[0.20.2] Mission Controller v0.10 (06/24/2013) [ALPHA]

[little square dot]

Unfortunately it didn't gather any attention I was hoping it would so someone could develop a similar thing.

I think the reason for the lack of excitement is that Squad's career mode is on the horizon, so it makes little sense to put an extensive amount of time into creating a mod that will likely be obsolete within a month or two.

Patience my friend. =)

I would wait until the official release before investing time in this, but that's just me.

[macegee]

Like I've said earlier, according to the latest article about 0.21, there are no plans for missions yet. Average update cycle for KSP is about 1.5 months, so unless something will change, we're at least 3 months away from the stock implementation of the missions in career mode. So why not to have fun until then?

[MK3424]

+1 for this great addon!

[nobody44]

I updated the source code on github. There is a small tutorial for mission goals: Tutorial. MaxEccentricity = 1 means: Its not an escape trajectory.

Basically:

• eccentricity = 0: circular orbit
  
• 0 < eccentricity < 1: elliptical orbit
  
• 1 < eccentricity: escape trajectory
  

[Tinweasele]

Has anyone figured out an approx balancing for mission rewards yet? thats been the hardest part for my own scenario, How much SHOULD it cost to complete the missions to push for economic construction vs making it impossible to come out with a positive budget.

[nobody44]

My current guess is: total reward = cost * 2.5.

So I try to build the smallest vessel possible in order to finish the mission and multiply the costs with 2.5, thats the total reward for a mission.

[Tinweasele]

My current guess is: total reward = cost * 2.5.

So I try to build the smallest vessel possible in order to finish the mission and multiply the costs with 2.5, thats the total reward for a mission.

Wouldnt that mean that you double your money every single mission?

[nobody44]

Here my thoughts:

Every once in a while you will crash. 100% loss of your vehicle. Sometimes during launch due to poor construction (not enough strust, whatever), sometimes you can't finish the mission because you don't have enough fuel, so you won't get the reward. Sometimes your landing results in a crash and so on. And I try to build the *smallest* vessel possible, so everyone will build bigger vessel, just to make sure they can finish the mission.

So I thought, in order to maintain a successful space program with ambitious visions, you will need a lot of money. I crashed a space station part that costs about 200 000 krones... the responsible engineers are testpilots now.

But you are right, maybe I need to adjust the number (2.5).

[Eric S]

Like I've said earlier, according to the latest article about 0.21, there are no plans for missions yet. Average update cycle for KSP is about 1.5 months, so unless something will change, we're at least 3 months away from the stock implementation of the missions in career mode. So why not to have fun until then?

I'm not going to tell anyone that they should or shouldn't invest time in something like this, but I agree with what your saying and even think that a 3 month timeframe is rather optimistic (from the point of view of how soon we'll get it).

The development of the Kethane mod has been mostly on hold since the developer post talking about the official resource stuff, but resource mining didn't make it into 0.19 or 0.20, and it doesn't look like it's making 0.21 either.

Even when official missions do show up, they may not have all the features or the same focus as what's described here.

[sim181]

I love the plugin

I was just going to ask if there was a way to make a reward based on cost, without editing the missions before every launch, looks like people are already talking about it

There are some homebrew rule sets that try to balance cost vs reward, Lord stimpys grand campaign for example, he set it if the mission was a success then you get cost*.5 back + any target rewards for a mission you put together + first achievements. While that's a lot to put in, would be nice to see something going in regards to auto-calculations

[vaughner]

This is great but i'm having a problem. The GUI comes up on the launch pad populated with all of it's information, but the select missions button brings up an empty window. :/ I have already created a few missions after looking at your code (they are not in the Plugin Data folder yet) and I can't see the stock missions in there. :/ Any ideas?

Also, is this the correct implementation for a resource goal?

ResourceGoal

{

name = Kethane

minAmount = 175

maxAmount = 5000

reward = 5000

}

[vaughner]

Oh and just guessing here cause I've not dug into coding mods for KSP yet, but to check for a docked situation, can't you just check the craft part count? A craft that docks actually merges so the part count should get larger.

[nobody44]

Post the complete mission file here and I will correct it, if there is something wrong (if you want to, you could open a github repository and share it with others). But so far it is correct. It should be inside a mission object though.

The mission files have to be in GameData/MissionController/Plugins/PluginData/MissionController/. You should not rename the GameData/MissionController folder, since the folder is hard coded into the plugin (I haven't seen a better access method).

