[0.90.0] Fine Print vSTOCK'D - BETA RELEASE!!! (December 15)

[Arsonide]

Want more contracts to flesh out the base game?

Wondering why not one agency is interested in building a station orbiting Laythe, or a mobile base on Eeloo?

Confused as to why the scientists of Kerbin have not been interested in retrieving asteroids, doing atmospheric surveys, or exploring the surface of planets using rovers?

Well wonder no more, because Fine Print is here to fill out all the minutiae missing from your contracts!

Features

• Six new contract types, more than doubling the initial amount included with Kerbal Space Program v0.25!
  
• Many contracts have side objectives that may or may not be attached, further increasing variety.
  
• Asteroid Retrieval Mission: Track and grab and asteroid, and bring it into orbit of Kerbin, other planets, or even jettison it out of the solar system.
  
• Build Orbital Station: Build a station in orbit around a planet to the agency's specifications. They want a specific crew capacity, certain capabilities, sometimes labs, and occasionally they want it built into an asteroid.
  
• Build Planetary Base: Similar to building a station, but on the ground. Sometimes an agency might require that it be a mobile base.
  
• Aerial Survey: Uses the new waypoint system (see below) that has you fly over specific points of interest at specific altitudes.
  
• Rover Search: Clusters a large amount of waypoints in a small area where some anomalous data was found. You must find the source by finding the right waypoint using a rover.
  
• Satellite Deployment: Places an orbit somewhere that you have to put a satellite into with very little deviation. The satellite may require specific parts, and the orbit might be geostationary, geosynchronous, or even a tundra or Molniya "lightning" orbit.
  

The waypoint system is integral to some of the new contract types, and gives you specific procedurally generated locations tied to each contract to visit. It greatly enhances interactivity. It will be integrated with all future contracts.

These are orbital waypoints that are used to show a path, rather than a specific location. They are used for the satellite deployment contracts, and will be further enhanced in the future.

Notes

• Install like any other mod, extract to your Kerbal Space Program/GameData folder. Delete any old versions of the mod.
  
• Occasionally a patch to Fine Print may require me to refresh the contract board if I make large changes to existing contracts. If this happens, I will make a note in the changelog for you to finish any active contracts you care about before patching.
  
• While the mod is compatible with the 64 bit version, due to the unstable nature of 64 bit right now, you may encounter general instability unrelated to the mod.
  
• Please note that the contracts do not appear until you can complete them. You need wheel technology for rover contracts, for instance.
  
• Please report any bugs on the official thread (below) that you encounter along with more information such as what you were doing, whether you are running 64 bit, and if possible, logs. Logs will help me track down these issues faster.
  
• Really. Logs are awesome.
  
• Also report any feedback you have about contract rewards, or contract difficulty.
  
• Report any issues or feedback on the official thread.
  
• The source code is available from GitHub.
  

Latest Changes

Added support for modded parts in some contracts, including:

Antennae from AntennaRange and RemoteTech.

Power Systems from from Interstellar, Modular/Orbital Kolonization, and Near Future.

Wheels from Firespitter, and landing gears now count as well.

Enhanced state tracking in many contracts, due to a bug in stock code, docking ports will no longer need to be open, just present, in station and base contracts. The mod support will also alleviate some confusion with the "Station Systems" objective. ARM contracts got a practical overhaul internally, as they were not functioning. Please keep me updated on if you are able to complete these contracts or not. I am in testing, but the more feedback the better. Also keep me updated if they complete for no reason, and when they do so.

No more than two contracts of any given type by Fine Print will appear on the contract board at any given time.

Aerial waypoints now appear in the same general area. It is still a decent range, but they will be in the same hemisphere. Aerial rewards reduced by 25% to compensate.

Rover waypoints now appear in much smaller areas, and there are less of them. To compensate I have doubled their rewards. Still looking for feedback on these.

You can now click on waypoints in the main map, this will cause a navigation icon to appear on your navball to assist you in completing your contracts. If you have a navigation waypoint set, you can click the same waypoint to disable it, or it will disable whenever you complete an objective at that waypoint.

