Build a 'New' Station contract by Docking?

[sardia]

Instead of hauling up a new station in one go, why not haul up part of it and then dock the rest to it? 

If that works, it leads to a new idea. Could you lift just a probe core rcs and a klaw to an existing station in order to satisfy the construct a space station contract? In theory, it should keep my save from being cluttered up with useless 1 time use stations. 

[ElWanderer]

Yes, you can assemble a station in orbit. However, you have to make sure that everything you attach was launched after you accepted the contract. So I'm pretty sure the answer to your second question is no.

Once you have completed a station contract, you should occasionally get contracts to expand it. I don't know if those will be satisfied by attaching previously-launched pieces you had floating around.

[Snark]

40 minutes ago, sardia said:

Instead of hauling up a new station in one go, why not haul up part of it and then dock the rest to it? 

If that works, it leads to a new idea. Could you lift just a probe core rcs and a klaw to an existing station in order to satisfy the construct a space station contract? In theory, it should keep my save from being cluttered up with useless 1 time use stations. 

I believe that the answer is "yes, you can build it in pieces" ... with the caveat that all the pieces have to have been built after accepting the contract.

So, for example, if you have an existing station, and after that you accept a new contract to "build a new station with ___" ... then you can't satisfy the contract by klawing a probe onto it, because the original station was built before the contract was accepted.

But if you have a contract that says "make a big complicated thing" and it's too much of a hassle to launch it all in one go, then you can launch it in (new) pieces and assemble them in orbit if you like.

[steve_v]

11 minutes ago, Snark said:

I believe that the answer is "yes, you can build it in pieces" ... with the caveat that all the pieces have to have been built after accepting the contract.

Interesting, has this changed recently?

I'm not sure about the current state of affairs, but in previous versions this was not entirely true... I certainly abused these contracts a bit - build a new vessel (meeting "new", "power", "docking port" etc. criteria, then dock to existing station to get the "crew capacity" bit. Worked at some point (most of my "stations" were actually spaceplanes ), but I dunno if it still does.

[Snark]

12 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Interesting, has this changed recently?

I'm not sure about the current state of affairs, but in previous versions this was not entirely true... I certainly abused these contracts a bit - build a new vessel (meeting "new", "power", "docking port" etc. criteria, then dock to existing station to get the "crew capacity" bit. Worked at some point (most of my "stations" were actually spaceplanes ), but I dunno if it still does.

You could be right.  I've never done any of the assemble-in-pieces-for-contract bit myself, I'm basically just echoing the gist of what I seem to recall reading other folks posting on this topic in the forum.

I tend to err on the side of caution when doing contracts, because nothing grinds my gears more than putting a lot of time and effort into a mission that I think is going to satisfy a contract, and then find out at the end that it doesn't work because the game is following rules that are different from what I thought it was.  In other words, not due to my own carelessness, but due to poorly (or flat out wrongly) communicated rules-of-the-game.

Whenever that happens, I feel cheated, and it's an incredible letdown.  I hate that feeling.  So for my own gameplay, I'd far rather "play it safe" and do something that I know will work because there's no ambiguity there.

(My personal worst experience with this:  a contract that said, "have an ISRU conversion unit", when what it really meant was "a Convert-O-Tron 250 and not a Convert-O-Tron 125".  This was at the end of a long, involved mission to get the equipment somewhere difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.  Yes, it was my fault for not noticing that the "have an ISRU unit" box was unchecked in the early stages of the mission... but nevertheless, it was absolutely infuriating.  I really wish they'd make contract language clearer, and/or make the contract UI in the VAB better so that you can see whether a ship satisfies design requirements while you're building it.)

[ElWanderer]

My understanding is that newness usedto be based on the mission elapsed time, which could be fooled if you docked an old craft to a new one, where the composite craft was based off the new and so retained its (recent) MET. Now the game tracks the launch id of each craft and either retains both or uses the oldest one when two craft dock together. That caused some problems with asteroid bases as the launch id of each asteroid was set to 0, predating every contract.

[sardia]

I was testing it out, and it works if you have kis and KAS mods. 

[Reactordrone]

6 hours ago, ElWanderer said:

Once you have completed a station contract, you should occasionally get contracts to expand it. I don't know if those will be satisfied by attaching previously-launched pieces you had floating around.

Expand station missions don't require newly launched hardware. I've completed several by just docking multiple ships together and the only thing to watch is to make sure you're in command of the correct piece when you dock.

[FancyMouse]

7 hours ago, steve_v said:

Interesting, has this changed recently?

I believe it's a change from 1.0 where each part starts to record its own launchID. Back then until 0.9 only a ship has a launchID so you can use docking to exploit, but that no longer works since 1.0, I believe.

Now, still, this doesn't fix all the problem, when the contract asks for resource like x LF or y Ore. Since resource has no launchID (much harder to track than parts) - you can still cheat like that way, i.e. fulfill parts requirement by a new launch, but fulfill resource requirement by the existing resource in orbit.

[sardia]

I'm sorry to say that docking crafts together will not work, even with KIS/KAS. =( 

What part of a space craft holds the ID code that controls the age? I was disassembling a craft, and reassembling it, but it wouldn't tag my station as "new",

[Temstar]

On 5/2/2016 at 9:13 AM, Reactordrone said:

Expand station missions don't require newly launched hardware. I've completed several by just docking multiple ships together and the only thing to watch is to make sure you're in command of the correct piece when you dock.

This, I can confirm docking of ships already launched work for expand station contracts and in fact this makes station expansion contracts extremely lucrative. Not long ago I got an "expand Mun station to 22 kerbal capacity" contract when it already had a capacity of 16 with a craft with 7 crew capacity already en route to the Mun when the contract popped up. Accepting this contract and docking the craft to the station on arrival netted me 150k easy money.

[Vive_moi]

Hello,

Using Contract Pack : Bases and Stations and KAS/KIS (and lots of other mods, but not involved in the following), I had to launch the Kerbin Space Station contract (4 kerbals, cuppola, power gen, science lab and docking port). I had also a MPL orbiting Kerbin from a stranded kerbal rescue long before the KSS contract.

I launched my KSS core with only cuppola, hitchhiker and KIS container with power gen and docking port inside (so not detected by the contract).

When in orbit, I captured the MPL and added it to the station, this validated the MPL requirement.

I have rearranged the station in orbit and the MPL is now inside the station core. After assembling the solar panels and the docking ports, it also validated the rest of the contract.

Note: the launcher is still on the station core (just behind the solar panels)

Vive_moi

Edited February 8, 2016 by Vive_moi

[Provisional Name 12]

See I thought that was the case, I started playing 1.0.5 and I definitely remember exploiting the hell out of this. Yea you have to bundle missions and plan quite a bit, But I play with a lot of the difficulties on hard so if the mission pays for a station that's worth it, never-mind what you can net by tying in extra contracts. If I recall all of the components in the parts list have to be new not the station as a whole. This may not sound like a great deal but with large crew contracts it can be a big deal. Other way to make bank on em is to incorporate tourism missions to fill out the crew capacity and make money.