Contract Pack: Giving Aircraft a Purpose (GAP) 2.11 - Milestones, Air Flights, Coast Guard (Now Updated for KSP 1.12.5)

[nightingale]

8 hours ago, inigma said:

Woot, Contract Configurator is out for KSP 1.5.1. Time to update GAP to reflect this.   @nightingale

No problem!  I'm going to do a Strategia release next (there may be nothing needed other than updating version files), then I have one outstanding issue that I owe you (around launch sites).  If there's anything else you want as a priority on the GitHub tracker, just post on it to notify me that it's something you're actually still looking for (as it's hard to tell with many of the enhancements that were raised 6+ months ago if anybody is still waiting).

Edited December 7, 2018 by nightingale

[inigma]

Same here, should be a simple process of updating version files after running some basic playthrough checks in GAP. I have time this weekend to keep working on the playthrough testing.

[Acvila]

Is it possible to integrate this with linuxgurugamer's state funding saving an air-flight with passengers and giving daily income? Like in a strategy games, something like 100 credits per passenger for 100 km of flight. First you make contract flight and at it's end, save it for generating daily income.

[inigma]

Contract Pack: Giving Aircraft a Purpose (GAP) 1.6.1

Edit

 inigmatus released this 6 minutes ago

Requires the latest version of Contract Configurator from https://github.com/jrossignol/ContractConfigurator/releases

Requires Module Manager from https://github.com/sarbian/ModuleManager

Published: 2/9/19

GAP 1.6.1

• compatibility fixes for KSP 1.6.1. GAP will adopt KSP versioning going forward to make it easier to confirm compatibility. Releases will instead be tracked via builds appended to the version number.
• tested compatibility with KSP 1.6.1 and latest version of ContractConfigurator

[gullymat]

Hi there, 

 

Is there something to do beside installing the mod, Contract configurator and ModuleManager?

I did it and unfortunately the starting missions do not appear in the contract screen.

The game offers me the following: Giving Aircrafts a purpose, KSC Airlines, KSC Coastguard, Prototype Marketplace (and the stock "Exploration").

 

I made a copy of my game folder with only the three above mods installed, no change.

 

Any advice?

Thanks,

Tobias

 

[inigma]

16 hours ago, gullymat said:

Hi there, 

 

Is there something to do beside installing the mod, Contract configurator and ModuleManager?

I did it and unfortunately the starting missions do not appear in the contract screen.

The game offers me the following: Giving Aircrafts a purpose, KSC Airlines, KSC Coastguard, Prototype Marketplace (and the stock "Exploration").

 

I made a copy of my game folder with only the three above mods installed, no change.

 

Any advice?

Thanks,

Tobias

 

Go to the Prototype Market, and you will need to purchase tech to unlock what you need to unlock the first contract. You will need an air breathing engine, wing, and wing control tech at the minimum. This will unlock the glider and first airplane contracts. Feel free to check out the basic start here (this is an old video, as SSI Member Services was renamed to Prototype Marketplace, but same contracts there still exist to get you the tech you need to unlock): 

 

Edited February 12, 2019 by inigma

[gullymat]

hi inigma,

 

i did this, didnt work yesterday.

today i made a complete fresh install, removed all leftovers from before, it is working now

looks like something did interfere before..

 

thanks a lot

Tobias

[rottielover]

Looking for a little advice/help...   I just picked up the "Rescue two climbers" contract.   There are two kerbals up on K2 that need to get picked up.   I am using the Airplane Plus pack for my GAP purposes...

So I loaded up the Chieftain (Huey), which was fine for taking off from the runway and landing on the helipad, but it's much to slow and uncontrollable (keyboard only here) to be able to be used for this.

Any suggestions out there?  BTW I'm doing this career mode and basically have unlocked the bulk of T1 parts, using Community Part Tree.

EDIT: well I found one thing, I didn't max out the torque on the cockpit, doing that helped some.

Edited February 18, 2019 by rottielover

[rottielover]

Thought I would expand a bit on what I was talking about in case other's have similar issues.   I also installed tweakable everything, so the cockpits start with about 1/2 of the max torque set.  You have to remember to right click on them and set them up to full in order to get better performance out of the helicopters.

I'm still not able to get any of the helicopters up over 2500 meters though, so rescuing the climbers from the mountains is pretty much out...  I don't have the tech for a longer range VTOL, and I can't get the helio's up high enough   

[MacLuky]

On 7/30/2018 at 10:02 PM, kurgut said:

EDIT: I changed all "kerbin" in GAP folder and replaced with "Earth" instead, and it worked! Maybe should release this as a little patch so RSS players can enjoy

I did this too, just a small shell script running sed does the trick

[Roberius]

Love this mod, I hardly ever use airplanes now, takes too long to do anything, glad to have a reason to use them. The seaplane one was fun, barnstorming the R&D bridges, very frustrating.

