Question about Contracts (newb)

[Giygus]

I have been playing vanilla career mode (easy setting), for the first time, in the past few days.  I have been successful completing some of the easier contracts, and have noticed that very similar ones respawn right after I am done.

My question is, can I expect survey, ferrying, and part testing type contracts (the easy ones) to ALWAYS respawn, or will the pool dry up?

I ask because I have yet to upgrade any buildings, other then launch pad (lvl 2), for fear of running out of money.  I understand it would be grindy, but it would be nice to know if I could always count on something easy and quick to do if I needed the cash.

Thanks!

EDIT:  While I am bothering to open a thread, I have another question.

Is there a way to see the Biome map in game without the cheat?  I know that survey parts exist, but I thought they showed you ore.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Giygus
One more question

[Streetwind]

You can expect there to always be contracts available for you. The majority is procedurally generated and will never dry up. However, you might not specifically see survey, ferrying and part test contracts at all times.

What contracts you get is dependant on a lot of things - including (but not limited to) the amount of reputation you have, the exact tech nodes you have unlocked, which spheres of influence you may have entered or left, and (coming in 1.1) the types of contracts you routinely accept and the ones you routinely reject or let expire.

You may, over the course of your career, also encounter tourist contracts, asteroid redirect contracts, space station building contracts, Kerbal rescue contracts, planetary base building contracts, ore mining and delivery contracts, satellite launch contracts, flag planting contracts, celestial body exploration contracts, science gathering contracts and more. In no particular order, all based on your progress, performance and personal preferences.

 

As for a biome map - the narrow-band scanner, while being a resource tool, does show you biome borders. However, it's not a global display. There is no global biome map available to the player outside of the cheat menu. And even there, it only exists as a debug tool, not because it's a gameplay feature. You're in fact supposed to go out there and discover yourself what biomes exist where - it's called doing science

If you have interest in making your own biome maps through legit exploration, a mod called SCANSat will be your friend. Look for it in the Addon Releases subforum!

Edited March 16, 2016 by Streetwind

[Geschosskopf]

3 hours ago, Giygus said:

My question is, can I expect survey, ferrying, and part testing type contracts (the easy ones) to ALWAYS respawn, or will the pool dry up?

Sadly, yes.  Contract availability bears little ration to what you're actually doing at the time so most of the available contracts will be pointless, non-remunerative things close to home that aren't worth wasting your time with while you're building colonies on Laythe.

[Wemb]

One of the better ways to maximise income with the contracts in the early game is to work out how to complete multiple missions with a single launch - for instance, it's very easy to make a satellite with huge amounts of delta-v - far more than you'd ever need, once you unlock the Spark engine - in which case you can stack up a bunch of similar satellite launch missions and complete them with the same bird, rather than doing multiple launches. 

Similarly, you can quite easily build an unmanned two-person rescue ship with a couple of Mk-1 pods and a stayputnik strapped together.  It doesn't look pretty, but it'll fly, and re-enter safely enough and you get twice the income and two new astronauts for every launch.

Oh, as for a Biome map, not entirely sure about the stock survey scanner, but the SCANsat mod adds similar scanners which can display a biome as well as a resource map (and others)

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/72679-105-scansat-v149-real-scanning-real-science-at-warp-speed-march-6/&page=1 

Wemb

Edited March 18, 2016 by Wemb

[Loren Pechtel]

On 3/18/2016 at 3:14 AM, Wemb said:

One of the better ways to maximise income with the contracts in the early game is to work out how to complete multiple missions with a single launch - for instance, it's very easy to make a satellite with huge amounts of delta-v - far more than you'd ever need, once you unlock the Spark engine - in which case you can stack up a bunch of similar satellite launch missions and complete them with the same bird, rather than doing multiple launches. 

Similarly, you can quite easily build an unmanned two-person rescue ship with a couple of Mk-1 pods and a stayputnik strapped together.  It doesn't look pretty, but it'll fly, and re-enter safely enough and you get twice the income and two new astronauts for every launch.

Oh, as for a Biome map, not entirely sure about the stock survey scanner, but the SCANsat mod adds similar scanners which can display a biome as well as a resource map (and others)

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/72679-105-scansat-v149-real-scanning-real-science-at-warp-speed-march-6/&page=1 

Wemb

I'm currently playing on Normal with most of the tech unlocked.  I find the main source of money to be from collecting up a few tourist contracts and any Kerbal rescue contracts.  I've got a bird that seats 13 and has about 4000 m/s left after reaching orbit.  (Just a wimpy poodle on it, it doesn't get places very fast, but it's efficient.)  I load up every tourist (so far I've orbited Mun and landed on Minmus, this bird can do both in one mission), allocate seats for anybody I'm going to rescue and if I have an extra I fly a scientist also.  I net several hundred thousand per launch.  (Note that I'm running Stage Recovery, I get back most of the money for the first two strap-ons and a decent chunk for the second pair.  Your profit won't be as high without this mod but it's still a major money-maker.)