What`s the deal with reputation?

[John FX]

So I just noticed in my career game where I have never failed a contract I have attempted, I have never cancelled a contract and no contracts have run out of time that my reputation is -10%. That makes no sense.

What`s the deal with reputation?

Why is it handed out in points yet measured in percentage?

Why can we not have a number letting us know how much we have rather than a slider where it is impossible to see how much you have?

I mean, red letters on a yellow background, who thought that would be easy to read?

Anyway, what are your thoughts on reputation, how it is handed out, measured and displayed to the user?

What works, what could be better, what needs replacing?

[Mastikator]

Turning down contracts reduces reputation.

If not that, then bug. Welcome to the club

[John FX]

The only contracts that I did not complete were ones that closed by themselves in the mission control.

[DChurchill]

Bug, I'd expect. Did you look in the archives tab to see if anything is funky in there?

[severedsolo]

Killed any kerbals? That decreases rep too.

Anyway, yes reputation is a little pointless. Basically the only thing it does (as far as I can tell) is affect whether you will get "better" (read 2 or 3 star) contracts.

[HebaruSan]

100% agreed on the unreadability issue (though there is some irony to your complaint in the context of your sig ). The below screenshot snippet is from the wiki. Even if you find the colors readable, the font size is nano-scale compared to the numbers for funds and science, and the labels are even more difficult to take in at a glance because they shift around to different spots on the bar as the value changes. And on the topic of the colors, they convey virtually nothing because you can't tell a) how many colors there are in the bar overall, b) how wide the strip for each color is, or c) where the boundaries fall numerically. Presumably the idea was to make this value more "fuzzy" than the others because it represents public attitudes rather than spendable points in an account, but in practice it works out to be not very different from giving no information at all.

As for your problem of mysteriously missing points, obviously that's something I can't comment on without being able to track or investigate the issue myself. But that's difficult with my current rep value effectively hidden; for all I know, I might be losing rep constantly due to some bug but not noticing it because I have no idea what my rep is now or was in the past.

[p1t1o]

Doesn't it slowly fall over time if you don't do anything? I don't recall...

Anyhoo no it has never really had much impact on my game, though I do hate losing it... <shrug>

 

[Mjp1050]

27 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Doesn't it slowly fall over time if you don't do anything? I don't recall...

I hope not. That makes time warp completely useless.

[FullMetalMachinist]

1 hour ago, John FX said:

The only contracts that I did not complete were ones that closed by themselves in the mission control.

Are you saying that you accepted contracts that expired and went away, or contracts were offered (but you didn't accept them) and they went away? The first option will cost you rep, the second won't. 

Other than that, are you using one of the Administration Building strategies that takes away rep and gives something else? 

[DChurchill]

8 minutes ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

Are you saying that you accepted contracts that expired and went away, or contracts were offered (but you didn't accept them) and they went away? The first option will cost you rep, the second won't. 

Other than that, are you using one of the Administration Building strategies that takes away rep and gives something else? 

This may be part of the problem. If they disappear from the Available tab after a time then no problem. If they disappear from the Active tab after their deadline time, then you get a hit to your reputation because you failed to complete them on time.

[Deddly]

First thing we should all assume when we think a game or anything else in life is treating us wierdly of wrongly is: "Am I absolutely certain it's not me doing something wrong?" Now I'm not saying you definitely are doing something wrong, @John FX, but we have to first of all eliminate that possibility.

Is it at all possible that you could have accidentally declined or cancelled some contracts? It's very easy to do so because the nice big red "Decline Contract" button can be mixed up with the "close this screen" button at the top-right of the screen:

I have done it myself a couple of times.

 

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Time warping too much also reduces Rep. (or so I've heard)

[samstarman5]

7 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Time warping too much also reduces Rep. (or so I've heard)

Nope. The only way that would effect Rep if during the time warp a contract expired, which would also reduce funds and possibly science.

It's actually not so easy to reduce reputation unless you are really into kerbal genocide or like accepting contracts that have an expiration date and you do nothing with. That's actually one reason I have yet to upgrade Mission Control to Tier 3.  That 7 contract acceptance limit helps me behave.

[KerikBalm]

Also note that the strategy aggressive negotiations can kill your reputation...

If you use this to get cheaper rockets... you're going to have a really bad reputation

[Cucco-Master]

14 hours ago, John FX said:

So I just noticed in my career game where I have never failed a contract I have attempted, I have never cancelled a contract and no contracts have run out of time that my reputation is -10%. That makes no sense.

Since you have been obviously sitting at exactly 1000 rep for quite a while (either that, or your signature tells us lies :P), my guess would be, that through some calculation mistake (rounding error or whatever), you somehow got just a bit more rep from some contract pushing you over the "hard cap". The game can't deal with values over 1000 rep (<- this is a theory, not a fact), because you are not supposed to ever surpass 1000 and thus it glitched out and you actually ended up with a negative value.

Maybe your actual reputation is not even affected, but the only thing that's broken is the info-bar. If you still get the same amount of available contracts (especially 2 and 3 star ones), you don't have to worry, because then you only get displayed incorrect values.

Edited June 4, 2016 by Cucco-Master

[John FX]

It`s not impossible that I`ve done things which reduce my rep but it would be not much, maybe one or two contracts that I didn`t notice time out.