One thing though, barnstorming the hangers for the island runway doesn't work with the GPP mod, the contract waypoints them correctly but flying through them didn't register for either hanger. Barnstorming the R&D bridges worked fine though. Shame, as it's a long trip from the KSC in on Gael.

Totally understand if you don't want to be tied into supporting different mods though, just thought I'd mention it.

[Friznit]

As the GPP thread states, GAP won't work very well with it because so much is changed.  

[jupiterbjy]

Is GAP intended to be played with FAR installed?

I don't have FAR nor AJE installed, but only requirement for FAR is broken.

 

EDIT: Contract pack does work with FAR installed, but not without it.

Edited February 25, 2019 by jupiterbjy
added test result

[kcs123]

On 2/24/2019 at 5:48 PM, jupiterbjy said:

Is GAP intended to be played with FAR installed?

Not required, but in the past GAP worked quite fine with FAR. Haven't checked latest KSP version and latest FAR and GAP, so take this with grain of salt.

[Manul]

On 2/19/2019 at 7:10 AM, rottielover said:

I'm still not able to get any of the helicopters up over 2500 meters though, so rescuing the climbers from the mountains is pretty much out...  I don't have the tech for a longer range VTOL, and I can't get the helio's up high enough   

Helicopter rescue above 6km altitude is nearly impossible in real life too. I used a tiltrotor vtol with Osprey engines. Made it as light as I could, so it was able to hover high in the mountains.

[Dunbaratu]

Thank you for updating this mod to KSP 1.6.1!  Yaay.

The last time I tried using GAP was back when Contract Configurator had those bugs where Kerbals GAP was trying to spawn on the surface kept spawning in midair and falling to their deaths instead (which the player was blamed for, failing the contracts).  It made it unplayable.

I'm happy to see that it got updated.

One weird thing with the "contracts" to buy prototype parts though:  There's a prototype part buy for the small circular intake, but no prototype part buy for any of the associated engines that would use it.  This renders the air intake prototype kind of pointless since the same tech tree node with the air intake also gives you the Juno engine so.... if you have to get that tech tree node *anyway* to get the Juno engine, then pre-buying the air intake with the prototype contract doesn't do anything.

This was a problem when I took the contract to build the first airplane, and then was forced to fail the contract and take the penalty because I was unable to actually get an air-breathing engine until later in the game when I unlocked that tech node in the normal rocketry way instead of the airplane way.

[Shizen]

Hello.

I have an issue wherein no matter how many times I accept and complete the "Barnstorm the Hangars" and "Build a Glider" they always return to the the available mission list.

Is this intended? Are they meant to be repeatable?

[Dunbaratu]

Is the purpose of GAP to allow someone to play a career where they do the aircraft stuff before the rocketry stuff?  (To fix the problem in stock that by the time you can do effective airplane contracts worth about 20,000 funds you don't care anymore because they no longer matter.)

Because if fixing that is the purpose of GAP, I still see a few areas where it needs a couple of changes to achieve that goal:

1 - As mentioned above, the GAP contracts require an air-breathing engine before they will spawn, and while GAP gives you these "prototype contracts" designed to let you bypass the normal tech tree ordering to get some required airplane parts early, it seems GAP forgot to make an "air breathing engine" prototype contract, so you still need to get all the way up to that 45-science-cost tech node to start playing the GAP contracts.  The other "prototype" contracts don't really mean anything if you have to unlock the airplane tech nodes through normal means anyway first, so you already had access to most of those parts before you could start working on the GAP contracts.  This could be fixed by adding a prototype contract that unlocks either the first firespitter prop engine if firespitter is installed, or unlocks the Juno engine if playing on stock.  You've got to have at least *some* air-breathing engine to start the GAP contracts, even if it's just a weak prop engine that would at least let you get started, which right now you sort of can't.

2 - All the rescue contracts require first doing the helipad landing contract, which in turn requires having spent 450,000 funds to upgrade the VAB once to make the helipad exist.  If you're playing planes before rockets, then the VAB is the wrong building to be spending your first upgrade on (it should be the SPH), and anyway once you can afford a 450,000 fund upgrade like that, you're already in the stage of the career where you don't care about the small contracts that GAP pays out.  It really seems like forcing you to upgrade the VAB first before you can even take the small basic seaplane rescue contracts is, again, forcing you to play rockets before airplanes.  I think this could be fixed by making the first helipad landing contract not require the building upgrade.  Just let you land on the top of one of the other buildings with a flat top, even when it doesn't have a marked helipad yet but at least has a flat top.  Requiring a very expensive building upgrade before you can get started in GAP seems to defeat the purpose of Giving Aircraft a Purpose.

