[0.22] KSP Story Missions

[frizzank]

Would anyone be interested in writing a mission pack for my FASA mod. Specifically from a Kerbal perspective about the manned space race from Mercury to the end of Gemini.

[DennyTX]

already done for my kid. 2+4 mercury (historic), 10 gemini (historic, including agena stage dock and high orbit, with divided launchs, and some missions are combined)), 4 gemini-mun/minmus missions.

using KAS (for agena missions)

also, 25 soviet vostok-voshod-soyuz till apollo-souyz r up too

but... all inner missions texts r on russian

Edited December 3, 2013 by DennyTX

[Morden96]

Having an issue with the 'We're not getting it back' challenge. The final requirement is a temperature scan above 100Mkm from the Kerbol. Problem is you can't take temperature scans in high orbits.....

[skarred]

I

Revert to Launch and quick loading shouldn't lose you money, except in hardcore mode. Are you really losing money or is just that you see the launch cost pop up every time?

As of version 0.7 a special save file is created at launch time and is loaded when you use revert to launch. This restores everything, including the budget, back to how it was before launch.

There is a bug where it sometimes doesn't work if you use 'Revert to vehicle assembly' then exit to the space center. But exiting the VAB to launch is safe.

I have had the same problem, while playing on easy mode. reverting to launch if you messed up your staging or assembly to tweek design will cost you money. Not always but it does happen which made me think it was an auto save or something doing it. its a frustrating bug because after a few times it leaves you in an impossible hole and cant level up.

Hope its fixed quickly, love the missions. I'm one of those people that need purpose.

[duckofthemoon]

Ahhh, I thought is was on purpose. It didn't make sense to me, and it got frustrating and confusing because I lost Huge amounts.

[skarred]

I had a think about the problem. maybe you could get the game to calculate the cost of the ship at the end of the mission instead of the start. this would have two benefits, it would avoid the cash stealing bug and secondly you could include a new feature that refunded the cost of parts that are returned undamaged.

[landeTLS]

Hey. Any news here? I love the plugin and the gui. It has many things going for it that mce doesnt and seems to flow better with ksp. A few things that would be nice to have would be:

- Required crew count for missions (configurable in cfg)

- more missions (perhaps with science rewards) base building/station missions etc etc.

- part recovery/recycling system(like mce has) i had an idea that you could impliment/use something like the feature in romfarers lazor mod that increases rendering distance so the debris (spent boosters w/parachutes) will touch down as usual then the plugin would just need to autorecover all debris on the ground. ( havent tested if this works yet tho)

I havent tested the plugin with ksp 0.23 yet but will do. Ill post my results.

[landeTLS]

i just tested the plugin with ksp version 0.23. and it still works perfectly, all goals are calculated correctly and mission goals completed as before. would be nice to see an update from the op on the status of the mod. no posts since nov 29th. sad if the mod is dead. this is a good compeditor to mce

EDIT: just tested out booster recovery using both TTneverunload and romfarers lazor mod to increase draw distance. either those components are broken by ksp 0.23 or for some other reason it wont work, i tried adding a probe core to the boosters too but the boosters never touch down(it works if i hover within ksp draw distance tho). seems something like the mce recycling by calculated paracute drag would need to be used.

EDIT2: i actually got boosters touching down with ttneverunload(forgot to turn the thing on:-P) but the problem is that when you get outside of draw range for the surface the boosters explode because they drop through the surface? Also physics gets really unstable under such high distances so sometimes the boosters would explode during parachute deployement at 500m If there was a way to turn off neverunload after the boosters touched down it could maybe be made to work in some form. I must say it looks really cool watching the boosters glide down gently and touch down while you ascent.

Edited December 23, 2013 by landeTLS

[chlue]

i actually got boosters touching down with ttneverunload(forgot to turn the thing on:-P) but the problem is that when you get outside of draw range for the surface the boosters explode because they drop through the surface? Also physics gets really unstable under such high distances so sometimes the boosters would explode during parachute deployement at 500m If there was a way to turn off neverunload after the boosters touched down it could maybe be made to work in some form. I must say it looks really cool watching the boosters glide down gently and touch down while you ascent.

