Contract Pack: Giving Aircraft a Purpose (GAP) 1.6.1 - Milestones, Air Flights, Coast Guard

[*MajorTom*]

2 hours ago, drhay53 said:

For the rescue contracts, are you supposed to get to keep the kerbals like the stock rescue contracts?

Also, every rescue contract I've ever done, all of the kerbals fall beneath the land and float in some water below. I have to hyperedit them back to land so I can pick them up. Is this a known issue? If not I can try demonstrating it and find a log (I haven't had one in a couple of days, but just randomly thought of it).

I find what "fall from land texture to water texture if change craft/kerbal" - all mods problem. Maybe it is KSP bug or contr.configurator (maybe no problem in contr.pack mods). Modders can test it if they want.

Edited June 3, 2016 by *MajorTom*

[inigma]

On 6/2/2016 at 0:23 AM, AdamMil said:

This is a frequent problem with ContractConfigurator contracts. I don't know if it's related to CC itself or bugs in the contract packs, but contracts frequently seem to get attached to particular ships after which they cannot be completed by other ships (even if the ship the contract is attached to gets destroyed), so if you accept the contract and don't complete it immediately it may become uncompletable. I've seen this with other contract packs too, like Advanced Progression and possibly KFiles.

Contract Configurator has a VesselParameterGroup that you can define as a certain vessel meeting certain parameters. WIth this, you can couch contract goals for that VPG to do, and if not done by that VPG, the goals do not get completed. At the end of the contract, by default, or by cancellation, the VPG should be reset. Sometimes though you can define a permanent VPG, but GAP does not do so.   I wish there was a better way to define vessels meeting certain contract criteria, and then on premature removal, resetting such.

14 hours ago, drhay53 said:

For the rescue contracts, are you supposed to get to keep the kerbals like the stock rescue contracts?

Also, every rescue contract I've ever done, all of the kerbals fall beneath the land and float in some water below. I have to hyperedit them back to land so I can pick them up. Is this a known issue? If not I can try demonstrating it and find a log (I haven't had one in a couple of days, but just randomly thought of it).

No, GAP intentionally removes rescued Kerbals. Future contracts may have you rescue a specific VIP Kerbal, which you will get to keep them, but I haven't developed such yet.

[drhay53]

2 hours ago, inigma said:

No, GAP intentionally removes rescued Kerbals. Future contracts may have you rescue a specific VIP Kerbal, which you will get to keep them, but I haven't developed such yet.

Ok, thanks for the clarification, I just wasn't sure if it was somehow related to the 'drops under the terrain and has to by hyperedited' issue.

As a point of feedback; for the time commitment required, these contracts are vastly short on rewards. I've used contract reward modifier to increase them by the maximum amount allowed in the addon (1000% I believe) and I STILL think it's not enough. For the same amount of time it takes to fly a long trip on Kerbin I can launch a simple Eve probe who's contract rewards 500,000.

The contracts are fun, but I sometimes find myself avoiding them only because of the funds/time efficiency, which I believe is currently far too low. I'm not saying they should pay out as much as a trip to Eve; but I think there's a middle ground. Long trips on Kerbin (stuff that takes an hour or so) should probably reward of order 100,000 IMO.

Edited June 3, 2016 by drhay53

[inigma]

1 minute ago, drhay53 said:

Ok, thanks for the clarification, I just wasn't sure if it was somehow related to the 'drops under the terrain and has to by hyperedited' issue.

As a point of feedback; for the time commitment required, these contracts are vastly short on rewards. I've used contract reward modifier to increase them by the maximum amount allowed in the addon (1000% I believe) and I STILL think it's not enough. For the same amount of time it takes to fly a long trip on Kerbin I can launch a simple Eve probe who's contract rewards 500,000.

The contracts are fun, but I sometimes find myself avoiding them only because of the funds/time efficiency, which I believe is currently vastly too low.

Other people have complained about the payouts too. Thing is, flying to Island should payout lower than flying to Eve. Question is, by how much?  I agree it takes more time and human skill to accomplish, but I'm not sure it makes sense to pay more for flying to the island than landing on Eve.