Stations and bases will now occasionally request a cupola viewing port.

Slightly increased the rate at which exceptional station contracts will ask to be built into new asteroids.

Gave significant station contracts a very rare chance to ask to be built into new asteroids.

Slightly increased the rate at which exceptional base contracts will ask for a mobile base.

Gave significant base contracts a very rare chance to ask for a mobile base.

Aerial contracts should not appear until later in the technology tree, as I don't think Kerbals can flap two canards fast enough to make it to the south pole.

0.52a: Corrected an erroneous message that was thrown by unrelated mods.

The mod already verified entries of the save game and initialized them to default values if they were missing or invalid, which would happen any time the save game was manually modified by a player or a program, or after a patch that added new things. This would prevent crashing, but not weird little glitches, which would occur until the game naturally generated new missions, or until you refreshed the board manually. Now, whenever the mod detects one of these, it will automatically refresh the board for you. This means that any active contracts will be cleared sometimes after a patch, but it also means that you will not be experiencing these glitches. Please complete any active contracts that you care about before patching.

Added new logic to control when contracts are handed out on the board. Asteroid Retrieval, Station Building, and Base Building can now only have two contracts out at any given time, and you will not receive duplicate missions to build or retrieve the same things in the same locations, to prevent contract stacking. Aerial and Rover missions can have four active and two on the board. New contract types are coming soon.

State tracking has been vastly improved across the board. You should no longer have missions randomly completing on their own. This makes station and asteroid missions much more stable.

Asteroid contracts were overhauled. The tracking on "new" asteroids is now much more solid, you will be asked to retrieve a specific classification of asteroid, and you will receive feedback messages every time you claw an asteroid to let you know what the agency thinks about your choice of asteroid. The classification request also applies to the rare station side objective, so you may be asked to build your station into a Class E for that Death Star look.

The tracking station now shows waypoints for all current contracts, including ones you have not accepted. This gives you an opportunity to check out where a contract is going to take you before accepting it.

Waypoints were not evenly distributed over the surface of a planet, due to the geometry of a sphere, there is much less distance per latitude near the poles than there is at the equator, causing the generator to put more waypoints on the poles than intended. This has been fixed, and waypoints now spawn uniformly over the planets.

Removed default values of infinity from any variables, as it was rarely causing terrible things.

Fixed a typo that resulted in aerial missions only spawning above land on planets with water.

Tightened up higher difficulty aerial waypoint ranges slightly. Rewards remain the same.

"Navigation activated" and "navigation deactivated" messages were reversed, causing some confusion as to what was happening with navigation waypoints. This has been alleviated, and our previous navigations engineer was tied to a Class D asteroid and thrown at the sun.

Rover waypoint ranges can now be reduced (or increased) by the gravity of the target planet. The ranges from last patch apply to Kerbin, and can go as low as half of what they are now depending on how low the gravity gets.

Asteroid Retrieval rewards were increased by a significant amount. Station and Base rewards were increased slightly, and made more malleable by their side objectives, meaning having to integrate a research lab will boost science gains, integrating a cupola will boost reputation gains, etc.

I want to thank everyone that has been giving me feedback and reports. It's really helping build this into a decent mod. I will continue to listen and implement as many of your thoughts as I can, so keep on submitting them to my thread. Perhaps we can drop the "a" off the version soon!

Added orbital waypoints that show a ring and are animated to show you which direction the orbit goes. These show up in the tracking station for all currently posted contracts, and in game on the map for any that you've accepted, just like normal waypoints.

Added satellite deployment contracts. They do not show up until you have technology for probe cores, power sources, and antennae. These contracts will ask you to build a new unmanned probe with an antenna and a power source, then put it into a very specific orbit, shown on the map with the new waypoints. The mission will ask you to put it into a certain deviation of the orbit shown, and the deviation gets smaller as the difficulty goes up. You need to match everything: apoapsis, periapsis, inclination, eccentricity, the whole nine yards. The orbits also get less kosher as the difficulty goes up, more eccentric and inclined, and the burns required to hit that deviation window are very minute. It's challenging, but the pay goes up as well. This mission type prefers Kerbin, but can go to other planets as well, especially at higher difficulties. On Kerbin, the reputation and fund rewards are tripled, but the science is cut to a third. This is to emulate a commercial space program on Kerbin putting up satellites for clients. That doesn't mean it will pay as well as putting a satellite around Moho, it just means it will be comparable.

