Career and contracts

[Logan Timmermann]

In my career save I have mostly done missions according to the contracts the game gives me. I am thinking about doing more missions that aren't tied to contracts. But how do you deal with the missions you do? Do you just use contracts to fund your other projects? Or do you only send missions where the contracts are?

[Vanamonde]

Some of both. I look for contracts that involve places I want to go anyway, but I also do some just for money. 

[Superfluous J]

Basically what Vanamonde said. Early on (Mun and Minmus, basically) I do whatever they ask me to do. If a juicy Minmus contract comes up and I haven't done much on Mun, I'll whip up a quick Minmus mission, I mean I'm going there anyway.

But by the time I'm going interplanetary I've usually got tons of money and science so it's more about what I want to do than what anybody else wants. At that point I'll only take Satellite contracts for places that still need some relays and contracts specifically for the place I want to go (usually governed by orbital mechanics).

[The rocket exploder]

I usually do both. But if I'm bored I just send some random probe to a random planet for some contract.

[Magzimum]

Note that you can fast-forward (time warp) a few days (e.g. 4-6 days) to get a complete new set of contract proposals. Typically, if you are waiting for a transfer window to another planet, you can do a lot of such time warps.

 

I usually create multi-contract missions to the other planets. Only the special missions (e.g. Eve landing, Jool-5) are without contract. Those are difficult enough without having to do something special.

[king of nowhere]

in addition to what others said, i like to make reusable stuff, so i can fulfill a contract and then go on a mission of my own.

I want to make a mun landing but i'm only paid for bringing tourists in mun orbit? i make a ship with two modules, in mun orbit i detach them, the tourists stay in orbit and the lander lands.

i want to make an eve probe but i'm paid to put a satellite in orbit around minmus? i send the eve probe with plenty of extra fuel, i place it in minmus orbit to fulfill the contract, then i go on to eve

after i unlocked isru, that was magnified exponentially, because i could keep reusing my stuff infinitely. shortly after, i stopped playing the career as it was not challenging anymore.