Contract Pack: Astronaut Training -- Train Kerbals with Science (v0.2.0) [Oct 2]

[GreenWolf]

Inspired by this thread, I spent the afternoon hammering away at Contract Configurator to create an initial release of a basic contract pack that allows you to use science to train kerbals. Features of this release:

• Kerbals are trained at a rate of 1 XP for every 5 science and 1000 funds
• Training requires a higher level kerbal of the same profession to act as an instructor
• Training must take place on a station or base in the Kerbin system
• The training station must be equipped with a Science Lab
• Training occurs faster in orbit of Kerbin, even faster in orbit of the Mun or Minmus, and faster while landed on the Mun or Minmus
• Training requires a level 3 astronaut complex and a level 2 research and development facility
• There are two training options at the moment: Individual Basic Training, and Intensive Training
  • Individual Basic Training allows you to train a single kerbal of any profession to advance one level
  • Intensive Training allows you to train a single kerbal of any profession from their current level to level 5. This costs additional science and funds, but takes somewhat less time.
• If you don't have any high level kerbals for a specific profession, and if you meet a certain prestige requirement, you'll be offered the option of immediately hiring a level 5 instructor for that profession, at a high science and funds cost.

Future releases will include:

• Group Basic Training, to allow you to train multiple kerbals at once (although no group intensive training, for balance reasons)
• Training time bonuses for having profession specific parts on your training station
• A much better looking agency flag (hopefully)
• Configurable rates for science and funds costs

Do note that because of the way Contract Configurator works, the science cost is only applied after you complete the training, not before. I'm sure some unscrupulous individual could find a way to exploit this, but that's not really my concern.

 

Edit: Oh, and while it's hopefully obvious, yes, this does require Contract Configurator. I'm running the latest version (1.23.2), so it will definitely work on that. Your delta-v may vary on older versions.

Edit 2: Oh, also, please don't submit this to CKAN at the moment. I adore CKAN, I use it extensively myself, but this is still in a very early stage where updating between releases will probably break things a bit, and I don't feel comfortable putting it onto CKAN until it's feature complete. Once it is, I'll do the netKAN PR myself.

 

And here's the download link.

And the Github repo.

License

This mod is released under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. The full text of the license can be found in the Github repo.

Edited October 2, 2017 by GreenWolf

[DrLicor]

Good job on the release, will test it soon.

[GreenWolf]

Version 0.2.0 (Leonov) has been released. Changes in this version:

•  Increased science cost of hiring instructors to 330
• Added a cap to the funds cost of hiring instructors
• Added group basic training contracts
• Reorganized the contract groups for basic training contracts
• Fixed issue where the MoonStation parameters were checking for a Base vessel type
• Fixed issue where the MoonStation and MoonBase durations were reversed from what they should be
• Culled trailing full stops from the ends of contract requirement descriptions

Link to latest release on Github.

The next release that I'm targeting will be 0.2.1, which should include compatibility for RSS, GPP, and other planet packs.

Current known issues in 0.2.0:

• Science cost is still only applied on contract completion instead of acceptance. (Can't fix on my end, would require @nightingale to add an advanceScience hook into CC.)
• Kerbal names in group contracts are enclosed in square brackets and aren't space separated. Should be fixed in 0.2.1
• Group training contracts award 4 XP for training from level 0 to level 1, instead of the 2 that they're supposed to. Unsure what's causing this, might be a weird stock interaction (possibly adding 2 XP on top of the 2 XP for orbiting Kerbin? but it also happens when I use a planet-side base to train them). The correct amount of XP is awarded for all other level advances

If you find any other bugs or general weirdness, let me know and I'll see what I can do about it.