Making History Expansion: "To the Mun via Minmus" Squad missions not completable without cheating???

[capran]

So I was playing MHE yesterday, and I just couldn't complete the Squad mission "To the Mun via Minmus" as I kept running out of electric charge. The supplied spacecraft have no solar panels! And you can't go into the editor to add them. So I had to use the cheat panel to give myself unlimited electricity. Didn't these missions get play-tested?? You simply can't complete them without a power source (or oodles of batteries, more than they give you) as it takes about 6 game hours to get to the Mun and game days to get to Minmus.

[bewing]

Hibernation.

[Streetwind]

Perhaps the provided craft could be preconfigured to auto-hibernate when time warping...

(Unless of course the mission actually advises you to manually enable hibernation.)

[bewing]

It gives you a hint. And these are supposed to be challenges that make you think!

 

[Jarin]

Hibernation works, but the crash condition doesn't. Mission just hangs after impact. That's 3 for 3 missions not completing now...

Edited March 15, 2018 by Jarin

[Dunbaratu]

The game fails to tell the player why the mission failed.  This needs fixing immediately as it feels random and broken to any player unwilling to spend time debugging the situation.  It makes the DLC look really bad and gives a poor impression.

From trial and error I suspect there's a minimum score to succeed that the game never mentioned and not hitting it fails the mission.  So when you crash into the moon the mission is over and it checks the score and if it's too low it gives the fail message with no explanation.  I think you need at least a bronze, however many points that is (which it also doesn't tell you).

There are also secret objectives it fails to mention and failing them can lower your score.  Check the report and see the score calculation to look for anything that gave you multiplier less than 1.0.  those are hurting your score and possibly preventing the mission from working.  Also keep checking the map view for waypoints it never told you about and check the detail info dialog panel for objectives it didn't tell you about.  I had a mission fail because it needed to land near a latitude/longitude that it never talked about and never made a waypoint for.  I just saw the numbers in the info panel.  I then had to look up where that was to find it was near the KSC.

[dvader]

@Steven Mading I completely agree. I've been trying to  play through the missions but it really requires a lot of debugging to understand what I'm supposed to do or not. They should have used a lot more beta testers and fixed things before release. I don't mind beta testing as long as I know that is what I'm doing. I'll even provide reproducible save files and screenshots if required. Now, it's just frustrating.

@Jarin Note that the crash condition is for the Stayputnik with the Goo canister. If you (like me) staged away the Goo canister around Kerbin (like they said you should), then it doesn't count since you are crashing the wrong craft.

@capran Here are a couple of hints. Also note that you must not stage away the stayputnik around Kerbin. Mostly because you will fail later but also because it has a nice battery.

1) Note that there are two command modules. The Stayputnik in front and a OKTO on the main craft. Both must be set to hibernate (or hibernate in warp at least).

2) You must go for a direct hit on Minmus (use maneuver nodes). If you miss Minmus and try to correct it by waiting for the next intersect, you will run out of E.

3) Turn off the reaction wheel in the OKTO. Only use RCS for steering. (Or limit use of SAS)

4) The engine generates electricity so you can recharge by burning. In my first attempt, I had to burn at max to get the Grav measurement back home. Still failed though since I had already staged away the Stayputnik with the Goo...

 

[Jarin]

17 minutes ago, dvader said:

@Jarin Note that the crash condition is for the Stayputnik with the Goo canister. If you (like me) staged away the Goo canister around Kerbin (like they said you should), then it doesn't count since you are crashing the wrong craft.

Wow, that's even worse. I was thinking it was a bug, but it's legitimately not possible if you follow the instructions.

[Draradech]

 

50 minutes ago, Jarin said:

Wow, that's even worse. I was thinking it was a bug, but it's legitimately not possible if you follow the instructions.

Yes. "Release the goo by staging" apparently means "stage to remove the fairing and run the goo experiment". I can confirm it is possible to complete this mission, but the instructions are really bad.

The mission panel doesn't tell you what to do next either, because they have a weird break in the mission logic. The main logic ends in the 20d radiation fail condition after launching the second vessel, and the rest of the mission logic is triggered by a catch-all node activated by leaving kerbins SOI (into the muns', via distance check weirdly...).

Edited March 15, 2018 by Draradech

[capran]

On 3/14/2018 at 12:39 PM, bewing said:

Hibernation.

D'oh. Totally forgot about that, I never use it normally. Thanks. But, yeah, the mission text should have mentioned it, some kind of probe tutorial maybe?

9 hours ago, Draradech said:

 

Yes. "Release the goo by staging" apparently means "stage to remove the fairing and run the goo experiment". I can confirm it is possible to complete this mission, but the instructions are really bad.

The mission panel doesn't tell you what to do next either, because they have a weird break in the mission logic. The main logic ends in the 20d radiation fail condition after launching the second vessel, and the rest of the mission logic is triggered by a catch-all node activated by leaving kerbins SOI (into the muns', via distance check weirdly...).

Yeah, that wording is terrible.

Also, on that ship, they put the gravimeter on the wrong stage, if you stage before you get to it, you'll lose it.