Hello landeTLS, I guess that approach is a bit overkill anyways. Never tried mce, but from what I read the approach there is to 'simply' track the debris falling down and when the game wants to remove a piece the current mass and the potential drag from parachutes is checked and if there are enough parachutes present the mod assumes that the part will come down in one piece and count it as recovered. Additionally the expected landing position is calculated and for a splashdown in water the value is reduced a bit.

I guess in most situations this approach is accurate enough and there is no need to run physics on these parts. The noticeable exception is that a real craft may do a suicide burn in the last seconds to reduce the final speed a bit which is surely quiet hard to model in a generic way, but I guess for simple booster stages parachutes alone are fine.

[metalpoetza]

I am keen to try this out on 0.23 (I just finished the vanilla career mode tree earlier today) - as a new game obviously - but one thing concerns me a bit about the mission listing. Those "rover" missions may be fun - but with the way 0.23 works unmanned missions have greatly reduce your science earning potential - is this a sufficient barrier to make these harrowing on 0.23 or do you just work around that ?

[metalpoetza]

Follow up - installed it so long to try it out and loving it so far could use a few tweaks to the mission data for the way 0.23 works with science but otherwise it's fun so far. There is just one annoying thing, I started my missions in a new save - when I loaded my existing career save (which has the full tree unlocked and where I was about to design a Laythe visiting SSTO) it basically forced me to start the first mission.

So major feature request: a button on creating a new game to start mission mode so it doesn't interfere with existing saves ? I could disable the plugin every time I want to play my other save but that requires a restart every time.

[metalpoetza]

Okay - so after reading some more of the old posts - I found the solution to what I posted before... yay. Now... I really want to combine this with some custom mission sets for KSP_Interstellar, so I've added that and as I unlock the parts I'll start writing missions to use them - which I would happily then share back as a custom mission pack. But before I do - has anybody done so already ? Some googling on my part suggests "no" but I thought I would check ?

[landeTLS]

Hello landeTLS, I guess that approach is a bit overkill anyways. Never tried mce, but from what I read the approach there is to 'simply' track the debris falling down and when the game wants to remove a piece the current mass and the potential drag from parachutes is checked and if there are enough parachutes present the mod assumes that the part will come down in one piece and count it as recovered. Additionally the expected landing position is calculated and for a splashdown in water the value is reduced a bit.

I guess in most situations this approach is accurate enough and there is no need to run physics on these parts. The noticeable exception is that a real craft may do a suicide burn in the last seconds to reduce the final speed a bit which is surely quiet hard to model in a generic way, but I guess for simple booster stages parachutes alone are fine.

I know its overkill. And not needed. But its cool as hell (imo) to have the boosters actually touch down in the game and not just recovered using calculated drag. I have a pretty good idea of how to write a simple plugin to handle this(unload physics on booster touchdown). But im still not sure how to get around the surface to orbit transition issues. Im thinking this is probably why squad makes all decending objects get eaten up. If there is interest in this i could make this my first plugin release.

[metalpoetza]

Right, I started by trying to create a small custom mission set to use the early available SCANsat parts to map Kerbin, Mun and Minmus - but no matter what I do the part requirement isn't working. I've tried both the name and title fields from their part.cfg files, but when you attach them to the vessel they still refuse to show as added. What do you have to do to add mod parts as requirements (for missions that are intended to be done with mods) ?

UPDATE: In case it helps - here is the file so far:

MissionSet = Mapping The Neighbourhood

SetAvailableRank = 3

MISSION = Part 1: Kerbin

{

From = KSC Geographical Sciences Dept

Description = We had a great idea ! We could draw really accurate maps if we did it from space... or at least pretty ones. !

Description = So what we're thinking is - let's put a satelite in a polar orbit around Kerbin, with mapping gear on it, map the planet and transmit the data back for science.

Description = So go do er... what we just said.

Success = Mmm... wait, what's that big white place up here ?

