the threshold of 2.

It could also mean 75% is the maximum you can reach when you have 2 stations around a planet and with one station the chance would be 75%/2 = 35,5%

 

Edited December 10, 2015 by Gooru

[Just Jim]

1 hour ago, Gooru said:

I had a expansion contract for my first and for my 2nd station around kerbin, that weren´t build for contracts.

I also have "reposition satelite" contracts for satelites i didn´t place for contracts.

So i guess it has nothing to do with a contract.

 

The lines in the config read:

        ContextualChance = 75 // The maximum chance for a station expansion request
        ContextualAssets = 2 // The amount of stations required around the planet to reach that chance

this doen´t necessarily means the chance to get a contextual contract is 0 before you reach the threshold of 2.

It could also mean 75% is the maximum you can reach when you have 2 stations around a planet and with one station the chance would be 75%/2 = 35,5%

 

OK, then my next question would be: does a station being around the moon of a planet count as being around a planet?

[Geschosskopf]

5 hours ago, Just Jim said:

OK, then my next question would be: does a station being around the moon of a planet count as being around a planet?

No.  The station is in orbit around whatever it's in orbit around so each body is treated as a separate thing, even if that body orbits another.  Which makes sense because, after all, all planets orbit the sun.

[Just Jim]

16 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

No.  The station is in orbit around whatever it's in orbit around so each body is treated as a separate thing, even if that body orbits another.  Which makes sense because, after all, all planets orbit the sun.

Then I'm not sure how it's happening.  But this is the only station I have over Kerbin, and all the crew-pod sections you see docked were added because of a contextual contract.  I've had 4 expansion contracts so far, the most recent adding a research station.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Just Jim

[Gooru]

20 hours ago, Kobymaru said:

What is a "station" actually? Is it a vessel that's labeled with the Space Station symbol? Or is it a vessel with a Cupola Module? Or a science Module?

I just got an expand station contract for a vessel labeled as a "ship".

Indeed the "ship" is a planed Station on it´s way the destination planet, so it looks like a station with thrusters.

It has a hitchiker module, a cupola, lab, antenna, energy and dockingports and the game takes it for a station.

[PT]

18 hours ago, Snark said:

I saw a post from someone in this forum that they ran into a snag:  they had a space station to which their shuttle was docked, then they accepted an "add to station" contract for that station, then they undocked their shuttle... only to discover to their chagrin that the game decided that their shuttle (and not the station core) was "the station" and therefore was the thing that needed to be added to.

So if you accept an "add to station" contract, be aware of that if you have any plans to undock anything from the station that was docked at the time that you accepted the contract.  The game can be arbitrary about deciding which part "the station" is when you undock.

That was me.

My shuttle(s) have: pilot cabin/drone, crew cabin, antena, solar panels, batteries, engine+fuel and of course docking port.

For quite some time my station had no solar panels. It relied on solars on its modules. I KISed some after two stolen contracts.

18 hours ago, Gooru said:

I had a expansion contract for my first and for my 2nd station around kerbin, that weren´t build for contracts.

I also have "reposition satelite" contracts for satelites i didn´t place for contracts.

So i guess it has nothing to do with a contract.

One of my KSS modules stole extension contract when it left for munar voyage. Module mission is Munar orbit station and Minmus outpost so it have all typical stuff for station. I guess next stop is back to LKO to finish contract.

1 hour ago, Gooru said:

I just got an expand station contract for a vessel labeled as a "ship".

Indeed the "ship" is a planed Station on it´s way the destination planet, so it looks like a station with thrusters.

It has a hitchiker module, a cupola, lab, antenna, energy and dockingports and the game takes it for a station.

All my modules that stole contracts are labeled as "ship", station was renamed to "station" once in orbit.

I have only my KSS as "station" in Kerbin orbit, there are two more stations, on Mun and Minus, both renamed to "station" after they got there.

Next time I get such contract I'll document everything I can and put it in my thread.

Edited December 11, 2015 by PT

[jedensuscg]

If you have the SCANsat mod (at least all they contracts I've gotten for this were previous SCANsat sattelite contract) you will get periodic contracts to adjust the orbit of a sattelite. 

 

Again both times this happened were from contracts requiring be to put a satellite in orbit and both were from the SCANsat corporation (though only one required a SCANsat antenna) 

[Gooru]

the djust sattelite contracts are stock. No mods needed.