Because of the above two problems, I found that to play GAP, I have to play the normal stock "rocketry career" first for a while before those two requirements (45-science airplane tech tree node, and 450,000 fund VAB upgrade) are met so I can start playing the GAP career.  And then I just have to sort of ignore the fact that I'm already past that stage and just pretend that I still care about small contracts for the GAP roleplaying feel.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Steven Mading
(said 90 sci points, corrected to 45)

[kcs123]

10 hours ago, Steven Mading said:

Because of the above two problems, I found that to play GAP, I have to play the normal stock "rocketry career" first for a while before those two requirements (45-science airplane tech tree node, and 450,000 fund VAB upgrade) are met so I can start playing the GAP career.  And then I just have to sort of ignore the fact that I'm already past that stage and just pretend that I still care about small contracts for the GAP roleplaying feel. 

You might want to try new tech tree mod instead of stock:

It is kind of continuation of SETICtt or UBM mod that is no longer updated. I also liked to play GAP career along with KAX mod. KAX mod is not being updated for some time, but there some info that it might be updated soon by other maintainer.

I also like to build heli for purpose of gathering those science points trough ground surveys over various biomes (temperature/pressure measurments, seizmic readings and few from DMagic mods). Not only for that contract from GAP to land on VAB roof (I don't even recal if I even try that one). kOS come along with that quite fine with my own scripts to assist hovering and altitude control trough PID controled throttle, while I was steering craft manualy.

 

[Dunbaratu]

6 hours ago, kcs123 said:

You might want to try new tech tree mod instead of stock:

The 450,000 fund VAB upgrade is a bigger problem than the 45 sci point tech tree node.  The 45 science cost node is annoying because it requires you to exploit the silly space center building biomes but at least that IS do-able early game to get yourself bootstrapped.  The 450,000 fund building upgrade, however, is not.  Getting the sort of payouts to pay for that means getting to at least a Mun flyby.  Which is still playing the rocket game before the airplane game.  (and it's not even a building you *want* to be upgrading if you're playing the airplanes first.  playing an airplane career where you upgrade the VAB FIRST and the SPH afterward doesn't make any sense.)  It seems like an unfair hurdle to put in the way of what was meant to be a mod that affects the *start* of a career.

[inigma]

Thanks for your comments, I'll get to them now.

On 2/18/2019 at 9:10 PM, rottielover said:

Thought I would expand a bit on what I was talking about in case other's have similar issues.   I also installed tweakable everything, so the cockpits start with about 1/2 of the max torque set.  You have to remember to right click on them and set them up to full in order to get better performance out of the helicopters.

I'm still not able to get any of the helicopters up over 2500 meters though, so rescuing the climbers from the mountains is pretty much out...  I don't have the tech for a longer range VTOL, and I can't get the helio's up high enough   

Rescue contracts are tough, and require more advanced engines or parts, or force players to look at mods for solutions. The goals are simply set. How you figure out how to accomplish them inside or outside the box is up to you (and really the fun that makes GAP ... well GAP).  Even I admit I've only been successful once with the K2 rescue contract - and this was a few years ago. The goal is there though. How you accomplish it is pretty open.

On 2/23/2019 at 6:34 AM, MacLuky said:

I did this too, just a small shell script running sed does the trick

I think a GPP patch isn't out of the question then. I'll have to take a look.

On 2/24/2019 at 9:48 AM, jupiterbjy said:

Is GAP intended to be played with FAR installed?

I don't have FAR nor AJE installed, but only requirement for FAR is broken.

 

EDIT: Contract pack does work with FAR installed, but not without it.

FAR is not required to play GAP. It appears the requirements may not have loaded correctly if the contract fails to appear without FAR installed. I tested and played GAP 1.6 with no mods except Airplane Plus. FAR was not installed. You may need to look at reloading your game.

On 3/5/2019 at 3:05 AM, Steven Mading said:

Thank you for updating this mod to KSP 1.6.1!  Yaay.

The last time I tried using GAP was back when Contract Configurator had those bugs where Kerbals GAP was trying to spawn on the surface kept spawning in midair and falling to their deaths instead (which the player was blamed for, failing the contracts).  It made it unplayable.

I'm happy to see that it got updated.

One weird thing with the "contracts" to buy prototype parts though:  There's a prototype part buy for the small circular intake, but no prototype part buy for any of the associated engines that would use it.  This renders the air intake prototype kind of pointless since the same tech tree node with the air intake also gives you the Juno engine so.... if you have to get that tech tree node *anyway* to get the Juno engine, then pre-buying the air intake with the prototype contract doesn't do anything.

