I have to ask - about 0.24 and contract gameplay

[tjsnh]

Am I the only one who feels a little pigeonholed into "chasing the contracts" in 0.24?

It seems I never have enough funds to do "fun stuff" (mun rovers, space stations, random unmanned probes to jool, etc) that aren't part of a contract and, thus, won't generate any more funds if I do them especially since the rewards for repeat-mun-landings/etc fall off so dramatically.

Or am I just doing-it-wrong?

Not a big gripe or whatever, I'm just curious if other people are getting the same kind of feeling.

[Thomas988]

Before 0.24, in my career save, I was already building a space station around Kerbin, but with the update I couldn't really afford anything. I hadn't made much progress in that save so I didn't feel like I wasn't missing out on too much. However, you seem to be much farther progressed than me in your save, so I can understand at how to can't do much, such as said rovers and probes, with the starting 10,000 funds you get at the beginning.

The best solution is just to spend a few days knocking out some of those contracts and the money should come rolling in.

[Sky_walker]

You must be doing something wrong, cause on a day 3 I already had 2 large rovers roaming around KSC, and send a huge (successful) asteroid capture mission with enough money in a bank to either afford another one or a space station.

I also have 3 unmanned probes on an orbits: 2 around Kerbin and 1 around Minimus.

I don't know.... perhaps you are simply overengineering? Eg. most of my contracts were completed on a base of a ship that was nothing more than a capsule, chute, 2 fuel tanks and an engine - with small modifications it can accomplish pretty much every mission in Kerbin - atmosphere or sub-orbital flight, which happens to be almost all of the contracts in an early stages of the game.

Before 0.24, in my career save, I was already building a space station around Kerbin, but with the update I couldn't really afford anything.

(BTW: I didn't use any exploits described below in my game)

That puts you in an unique situation - as in this game you cannot go bankrupt - simply take all of the contracts you can, buy items for money you had, put them around KSC, then cancel all of the contracts and reclaim your ships. This way you'll get money in an instant.

More tedious alternative is to build ship for everything you have, put it on a launch pad, and then reclaim - it'll give you some small bonus amount of money. With a clever keyboard+mouse macro you can pump money indefinitely.

Funds system in KSP is broken to the point where it's pointless. You will always have money no matter what, so the devs basically spend 4 months preparing system that only adds another clickfest to the game with no real depth or choices involved.

Edited July 21, 2014 by Sky_walker

[LordFjord]

The funds are very generous and are piling up rather quickly. And I did not pay very much attention to the cost of the launches.

Just try to play as you like. If you want to go somewhere, just check if there are some contracts for the location and take along whatever goes.

Or push in a few dedicated contract flights, whatever suits you best.

A good start are also all those "test landed on Kerbin" stuff, its like free funds, science and rep.

[Jesrad]

I'm rolling in money doing kerbonaut rescues. And you can decline all the silly test contracts (like testing chutes at mach 2 near the ground) into making more rescues and simple (= landed at the pad) test missions that are very lucrative.

[PlonioFludrasco]

Try to build recoverable rockets, and if you don't like to fly missions only to accomplish contracts, choose the ones that can be accomplished while doing fun stuff. For example, strap a pair of decouplers on the launcher that's going to launch your Munar rover, if you are asked to.

Playing that way, I ever had enough funds to do whatever I liked.

[ScopusAurelius]

It simply is an alternative to instant funding for those common things we did for the first 1000 research points or so (omg a crew report, eva report, and surface sample from the tundra one small fuel tank west of launch). We all had our own algorithm to that first Mun/Minimus orbit raking in a crapload of research storing an eva report over every biome and heading back to get the next tier of research.

Contracts offers (one can simply not play contracts) a more throttled approach wherein funding comes in grudgingly (unless one exploits... keep a Kerbal on Mun for flag planting if that is your style) and the days of raking it all in are over. Unless, like I say, one simply plays a pre-contracts style game.

Can one exploit it? Sure. Can one opt out of it? Sure. Was it a failed or wasted update? Hell no, it was not if one enjoys the sometimes bizarre contracts and the dance for more funding. If you're looking for more realism, then they'd have to eliminate whimsical or frequent funding altogether.

