Another contract structure suggestion

[peadar1987]

Contracts are getting a lot of stick off people for various reasons, I actually love them, but I have a quick suggestion for how they could be made even better:

Essentially, you have two "streams" of contract.

The first is the sort of contract we have now (hopefully with a few more types of mission thrown in), so procedurally generated contracts, testing parts, rescuing (hopefully fewer) Kerbals from space, doing small experiments, launching satellites into predefined orbits, and so on.

The second is a progression-based system, modelled after the real-life space race.

You would have big, predefined contracts (Land on the Mun, Launch a rover to Duna, etc.). Perhaps they could be in a minimisable tab, so as not to confuse or overload new players. There would be maybe 10 or 15 of them, and you could accept any one at any time.

These would be broken down into sub-contracts, so your first one would probably be "put a Kerbal in Orbit". This would be broken down into "Launch your first rocket", "Break altitude record of 5000m", "Go on suborbital flight", "Achieve orbit". The same amount of funds are available to unlock whether you do the individual steps and add the rewards together, or just go straight for orbit.

One of the more difficult ones could be "build a space station", so the first mission could be "fly by a target in orbit", the second one would be "rendezvous with a target in orbit", so within a certain distance, and below a certain relative velocity. Then "dock with a target in orbit", all the way to "launch space station core with A, B and C parts attached", and "add a module containing X, Y, and Z parts to your space station"

Other suggestions for "big contracts" would be landers for all major planets and moons ( unmanned Flyby >> unmanned orbiter >> manned orbiter >> unmanned lander >> manned lander), bases, and satellite networks.

This would give new players a measured, logical progression, and lots of rewards and gratification as they advance through the game, while allowing them to learn important skills such as docking.

It would give more experienced players a chance to go straight for the more advanced contracts with low-tier parts, instead of feeling "forced" to do missions they are bored with in Kerbin's SOI because that's the only way they can get funds and rep.

And with the procedurally generated contracts system running in parallel, we still get to make (and get rewarded for) interesting and quirky creations to test massive SRBs in Minmus orbit, and landing legs on Jool.

And I doubt it's much work for Squad, as it's not too much of a massive departure from the current contracts system, just adding more predefined contracts, changing when they appear, and tweaking the UI a bit so it all makes sense.

Please Squad, make this happen!

[Strikerklm96]

I like the progression based thing. I don't understand why they didn't do that the first time. I was pretty annoyed when they started giving me contracts for things I had already done.

[Zubru]

I fully support your idea. For now contracts seems hmm chaotic and too random. Test this test that, fly there... i don't feal the story of space exploration in it.