"Contracts Plus" Inquiry - Should this add-on be made?

[BeauZoe]

So I've been chugging along in career mode for a while and have noticed that the contracts offered by mission control are fairly cookie cutter and can even become repetitive. I believe there is a lot of space for improvement to the vanilla options, and have thought of overhauling some of the worst offenders and creating several new types of contracts in the hope of refreshing the game. As my first post on the KSP Forums, I'd like to field my ideas to the community for peer review and see if this is something I should pursue or possibly start campaigning for others to pursue.

Without much further ado, these are my current plans for the proposed add-on (copied and expounded on from the napkin it was originally written on)

CONTRACTS PLUS

• Increase the # of contracts a player can choose from in Mission Control.

I'm thinking by 1-3, just to add more options.

• Routine Parts Maintenance.

In real life, the stuff we put in space needs maintenance if we expect it to stay there for extended lengths of time. Random part failure being a little extreme for me, I thought of just making the upkeep contractual. The various corporations will pay you to go and perform maintenance, and refusing the contract won't cause things to break because it's assumed they would simply give the contract to someone else. Completing the contract would be done in a similar way to the parts testing missions done in the early game, with an additional button popping up in the parts UI letting you "perform maintenance" provided you're currently on an EVA. There is also room for variety and varying levels of difficulty. The contract could merely ask a conveniently on-site Kerbal to do an EVA. You might need to rendezvous with an unmanned probe to do the EVA, and that probe could be in space or landed. It could even lead to a hunt around the craft to figure out which part needs the maintenance in true Kerbal fashion (the programming precedent is set by some EVA crew report missions asking you to find the source of "observational inconsistencies"). Finally, and more experimentally, I was thinking of adding a "done by a professional" requirement to the hardest missions, forcing you to use a specific kerbal profession (pilot, scientist, or engineer) to do the parts maintenance and fully complete the contract (maybe even a specifically leveled kerbal!).

• Crew Rotation.

Kerbals have families too! These contracts would essentially ask you to bring up a replacement kerbal to take over for more homesick kerbals, and then bring that poor astronaut back to Kerbin safely. It may also include contracts to fully staff those spacecraft with 21 seats but only 1 kerbal. #SaveMe #ForeverAlone

• Tourism/VIP missions.

After completing several of these back to back in order to gain #AllTheFunds, I realized that they could use some more variety in terms of destinations. All the tourists these days want to see are the natural features of the Kerbol system, when there are probably a bunch of cool looking stations and bases which we want to show off. Overhauling the tourism contracts to include tours of the stuff we've built, possibly requiring extended stays (precedent possibly set in the Asteroid Day developer mods included mission) could be really cool. Also the contract text could use a little more variety.

• Refueling missions.

These could pop up for any craft with a less than half full fuel tank and a docking port.

• Flag missions.

The current flag missions, while great money makers, are bland. Plant flag on named planet. That simplicity is nice, but doesn't need to be the only choice. We could have contracts telling us to plant flags in certain places on a planet! see what I did there? the places could be determined by biome, or the more randomly specific "Plant flag on the surface near Gamma Site". Corporations could also have you place multiple flags at sites alpha-gamma for them in order to mark out land use borders, before telling you to get off their lawn (Mission Control assures you that their claims are rediculous)

• EVA missions.

So, EVA missions are cool and fun to do. But in space, I rarely if ever have to do them. I'm discounting the ones where I duck out of the hatch, take a quick report, and head back inside. While those have their uses, we could also use a little gentle prodding to let go of our handrails and really space walk. Conceptually, I'd like to lift the mechanical systems used for missions requiring multiple surface samples, and apply them to the 2.5km physics bubble around a spacecraft, to result in "sectors" spawning around the spacecraft and even moving with it. Contracts would be of 2 varieties that I've thought of. Someone dropped their multimillion dollar Hydrospanner out the airlock and it's floated out to beta sector, go search for it (EVA report) or, Mission Control wants you to perform a photo op with (insert spacecraft here), head out to sectors alpha-gamma and take pictures of the old girl (Also EVA report). That last one though... I get a small chill thinking about doing it. BUT THAT'S ALL THE MORE REASON!

• Rescue missions.

Rescue missions are fairly tame, but come with some sweet rewards (New astronauts, hurray!) The ones we currently have are fine, but we can do better and with more variety. I'd like to add harder rescue missions with eccentric and highly elliptical orbits, with multiple kerbals in need of rescue. I'd also like to address the glaring hole in rescue missions... There's never anyone to rescue on Kerbin itself. Wait a minute, I hear your protests. But why would they need rescue and, wouldn't the recover vehicle system break the mission? Not if we're smart. A rescue mission on Kerbin doesn't have to be called a "rescue mission" instead we can call it "Extract Corporate Defector" or something similar, and stipulate in the contract that once you pick up the Kerbal in question, you must land again on the KSP runway to complete the mission. Completing the contract could remove some reputation, but what else are we doing with reputation in career mode? Done and Done.