[zanie420]

In an effort and actually understand the mission requirements and parameters, I edited the mission file in the builder to further examine the nodes. Writing it all out has helped, but I still can't seem to actually successfully complete the mission. I have 'completed' it several times, but can't seem to trigger the end node and get the scoring screen. Here's what I collected, please offer corrections if needed:

 

On Kerbin with Muna 1

1. Orbit Kerbin between 95 -100km
2. Release Mystery Goo canister     500 points

Minmus with Muna 1

1. Get to Minmus orbit between 9 - 12km  within 10 days    500 points and x2 score multiplier  (x1.5 if more than 10 days)
2. Transmit a gravity scan -  500 points
3. Crash Muna 1 into Minmus to advance the mission

Kerbin to Mun with Muna 2

1. Launch from Woomerang site on Kerbin to Mun, getting to within 250,000km to trigger next event
2. Orbit Mun at 30km and and 0 inclination  -  500 points
3. Release Mystery Goo within 1days 1hour 45min or launch -  500 points and x2 score multiplier  (x1.5 if more than 2days 5hours)
4. Crash Muna 2 on Mun within 20km of the target specified and at greater than 200m/s - 1500 points  (500 if less than 200m/s)

 

So the highest possible score should be:  (500 + 500 + 500 + 500 + 500 + 1500) x2 ) x2 ) = 12000  + 2000 completion bonus = 14000 points

• Gold = 11000 points
• Silver = 8000 points
• Bronze - 3750 points

 

Edited March 16, 2018 by zanie420
got the math right finally :D

[zanie420]

weird..... 

So I reset and tried again, getting to the point of transmitting the gravity scan, then quit before crashing Muna 1.  My score currently stands and 1750?!?

I KNOW the mission clock was at less than 10 days when I transmitted, but the mission selection shows the time at 33 days??? That doesn't make any sense..... 

So I reason, I got 500 for the goo, 500 for the gravity scan, and 750 (500 x1.5) for getting to Minmus beyond the 10 day requirement. So now I need to figure out how to get to Minmus quicker....

Edited March 16, 2018 by zanie420

[zanie420]

Finally at least got a Bronze! Not really sure how to improve my score however. Suggestions?

Edited March 16, 2018 by zanie420

[StrikeEagleCC]

Quote

On 3/16/2018 at 10:52 AM, zanie420 said:

So the highest possible score should be:  (500 + 500 + 500 + 500 + 500 + 1500) x2 ) x2 ) = 12000  + 2000 completion bonus = 14000 points

• Gold = 11000 points
• Silver = 8000 points
• Bronze - 3750 points

 

Unfortunately, this does not seem to be correct. Some testing has revealed that the score modifiers apply only to the score that has accumulated at the time the modifier was activated, rather than to the total score at the end of the mission. Furthermore, the timer for getting to minmus is actually referencing UT=0, rather than the intended UT=543600 that is set for the mission start. This means by the time you launch, 25 days have already passed.

There is also something goofy about the way the mun orbit is tested and rewarded. The 500 points for >80% accuracy is not activating for me, despite accomplishing an extremely accurate orbit upon a single circularization burn (<100m off from AP/PE, <0.01deg inc). Haven't figure this bit out yet.

You can fix the Minmus time goal by using the mission builder to replace the "Time Since Node" nodes docked under "Orbit Minmus 10k" with "Time of Mission" nodes instead.

The current max score appears to be ((500 x 1.5) + 500  + 500) x 2) + 1500 + 2000 = 7000. 

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by StrikeEagleCC

[dvader]

1 hour ago, StrikeEagleCC said:

There is also something goofy about the way the mun orbit is tested and rewarded.

Yes, I think orbit testing is broken. I had the same problem while trying to figure out Blue Mun scoring. I finally tested it by setting the orbit with Hyperedit. It accomplished the current objective but still failed to give me any bonus for neither Kerbin nor Mun. Wrote about it here:

EDIT: I can also confirm that multipliers only apply to the current score and not the final score.

Edited March 18, 2018 by dvader

[StrikeEagleCC]

27 minutes ago, dvader said:

Yes, I think orbit testing is broken. I had the same problem while trying to figure out Blue Mun scoring. I finally tested it by setting the orbit with Hyperedit. It accomplished the current objective but still failed to give me any bonus for neither Kerbin nor Mun. Wrote about it here:

Yeah, I just did something similar and came to the same conclusion. In this mission, the orbit is sort of tested twice, once with the main objective node, and again with the docked "Test Accuracy" node, both with a general 80% threshold. There is another test that could have been used: "Orbit Parameters", in the location category. I'll finish up a fixed version of the mission and post it here for those completionists among us.

[StrikeEagleCC]

I couldn't figure out a way to award different scores based on varying degrees of accuracy with the "Orbit Paramters" node the way I wanted too, but here's a "fixed" version of the mission. I tried to keep the spirit of the original, and made the following changes:

• Changed scoring structure so that all bonuses must be obtained to be awarded gold
• Fixed bonus for quick Minmus orbit by changing "Time Since Node" nodes to "Mission Time" nodes
• Changed mission briefing message to make it clearer how to release the goo (i.e., don't stage it away)
• Changed dialog messages to hint that there was value in achieving orbits quickly
• Changed node connections so that mun related objectives show up in the mission panel during play
• Eliminated non-functional bonus test for mun orbit accuracy
• increased primary mun orbit accuracy requirement from 80% to 90%
• Changed gold/silver/bronze levels to achievable values.

Actual game play is unchanged.

I haven't tested it fully, but if anyone bothers to play it and finds something wrong that you care to have fixed, let me know. For me, this has mainly been an exercise in learning the quirks of the mission builder.

Edited March 19, 2018 by StrikeEagleCC
fixed broken link