This was a problem when I took the contract to build the first airplane, and then was forced to fail the contract and take the penalty because I was unable to actually get an air-breathing engine until later in the game when I unlocked that tech node in the normal rocketry way instead of the airplane way.

The circular intake is only intended if you have an engine that doesn't trip the air intake requirement for a contract. You are correct in that jet engines are not available in the prototype market. This is intentional. 

GAP in its pure vanilla design is not intended to be an airplane-first set of contracts, with the exception of the glider contract.  This is because the default game only gives you jet engines or rocket engines. Historically,  rockets were first, then jet engines.  Because KSP does not provide a propeller engine yet, then GAP was not intended to circumvent this default game design at the vanilla level.

GAP is actually designed to encourage players to explore and use part mods. If you want airplane-first parts, mods like Airplane Plus and others that provide propeller engines are supported by GAP. Modded tech trees could also be a solution, but if you have a modded tech tree, you probably have modded parts, which is what GAP attempts to allow for anyways, so modded tech trees are not required (I wanted GAP to be as KISS as possible). By allowing GAP to prototype mod parts for propellers, I circumvented the need for finding and using a modded tech tree. But all this to say that GAP with vanilla game is not intended to be planes-first since KSP is not planes-first yet, but it is intended to be planes-first with mods. That said, I see a prob with the helicopter pad requirements... 

18 hours ago, Shizen said:

Hello.

I have an issue wherein no matter how many times I accept and complete the "Barnstorm the Hangars" and "Build a Glider" they always return to the the available mission list.

Is this intended? Are they meant to be repeatable?

Glider should not be repeatable. I'll look into it. Barnstorm is repeatable.

18 hours ago, Steven Mading said:

Is the purpose of GAP to allow someone to play a career where they do the aircraft stuff before the rocketry stuff?  (To fix the problem in stock that by the time you can do effective airplane contracts worth about 20,000 funds you don't care anymore because they no longer matter.)

Because if fixing that is the purpose of GAP, I still see a few areas where it needs a couple of changes to achieve that goal:

1 - As mentioned above, the GAP contracts require an air-breathing engine before they will spawn, and while GAP gives you these "prototype contracts" designed to let you bypass the normal tech tree ordering to get some required airplane parts early, it seems GAP forgot to make an "air breathing engine" prototype contract, so you still need to get all the way up to that 45-science-cost tech node to start playing the GAP contracts.  The other "prototype" contracts don't really mean anything if you have to unlock the airplane tech nodes through normal means anyway first, so you already had access to most of those parts before you could start working on the GAP contracts.  This could be fixed by adding a prototype contract that unlocks either the first firespitter prop engine if firespitter is installed, or unlocks the Juno engine if playing on stock.  You've got to have at least *some* air-breathing engine to start the GAP contracts, even if it's just a weak prop engine that would at least let you get started, which right now you sort of can't.

2 - All the rescue contracts require first doing the helipad landing contract, which in turn requires having spent 450,000 funds to upgrade the VAB once to make the helipad exist.  If you're playing planes before rockets, then the VAB is the wrong building to be spending your first upgrade on (it should be the SPH), and anyway once you can afford a 450,000 fund upgrade like that, you're already in the stage of the career where you don't care about the small contracts that GAP pays out.  It really seems like forcing you to upgrade the VAB first before you can even take the small basic seaplane rescue contracts is, again, forcing you to play rockets before airplanes.  I think this could be fixed by making the first helipad landing contract not require the building upgrade.  Just let you land on the top of one of the other buildings with a flat top, even when it doesn't have a marked helipad yet but at least has a flat top.  Requiring a very expensive building upgrade before you can get started in GAP seems to defeat the purpose of Giving Aircraft a Purpose.

Because of the above two problems, I found that to play GAP, I have to play the normal stock "rocketry career" first for a while before those two requirements (45-science airplane tech tree node, and 450,000 fund VAB upgrade) are met so I can start playing the GAP career.  And then I just have to sort of ignore the fact that I'm already past that stage and just pretend that I still care about small contracts for the GAP roleplaying feel.

I think switching to the SPH helipad requirement is a great idea. I think though, that the contract allows for any helipads, including SPH, so if its cheaper, do that. If SPH pad is not an option, I'll have to code it in for next release as it should be allowed for.

