When the contract is ridiculous

[TimberWolffe]

 

That's 15 minutes of progress

RIP me

[Tex_NL]

Actually stating what the contract is might be ever so slightly beneficial. Same goes for your issues with it. All you've done now is post two unrevealing images and saying you made 15 minutes progress.

[TimberWolffe]

5 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Actually stating what the contract is might be ever so slightly beneficial. Same goes for your issues with it. All you've done now is post two unrevealing images and saying you made 15 minutes progress.

it's a temperature survey group below 19000m on the other side of Kerbin

[Streetwind]

You can see the waypoints before you accept the contract, you know... it's not ridiculous if you choose to do it

(But yeah, I never accept survey contracts. Never ever. They just take too much RL time for the payout they have. Even if I make a tidy profit ingame, I could be completing three satellite launch contracts in the same time and earn that much more.)

Edited October 9, 2016 by Streetwind

[TimberWolffe]

1 minute ago, Streetwind said:

You can see the waypoints before you accept the contract, you know... it's not ridiculous if you choose to do it

(But yeah, I never accept survey contracts. Never ever. They just take too much RL time for the payout they have. Even if I make a tidy profit ingame, I could be completing three satellite launch contracts in the same time and earn that much more.)

my only contracts are orbit rescue, tourism, and survey

[Streetwind]

Orbit rescue is pretty great (and with that I mean borderline OP). You look at the contract and think that the payout is a bit underwhelming... but they you go into the astronaut complex, see that the price to hire a Kerbal is like 150,000, and suddenly that contract looks a lot more attractive

People who want to power through the earlygame quickly focus pretty much exclusively on low Kerbin orbit rescues. Better to build up that crew roster early, before these contracts start appearing way out at the Mun (or worse, Duna) later in the game. You also never have to upgrade the astronaut complex to level 3 - you can "hire" as many Kerbals as you want through rescues regardless of the building's current capacity.

Edited October 9, 2016 by Streetwind

[Guest]

LKO rescue and tourism are great, I always build my roster with rescues.

Surveys are really tedious and time-consuming. The only advantage is that if you have the capability, they're cheap. Put a Mun orbiter in polar orbit and you can do all the "in spaceflight" Mun survey contracts for free, it just takes really long and is really annoying if you just miss it and have to wait another half-month for the next chance at it.

I also like satellite contracts, especially with ComNet in 1.2 so the sats have some value for you. Exploration contracts are great too of course. Space station contracts would be great if those MPLs didn't completely trivialise Science.

[TimberWolffe]

I really do need as many funds as I can get since I'm only really being held back by the R&D center being underdeveloped

Update: this flight path has worked out nicely

[Starman4308]

For something like that: either just avoid accepting those contracts, or build a borderline spaceplane so you can get to the general area at near-orbital velocities. I tend to go for the first option.

[TimberWolffe]

Just now, Starman4308 said:

For something like that: either just avoid accepting those contracts, or build a borderline spaceplane so you can get to the general area at near-orbital velocities. I tend to go for the first option.

I don't have turbojets yet so I'm limited to about a 10km ceiling for my planes

[Tex_NL]

I must agree. LKO rescues and tourist missions (especially Kerbin orbit and Kerbin suborbital) are great fundraisers.
With some minor planning you can have those missions pay for the launch of a new segment of the large interplanetary ship your constructing in orbit. Simply let a tourist tag along or pick up a rescue on the way back. And with clever contract stacking you can seriously rake in the .

[TimberWolffe]

Update: First time visiting the South Pole while in the atmosphere

 

[Curveball Anders]

36 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

I must agree. LKO rescues and tourist missions (especially Kerbin orbit and Kerbin suborbital) are great fundraisers.
With some minor planning you can have those missions pay for the launch of a new segment of the large interplanetary ship your constructing in orbit. Simply let a tourist tag along or pick up a rescue on the way back. And with clever contract stacking you can seriously rake in the .

Yeah I use them a lot.

And as soon as the active save has the infrastructure in place I also (ab)use a lot of Mün and Minmus rescue and tourism to fund my targets.

All surveys within the atmosphere is ignored since I still haven't managed to reconcile myself with the so called flight model in KSP

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

All surveys within the atmosphere is ignored since I still haven't managed to reconcile myself with the so called flight model in KSP

Flight is greatly improved in 1.2-pre. Big planes can still be a bit of a handful, but moderate-sized ones designed for easy flying are... well, pretty easy to fly.

[Curveball Anders]

Just now, Brikoleur said:

Flight is greatly improved in 1.2-pre. Big planes can still be a bit of a handful, but moderate-sized ones designed for easy flying are... well, pretty easy to fly.

I've tried 1.2_pre to.

The problem isn't that the planes are easy to fly, it's rather the problem.