Added new "neutralize controls for a period of time" objective. This objective requires you to cut your throttle, and turn off any controls, such as RCS or SAS for a certain period of time. This was added to asteroid recovery missions, base building missions, station building missions, and satellite deployment missions to prevent the mission from completing before the situation has...stabilized.

Adjusted the way that distance calculations to waypoints are calculated, specifically in regards to altitude. For aerial waypoints this means that you can now fly anywhere within the height envelope shown on the contract and still complete them. For rover contracts, it means that if a waypoint spawns at an odd height, it doesn't matter, as you just need to drive to the general area.

Drastically reduced the distance required to trigger rover waypoints. This was made possible by the previous change, and means that you now have to actually drive around within a rover cluster.

Fixed the cupola objective plaguing some station missions, a big thanks to Burkitt for helping me track this issue down.

Applied vigorous OCD to the usage of the word "the" before the words "Sun" or "Mun".

Rewrote cupola parameter to be more generic and now look for any specific part on a vessel, this allows me to use it for cupolas, or sensors, which I used in the satellite missions.

Fixed rover contracts taking over the contract board occasionally.

Flight and rover waypoints will no longer appear in the tracking station when their contracts have been completed.

Fixed random satellite deployment orbits extending beyond the sphere of influence of their planets, thus having impossible to reach orbits.

Added much more constrained orbits to the satellite deployment mission, which now includes random orbits, in addition to equatorial orbits, polar orbits, geosynchronous orbits, geostationary orbits, Molniya orbits, and tundra orbits. These are given out at appropriate difficulty levels.

Due to the aforementioned cupola change, satellite missions can now request part additions to the satellites. Harder missions have a higher chance to ask for this, and for now it includes any sensor type and the goo, as the goo is reminiscent of our fine frisky Russian gecko satellite friends.

Satellite missions will pay more as they get harder, they pay more based on location, they pay more based on how many parts they ask for, and what kind of orbit they ask you to deploy into.

• Removed references to "geo"stationary and "geo"synchronous orbits of anything other than Kerbin. They are now just stationary and synchronous orbits.
  
• In response to previous change, renamed geostationary and geosynchronous orbits around Kerbin to keostationary and keosynchronous.
  
• Introduced the terms keliostationary, keliosynchronous, and Kolniya for konsistency.
  
• Orbits no longer even consider generating at any inclination above 180 degrees. This fixes impossible to match orbits from appearing.
  
• Retrograde orbital objectives for Kerbin and the Sun are now much rarer at lower difficulties. For other bodies, they can still appear at random.
  
• Orbits are now generated when satellite deployment contracts are generated, rather than on every scene change. This is better for compatibility and performance, but more importantly, it allows me to show orbital parameters in the mission briefings for people that need to see numbers.
  
• Visual orbits got an art pass. Revolving icons are now much smaller, resulting in the appearance of a pulsing line. There are now icons for apoapsis and periapsis with accurate tooltips.
  
• If you are in orbit of a body with a satellite deployment contract orbit around it, ascending nodes and descending nodes will show on the mission orbit that show where you need to burn normal to match inclination. These also have appropriate tooltips.
  
• Tweaked how textures get loaded to save myself some RSI in the future.
  
• Tweaked some small backend stuff with existing waypoints - including ground and aerial.
  
• Tweaked the waypoint renderer.
  
• Tweaked some backend stuff with orbital parameters. All of this small tweaking will be important when I introduce configuration.
  
• Condensed all four orbit generators to one reusable one.
  
• Objective orbits now properly calculate specific angular momentum. Just nod your head and smile.
  
• Matching an orbit now requires you to also match argument of periapsis, fixing an issue where very rarely you could complete a contract using a vastly different orbit.

• ARM contracts doomed for Kerbin will now occasionally ask you to land instead of orbit with the asteroid.
  