20 minutes ago, Steven Mading said:

The 450,000 fund VAB upgrade is a bigger problem than the 45 sci point tech tree node.  The 45 science cost node is annoying because it requires you to exploit the silly space center building biomes but at least that IS do-able early game to get yourself bootstrapped.  The 450,000 fund building upgrade, however, is not.  Getting the sort of payouts to pay for that means getting to at least a Mun flyby.  Which is still playing the rocket game before the airplane game.  (and it's not even a building you *want* to be upgrading if you're playing the airplanes first.  playing an airplane career where you upgrade the VAB FIRST and the SPH afterward doesn't make any sense.)  It seems like an unfair hurdle to put in the way of what was meant to be a mod that affects the *start* of a career.

Science node in vanilla game to get jet engine is annoying but doable. I'll have to confirm SPH availability though. Thanks for the heads up!

[MacLuky]

7 hours ago, inigma said:

I think a GPP patch isn't out of the question then. I'll have to take a look.

On 2/24/2019 at 5:48 PM, jupiterbjy said:

I didn't see how I could have made an MM patch, but I think you can run a post processing script that copies the stock files and creates rss ones. btw don't launch planes from Korrou, their runway is a wobbly mess. The Cape is fine though

[Dunbaratu]

11 hours ago, inigma said:

The circular intake is only intended if you have an engine that doesn't trip the air intake requirement for a contract. You are correct in that jet engines are not available in the prototype market. This is intentional. I think switching to the SPH helipad requirement is a great idea. I think though, that the contract allows for any helipads, including SPH, so if its cheaper, do that. If SPH pad is not an option, I'll have to code it in for next release as it should be allowed for.

Science node in vanilla game to get jet engine is annoying but doable. I'll have to confirm SPH availability though. Thanks for the heads up!

I *did* try to use prop engines before jets.  The firespitter prop engines are in the same tech tree node as the starting jet engine, which is why I mentioned firespitter by name in my earlier post.  When you install GAP on CKAN, GAP recommends also installing FireSpitter, which I did.  You say that getting around the stock tech tree not giving any airplane parts till later is outside of GAP's scope, except that then if that's true why do the GAP prototype contracts exist at all?  I thought they were there specifically to get around the stock tech tree putting aircraft things too late in the tech tree.  I was just saying that to be effective at doing that, at least *some* engine has to be gettable that way, and right now they're not.  If it let you get into the firespitter prop engines only, and not the Juno jet, that would be perfectly fine, and make sense.  But both props AND jets end up having to wait because the prototype contracts don't unlock any prop engines either, and props are in the same tech tree node as jets.

As for the helipad landing,  if it does turn out to be the case that upgrading the SPH would have worked all along, then I think the text description of the pre-requisite bullet point might need editing.  It would probably need to say "VAB or SPH' where it currently just says "VAB".  But even that doesn't really change the fact that that upgrade is *expensive*, even if it's the SPH upgrade, and a player is still left wondering how on earth they're meant to earn that money first while still tootling around on Kerbin and not getting to space yet.  The helipad landing contract should be doable without a building upgrade, IMO.  It should be just "land on top of one of these buildings", without caring what upgrade level the building is at.  Even without the upgrade that marks the top of the SPH or VAB with a big "H", the buildings' roofs are still flat enough to be landed on.

Edited March 7, 2019 by Steven Mading

[Manul]

19 hours ago, Steven Mading said:

Getting the sort of payouts to pay for that means getting to at least a Mun flyby.

I used to unlock hypersonic flight without orbiting Kerbin. Science from all Kerbin biomes + funds/reputation to science strategies + lots of atmospheric/ground survey contracts and i got it. If you do not put your spacecraft into a stable orbit you can still get these nice contracts with increasing range, altitude and reward. Launching a suborbital rocket into "in space high" was the only thing I did above the atmosphere.

[Dunbaratu]

10 hours ago, Manul said:

I used to unlock hypersonic flight without orbiting Kerbin. Science from all Kerbin biomes + funds/reputation to science strategies + lots of atmospheric/ground survey contracts and i got it. If you do not put your spacecraft into a stable orbit you can still get these nice contracts with increasing range, altitude and reward. Launching a suborbital rocket into "in space high" was the only thing I did above the atmosphere.

Was it at hard difficulty settings?  The building costs are cheaper on the easier difficulties, and the contract payouts are much more lucrative.  In the stock game, the intent of scaling it up to hard is NOT to completely cut off, in a strictly Boolean way, access to certain contract types.  The intent of "hard" in the stock game is to just make the contracts harder to accomplish because of these limitations, not refuse to even offer them in the first place.  This is why I think it doesn't feel right for GAP to require a building upgrade before allowing a certain contract type to even exist at all - especially one that's so low on the tree of prerequisite contracts that it cuts off access to like half the mod.