Weird Contract Behavior: New Requirements Keep Popping Up

[IamJimmy]

TL;DR:

I signed a contract which requires me to have Jeb write a EVA report at a specific point on the surface of Mun. When I accepted the contract, there was only one requirement (EVA report at S2M9C9 alpha), but as soon as I got the first requirement done, second requirement appeared (EVA report at S2M9C9 beta). Third requirement appeared after I completed the second one, etc.. I'm really confused and frustrated. I'm not sure if this is a expected behavior or a bug.

Long version:

So the contract basically says there's some kind of anomaly near my Mun lander, and wants someone to go there and do a series of EVA report(s) on the surface (Please note I set up my game to show Chinese, so the wording may not match English version of the contract shown in the game exactly. For the same reason I decided not to post a screenshot of the contract. If you think it is necessary to take a look at the contract please let me know and I'll try to download the English localization files). Normally all contract related locations are shown in the tracking center (and map view) even before you agree to sign the contract. So I took a look at the contract and the map, found out there was only one required location (only one shown in the contract and on the map) near to my landing vehicle, decided it was easy money and accepted the offer.

I had Jeb use EVA jet pack to fly to "S2M9C9 alpha" and made a report, but was then prompted to get to "S2M9C9 beta". I was pretty sure "S2M9C9 beta" wasn't in the contract in the first place, but then decided to go there. Poor Jeb ran out of jet pack fuel mid way, and I had to use the classical coins on W key trick to get Jeb back to the vehicle. Later I made a rover with RCS thrusters so that Jeb could fly (or drive) there. When I get to  "S2M9C9 beta" and made a report, I was then prompt to go to "S2M9C9 gamma" (again, just popped out of thin air, but a lot further this time). Poor Jeb depleted his rover's RSC propellant and had to take a two-hour ride to get to that point. Again he was greeted by a forth requirement to get to another point. It's now a half-day (kerbal 6-hour day, of course) drive to get back to Mun lander to refuel RCS tank. At this point I was pretty frustrated. I mean, although after completing each requirement I get a small payment, I feel kinda being scammed. I was told the mission was to make one report, not four (and potentially more)! 

So here are my questions:

1. Are some of the contracts designed to do this or is this a bug? (The wording of "do a series of EVA report(s)" may be a hint. Again this is a rough translation, and Chinese does not tell if "report" is plural)

2. If so, how do I know how many more places Jeb has to go and when I can meet all requirements? (I just want to know what counts as mission accomplished if every time I thought I got it all done a new requirement pops up)

3. If I fail to do so, will I get penalized?

Thanks guys!

[mystifeid]

1. I'm pretty sure it's by design.

2. Sometimes there might be three locations. Sometimes there might be as many as six.

3. Yes.

The contract usually includes something like "Vessel x has detected some temperature fluctuations to the north. Head in that direction and follow up with a series of reports."

(I think) It's impossible to tell when it will be finished until it's finished.

Edited June 4, 2018 by mystifeid

[IamJimmy]

2 minutes ago, mystifeid said:

1. I'm pretty sure it's by design.

2. Sometimes there might be three locations. Sometimes there might be as many as six.

3. Yes.

The contract usually includes something like "Vessel x has detected some temperature fluctuations to the north. Head in that direction and follow up with a series of reports."

(I think) It's impossible to tell when it will be finished until it's finished.

Well, I guess Jeb will have to do more exercises. Never gonna choose this kind of contract next time. Too time consuming and far less fun than rescues.

[Kesa]

The key clues are the word "anomalies" and the fact that you have only one marker. I don't remember the contract wording, and it is possibly a bit poor, but the idea is that a anomaly has been detected, and they want you to check. They only know the approximate location of the anomaly and know they'll ask you to check several places, but can't tell how many and where until they got more informations, which requires you to go to the first waypoint (at which point they got enough information only to tell you to check the second, and so on).

A rover or a rover-hopper should be able to deal with however many waypoints they find suitable to force you going through.

You get a very small penality if you decline or cancel the contract, and a significant one if you let the deadline pass (which is usually 5 years later). There are nobody nothing to rescue or tour somewhere, so it's impossible to fail unless you want so (since you should cancel the contract before the deadline rather than letting it fail).

[bewing]

Yes -- I call this a "treasure hunt" contract. They can happen on the ground, or they can also happen in the sky. The destination locations always start close to where you are currently, and then lead you rapidly away. The distance between each waypoint tends to grow. These waypoints also tend to lead you over some of the trickiest terrain on the CB if you go directly from one to the next. You can kind of guess the number of waypoints based on the number of stars on the contract.

So, in general, this is a very dangerous type of contract to accept.

 

[mystifeid]

2 hours ago, IamJimmy said:

Never gonna choose this kind of contract next time.

I like them. The mun is quite a fun place for rovers so I have quite a few sitting around waiting there for just such a contract.

[IamJimmy]

9 hours ago, mystifeid said:

I like them. The mun is quite a fun place for rovers so I have quite a few sitting around waiting there for just such a contract.