Edited June 3, 2016 by inigma

[drhay53]

18 minutes ago, inigma said:

Other people have complained about the payouts too. Thing is, flying to Island should payout lower than flying to Eve. Question is, by how much?  I agree it takes more time and human skill to accomplish, but I'm not sure it makes sense to pay more for flying to the island than landing on Eve.

I agree, I just think there's a middle ground. The main resource in KSP is time, not distance, IMO. Once one learns how to build a rocket, all they really have to do to go to other planets is find a way to get enough delta-v on it. Once they've figured this out, interplanetary travel is relatively simple.

But learning how to fly doesn't carry much time speed up; no matter how good you are, a 400km flight in a helicopter still takes of order hours and it's risky to warp more than x2, so you're talking about the same amount of time it takes to build, launch, and stick an Eve probe in orbit of Eve. Again, not saying it should pay as much as Eve, but IMO I would feel like 100,000 credits per hour of flight time was worth my time. Just my .02, I'm still enjoying the pack.

[AdamMil]

20 hours ago, drhay53 said:

no matter how good you are, a 400km flight in a helicopter still takes of order hours and it's risky to warp more than x2

Though I haven't gotten anywhere in GAP, I have to agree here. What makes aircraft no fun in stock KSP missions is the time involved. I'm just not interested in spending an hour flying in a straight line. Rovers are even worse. Who wants to spend hours holding the W key? Ideally, aircraft contracts would be near KSC and involve largely interesting activities, or if far away, allow you to use supersonic aircraft. No flying long distances in slow aircraft. That's boring. Or else, it'd better be worth it...

Edited June 4, 2016 by AdamMil

[inigma]

1 hour ago, AdamMil said:

Though I haven't gotten anywhere in GAP, I have to agree here. What makes aircraft no fun in stock KSP missions is the time involved. I'm just not interested in spending an hour flying in a straight line. Rovers are even worse. Who wants to spend hours holding the W key? Ideally, aircraft contracts would be near KSC and involve largely interesting activities, or if far away, allow you to use supersonic aircraft. No flying long distances in slow aircraft. That's boring. Or else, it'd better be worth it...

What I could do is develop more intermediate contracts - such as building a rescue station near the K2 mountains, staffed and stocked with a ready and waiting helicopter, so that rescue missions only take 15 min instead of an hour of planning, testing, and flying.

[kcs123]

Well, to avoid be bored, first thing is to create more reliable craft that is capable to survive time warp. For that purpose I have developed kOS script for personal use, to take care of stable hovering, when using heli. For longer distances I use VTOL plane capable to travel over 1 mach and it is stable under time warp.

When you encounter some problems it leads you to more inovative solutions, try different things in this game, don't alwayas use same thing over and over again.

[drhay53]

I use TCA for my helicopters and such, things are pretty stable....but who wants to fly in warp x4? What's the fun in that? You're not even doing anything. You're just watching 10-15 minutes pass by at a fast speed without really even doing anything.

[Cipher_077]

On 27 de abril de 2016 at 3:13 PM, vardicd said:

it does, there's just a small issue with the airbreathing solid rocket boosters unlocking the build an airplane contracts before you actually have air breathing engines unlocked.

thank you!

[Lupi]

The KSS Rix tends to violently explode once you get into close range. I don't know if this is a known issue, perhaps the craft file needs more struts or something, or the deck doesn't like being all clipped like that? I was trying to stream completion of the carrier landing contract, had to go into the debug menu and stuff to complete it in hopes of trying to replicate it in a followup mission. It exploded then as well, leaving a massive debris field. 
twitch.tv/lupidragon 

Edited June 15, 2016 by Lupi

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Between this and Kerbin Side Jobs, I have all the local operations missions I could want with aircraft.  But I'm getting a hilariously bad end of the stick in terms of Kerbal and terrain krakenspawn.

I played the K2 rescue mission, which I note is due for updates (or has been updated by now), but I don't know for the life of me how you rescue a kerbal from the side of a sheer cliff face the way KSP operates.  I ended up landing my S.A.R.dine helicopter on top of K2, switching over to one of the kerbals involved, and telling them to climb.  And climb...  And climb.  It was so slow I ended up 4x time accelerating to finish climbing, but in the process I guess the other kerbal couldn't wait any more, and let go.