I love the plugin

I was just going to ask if there was a way to make a reward based on cost, without editing the missions before every launch, looks like people are already talking about it

There are some homebrew rule sets that try to balance cost vs reward, Lord stimpys grand campaign for example, he set it if the mission was a success then you get cost*.5 back + any target rewards for a mission you put together + first achievements. While that's a lot to put in, would be nice to see something going in regards to auto-calculations

What is "first achievements"? Basically it is the same problem, because the total rewards must be higher than the total costs... so you adjust on the other side, but you still have to adjust the reward :/...

Yeah, the balancing is a known issue :-).

Edited June 5, 2013 by nobody44

[vaughner]

The mission files have to be in GameData/MissionController/Plugins/PluginData/MissionController/. You should not rename the GameData/MissionController folder, since the folder is hard coded into the plugin (I haven't seen a better access method).

Ah, my brain and fingers went straight back to .19 ways into the separate folders. Sheesh. Working fine now.

Post the complete mission file here and I will correct it, if there is something wrong (if you want to, you could open a github repository and share it with others).

I will be posting some Missions as I go. Just want to make and test a few before I start uploading them. Getting ready to fly my first mission now. Thanks!!

[vaughner]

@nobody44

Coding looks great. I like your style. Can you explain a few things for me?

How do SubMissionGoals work? [Got it figured out]

What does nonPermanent do? I've tried a few things and can't quite figure it out.

This is great. Quite a simple scripting to build missions. I love it!

Edited June 5, 2013 by vaughner

[Tinweasele]

Would it be possible to add in functionality to allow for missions to be manually set complete from the UI as opposed to needing to complete an objective? I say this because in my campaign i have to "buy" contracts (mods) and some of my missions arnt easily trackable by in game means.

[vaughner]

What are you trying to track? There is actually a lot of stuff available in the scripting. I'm writing a scripting reference for this right now. Perhaps, some of what you want to track is already in there.

I gotta install Visual Studio in a VM tomorrow cause I want to help with this mod too. It's great!

[Tinweasele]

Well i want to be able to track a complete(95%+) map in mapsat, as well as purchase of mods

[Fel]

Can you upload to a site that... well... isn't trying to set off all of my security settings?

I run far higher settings than most people, and have set some to bypass... but I cannot figure out why the site claims I do not have the Latest Flash installed. (Why I need Flash on an HTML5 site... just to download a file... is unknown.)

[vaughner]

@Tinweasele I see what you mean.

@nobody Need a flag in the PartGoal to indicate success requires NO part of that name for completion. Trying to script a requirement to disallow MechJeb in this mission. In the next day or two i'm going to pull a branch of your source. Hopefully, I can assist. I love this kind of thing. Thanks for the Awesome Mod!

[xandalis]

I seem to be having some form of conflict between this, and the available .20x compatible mapsat dev build. I uninstalled mission controller (as it was the most recent change to my mod setup when problems started), and now mapsat also does not work. Currently trying to figure out how to get mapsat working again. It could be an entirely unrelated issue that's popped up suddenly that's unique to my mix of mods, I'm still troubleshooting.

I love the idea for the mod, kind of hitting that point otherwise where I have a general lack of direction in the game.

Edit: Okay, seems to be a problem with mapsat. Will yoink that out and see what happens when I put MC back in. Also, nature of the problem: loading a vehicle for launch on the pad or runway, was freezing mid-load every time.

Alright, no problems with Mission Controller now that I got mapsat out of the way. Kind of sucks though, still can't figure out why mapsat went bonkers suddenly.

Edited June 5, 2013 by xandalis
update info

[Sandworm]

I would also like to try this mod, but Mega is a ridiculous site for sharing files. I've tried for 15minutes now and I am no slouch when it comes to filesharing.

As this has been released under a GPL (ie open source) can someone please post a copy to another file hosting service.

Edited June 5, 2013 by Sandworm

[gibbskw]

Wouldnt that mean that you double your money every single mission?

Not necessarily. If you build a small, cheap craft, then yes. If you aren't skilled enough, or confident enough, then you may "over-build" and get considerably less of a reward. If you really over do it, you could even lose money.

[ymir9]

I think it refers to the eccentricity of the orbit. A perfectly circular orbit will have an eccentricity of zero; 1 is pretty crazy.

[vaughner]

I think it refers to the eccentricity of the orbit. A perfectly circular orbit will have an eccentricity of zero; 1 is pretty crazy.

Where e = eccentricity

e = 0 | circular orbit

0 < e < 1 | elliptic orbit

e = 1 | parabolic trajectory (escape/capture orbit)

e > 1 | hyperbolic trajectory (flyby's and gravity assists are hyperbolic trajectories)