Station/base contracts changes in 1.2

[radonek]

I noticed strange change in 1.2. Almost all contracts involving surface base or space station include huge amounts of, well, something. Right now I have available contract for adding 1000 xenon to existing space station (are they going to fly it into sun or what?), new outpost with 7500 electricity and 6000 LF and another with 5000 ore and 1500 monoprop (o.m.g.)… I kinda liked these before for added challenge, but that was because they were rare opportunity, not the only game in town.  Is this some artifact of contract weighing or are new players really supposed to jump from orbital rescue ships and small landers straight onto humongous ~40t beasts that cannot even be (reasonably) lifted with available tech?
 

[Streetwind]

Contracts available to you depend on three things:

1.) Your game progress, meaning how far have you been out there, which SOIs have you entered or left, the works.
2.) Your tech progress, meaning which parts do you have available to build things with.
3.) Your reputation, meaning how much faith do the contracting companies have in your ability to pull off stuff.

If you did a lot of contacts that yielded primarily reputation, you will be assigned more difficult missions than average. If you sent a science probe into solar orbit much earlier than usual, the game now considers you more advanced than you consider yourself to be. If you raced to certain tech nodes at the expense of others, you may now qualify for special tasks that are gated by parts in those nodes. All of this is Working As Intended(tm).

If you have nothing but station contracts in your list, reject a couple of them. Not only will that create a weighting factor against them, but it will also lower your reputation, so you get less difficult contracts. (At least theoretically. In practical application the default penalty for rejecting contracts is so low that you can toss out fifty of them without seeing a noticable change in behavior.)

Edited November 7, 2016 by Streetwind

[Sharpy]

2 hours ago, Streetwind said:

If you did a lot of contacts that yielded primarily reputation, you will be assigned more difficult missions than average. If you sent a science probe into solar orbit much earlier than usual, the game now considers you more advanced than you consider yourself to be. If you raced to certain tech nodes at the expense of others, you may now qualify for special tasks that are gated by parts in those nodes. All of this is Working As Intended(tm).

"sent a probe"...

Got a world first record in my Caveman game after decoupling a nose cone in LKO.Seriously, didn't expect that.

[tater]

Same ole cruddy contract system. It takes the "bigger boss" route to "challenge," instead of being intelligent. Do whatever, but with more stuff.

Make a station with X thousand liquid fuel... even though I have no need for just LF (nukes not yet unlocked, and I don't make aircraft).

[Curveball Anders]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Same ole cruddy contract system. It takes the "bigger boss" route to "challenge," instead of being intelligent. Do whatever, but with more stuff.

Make a station with X thousand liquid fuel... even though I have no need for just LF (nukes not yet unlocked, and I don't make aircraft).

Well just as in RL, never accept a contract unless you know how to profit from it

[tater]

7 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

Well just as in RL, never accept a contract unless you know how to profit from it

Except that many of the "contracts" in KSP would actually be programs designed by your own agency, not random contracts from third parties.

Honestly, anything you build as a "contract" should cease to belong to the player the second the contract is satisfied. Then it doesn't matter why they want 2000 LF on a simple station, you drop it off, and never control it again.

[Curveball Anders]

Just now, tater said:

Except that many of the "contracts" in KSP would actually be programs designed by your own agency, not random contracts from third parties.

Honestly, anything you build as a "contract" should cease to belong to the player the second the contract is satisfied. Then it doesn't matter why they want 2000 LF on a simple station, you drop it off, and never control it again.

Well I don't agree.

The contracts offered are based on what we (or I as technically the director) could do.

My selections (as well of success, or lack there of) will adjust what contracts I'm offered.

When I ignore stupid or boring contracts, while taking funny or worthwhile ones, the range of contracts change.

Hitting 'reject' on a particularly stupid/boring contract I'll take a wee bit of hit on rep, but at the same time I'll get other and better/funnier contracts.

It's a decent implementation of game design, and one that I don't have any issues with from an RP (as in my own story that I want to play) in-game view.

[tater]

The contracts are random side quests.

[radonek]

9 hours ago, Streetwind said:

If you did a lot of contacts that yielded primarily reputation, you will be assigned more difficult missions than average.