I have millions in funds, the tech tree is nearly completed, my program is doing very well. There should be more rep IMHO.

My main complaint though is the incredibly hard to read display and the nebulous benefits from going to the effort of building up rep.

[cantab]

2 hours ago, Cucco-Master said:

Since you have been obviously sitting at exactly 1000 rep for quite a while (either that, or your signature tells us lies :P),

I assume the signature relates to *forum* reputation.

Anyway, the most obvious cause of reputation drop is spamming that "decline contract" button in Mission Control Available Contracts in the hopes of being given something better. I see so many people do this and to me it's felt like abusing the mechanic since day one, it's like re-rolling and re-rolling a dice until you get the number you want. If you really don't want to do any of the Available Contracts and don't want the reputation drop then you can timewarp for a bit to get them replaced, incurring the small but non-zero drawbacks to doing that.

[SorryDave]

After you complete a mission, the recovery screen shows you the numerical value of you reputation.

Recover a rocket from the launch pad and it is on the bottom of the third screen. 

Reputation gives you much higher paying contracts. 

[Wraith977]

4 hours ago, Cucco-Master said:

Since you have been obviously sitting at exactly 1000 rep for quite a while (either that, or your signature tells us lies :P), my guess would be, that through some calculation mistake (rounding error or whatever), you somehow got just a bit more rep from some contract pushing you over the "hard cap". The game can't deal with values over 1000 rep (<- this is a theory, not a fact), because you are not supposed to ever surpass 1000 and thus it glitched out and you actually ended up with a negative value.

The game should be able to 'handle' integer values up to 2,147,483,647. Assuming that the reputation variable is an integer (it's actually probably a double in which case that number would be even higher) you would have to have gotten a very large amount of reputation for it to cause problems, this could be because of mods or a bug in the game, although I'm not sure what that bug would be.

As for keeping the value below 1000, it has nothing to do with technical limitations, it would simply be something like this, excuse my java...

reputation += reputationGain;
if(reputation > 1000)
{
	reputation = 1000;
}
else if(reputation < -1000)
{
	reputation = -1000);
}

 

[Pthigrivi]

Yeah I couldn't speak to your specific issue but I totally agree reputation should just be displayed in points. Right now reputation is a bit of a black box. We know having it is good and makes better contracts pop up but how that works and how much we need for what is a total mystery. I tend to think the key exploration contracts for Flyby, Orbit, Land and Plant flag should always be displayed in Mission control with their advances locked out until a player had accumulated enough rep. This way players would know exactly what rep was for and how much they need to get what they want. Something like this:

* Ignore the numbers this was just cobbled together from screenshots.

Edited June 4, 2016 by Pthigrivi

[Tiberius K]

If rep is negative what ACTUAL difference would it make?  People are saying 'better' contracts appear for higher rep, but does that mean higher $$ rewards or more interesting goals?

I've learned to just ignore it because it is illegible, though the needle always seems to be at around top limit.  I decline repetitive contracts (needle never moves) but never time-warp more than a few days because I'm unduly paranoid that my kerbals will vegetate and become useless couch potatos, or rebel and spray anarchy symbols all over the KSC

[SorryDave]

2 hours ago, Tiberius K said:

If rep is negative what ACTUAL difference would it make?  People are saying 'better' contracts appear for higher rep, but does that mean higher $$ rewards or more interesting goals?

Using the "tourist orbit Kerbin" contract types as an example, I've noticed the following:

The three star contracts earns more money per tourist than the two or one star contract. It also has a higher rep gain for the complete contract, but requires more tourist to complete.

I use a rocket that carries two tourist and a pilot, so the higher star contracts earn more money per launch, but earn less rep per launch.

I've found this to be generally true:

0-25% Rep = 1 three star contracts

25-50% Rep = 2-3 three star contracts

50-75% = 3-4 three star contracts

where the % rep is visible on the save game and it is 10% of the rep number available after rocket recovery. For example: 1000 actual rep, shows up as 100% rep.

Hope this helps.

Edited June 5, 2016 by SorryDave

[electricatom]

On 5.06.2016 at 1:14 PM, SorryDave said:

Using the "tourist orbit Kerbin" contract types as an example, I've noticed the following:

The three star contracts earns more money per tourist than the two or one star contract. It also has a higher rep gain for the complete contract, but requires more tourist to complete.

I use a rocket that carries two tourist and a pilot, so the higher star contracts earn more money per launch, but earn less rep per launch.

I've found this to be generally true:

0-25% Rep = 1 three star contracts

25-50% Rep = 2-3 three star contracts

50-75% = 3-4 three star contracts

where the % rep is visible on the save game and it is 10% of the rep number available after rocket recovery. For example: 1000 actual rep, shows up as 100% rep.

Hope this helps.

yeah  i earned fortune of 9 milion before even going to kerbins orbit by building massive ships and taking 30 tourists into suborbital flights, money is earned without any problems but i noticed i didnt get as many reputation as it said i would, 20 rep per mission and i do more than 5 meaning i would get at least 100 rep in one time but instead i have 30-40 without any strategies, this leave me in bad position of loosing reputation from strategy to buy science even at 50% and i have strategy to give 100% money out for rep too

i really dont know why this crucial info isnt displayed at all as well