 

That or fell through the terrain and went splat on the ocean sphere.

 

Then, playing the coastguard missions, I had at least one instance where the victim got 'stuck'.  Something wonky about the water physics, but they will invariably get pinned in place by unseen forces, or if you shove them under because you floated into them, they can also get stuck about 1 meter below the surface, unable to move around.

 

I've been able to nudge them free thanks to airstairs, but because of the terrain interaction glitches as a whole I've effectively failed more rescue attempts than I have completed.  I'm trying to come up with clever ways to fix this problem.

[*MajorTom*]

maybe add custom "broken crafts" , "boats (or forest/mountain camps)" to place on top of craft "poor kerbals to be rescued" can solve this "fall from terrain" problem.

[Lupi]

Is it normal for the KSS Rix to spawn
1. in the space center view
2. like so?

[inigma]

1 minute ago, Lupi said:

Is it normal for the KSS Rix to spawn
1. in the space center view
2. like so?

Heh, no.  It's a bug with Contract Configurator's spawn engine. It tends to put the Rixx in weird places. I'm halfway tempted to just move the Rixx outside of KSC physics range for the attempt.

[Lupi]

1 minute ago, inigma said:

Heh, no.  It's a bug with Contract Configurator's spawn engine. It tends to put the Rixx in weird places. I'm halfway tempted to just move the Rixx outside of KSC physics range for the attempt.

This was long after the attempt, I'm getting it as a recovery location. 

[inigma]

On 6/14/2016 at 9:56 PM, Lupi said:

The KSS Rix tends to violently explode once you get into close range. I don't know if this is a known issue, perhaps the craft file needs more struts or something, or the deck doesn't like being all clipped like that? I was trying to stream completion of the carrier landing contract, had to go into the debug menu and stuff to complete it in hopes of trying to replicate it in a followup mission. It exploded then as well, leaving a massive debris field. 
twitch.tv/lupidragon 

I'll be

On 6/15/2016 at 2:19 PM, AdmiralTigerclaw said:

Between this and Kerbin Side Jobs, I have all the local operations missions I could want with aircraft.  But I'm getting a hilariously bad end of the stick in terms of Kerbal and terrain krakenspawn.

I played the K2 rescue mission, which I note is due for updates (or has been updated by now), but I don't know for the life of me how you rescue a kerbal from the side of a sheer cliff face the way KSP operates.  I ended up landing my S.A.R.dine helicopter on top of K2, switching over to one of the kerbals involved, and telling them to climb.  And climb...  And climb.  It was so slow I ended up 4x time accelerating to finish climbing, but in the process I guess the other kerbal couldn't wait any more, and let go.

 

That or fell through the terrain and went splat on the ocean sphere.

 

Then, playing the coastguard missions, I had at least one instance where the victim got 'stuck'.  Something wonky about the water physics, but they will invariably get pinned in place by unseen forces, or if you shove them under because you floated into them, they can also get stuck about 1 meter below the surface, unable to move around.

 

I've been able to nudge them free thanks to airstairs, but because of the terrain interaction glitches as a whole I've effectively failed more rescue attempts than I have completed.  I'm trying to come up with clever ways to fix this problem.

im working on better craft and kerbal placements in the next update.

18 hours ago, *MajorTom* said:

maybe add custom "broken crafts" , "boats (or forest/mountain camps)" to place on top of craft "poor kerbals to be rescued" can solve this "fall from terrain" problem.

working on fixing this in 1.2.6...

[inigma]

Discovered a game breaking bug with Lupi last night. Flight 101, the flagship contract and purpose of GAP, is dependent on Charter Flight 5. Unfortunately,  Charter Flight 5 is accidentally coded to require Flight 101! This means no one has ever seen the Flight 101-103 series of lucrative GAP contracts. Doh! Fixed in 1.2.6 which I hope to release over the weekend.

We also fixed the KSS Rixx from exploding on spawn.

Edited June 17, 2016 by inigma

[million_lights]

I tried the CoastGuard-RescueClimbers Contract today again and was VERY frustrated with the random location.