SuggestedVesselName = ScanSAT Kerbin

Part = Stayputnik Mk. 1

//TODO: Add required SCANsat Parts

Part = Comms DTS-M1

Reward = 15000

OBJECTIVE = LaunchKSC

OBJECTIVE = ReachAltitude

{

Target = Kerbin

MinAltitude = 250000

}

OBJECTIVE = Orbit

{

Body = Kerbin

MinAltitude = 250000

//TODO - This line does nothing right now - is there a way to require a polar orbit ?

Inclination = 0

}

//TODO: Objectives to SCAN, analyze and transmit data ?

}

Edited December 30, 2013 by metalpoetza
Added source of current WIP

[Morden96]

Right, I started by trying to create a small custom mission set to use the early available SCANsat parts to map Kerbin, Mun and Minmus - but no matter what I do the part requirement isn't working.

You can always skip the part requirement. In MissionController, they had a few placeholder missions that you could use for other purposes. Just specify the orbit and let the player choose the parts. That way the mission can be played whether you have ScanSat or ISA MapSat or simply stock. Just make sure the reward is high enough to pay for the ScanSat parts.

[metalpoetza]

You can always skip the part requirement. In MissionController, they had a few placeholder missions that you could use for other purposes. Just specify the orbit and let the player choose the parts. That way the mission can be played whether you have ScanSat or ISA MapSat or simply stock. Just make sure the reward is high enough to pay for the ScanSat parts.

I took that approach for now - though I suspect that SCANSat and ISAMapSat differ too much to be easily interchangeable here. That said, the current mission rewards can build adequate scansats and cover their costs if you're a bit clever (I've played it through). I know LandeTLS doesn't want Mod-requiring missions in the main distribution but if others would like, I'd be happy to share my mission set with you. This is still a fairly small and simple one - just covers Kerbin, Mun and Minmus (though I have in the past done Duna with a similar design). I don't think doing further out as early as these can be done is wise since that would unlock a massive chunk of the tree and remove the fun from the rest of it. My main goal is actually a complete custom mission pack for KSP-Interstellar but I used SCANsat as a starting point because it's much simpler and I wanted to learn the mission structure and find out the pitfalls.

[metalpoetza]

Looks like Probing the system will indeed be very low-yield science wise due to the massive penalty for transmissions in 0.23 and the fact that you can't do unmanned science stations to reduce that. In theory you could put one down first and dock before transmission but this adds new complexity (and a requirement to have unlocked docking ports). Another option is to build retrieval probes, land them and recover them (making the antenna requirement rather superfluous) but that adds it's own complexity (building them with enough fuel to return.

I would highly recommend these be reworked for 0.23. Right now I've done the first Wing and a Prayer mission but can't do the next one as I haven't yet unlocked the radial intake. Need about 110 to unlock the docking ports for the Two is bigger than one series and whole lot to unlock rover wheels... basically there's a gap here where the next logical mission set is no longer very workable and the ones after that not yet reachable without going off-script (i.e. doing some science missions on your own without starting a mission because if you do it ruins the budget).

[metalpoetza]

Announcement: Romancing the little green stone - new custom mission pack for KSPStoryMissions

Link: https://github.com/ajventer/ksp_stuff/releases/tag/0.0.2

This is a mission pack built around the design of science in KSP 0.23, and making use of the new mobile science lab. It requires *only* stock parts.

It lets you set up a permanent science and refuel station in orbit around MinMus - then build a small manned science vessel. The small vessel can then

visit the various Minmus biomes and return the data for processing to maximize the gain you can get without return missions.

It's designed to fit in with the budget system of KSPStoryMissions as subsequent research trips don't involve building new rockets - they therefore don't impact your budget.

I successfully played through all four missions and were able to complete all four of them with ease and achieve the desired final status - however I would like some other people to test and comment before considering it stable.

landeTLS: I honestly believe that these fit the science model in 0.23 better than the Probing the System series (basically I set out to fix the problem I ran into last night). If you agree with me - please feel free to include them (edited as you see fit - it's GPL'd) in the official KSPStoryMissions. I don't believe they ought to replace the Probing missions - but I think the combination is an improvement over just the one with 0.23's restrictions on transmitting science. This is written to do things the way Squad wants them done.