[Kerbart]

Doing one contract per mission is a good way to run out of money. Start approaching it in a more economic way and the money piles in in ridiculous amounts:

• Pile up all the "at an escape trajectory" contracts. Once you have half a dozen, build a rocket for them and you can execute all contracts at once (make sure you deal with the right-click test run parts first before staging)
  
• In a similar fashion, Pile up al the "landed at Kerbin" contracts. You can recover most parts here, so don't actually launch anything. Just test on the launch pad, and recover everything after the experiment
  
• Third of these "do everything at once" contracts are the "splashed down" ones. Same approach. Just toss 'em in the water (one or two RT-10's will usually get the job done, throw in some RV-8's to make the stack controllable), test, profit.
  
• Do science. By know everyone has science stations (fancy mobile labs or a simple thermometer readout) that make these missions the "printing money in 30s" type.
  
• The remainders are where the real fun is; testing parts at various altitudes and velocities. This is where I think the game really has matured. No willy-nilly launches: each of these launches is meticilously planned to make sure all tests are compatible with each other (or can fail without a problemâ€â€let's throw in "test small gear bay" here in case I overspeed) and for each of these launches I now have checklists and I need to monitor the ascent carefully to stay within the testing envelope. No "full throttle see you in orbit" launches but challenging ascents where I'm trying to cover three or four contractsâ€â€or even more sometimes.

Take this into account and you'll quickly find you have more than enough funds to burn.

[Sky_walker]

The remainders are where the real fun is; testing parts at various altitudes and velocities. This is where I think the game really has matured. No willy-nilly launches: each of these launches is meticilously planned to make sure all tests are compatible with each other (or can fail without a problemâ€â€let's throw in "test small gear bay" here in case I overspeed) and for each of these launches I now have checklists and I need to monitor the ascent carefully to stay within the testing envelope. No "full throttle see you in orbit" launches but challenging ascents where I'm trying to cover three or four contractsâ€â€or even more sometimes.

These can be completely skipped - and you still will have enough money to build space stations / inter-planetary ships.

[Alewx]

I can just say, "YEP" it is made so that you hacve to play the contracts in order to support even a single launch for science or fun only.

I miss something like income on daily basis, because with the current system having a station for science performance is totaly useless during early game.

[jalapen0]

I think you should get income for accomplishing new things, regardless of contracts. Make contracts a cool but side thing. The main task should still be exploration as you see fit. Give a bit of cash for doing things like landing on Moho for the first time or discovering a new obelisk, etc.

[EtherDragon]

I don't feel pigeon holed into contracts all the time - but I do have to look out for lucrative contracts, from time to time, to fill up my coffers before my next big scientific (only) mission. The main goal of the game still seems to be to unlock the whole science tree - but doing so doesn't come free any more, so now we have to take on contracts fairly often to build up funds.

[Eric S]

I don't feel pigeon holed at all. The first time I launched a mission that was just for contracts was when I was waiting for a Duna transfer window. Other than that, every mission was aimed at progression.

Mission 1: Polar orbit, collecting EVA reports over all Kerbin's biomes to unlock the first two tiers of science and one from the next tier. Knocked out all four starting contracts, if I remember right, giving me a decent amount of funds.

Mission 2: Goo containers/Science Jrs all the way up, picking up a stranded kerbal, and reaching space high over Kerbin. Even more funds, and enough science to unlock fuel lines.

Mission 3: Mun mission, EVA report over all biomes, Goo/Science Jr/crew report at high and low altitudes, landing in four biomes with Goo/Science Jr/crew report/EVA report/surface sample at those four biomes. This gave enough science to unlock all the experiments. My mun craft cost about 80K, and by the time I finished the Mun mission, I had something like 360K funds.

Mission 4: Almost identical to craft to Mission 3, this time going for Minmus and landing in every biome. Huge science payout (7k if I remember right) even though I missed a few things. By this time, I've got 1M funds and have unlocked all but two nodes of the stock tech tree.

I really didn't pursue contracts, just knocked out the ones that I could do on the way. I will say that if you're having problems getting contracts that you can do in conjunction with your current mission, don't forget to pop back to mission control every time you orbit or land on a new body, the contracts for returning science from orbit and planting a flag don't wait until you've returned.