The Kerbals were sliding again to their death or clipping through the nearly vertical wall and falling into oblivion.

So I fixed it

Changes:

story: The 2 climbers disagreed on the correct direction to the top. Now they are on 2 different mountain peeks. One has the robe, the other the hooks. Rescue them!

1.

The spawn locations are absolute values (no randomization)

2.

The waypoint you need to fly to is well above and to the side (Goal: observer the surrounding)

3.

The 2 spots are relatively flat so the kerbals wont drift on their own. But still challenging to land there.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

Download:

Spoiler

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y2uj43mc08arkln/Mils REMIX - CoastGuard-RescueClimbers.cfg?dl=0

 

Edited June 18, 2016 by million_lights

[inigma]

13 minutes ago, million_lights said:

I tried the CoastGuard-RescueClimbers Contract today again and was VERY frustrated with the random location.

The Kerbals were sliding again to their death or clipping through the nearly vertical wall and falling into oblivion.

So I fixed it

Changes:

story: The 2 climbers disagreed on the correct direction to the top. Now they are on 2 different mountain peeks. One has the robe, the other the hooks. Rescue them!

1.

The spawn locations are absolute values (no randomization)

2.

The waypoint you need to fly to is well above and to the side (Goal: observer the surrounding)

3.

The 2 spots are relatively flat so the kerbals wont drift on their own. But still challenging to land there.

Screenshots:

  Hide contents

http://imgur.com/a/qF63U

Download:

  Hide contents

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y2uj43mc08arkln/Mils REMIX - CoastGuard-RescueClimbers.cfg?dl=0

 

awesome! ill incorporate it in 1.2.6  thanks man!

[million_lights]

I think I found yet another bug.

The kerbals on the island from the contract "Charter: Flight 45" ragdolled and spaghettified when I came into loading range.

I wondered why and found out that the code that spawns them in using PQS offset loads them in the same location and then applies the offset.

 

I changed it to 4 individual lat, lon, alt values.

now they spawn in perfectly fine without a chance of ragdolling.

are there any benefits from using the PQS offset ?

Charter flight 45 file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rkoea4a4o9iu78s/Charter-Flight-45.cfg?dl=0

Edited June 18, 2016 by million_lights
included dropbox link

[million_lights]

While we are at it. The Waypoint and the RSS Rix didnt line up.

FIXED!

Carrier landing file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ncviozxbeweo16c/KSP-CarrierLanding.cfg?dl=0
 

Edited June 18, 2016 by million_lights

[million_lights]

i was expecting it ... the Carrier take off and landing contract didnt line up ether....

FIXED!

Spoiler

file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/edxewznt6ych5tm/KSP-CarrierTakeoff.cfg?dl=0

 

[inigma]

7 hours ago, million_lights said:

I think I found yet another bug.

The kerbals on the island from the contract "Charter: Flight 45" ragdolled and spaghettified when I came into loading range.

I wondered why and found out that the code that spawns them in using PQS offset loads them in the same location and then applies the offset.

 

I changed it to 4 individual lat, lon, alt values.

now they spawn in perfectly fine without a chance of ragdolling.

are there any benefits from using the PQS offset ?

Charter flight 45 file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rkoea4a4o9iu78s/Charter-Flight-45.cfg?dl=0

PQS is used to make GAP compatible with RSS, however I removed RSS compatibility a few releases back, so no benefit. If lat and lon values work better, I'll incorporate them.

5 hours ago, million_lights said:

While we are at it. The Waypoint and the RSS Rix didnt line up.

FIXED!

Carrier landing file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ncviozxbeweo16c/KSP-CarrierLanding.cfg?dl=0
 

I hadn't noticed a prob with the waypoint while watching @Lupi's GAP stream. I'll have to test it and see what fix you made.

4 hours ago, million_lights said:

i was expecting it ... the Carrier take off and landing contract didnt line up ether....

FIXED!

  Reveal hidden contents

file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/edxewznt6ych5tm/KSP-CarrierTakeoff.cfg?dl=0

 

Thanks so much for contributing to GAP bugfixing and development!

[inigma]

@million_lights and everyone else

GAP Skydiving works now with SM Chute: