Contracts Catch-22 re One-Star "Explore" Contracts?

[Srpadget]

I appear to have gotten myself "trapped" into a situation where the game will not offer any "Explore" contract worth more than one star.  Looking for help on how to bust free of this.

My understanding (and observation) is that I will ALWAYS have exactly one "Explore" contract, either on offer or accepted.  Yes?

And the contracts system is pretty consistent about offering X number of 3-star contracts, Y number of 2-star contracts, and Z number of 1-star contracts (where X, Y, and Z depend on Reputation and Mission Control upgrade level).  So if I complete, for example, a 2-star contract (or let a 2-star offer expire unaccepted), the game will typically immediately offer a new 2-star contract.  There are rare exceptions, when I don't see a new contract offered at all when an existing contract is completed/expires, but that's fairly rare.

So, I have now completed all the Explore contracts for Mun and Minmus, and am now getting Duna - as expected.  However, the last couple Explore Mun/Minmus contracts were one-star offers (dock at Mun, bring back craft from Minmus surface), and now I'm staring at a one-star "Fly by Duna" contract.  Which I frankly don't want.  I WANT a big juicy 3-star multiple-objective contract, so I don't either spend a fortune setting up a Duna/Ike infrastructure during the upcoming transfer window and not get paid for it, or waste the transfer window sending a piddly little flyby probe just to see that one-star contract replaced by another one-star contract to fly by Ike, or orbit Duna, or some other minor task.

And, more importantly, I don't want to be fighting this trickle of one-star Explore contracts for the rest of time.  But I don't see how to escape the "trap".  As soon as I finish an Explore contract, or if I let the current offer expire, BANG another one pops up immediately...and the only "open slot" in the contract-offer "tree" is the one-star opportunity that just opened up when the previous Explore contract went away.  I don't see any obvious way for the logic of the contract system to EVER be able to offer a higher-value Explore contract.

IS there a way to regain the big juicy multiple objective "orbit, land, and get science" (or whatever combination the random-number generators happen to put together for three stars) Explore offers?  Or am I now cursed with "baby step" one-star Explore offers for all time? 

Sure, I can get a massive Duna/Ike infrastructure-building "kolonization fleet" paid for using nothing more than one "Get Ore from Ike and put it in orbit of Duna" and a "Build a space station around Duna with a long list of goofy illogical parts".  And there's always the World's First milestone payments in addition. But I'm greedy.  I want it all.  (And, really, this is mostly about the psychological/emotional impact.  I've gotten accustomed across years of updates to EXPECT big multi-objective Explore contracts, and I feel deprived if I'm not getting them....)

[bewing]

2 hours ago, Srpadget said:

My understanding (and observation) is that I will ALWAYS have exactly one "Explore" contract, either on offer or accepted.  Yes?

Without cheating, yes. Are you willing to cheat just a little to get your contract?

And what's your exact current status with your current explore contract? Accepted but not completed yet?

 

-- And BTW, the way to get them without cheating (ie. to avoid your trap) is to complete multiple contracts at the same time, including an explore contract. But that only really works for "return data from the surface of the Mun/Minmus" or "recover a ship from the Mun/Minmus" contracts -- generally in combination with 2 or 3 star tourist contracts or rescue contracts. Since you just completed a multi-star contract, your newly generated explore contract has a chance of being multi-star.

Edited December 3, 2016 by bewing

[Srpadget]

5 hours ago, bewing said:

Without cheating, yes. Are you willing to cheat just a little to get your contract?

And what's your exact current status with your current explore contract? Accepted but not completed yet?

 

-- And BTW, the way to get them without cheating (ie. to avoid your trap) is to complete multiple contracts at the same time, including an explore contract. But that only really works for "return data from the surface of the Mun/Minmus" or "recover a ship from the Mun/Minmus" contracts -- generally in combination with 2 or 3 star tourist contracts or rescue contracts. Since you just completed a multi-star contract, your newly generated explore contract has a chance of being multi-star.

I might be willing to muck with the parameters of the contract system a bit in order to obtain more variety in the type/difficulty of the "Explore" contracts, yes.  Depends on the nature of the "cheat".

Current Explore contract is on offer, but not accepted.  It'll expire in a few in-game days, but cannot be declined/rejected.  (It has the big red X button, but it's greyed out.  Or "pinked out", to be precise...)  I assume this means that there's no other Explore contract that the system is prepared to offer, and that when this one expires, I'll just get exactly the same offer again--unless something changes between now and then.

As it happens, I had ... 2? 3? (I forget) rescuees on the ship that fulfilled my most recent Explore contract (which was, as you note, "Return from surface of Minmus").  Unfortunately, they were all 1-star rescues so that didn't help.