I also made a public pre-release of my SCANSat missions though these are very much WIP and shouldn't be considered ready for prime-time. Since they require mods to operate they are not suitable for the main KSPStoryMissions mod.

https://github.com/ajventer/ksp_stuff/releases/tag/0.0.1

Please note: since they are built from the same git tree, the source links contain BOTH sets (but the source link under the SCANSat zip file is to a much older copy of the mission file which was not working at all yet).

[landeTLS]

landeTLS: I honestly believe that these fit the science model in 0.23 better than the Probing the System series (basically I set out to fix the problem I ran into last night). If you agree with me - please feel free to include them (edited as you see fit - it's GPL'd) in the official KSPStoryMissions. I don't believe they ought to replace the Probing missions - but I think the combination is an improvement over just the one with 0.23's restrictions on transmitting science. This is written to do things the way Squad wants them done.

Love that you made some more missions for this great plugin. Im not the plugin author tho. Just another fan of the plugin airing my own ideas. I havent heard from the plugin author for some time. Even if this is abandoned i hope someone will take it over. I currently dont concider myself "fluent" enough in c# to fully manage a mod. Maybe in the future tho. Im currently experimenting with an oceanic/atmospheric/planetary resource extraction plugin mainly to learn the works.

EDIT:

Btw regarding the "recoverable booster" plugin experiment i did earlier was kindof a dead end.even with optimizations in the unloading code on touchdown only the first few booster stages would land safely. The rest fall through the surface and explode because the planetary collision mesh gets unloaded. Dont currently know how i would go about trying to get around that. Im thinking some kind of warp-to-surface-and-unload before planet mesh unload but it gets too messy codewise compaired to just the calculated drag model.

Edited December 31, 2013 by landeTLS

[metalpoetza]

Oh dear, my bad. Well I hope others will enjoy the missions though and that the author is just on Christmas holiday. I wont be up to taking it over either as I've never used c# python and bash are my bread and butter.

[metalpoetza]

New version of Romancing the Green Stone now available: https://github.com/ajventer/ksp_stuff/releases/tag/0.0.3

This release fixes some spelling errors and a few minor balance issues in the earlier missions, and most importantly adds a new final mission to retrieve your Kerbals from the science space station once they are done exploring Minmus and bring them back home.

[chlue]

Announcement: Romancing the little green stone - new custom mission pack for KSPStoryMissions

I successfully played through all four missions and were able to complete all four of them with ease and achieve the desired final status - however I would like some other people to test and comment before considering it stable.

Ok played trough tag 0.0.3 of the mission and found it quiet nice. Here is my detailed feedback:

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD!!:

Stone Part 1: The Science Lab

- Budget: 48210/60000 needed

- forgot the Kerbals, but IMHO putting them already in the lab does not makes so much sense. Why send scientists with the first ship if you can assembly the station by robots first?

- was unsure if I need to bring fuel - included 720units just in case (partially used for transfer)

- was unsure how much electric power I need

Stone Part 2: Refueling Ship

- Budget: 49980/95000 needed (was to lazy to design a new launcher so I basically send the first mission again with the science-lab replaced by some fuel)

- was unsure how further much fuel I need - settled for 720 additional units

--> turned out later I only need <45 units for a single lander mission, so I had enough for 30 trips or so :-)

Part 3: Dock the lander

- Budget: 40920/45000 needed

- why command pod? I would have preferred a 'Lander Can' because I need to put a big docking port on the top

--> I build the lander with the Mk1 Lander Can and attached the command pod to the rocket --> more costly, but budget was plenty so no issue

Proposal: Add mission to send manned crew at this point. Everything so far could be done by unmanned units. Maybe remove the 'refueling ship'-mission instead.