Yup, I did quite a few of space tourism contracts early on. It kinda makes sense, I do not have trouble with large payloads. I just thought this is something to do with fact that I play KSP for a long time, not that I threw dozen tourists at suborbital flight, but hey, what do I know…

For me, takeaway is that there is now such thing as having too much reputation.
 

[purpleivan]

I was a bit surprised when my first station contract in 1.2 was for one orbiting minmus, accomodating 20 kerbals, with 6000 units of LF and 7500 of electrical charge.

At that point I did however already have a small science station in Minmus orbit and made one landing there, but the contract details were still a bit of a shock.

Only now (a few days later) am I going to put this station up as I didn't fancy having a jumbo box of 400 unit batteries cluttering up the station, so waited until I'd upgraded electrics to include the 1000unit one.

Edited November 8, 2016 by purpleivan

[Wjolcz]

On 07/11/2016 at 6:12 PM, Curveball Anders said:

It's a decent implementation of game design, and one that I don't have any issues with from an RP (as in my own story that I want to play) in-game view.

"Decent" is a very strong word here. Contracts are nowhere near that. They are really poorly thought-out at best. There's no depth to them. Only randomness.

Edited November 8, 2016 by Veeltch

[Shadowmage]

On Monday, November 07, 2016 at 10:01 AM, tater said:

Except that many of the "contracts" in KSP would actually be programs designed by your own agency, not random contracts from third parties.

Honestly, anything you build as a "contract" should cease to belong to the player the second the contract is satisfied. Then it doesn't matter why they want 2000 LF on a simple station, you drop it off, and never control it again.

Yep;  I go so far as to delete contract-objective stations/satellites/bases after I've fulfilled the contract.  They are usually not usable for my own purposes, having been designed around silly goals such as the 'must hold XXX LiquidFuel', or 'must hold 20 kerbals'; neither of which I would ever need on my own stations.

So build it, launch it, land it, and then delete it.

Might explain why I never get the 'adjustment' or 'expansion' contracts though.....

 

[Curveball Anders]

13 minutes ago, Veeltch said:

"Decent" is a very strong word here. Contracts are nowhere near that. They are really poorly thought-out at least. There's no depth to them. Only randomness.

Well then we disagree on that point.

[James Kerman]

I am liking the new contract system - particularly always having world first contacts available - I am using these to guide my space program.

As to station/base contracts - I tend to build these craft so that the resources on board can be undocked, and connected to an orbital station for later use.

[LordKael]

47 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

As to station/base contracts - I tend to build these craft so that the resources on board can be undocked, and connected to an orbital station for later use.

I too do this; I take the bare minimum for it to be considered a station and fulfill the contract, assemble it in a modular fashion, and then move the useful components to the stations I'm building. I look at these contracts as "Hey, we're gonna pay you to haul heavy stuff into orbit."

 

[Aegolius13]

Though these requirements can be weird, I kinda get the idea. With just 5 kerbals, a docking port and electricity, it's very easy to complete a basic "station" contract with pretty much any kind of spaceship.  

But I would rather they make me load up on regular fuel, not 4000 units of monopropellant or whatnot.  

Edited November 10, 2016 by Aegolius13

[Joonatan1998]

It seems like the game progress tracking might consider solar orbit probes to be much more lategame than they are. 

[The Aziz]

..and I was planning to reach 100 rep. Now I'm at 87, and I ignored contract about making solar orbit station (13 Kerbal capacity, three pilots on-board (why??) and 5000 ore) or typical testing one - but this time it was 3.75m heat shield, on Duna, between 6 and 20km, at speeds above 4600m/s.

[Wjolcz]

25 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

..and I was planning to reach 100 rep. Now I'm at 87, and I ignored contract about making solar orbit station (13 Kerbal capacity, three pilots on-board (why??) and 5000 ore) or typical testing one - but this time it was 3.75m heat shield, on Duna, between 6 and 20km, at speeds above 4600m/s.

That's actually pretty funny.

Eh, I'm just waiting for Strategia to get updated. Until then there's not much point even looking at these stock unfiltered contracts