• Stationary orbits now ask for you to orbit over a specific point with line of sight to it. Be within 45 degrees of that point to accomplish this objective. It will be shown as a new waypoint.
  
• To compensate for the added difficulty of stationary orbits, they were raised to exceptional prestige level, which has the added benefits of making them worth more, and making synchronous orbits more plentiful in the lower difficulties.
  
• Argument of periapsis checks are now skipped for perfectly round orbits.
  
• Ascending and descending nodes now show the proper relative inclination differences.
  
• There is currently a known issue with the board reset upon patching. Patching may or may not reset your contracts. If it does, any active contracts will be refreshed on the board upon patching. This is intended. If it does not, you will have goofy contracts for a few days of in game time. This is not intended. If you see any satellite contracts with 400KM apoapsis and periapsis, decline them so that new ones can generate. You should only see them once, if at all.

• Removed source from release packages. For blisteringly up to date source, please visit GitHub from now on.
  
• This patch will reset your contract boards, including any active contracts, but this reset is now optional. Please read below for more information regarding how patch resets work now.
  
• Added a configuration file that fully encompasses every setting that it possibly could for each contract type. This lets users balance each contract's functionality and rewards in a highly customizable fashion. The inputs are sanitized and if you choose an input that is invalid, it will choose a default value for you, so for the most part it is unbreakable. Do note however, that this level of control can allow you to create some weird behavior if you choose to do so.
  
• Due to the changes required for configuration, there was a full balance pass. You will notice that rewards in general have changed significantly, generally in the upwards direction. I did get second opinions on the balance pass, but as always, your opinion may vary. If this is the case, I encourage you to play with the balance by using the configuration file and let me know if you find something better on the official thread. If people find a more agreeable setting, I will incorporate it as default in future versions.
  
• Added In Situ Resource Utilization contracts (resource harvesting). Because these contracts require other mods, these contracts are disabled by default. To enable them, open the configuration, go to the "ISRU" section, and change "MaximumExistent" to something other than 0. I recommend 2. This section also allows you to customize what type of resource you want to harvest, and what technology unlocks cause the contract to start showing up. By default this is set up to utilize the Karbonite mod, but you can set it up to use any resource mod you want (Kethane, Extraplanetary Launchpads, etc). You can even set it up here to be able to use multiple resource types, if you change "Karbonite" to "Karbonite,Kethane,Metal,Water" etc. You can also forbid certain planets or celestial bodies from being the target of this contract.
  
• ISRU contracts will ask you to extract a certain amount of material from a certain location. Sometimes the contract ends there, but frequently you will also be asked to transport that material to a nearby location. Most of the time this will be planet to moon, or moon to planet. Delivery raises the rewards greatly.
  
• Changed how the patch reset works. It now only targets my contracts, rather than all contracts. Stock contracts and contracts added by other mods are no longer affected. It is also not not automatic, but rather, manually set by me in the configuration file if I feel like one is necessary. This gives the user a chance to opt out of the patch reset by changing PatchReset to False immediately after patching. This can cause undefined behavior, so I do not recommend it, but it is available if you wish to use it.
  
• Added low altitude contracts. These have a chance to spawn which is higher at lower prestige ratings, unless they are for a gas giant, in which case the chance is higher at higher prestige ratings. Low altitude contracts on gas giants provide a clear warning that it is likely a suicide contract.
  
• Added configuration option that allows users to add (or remove) parts from the satellite contract. If you are enabling ISRU contracts, adding resource scanners here might help you in future endeavours.
  
• Added a chance for aerial and rover contracts on Kerbin to spawn close to the space center. This is greater at lower prestige ratings.
  
• Added settings for each contract type that allow the user to disable those types if they want.
  
• Added settings for the names of each orbit type, for user preference.
  
• Display when an orbital parameter is being ignored or not, to prevent user confusion.
  
• Technology check now properly handles underscores.
  
• Added some new names to waypoint sites that spawn on Kerbin, and corrected a few site name typos.
  