Part 4: The first research trip

- Budget: 0/5000 needed

- Hm why not repeat this mission two or three times instead of hinting it in the last objective. It will be done by the player anyways

--> I guess it is possible to request a specific biome?

Part 5: The voyage home

- Budget: 52170/100000 needed

- hitchhiker storage is lighter than a science lab, so Budget does not need to be much higher than for the first mission --> 60000 would be plenty

- actually I send a replacement crew and took the so far accumulated 1500 science points home

- Proposal: change this to a replacement-crew mission and repeat step 4 once again after

[chlue]

My mission costs for the main missions in case some calibration shall be done:

Note that I played some off story missions in between so I had more techs unlocked compared to a new career using only this missions.

in 0.22 (mostly in easy mode):

1472 / 2400 - The Height Stuff Part 1: Welcome

2722 / 9600 - The Height Stuff Part 2: Space

6632 / 12000 - The Height Stuff Part 3: Orbit

6632 / 12000 - The Height Stuff Part 4: Sand

12117 / 18000 - The Height Stuff Part 5: Mun Flyby

2902 / 4800 - The Height Stuff Part 6: Lander Test

37982 / 42000 - The Height Stuff Part 7: The Mun Mission

17385 / 18000 - Probing The System Part 1: Minmus

34107 / 42000 - Probing The System Part 2: Eve

14167 / 36000 - Challenge The Space Race

13337 / 32400 - Challenge The Space Race

49580 / 60000 - Challenge There's no conspiracy

9135 / 18000 - Challenge Nothing on TV

43527 / 48000 - Challenge Two for the Price of One

6182 / 12000 - Challenge Ice For The Drink Machine

16795 / 42000 - Probing The System Part 3: Sun

2530 / 2940 - My Little Rover Part 1: Wheels

8060 / 14400 - My Little Rover Part 2: More Wheels

35286 / 60000 - My Little Rover Part 3: Eve Rover

50079 / 60000 - My Little Rover Part 4: Laythe Rover

66830 / 72000 - My Little Rover Part 5: Dres Rover

11030 / 24000 - A Wing And a Prayer Part 1: Basic Jet

41810 / 42000 - Probing The System Part 4: Duna

14112 / 24000 - Two is Bigger Than One Part 1: First Ship

15737 / 24000 - Two is Bigger Than One Part 2: Second Ship

0 / 1200 - Two is Bigger Than One Part 3: Bring Them Home

13680 / 30000 - A Wing And a Prayer Part 2: Fast Jet

44340 / 48000 - Probing The System Part 5: Jool

41000 / 60000 - Probing The System Part 6: Laythe

63510 / 90000 - Probing The System Part 7: Eeloo

55370 / 120000 - Challenge We're Not Getting It Back

10337 / 18000 - The Height Stuff Part 6: New Materials <-- updated to 0.8.4 and as a result 'The Height Stuff' was resettet to step6

12117 / 24000 - The Height Stuff Part 7: Minmus Flyby

2452 / 4800 - The Height Stuff Part 8: Lander Test

47572 / 42000 - The Height Stuff Part 9: The Mun Mission

0.23 replay (normal mode budget, obviously my ships does not get better on average):

1472 / 2000 - The Height Stuff Part 1: Welcome

3457 / 8000 - The Height Stuff Part 2: Space

9172 / 10000 - The Height Stuff Part 3: Orbit

4532 / 10000 - The Height Stuff Part 4: Sand

11742 / 15000 - The Height Stuff Part 5: Mun Flyby

5362 / 15000 - The Height Stuff Part 6: New Materials

11622 / 20000 - The Height Stuff Part 7: Minmus Flyby

2180 / 4000 - The Height Stuff Part 8: Lander Test

32172 / 35000 - The Height Stuff Part 9: The Mun Mission

9747 / 10000 - Challenge Ice For The Drink Machine

48613 / 50000 - Challenge There's no conspiracy

[metalpoetza]

Ok played trough tag 0.0.3 of the mission and found it quiet nice. Here is my detailed feedback:

Thank you - this was very useful feedback -I'll definitely incorporate some of it into the next update.