The low gravity and rough terrain makes it really hard to drive around the Mun in my opinion. On the other hand the not so low gravity makes RCS powered flying vehicles less efficient. The safe top speed I'm able to achieve at this moment is around 6 m/s (I only unlocked the smallest wheels yet). Any faster than that bumpy terrain can send poor Jeb flying and then crashing into the ground. Another problem is that my rover is a little under powered when climbing, topping at 1.2 m/s. The most frustrating thing is that when driving on Mun I have to keep an eye on the rover so that I can break when needed. It's virtually impossible to AFK.

[bewing]

2 hours ago, IamJimmy said:

The low gravity and rough terrain makes it really hard to drive around the Mun in my opinion. On the other hand the not so low gravity makes RCS powered flying vehicles less efficient. The safe top speed I'm able to achieve at this moment is around 6 m/s (I only unlocked the smallest wheels yet). Any faster than that bumpy terrain can send poor Jeb flying and then crashing into the ground. Another problem is that my rover is a little under powered when climbing, topping at 1.2 m/s. The most frustrating thing is that when driving on Mun I have to keep an eye on the rover so that I can break when needed. It's virtually impossible to AFK.

Yeah, little rovers on the Mun are nasty that way. Bigger ones are harder to transport, but with a little rocket-assist thrust, they can be very nice to drive.

 

 

[mystifeid]

4 hours ago, bewing said:

I only unlocked the smallest wheels yet

Do you mean M1-F's ? You should be able to make something that goes faster than 6m/s with those. eg

Remember to:

- check controlling probe core orientation by making sure that the navball is blue in the top half and brown in the bottom half (as above)

- add a reaction wheel and drive with SAS on.

- drive with soft controls on - toggle with caps-lock so that the pitch/roll/yaw markers are blue (as above)

- make something with a very large wheel base and a very low center of gravity - the example above can turn hard at its top speed of 22m/s at KSC without flipping.

- always try to re-establish contact with the surface with all wheels at once and in the direction you are moving.

- autostrut extensions to wheels or wheel axles. Each of the plates leading out to the wheels in the example above is individually autostrutted to the grandparent part.

- have a reasonable antenna and make sure you always have full probe or crew control.

- consider adding rcs- when you find yourself 300m up above the surface, quickly turning rcs on and holding the "k" and "n" keys will usually mean the difference between destruction and driving on.

- consider assigning (unused) secondary forward/back/turn keys for wheels that affect only staging because wsad also make SAS rotate the rover.

- if you want to drive long distances afk you can always install mechjeb, use the rover autopilot module and set a speed at which it will be unlikely to damage anything.

That's how I test my rovers. I build one, take it to the Mun and let mechjeb drive it in a straight line at 40m/s until something breaks. Go back to the VAB, try and fix it so that doesn't happen again then rinse and repeat.  After 10-12 iterations the rover should be a lot better than when you started.

However, when driving fast there is always a good chance you'll be leaving the surface and the killer is when you come down hard on an uphill slope. No matter how strong the design, the dV is going to damage the rover.  That's why rcs is a good idea.

Also some places are just really challenging environments. Moho's North Pole biome has slope changes in excess of 30 degrees and hitting one is like running into a brick wall. Even on the Mun, the Polar Lowlands (pictured below) near the South Pole is a very difficult area to drive through.

- and you can always do as @bewing suggested and try adding engines.

Edited June 5, 2018 by mystifeid

[IamJimmy]

2 hours ago, mystifeid said:

Do you mean M1-F's ? You should be able to make something that goes faster than 6m/s with those. eg

Remember to:

- check controlling probe core orientation by making sure that the navball is blue in the top half and brown in the bottom half (as above)

- add a reaction wheel and drive with SAS on.

- drive with soft controls on - toggle with caps-lock so that the pitch/roll/yaw markers are blue (as above)

- make something with a very large wheel base and a very low center of gravity - the example above can turn hard at its top speed of 22m/s at KSC without flipping.

- always try to re-establish contact with the surface with all wheels at once and in the direction you are moving.

- autostrut extensions to wheels or wheel axles. Each of the plates leading out to the wheels in the example above is individually autostrutted to the grandparent part.

- have a reasonable antenna and make sure you always have full probe or crew control.

- consider adding rcs- when you find yourself 300m up above the surface, quickly turning rcs on and holding the "k" and "n" keys will usually mean the difference between destruction and driving on.

- consider reassigning the forward/back/turn keys for rovers because these also make SAS rotate the rover.

- if you want to drive long distances afk you can always install mechjeb, use the rover autopilot module and set a speed at which it will be unlikely to damage anything.

That's how I test my rovers. I build one, take it to the Mun and let mechjeb drive it in a straight line at 40m/s until something breaks. Go back to the VAB, try and fix it so that doesn't happen again then rinse and repeat.  After 10-12 iterations the rover should be a lot better than when you started.

However, when driving fast there is always a good chance you'll be leaving the surface and the killer is when you come down hard on an uphill slope. No matter how strong the design, the dV is going to damage the rover.  That's why rcs is a good idea.

