Failing contracts?

[Hyomoto]

The system still has a ways to go, and I'm enjoying playing with it, but I have a question about it: has anyone failed a contract? I don't mean, not completed. I've sent up plenty of flights that didn't succeed in the pursuit of fulfilling a contract. But with the sheer amount of time given for each one, I'm not sure there is a way to fail except to simply ignore them.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

I've accepted about 50 contracts, never failed one nor came close to failing one.

[Metalsand]

Yeah, I feel contracts is nice but it could use some work. For instance, "testing" parts and making money in-atmosphere means doing multiple contracts at once, which I liked. Using a spaceplane and testing the Mainsail engine in 80,000 Kerbin orbit net me a profit of 10 times what I paid (contract gave 400,000 to test, spaceplane cost 40,000 to launch because landing was rough and broke half the parts off) and gave me 128 science.

An in-atmosphere test may be difficult, but it only takes 8 minutes usually. You don't need a YEAR to complete them. I realize that Duna/Jool missions will take up to several years to accomplish, and in real-life they have tons of time to accomplish missions but...I'm accepting missions ahead of time so I can stack them, and I end up nearly having the experimental technology unlocked by the time I get around to testing some of it solely because I have so much time to do so.

I have 1,668,000 funds so far and most of the science unlocked so far and I've only done 3 missions to the Mun and 1 mission to Minmus and to get similar results before in Science mode, I would have had to explore nearly the entirety of the Mun to get similar results.

So for starters, Science values should be tweaked per mode. In Career mode, the game is actually several times easier to progress because science is so easy to unlock from missions. I'm having missions that more than double the science I get when I stack them making most tech unlocked before I've even gone past Duna/Eve. Missions may be fun and challenging, but some of them are reeally easy and come up too often. I love the rescue missions, but I rescue one Kerbal to have another rescue mission pop up to take it's place. Finally, I feel that spaceplanes need to be revamped after this update. MK3 fuselage and MK1/2 fuselage still don't come with liquid fuel parts, meaning I have to jerry-rig space planes together if I want to use them. And finally of course, mission times need a bit more tweaking so that people can't just take on so many missions and not work on them until they get tech that takes away the challenge of doing them.

(Don't get me wrong though, I LOVE this update and have been playing tons of KSP again since it came out, I just feel like there are some adjustments needed to make it even better)

[Hyomoto]

I think that's fair to say. I think there should be some sort of requirement to actually do the missions that you take, so if you accept ALL the missions, they are expecting your next launch to whip out some results. The window to accomplish should be a lot shorter, and the window to accept a lot longer to compensate. I think that very small change would have the necessary effect. Either that or some sort of time needs to pass on the ground, I can understand giving me a year to complete it but I had a rescue mission around Kerbin with a 4 year window.

I guess I was being dramatic when I thought this was an emergency! I think modders will have a run on this but my initial question still remains, has anyone actually failed a contract yet?

[No one]

I've failed 2. Well, failed one canceled one.

I rescued a kerbal, on the way back to Kerbin I went via the Mun, but I tried to land on the dark side and crashed. He was not a part of my space program yet and I feel no guilt.

Also, I was rescuing another, I used a tiny retrieval vessel with a command seat, got him into the command seat, landed on Kerbin, recovered the vessel, only to find out that because I used a command seat rather than a command pod it didn't count and he was gone (I recovered him but he wasn't in the astronaut complex) so the mission was impossible to complete.

[Artophwar]

Ya it seems pretty much impossible to fail the contracts. I havent failed one yet and looking at the failure requirements I doubt I will ever fail one. IF this is where they want to base game to be fore new players they really need to add difficulty settings. I came back after about 4 months to check out Career Mode and I love a lot of the changes but the difficulty is the one thing I wuld liek to see increased. It really is not very fun for a experienced or semi experience player. And all those new player will be come experienced one day too so there needs to be a mechanism to increase the challenge.

[nhnifong]

Does anyone know if it's possible to fail the "Explore the Mun" contract? It has no deadline so why does it have a penalty of √24,000 for failure?

[Alshain]

Does anyone know if it's possible to fail the "Explore the Mun" contract? It has no deadline so why does it have a penalty of √24,000 for failure?

The penalty occurs if you choose to abandon it. Not that anyone would.

[Asmayus]

I don't think it's possible unless you deliberately do it or crash a rescue mission.

The time limits are too forgiving. Which is fine; the underlying mechanics are sound, and will be refined in later updates, I'm sure.

...Although I'd love a hotfix

[nhnifong]

The way I expect deadlines to matter is when you've accepted a mission requiring you to build an expensive craft, but you screw up enough that you no longer have enough money to build such a craft and you have to slowly work your way back up by doing easier contracts to make money and you run out of time. But of course that's never going to happen given how generous they are with the funds.

[Hidden Gunman]

I think it would probably make a difference for someone completely new to KSP. But, on the other hand, if 'failing' became a major focus (or not failing) it might take away from the fun aspect for some people, and turn the game into more of a competitive 'I beat the game' thing.

[technicalfool]

I did manage to fail one parachute-based contract a while back. Thought I'd completed it as well, but ho hum. It was hardly a massive dent in my rep, and the successful flag-on-Duna, science-from-Duna and science-from-Ike contracts soon cancelled out any negative effects.

Thing to remember is that a lot of us here will consider a return trip to Duna to be child's play. Give a complete newbie a copy of KSP on the other hand, and I'm pretty sure they'll find the contracts as they stand to be a fair challenge.

[Superfluous J]

Which is why we need modes. Easy/Medium/Hard/Nightmare or somesuch.

The current setup would be Easy.

[magnemoe]

The way I expect deadlines to matter is when you've accepted a mission requiring you to build an expensive craft, but you screw up enough that you no longer have enough money to build such a craft and you have to slowly work your way back up by doing easier contracts to make money and you run out of time. But of course that's never going to happen given how generous they are with the funds.

Deadlines matter on interplanetary missions, at least if your first try fails.

[Hyomoto]

I did manage to fail one parachute-based contract a while back. Thought I'd completed it as well, but ho hum. It was hardly a massive dent in my rep, and the successful flag-on-Duna, science-from-Duna and science-from-Ike contracts soon cancelled out any negative effects.

Thing to remember is that a lot of us here will consider a return trip to Duna to be child's play. Give a complete newbie a copy of KSP on the other hand, and I'm pretty sure they'll find the contracts as they stand to be a fair challenge.

Not entirely, since contracts aren't entirely mandatory. Yes, you need to do some for money and I agree with what you are saying but I was asking more on has anyone actually failed one? You can simply choose not to take contracts, and the ones you do take are inconceivably generous on time even for a new player. We're not talking a well-beyond reasonable month to fire a decoupler on the launch padâ€â€we're talking three years to do it. I think the system starts to level out once you get to contracts asking you to fire a specific engine within EVE's atmosphere, but that doesn't change a lot of the facts surrounding the system. I get a decade to do some missionsâ€â€craft are built instantaneously.

I honestly would rather get into the nuances of the pros and cons in the system in another thread, I just wanted to hear about anyone who has failed a contract. It seems so far rescue missions are the majority.

[Yemo]

failing contracts means unlimited money:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/87138-failing-contracts-unlimited-funds

Edited July 20, 2014 by Yemo