[TNM]

hm...maybe if i play career i WANT to be reliant on contracts? My gripe about them right now is not so much that i would have to do them, its more that they are all over the place. I prefer "paths" mayself, progression. The "experimental" contracts are just over the top sometimes.

If i want to explore aimlessly, sandbox is still there.

[FleetAdmiralJ]

Am I the only one who feels a little pigeonholed into "chasing the contracts" in 0.24?

It seems I never have enough funds to do "fun stuff" (mun rovers, space stations, random unmanned probes to jool, etc) that aren't part of a contract and, thus, won't generate any more funds if I do them especially since the rewards for repeat-mun-landings/etc fall off so dramatically.

Or am I just doing-it-wrong?

Not a big gripe or whatever, I'm just curious if other people are getting the same kind of feeling.

I guess it just depends how much you want in the bank before you start playing. I had almost 8 million before I did, but part of that was because many of the contracts asked for things I would have done anyway. But now I'm at a point where most of the worthwhile contracts are for sending probes to other planets, which means I have to wait for transfer windows and transit, so I've started doing things like spamming Minmus for science and building space stations with my enormous pile of bottlecaps

[tjsnh]

Interesting thoughts. Thanks for the perspectives, folks. :-)

[TNM]

I guess it just depends how much you want in the bank before you start playing.

Hm, isn't that kind of a strange approach to a game? Shouldnt the way to the 8Mil be the game? Otherwise its just the grind to freedom. Sandbox spares you the grind, thus the sole purpose of contracts can't be to free yourself of contracts...

[Franklin]

Hm, isn't that kind of a strange approach to a game? Shouldnt the way to the 8Mil be the game? Otherwise its just the grind to freedom. Sandbox spares you the grind, thus the sole purpose of contracts can't be to free yourself of contracts...

Exactly. If people are grinding to freedom, they're doing it wrong. Career's about the career, you retire in the sandbox.

[NecroBones]

Yeah, I'm looking at the early money-making and tech-tree progress as the primary game-play at the moment. I did probably a half-dozen specialized launches (something thrown together to test a couple of parts, on the pad or in the water), plus about 10 launches with a recoverable, high-altitude sub-orbital rig. Then 2 or 3 orbital missions (Kerbal rescue, and a "look, I'm orbiting!" mission), and then two moon-missions (one at each moon). I have about 700k banked, and a huge portion of the tech-tree unlocked now.

I think it only feels confining at the very beginning, when you don't have the technologies to do anything with flexibility.

[Franklin]

I think it only feels confining at the very beginning, when you don't have the technologies to do anything with flexibility.

I found the contract rewards scale poorly right now. All the 1-star contracts give back next to nothing, so for the first dozen or so 1-star contracts I took I was actually slowly bleeding money. It wasn't until I got to 2 and 3-star contracts that the money started rolling in easy, and I quickly went from an $18K budget to a $100K budget, which might as well be infinite for my needs right now.

Personally I prefer a tight budget, though. The idea that you need to make recoverable, sustainable, well-engineered rockets only applies to the beginning, 1-star contracts. It's moot once you've banked $250K+, which doesn't take long. You can then go about making any old over-engineered rocket and come away with no or minor losses.

Plus with revert to launch/revert to VAB, quicksaves, etc. you gotta really mess up to actually see a big loss on a mission. It's all far too easy.

[NecroBones]

That's a good point. I hadn't considered the scaling issue beyond the "I'm visiting the moons!" phase.

My suspicion is that I may end up doing the NASA-thing... unmanned probes to the rest of the solar system, since that's what the budget permits.

[jalapen0]

If you guys feel the cash flows a bit too freely, take a look at this thread.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/87395-Harder-economy-and-progression-in-0-24

[Frank327]

That's a good point. I hadn't considered the scaling issue beyond the "I'm visiting the moons!" phase.

My suspicion is that I may end up doing the NASA-thing... unmanned probes to the rest of the solar system, since that's what the budget permits.

If you build it smart (lots of SRB's, using a nuclear engine) your duna lander and return craft doesn't have to cost more than 100k. Mine cost me 70k (although it was really difficult to land) and I had 2k-3k delta-v left over when I returned. Ditch excessive weight like science jr.'s and empty tanks at duna as well.