I'm so used to FSX/X-Plane that I simply can't get used to the arcade feeling of flight in KSP

 

[RX2000]

I dont have the patience for the temp survey on Kerbin missions. I tried doing a couple on my first career playthrough & it was just soooo boring. Takes waaay too long to fly around Kerbin, even at 4x speed. I dont do them at all anymore. I just decline them as soon as I see them. A game should be fun to play, & survey missions are the opposite of fun for me.

[theend3r]

Just do a suborbital jump to the place. It's actually kinda fun doing that.

2 hours ago, TimberWolffe said:

I don't have turbojets yet so I'm limited to about a 10km ceiling for my planes

You can use rockets instead of turbojets, you know.

I also prefer 100% recovery but using two SRBs to blast off won't hurt you... probably.

Edited October 9, 2016 by theend3r

[magnemoe]

10 hours ago, Streetwind said:

You can see the waypoints before you accept the contract, you know... it's not ridiculous if you choose to do it

(But yeah, I never accept survey contracts. Never ever. They just take too much RL time for the payout they have. Even if I make a tidy profit ingame, I could be completing three satellite launch contracts in the same time and earn that much more.)

On low gravity moons it might pay off well bonus as it can be done from an established base. 
On Kerbin they are easy picking for players focusing on planes however doing stuff on the other side of the planet require something suborbital to make sense. 

[klesh]

Decline a few of those survey and detailed observation contracts and the game will start spitting other ones at you.  

[Terwin]

On 10/9/2016 at 7:33 AM, TimberWolffe said:

my only contracts are orbit rescue, tourism, and survey

I am a big fan of taking along a couple of tourists on rescue missions to pay for the flight, thus making the 'recruiting bonus' highly profitable.

More than a couple once I get the Mk3 passenger module.(currently doing 3 rescues as part of a 'training and tourism' flight.  Also got a station contract which paid for the entire launch)

Multi-tasking for fun and profit.

[Regiampiero]

A better example of a ridiculous contract to me is Testing an RT-10 at 62,000 ft while going faster then 600 mps. I mean, how the heck do you tie that down to a standard mission? Or testing a Rockomax Brand Decoupler (the big one) while you have no large fuel tanks and no adapters, although I made that work.  

Edited October 13, 2016 by Regiampiero

[Millitron]

I dunno, I kinda like those long atmospheric flights.  I especially like the ones about gathering data from the surface on Kerbin.  Basically what I do is I build a bomber, and paradrop probes with the necessary science equipment into the target sites.  It's pretty challenging.  There's challenge in building a long-range plane with a big cargo bay, then there's challenge in getting the probes to drop without blowing up, and then there's challenge in actually hitting the target sites; they're kinda small and dropping probes isn't exactly precise.

[Leafbaron]

@TimberWolffe dont let anyone discourage you! those contracts can be a pain but they also allow you see a lot of Kerbin normally overlooked. I prefer the suborbital hop method but I have done my fair share of flying completely atmospheric trans-kerbally. Good practice making stable planes and while they are lengthy in real time your in game clock doesn't go days ahead in seconds and you usually get most of the money back from your craft minus fuel expenses so the overhead on those contracts is usually rather high. 

20 minutes ago, Millitron said:

I dunno, I kinda like those long atmospheric flights.  I especially like the ones about gathering data from the surface on Kerbin.  Basically what I do is I build a bomber, and paradrop probes with the necessary science equipment into the target sites.  It's pretty challenging.  There's challenge in building a long-range plane with a big cargo bay, then there's challenge in getting the probes to drop without blowing up, and then there's challenge in actually hitting the target sites; they're kinda small and dropping probes isn't exactly precise.

i have done this too and it is extremely fun. 

what engine is that? did they overhaul the jet engines in 1.2 as well? i haven't played the official release yet.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Leafbaron said:

@TimberWolffe dont let anyone discourage you! those contracts can be a pain but they also allow you see a lot of Kerbin normally overlooked. I prefer the suborbital hop method but I have done my fair share of flying completely atmospheric trans-kerbally. Good practice making stable planes and while they are lengthy in real time your in game clock doesn't go days ahead in seconds and you usually get most of the money back from your craft minus fuel expenses so the overhead on those contracts is usually rather high. 

i have done this too and it is extremely fun. 

what engine is that? did they overhaul the jet engines in 1.2 as well? i haven't played the official release yet.

Doing some now to complete science, added an kerbal in command seat inside service bay for eva in flight over
And yes its a bit stupid then my ground hogging short landing and takeoff plane is high supersonic, still its too slow going to the poles.

More weird, I tested an design, tailsitter H wing design build around 3 MK2 sections, the vertical parts thin wing segments for stability then landing, prototype for future Layte missions, took it to orbit as my first SSTO in 1.x 
 

[BadLeo]

What I do is I accept a whole bunch of those contracts at the same time, preferably if they are reasonably close to each other, and fly just once to get all of them done. Since I like to build planes it can be fun, but when there's too much flight time I just use Atmosphere Autopilot or Pilot Assistant to level the plane during warp.