• In an effort to improve compatibility with Real Solar System, removed all direct references to Kerbin, the Sun, and Jool. One reference remains for Aerial contracts, and that will be taken out in time as well.
  
• Fixed orbital waypoints and stationary point waypoints from spontaneously disappearing.
  
• Fixed equatorial and retro equatorial orbits from not matching.
  
• Fixed stationary waypoints from matching too much.
  
• Adjusted where ascending and descending nodes are shown on orbits such that they work better on highly eccentric ones.
  
• Fixed contract events not unregistering, causing reported issues with ARM contracts primarily.
  
• Fixed waypoint persistence, which could break between saving and loading due to Unity's random number generator not being seeded properly.
  
• Pulled station and base apart in the code such that they can be independently configured.
  
• Updated some internal loading functions to be much more specific when something goes wrong, to help with any future reports caused by misconfiguration.
  

Simple update for KSP version 0.25

Aerial Survey and Rover contracts have been merged into Survey contracts. These contracts still have a cluster of waypoints, but the waypoints each ask you to do an experiment on the ground, at low altitude, or at high altitude. These restrictions are very loose, and there are no restrictions on the player's vessel. This gives the player much more freedom in deciding how to approach each objective. High altitude waypoints can even be passed over in orbit if desired. Each waypoint might be at a different altitude, with a different experiment - even within the same contract, though generally the surveys are themed. Right now there are five "themes": temperature scans, visual surveys (crew reports, EVAs, surface samples), gravimetric scans, seismic scans, and atmospheric surveys, which include atmospheric analysis and pressure readings. Certain themes can only happen at certain altitudes, so atmospheric surveys are very similar to aerial surveys, and seismic surveys are very similar to rover contracts. Each objective completes the moment you initiate an experiment in the correct location. You are not required to transmit it, giving you the option of keeping the data and returning it to Kerbin. Overall, the system is much more robust.

• "Neutralize Controls" objective relaxed significantly. It should no longer matter if your controls are neutral, your trim is active, or if SAS is on. As long as the craft is stable, it will complete. Reworded text to make this clearer.
  
• Several contracts now scan the entire planetary terrain to calculate the highest peak before picking a periapsis or minimum height, resulting in less ballistic trajectories.
  
• Base and Station contracts will no longer target the same celestial bodies.
  
• Number of survey contracts available starts at half, and raises to the normal amount after the player leaves Kerbin. This is to prevent overcrowding the map, when surveys can only show up on one planet.
  
• Legacy atmospheres are now supported by Fine Print's calculations.
  
• When entering trigger zones for surveys, there is now a more visible message, and the navigation icon on the navball will blink while you are inside the zone.
  
• Since satellite contract deviation meant different things depending on if you were talking about angles or distances, it was removed in favor of more general phrasing, now you will be asked to meet the orbit with "reasonable", "marginal", or "minimal" deviation.
  
• Fixed a lot of glitchiness with orbital matching and display of ascending and descending nodes.
  
• Generated solar orbits are now more mod compatible.
  
• Ascending and descending node for target orbits now shows even when suborbital.
  

• Rescue contracts now slightly more interesting by using a gentle variant of the Fine Print orbit generator for harder contracts. This rarely creates time limited rescues, if the generated orbit encounters a moon. Easier contracts still generate as they did before, and are designated in the contract text as "Low Orbits".
  
• Unless it is your first flag on a planet, flag contracts will no longer appear for planets that have Kerbals on them already. Once the kerbals move off of the planet, they will appear again.
  
• All stock contracts other than the World First ones now have configurable availabilities and configurable rewards.
  
• Tweaked Part Test altitudes to be more compatible with modded celestial bodies.
  

• All stock and Fine Print contracts adjusted to be aware of facility upgrade status.
  
• ARM contracts will not show up until the Tracking Station can display asteroids.
  
• Flag contracts will not show up until the Astronaut Complex allows kerbals to plant flags.
  
• EVA objectives in visual surveys will not show up off of Kerbin until the Astronaut Complex allows EVAs off of Kerbin.
  
• Surface Sample objectives in visual surveys will not show up until R&D allows surface samples.
  