Also some places are just really challenging environments. Moho's North Pole biome has slope changes in excess of 30 degrees and hitting one is like running into a brick wall. Even on the Mun, the Polar Lowlands (pictured below) near the South Pole is a very difficult area to drive through.

- and you can always do as @bewing suggested and try adding engines.

Thanks for your great suggestions! I guess I'll have to make a rover with much larger wheel base next time!

As suggested, I resigned keys to have better control. It feels  a lot better. This is what it looks like now:

	WASD	IJKL
Staging	Pitch, Yaw	Up, Down, Left, Right
Docking, LIN	Up, Down, Left, Right	Drive Vehicle (Rover)
Docking, Rot	Pitch, Yaw	Drive Vehicle (Rover)

Now I can turn on reaction wheel while driving, which makes driving a lot safer and I can drive a lot faster. When the rover hits a small bump and goes flying, I can rotate it into right orientation quickly and land on its wheels instead of landing on its side and breaking stuff. 

There is one problem though. Whenever I turn on reaction wheel torque and turn off SAS, my rover rolls in pitch direction like crazy except when the reaction wheel is set to SAS only mode. Any idea why it is doing this?

Edited June 5, 2018 by IamJimmy

[mystifeid]

2 hours ago, IamJimmy said:

There is one problem though. Whenever I turn on reaction wheel torque and turn off SAS, my rover rolls in pitch direction like crazy except when the reaction wheel is set to SAS only mode. Any idea why it is doing this?

I'm not sure I understand. A screenshot really helps.

Did this happen before you made the key reassignments?

With SAS on, by default, the reaction wheel properties should show it in "normal" mode and in the "running" state. If things are working leave it at that, otherwise do what you must to make it work.

Edited June 5, 2018 by mystifeid

[IamJimmy]

29 minutes ago, mystifeid said:

I'm not sure I understand. A screenshot really helps.

With SAS on, by default, the reaction wheel properties should show it in "normal" mode and in the "running" state. If things are working leave it at that, otherwise do what you must to make it work.

With SAS on and reaction wheel in its default configure, it behaves as expected.

When I turn off SAS, however, it starts rolling and destroys everything. Note that I;m not pressing any key. I expect a vehicle with SAS off to be sort of free floating (in this case, stay in its place if not  pushed), not to start to roll on its own. This is kind of weird.

Edited June 5, 2018 by IamJimmy

[mystifeid]

3 hours ago, IamJimmy said:

As suggested, I resigned keys to have better control.

Actually it might be better to just assign secondary keys for the wheels that affect staging only. Keys that are unused elsewhere. I turned on num-lock and used keypad 2, 4, 6 and 8.

By default there are no secondary keys assigned to the wheels and I did not change anything else.

Edited June 5, 2018 by mystifeid

[IamJimmy]

4 minutes ago, mystifeid said:

Actually it might be better to just assign secondary keys that affect staging only. Keys that are unused elsewhere. I turned on num-lock and used keypad 2, 4, 6 and 8.

By default there are no secondary keys assigned to the wheels and I did not change anything else.

I'm on a laptop so no extra number keys for me. By default docking LIN mode has linear motion control on both sides (WASD and IJKL), so I decide to modify that.

Edited June 5, 2018 by IamJimmy

[mystifeid]

5 hours ago, IamJimmy said:

I'm on a laptop so no extra number keys for me

I knew you were going to say that.

 

5 hours ago, IamJimmy said:

When I turn off SAS, however, it starts rolling and destroys everything. Note that I;m not pressing any key. I expect a vehicle with SAS off to be sort of free floating (in this case, stay in its place if not  pushed), not to start to roll on its own. This is kind of weird.

Yes.

What part is controlling the rover? (I'm guessing the command seat)

Maybe the problem is caused by the angles you've used to attach the wheels to the rovemate probe core (and which I was having a little difficulty reproducing a minute ago). If you attach the wheels vertically, what happens?

[mystifeid]

Ok, finally got those wheels straight and attached at about that angle - however, using mirror symmetry to attach them, when I launch it, it won't go forward or backward. But it does start rolling quite quickly.

Attaching them vertically makes it able to be driven although there still a very, very slow roll on the launchpad.

[bewing]

6 hours ago, IamJimmy said:

When I turn off SAS, however, it starts rolling and destroys everything. Note that I;m not pressing any key. I expect a vehicle with SAS off to be sort of free floating (in this case, stay in its place if not  pushed), not to start to roll on its own. This is kind of weird.

It looks like you probably have pitch trim set -- it's the trim that's causing the rolling.

 

 

[mystifeid]

1 minute ago, bewing said:

It looks like you probably have pitch trim set -- it's the trim that's causing the rolling.

Alt-X to cancel trim?

[IamJimmy]

11 hours ago, mystifeid said:

Maybe the problem is caused by the angles you've used to attach the wheels to the rovemate probe core (and which I was having a little difficulty reproducing a minute ago).

 

10 hours ago, bewing said:

t looks like you probably have pitch trim set -- it's the trim that's causing the rolling.

Yeah I definitely set pitch trim by accident. The indicator is off center by a little bit in resting position. It's pretty hard to spot though. Thanks for that! The wheel orientation does not seem to be the problem.