It appears that this is a systemic issue.  Each time an Explore contract is completed, the next one may be simpler, but will not be harder, than the previous.  Over time, the single "Explore" contract on offer will trend down to 1-star...where they will remain forever.  (There's a few caveats and exceptions there, but that's going to be the general trend, yes?  And it seems to me that it would likely happen fairly early--a common player tactic early on would be single-craft land-and-return missions, so "dock 2 craft in orbit around <body>" is frequently going to be the last uncompleted "Explore" parameter, thus driving a one-star contract.  Yes?)  That's not exactly a "bug", per se.  But it seems to me that it's most likely an unintended and undesired (yet inescapable) consequence of the way the contracts system chooses new offerings. 

I've never posted a formal bug report before; would this be a suitable topic (and/or would that be the right forum for reporting)?

[bewing]

The nature of the cheat:

1) Note down the exact amount of funds you have. 2) Accept the one star contract. 3) Go into the Debug menu/Contracts/Current tab. 4). Click the "Complete" button on the 1 star explore contract. You now have zero total explore contracts for the moment. 5) Go into the main Debug/Contracts tab. 6) The eighth row is Explore contracts -- click the Exceptional button. You now have a 3 star explore contract on your offer list. 7) Go to the Debug/Console and type "/funds X" where X is the amount of funds you had in step 1.

Now you can go accept your new 3 star explore contract.

1 hour ago, Srpadget said:

I assume this means that there's no other Explore contract that the system is prepared to offer, and that when this one expires, I'll just get exactly the same offer again--unless something changes between now and then.

No, they generate randomly. But I think you are right that it'll be a new random 1 star contract again, if you let the current one expire.

1 hour ago, Srpadget said:

As it happens, I had ... 2? 3? (I forget) rescuees on the ship that fulfilled my most recent Explore contract (which was, as you note, "Return from surface of Minmus").  Unfortunately, they were all 1-star rescues so that didn't help.

Too bad. But 3 star tourist contracts come around a lot, so that will always work better.

1 hour ago, Srpadget said:

It appears that this is a systemic issue.  Each time an Explore contract is completed, the next one may be simpler, but will not be harder, than the previous.

Agreed it is a systemic trap, unless you use the tourist trick. I have a 2 star explore contract right now, by completing a 2 star tourist mission and a Minmus landing explore contract together. So it is doable, but it requires two trips to the same CB, so it's only practical to do at the beginning of the game (in Kerbin SOI).

1 hour ago, Srpadget said:

I've never posted a formal bug report before; would this be a suitable topic (and/or would that be the right forum for reporting)?

There is a type of report called a "Feedback" report. It's for if the game is technically functioning correctly, but the game itself has a design flaw. That is exactly what you are describing here. So yes, filing a feedback report over this seems perfectly appropriate. Or I could do it for you.

 

Edited December 4, 2016 by bewing

[Srpadget]

Could you? That'd be lovely!  Thanks!

[bewing]

Done.

And actually, that 1 star contract probably also gave you a tiny bit of science and reputation, and if you care you can also use the Console to set those values back to where they should be, too.

Edited December 4, 2016 by bewing

[Magzimum]

You can also just warp forward. Contracts are typically on offer anywhere between 1-6 days, so if you warp ahead 3 days a large portion of the contracts will have expired and have been replaced by new ones. 

When you are really close to a launch window, of course warping ahead several days is perhaps a problem, but if you save the game before warping ahead then you can always reload. (The 2nd time it will offer different contracts, so you can reload until you're happy). Personally, I don't reload too often as that feels a little cheaty to me. 

[Srpadget]

14 hours ago, Magzimum said:

You can also just warp forward. Contracts are typically on offer anywhere between 1-6 days, so if you warp ahead 3 days a large portion of the contracts will have expired and have been replaced by new ones.

True.  I routinely do that with contracts I don't want to bother with.  Just ignore it, and it'll go away to be replaced with something else.

The problem is the inexorable "always exactly one" nature of Explore contracts in particular.  Sure, I could wait a few days for the crappy little one-star "Fly by Duna" contract to go away.  And then it would be replaced instantly with another Explore contract--which is fine, that's actually what I want, another Explore contract.  EXCEPT... the way the contract-offer algorithms work, a one-star contract is going to be replaced with another one-star contract (modulo the occasional 'bump' resulting from increased Rep opening up more high-value "slots").  So when that "Fly by Duna" contract goes away, the contract-generation logic requires that the next contract be A) an Explore contract, AND B) worth one star.  And if I ignore THAT contract, then by the same logic, the NEXT one will also be an Explore contract that's worth one star. Lather, rinse, repeat FOREVER.

And my beef was with the endless succession of Explore contracts *worth one star*, with never a more-rewarding two- or three- star Explore contract.

Oddly, bewing's procedure (see above) gave me a TWO-star "Explore Duna" contract plus an extraneous one-star "Science from the surface of the Mun" contract.  But hey, that's an improvement.  I'll take the free cash from the Mun Science offer, then accept the two-star contract and see what happens after I get to Duna....