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD!!:

Stone Part 1: The Science Lab

- Budget: 48210/60000 needed

- forgot the Kerbals, but IMHO putting them already in the lab does not makes so much sense. Why send scientists with the first ship if you can assembly the station by robots first?

- was unsure if I need to bring fuel - included 720units just in case (partially used for transfer)

- was unsure how much electric power I need

The budget here may be a tad on the generous side - depending how good you are at building budget lifters, mine had come in just below the budget but I had arrived with way too much fuel - so I thought I'd see what the feedback was before altering it - I think I'll alter the budget here to 50K.

I'll add a note not to bring extra fuel in this one.

I already planned on the possibility that some people may forget to bring the Kerbals - this is why I left the refuel ship mission open-ended so you could bring them in that stage if needed.

Stone Part 2: Refueling Ship

- Budget: 49980/95000 needed (was to lazy to design a new launcher so I basically send the first mission again with the science-lab replaced by some fuel)

- was unsure how further much fuel I need - settled for 720 additional units

--> turned out later I only need <45 units for a single lander mission, so I had enough for 30 trips or so :-)

The player has quite a bit of freedom of design here - you can bring more fuel in this stage and do more trips on the basic station - or bring less (saving money) but risk having to send up another later - Minmus only has about 8 biomes though so generally you should be fine. The budget was based on my refueling ship - but that ended up being far more than what I needed, I'm sure this can be safely adjusted down to about 60K ?

I had also over-estimated the lander mission fuel - though it's somewhat higher for the biomes with the worst inclinations (around 120 units for the polar biome). Still you could probably get more than enough with a about 1200 units of refuel option and maybe 300 units of monoprop.

Part 3: Dock the lander

- Budget: 40920/45000 needed

- why command pod? I would have preferred a 'Lander Can' because I need to put a big docking port on the top

--> I build the lander with the Mk1 Lander Can and attached the command pod to the rocket --> more costly, but budget was plenty so no issue

Proposal: Add mission to send manned crew at this point. Everything so far could be done by unmanned units. Maybe remove the 'refueling ship'-mission instead.

Based on your experience - the budget here seems fair.

I used the pod purely because previous missions up to the same rank from the official set all used it - I didn't want to leave players in the lurch if they hadn't unlocked the lander can yet. It's possible to change it, or even to leave it un-forced and just require crew.

I suspect my version, including any missing crew with the refuel ship, is actually a bit better as doing it in this stage may force players to put extra room on the lander which will add weight (and thus cost) to something intended to be very lightweight.

Part 4: The first research trip

- Budget: 0/5000 needed

- Hm why not repeat this mission two or three times instead of hinting it in the last objective. It will be done by the player anyways

--> I guess it is possible to request a specific biome?

The budget here is meant to simply be a small reward for completing the mission (and make up any shortfalls) - I'm aware it costs nothing, this is one reason this mission is only available once - I could reduce it down to 1000 or so, or even remove it entirely however. I'll have to think about that.

There isn't a way to force the biome you land in, in KSPStoryMissions (at least - none that I could find) so I can't really force you to do different biomes - but I can give you an open-ended state where you can choose which ones you want to do.

On my version I did everything except the slopes and highlands biomes at this stage, I skipped slopes entirely as they are a nightmare to find a feasible landing site in - and highlands was the one I did just before the final mission and didn't transmit.

Part 5: The voyage home

- Budget: 52170/100000 needed

- hitchhiker storage is lighter than a science lab, so Budget does not need to be much higher than for the first mission --> 60000 would be plenty

- actually I send a replacement crew and took the so far accumulated 1500 science points home

- Proposal: change this to a replacement-crew mission and repeat step 4 once again after

[metalpoetza]

The changes suggested by chlue turned out to be quite quick to do - and I've released an updated beta with them applied. I didn't change the storyline or mission structure but I did make all the budget changes and remove the requirement for a command-pod on the lander mission as discussed.

https://github.com/ajventer/ksp_stuff/releases/tag/0.0.7