• Debris Recovery/Destruction.

Bring the space junk back intact for profit! But the game always makes space junk for me when I'm making plenty of the floating space debris myself. I'd like the system to also include as candidates for recovery the stuff I leave behind. I'd also love to see a contract to de-orbit an aging space station. Purely for academic reasons.

• Discovery missions.

I am lame. I admit it. I'd love it if a contract sent me to the Munar canyon, or to check out the ancient Kerbin ruins in that desert, or to find the Magic Boulder. Complete with hand holding and "easter eggs this way" arrows. I don't want to miss seeing that stuff. So I'd make a set of contracts which did that without being too meta about it, but add an option to toggle them off in the settings, cause I can totally understand it if that ruins the fun of finding them for others.

• Orbital Adjustment Missions.

Sometimes, close is not good enough. The orbit must be perfectly circular and directly over the equator. I pledge to build in mechanics which can detect when you are too lazy to properly circularize, and then generate a contract to pay you to FIX IT! Why? I dunno, just because if I know I can occasionally get triggered by it, Some Kerbal somewhere must also get triggered by it, and I want to read that mission briefing. Come on, it's a totally kerbal mindset!

• Underwater Missions.

It exists therefore, there must be missions to it. I'll make several contracts involving the oceans of Laythe or Eve, and include Kerbin ostensibly as practice for the first two. Did you know Kerbals get sea sick?

 

That's everything I've got so far. I'd like input on anything and everything. Also, I'd like advice on how I can take my first dip into building this mod for KSP, since these are all just ideas on paper right now, and I've never touched the UNITY engine or done major programming before. Thanks for your time and I'll leave you with an image of my Minmus base currently under construction in Kerbin orbit. Toodles!

Edited January 29, 2017 by BeauZoe
I noticed a Spelling Error. Ehehe

[Li0n]

Hi @BeauZoe welcome to the forum

Do you know about this mod ?

With it you can load (or create) new contract. Check the second post for a list of available contract pack. There is a wiki if you want to create contracts yourself on github.

[BeauZoe]

Thanks Li0n, I hadn't seen it yet. Looks like a useful tool, and I see that some of my ideas don't yet have a similar contracts pack, so I can probably still make something unique to add to the listing.

[eddiew]

I agree that we need more contract variety, and heartily encourage you to make some   Contract Configurator is totally your friend in this endeavour, since you'll be able to slot yours right in alongside other people's contributions.

WRT enhancing tourist missions, can I make two suggestions?
- make them pay something sensible! Stock tourists barely pay for petrol...
- have them going to the same place   It's darn annoying when Freido wants to go to Mun and Hildren wants to orbit Duna and Telemo feels like landing on Ike. If they're arriving as a group, it should be with the same destination in mind.

Discovery missions to the point of "check out this specific biome for a healthy kick of science" sound nice, but be aware that there's already a contract pack to survey the anomalies. There are a few other things that come by default with CC as well, such as orbital adjustments, so it's worth making sure you're not reinventing the wheel  

[BeauZoe]

@ eddiew (< I figured it out! I did it!)

Thanks for your input eddie!

17 hours ago, eddiew said:

WRT enhancing tourist missions, can I make two suggestions?
- make them pay something sensible! Stock tourists barely pay for petrol...
- have them going to the same place   It's darn annoying when Freido wants to go to Mun and Hildren wants to orbit Duna and Telemo feels like landing on Ike. If they're arriving as a group, it should be with the same destination in mind.

I agree, one of the things I'd change with tourism is to make it so they don't all want to go different places. Though, with that in mind I may not change how much they pay because the cost of transporting them would suddenly go down.

17 hours ago, eddiew said:

Discovery missions to the point of "check out this specific biome for a healthy kick of science" sound nice, but be aware that there's already a contract pack to survey the anomalies. There are a few other things that come by default with CC as well, such as orbital adjustments, so it's worth making sure you're not reinventing the wheel

I noticed how there already was that contract pack, yes. I'm actually fine with leaving those to others, what I really want to be made the author of is the Routine Parts Maintenance contracts. From my perusal of the list of packs I don't think anyone has gone down that road yet and I feel pretty good for thinking of it first.

[dboi88]

Take a look at the bases and stations pack. It adds repair and maintenance contracts.