Newb Grind: Reputation & Contracts

[Zpike]

I'm a new player attempting to grind my way up the science tree in career mode and currently on the first and second level of the tree.

I found a bunch of survey contracts that I could not figure out how to do so I declined them.  After declining them I noticed that they had a -1 to reputation stars when declined.

Does reputation actually effect anything?  I seem to be at 0 reputation because I declined about 10 contracts while looking for something I actually had the equipment to do.

Is there any drawback to cycling through contracts until you find a good one?

[HvP]

Reputation affects the value of contracts you are offered. Higher reputation will make more rewarding contracts available.

While declining contracts will lower your reputation it will also weight the contract system so that you are offered fewer of those types of contracts you have declined. If you are early in the game it may be better to accept a few contracts that you like and let the others gradually expire so that others will take their place (this will still slightly weight the contracts to offer less of those that you passed up, but not as heavily as if you had declined them outright, and it won't lower your reputation.)

World first records will still be awarded to you without needing a contract, so you can still get speed, altitude, distance records to increase your reputation slightly. Things like escaping the atmosphere, first orbit around a body, first rendezvous, first docking around a body, first landing on a body... will always award you more reputation whether or not you have a contract for it, but doing them under a contract will get you more rewards.

Edited October 9, 2016 by HvP

[Aethon]

I haven't played the pre release 1.2 yet, but in previous versions you could turn off the reputation penalty for declining contracts (cheater) in the settings menu.  I always (cheat) do this because many contracts are too ridiculous or take to long to accomplish for very little reward.

Hope this helps.

[tater]

You can turn off the -1 rep hit in career settings when you start a career. I always do this as 90%+ of contracts are awful.

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, HvP said:

While declining contracts will lower your reputation it will also weight the contract system so that you are offered fewer of those types of contracts you have declined. If you are early in the game it may be better to accept a few contracts that you like and let the others gradually expire so that others will take their place (this will still slightly weight the contracts to offer less of those that you passed up, but not as heavily as if you had declined them outright, and it won't lower your reputation.)

A better thing to do is to look at contracts that you don't want, click on them directly, and then move on. This will weight the system towards contract types other than those, at least insofar as I've read. Applicable to 1.2 pre-release and beyond.

In general I've found that the -1 penalty to declining contracts isn't that big of a hit on even 70% rep rewards since you get a lot of rep for world's firsts and such. Declining also weights the system pretty heavily, so removing a few contracts will help greatly. Unfortunately some of the better contracts don't show up until a little later in career mode so declining early contracts may not be as helpful as you think, but it does help.

Edited October 9, 2016 by regex

[Wjolcz]

*sigh*

I can't believe decline penalty is still a thing.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Although the perfectionist in me finds the decline penalty irritating, I'm just gonna throw this out there:

As a game play balancing tactic it's actually not so bad, if the player is declining lot's of contracts they are obviously having a hard time finding something they can/want to do.

As their reputation lowers, the contracts offered will become easier and easier, until they find something they feel comfortable with, accept it, complete it, and begin to move back up the system's ladder.

[Laie]

6 hours ago, Zpike said:

Does reputation actually effect anything?

It determines how many two- and three-star contracts will be open (on offer or active)  at any given time. It used to be that the contracts to explore a planet were three-star, so with bad reputation you'd never be offered to (e.g.) explore Duna. If you wanted contracts to explore both Duna and Ike, you needed a good enough reputation so that you can have two exploration contracts. Plus some luck so that the desired contract will actually be offered, rather than a large group of tourists (which also is a three-star contract).

As has been said, your first visit to a new body will always pay some reward, but from what I've seen of 1.2 so far, it's a pittance compared to what a proper contract will pay.

36 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

if the player is declining lot's of contracts they are obviously having a hard time finding something they can/want to do.

Interesting way to look at it.

[magnemoe]

it depend a bit on the setting too, if you are about to launch toward Duna you take all stupid Duna/ Ike related stuff 
400K for adding an small hardpoint to lander is easy. After the window is closed you ignore. 
Stupid turist paying 20K for an Minmus flyby, free if you have free seats. 
Just don't mess up and send them to Duna like I did