• All Fine Print contracts that are not surveys will no longer show up until the player has orbited Kerbin, to avoid interference with the tutorial contracts.
  
• Surveys show up pre-orbit much like part tests, but are tied to a special progression. They keep an eye on player progress, and start in "focused survey" mode, that will be a single waypoint survey that rewards the player for suborbital test launches. As the player progresses, these will open up into normal survey clusters. Note that while focused surveys are easier, you are not rewarded for the individual waypoints as you are with clusters. You only get contract completion rewards.
  
• ARM contracts will no longer appear until the player has orbited the sun.
  
• Base contracts weighted towards planets the player has landed on, though harder contracts may suggest ones he hasn't.
  
• Station and satellite contracts weighted towards planets the player has orbited, though harder contracts may suggest ones he hasn't.
  

• Waypoints are now displayed in a much more user friendly manner, with bubble pins, much like stock.
  
• The waypoint icon now represents the experiment required at that location.
  
• Waypoint colors should be more varied.
  
• Waypoints now have a fading animation when they pass behind the planet.
  
• Waypoints also fade out when you zoom away from a planet.
  
• Waypoints now display tooltips with the agency of the relevant contract, this is to make correlating the waypoint to a contract on the board easier.
  
• Waypoint tooltips are now colored based on contract status. Orange for offered but not active, green for active.
  
• Waypoint navigation activation and deactivation now pops up a menu, much like setting a target in stock.
  
• Waypoints now scan the terrain height before they pick an altitude. No more subterranean waypoints.
  
• Fixed half completed surveys showing all of their waypoints in the Tracking Station.
  

• Lowered site designation length slightly. (Site X1A-BAJKBDKB)
  
• Added a few more prefixes to non-unique sites for variety. (Area 51)
  
• Modified how site clustering works. Surveys can spawn a mixture of ground and aerial waypoints. If a survey spawns waypoints that are all on the ground, they will be designated alpha, beta, gamma, etc. If the survey is mixed, but there is more than one ground waypoint, they will form a designated cluster as well.
  
• Added a ridiculous number of new suffix names to the name generator.
  
• Suffix chosen now depends on planetary structure. Land names no longer appear on water, neutral names like "basin" no longer appear on the sun or gas giants.
  

• Fine Print's old configuration file can now be found in GameData/Squad/Contracts as Contracts.cfg
  
• Added Module Manager support.
  
• Added MODULE_DEFINITIONS section, which allows mod authors to inject their own modules for things, effectively removing all hard coded references to things like wheels, power sources, and antennae in Fine Print.
  
• Changed "FSWheel" to "FSwheel" fixing a long standing incompatibility with Firespitter.
  
• As previously mentioned, all stock contracts now have their own sections in the configuration file.
  
• Added PART_REQUESTS to station, base, and satellite contracts, allowing mod authors to add their own objectives to these contracts.
  
• Added RESOURCE_REQUESTS to ISRU contracts, allowing them to support more than one kind of resource. Added Karborundum and Karbonite examples.
  
• Added SURVEY_DEFINITIONS to Survey contracts, allowing mod authors to utilize the waypoint system for their own experiments.
  

• If errors get thrown, they are now more descriptive.
  
• Removed Fine Print's "patch reset".
  

Fine Print is stock! It has been integrated into the full game, and is no longer available as a mod. Launch the latest version of KSP to enjoy the features.

JUST DOWNLOAD IT ALREADY.

Check out source code on Github.

Licensed under GNU GPL v3

This mod does NOT gather any statistics. It just makes your game more awesome.

Edited December 16, 2014 by Arsonide
Added legacy download option and 0.90 changelog.

[safarley2901]

Seems like a really inventive mod, I'd love to try it. Waiting for DL links.

[biohazard15]

Looks interesting.

Does rover contract involve science? I.e. make a temperature reading at waypoint A, gravity scan at waypoint B, etc?

[Arsonide]

Looks interesting.

Does rover contract involve science? I.e. make a temperature reading at waypoint A, gravity scan at waypoint B, etc?

Not currently. It is the first implementation of the contract. You are searching for the source of an anomalous data point, a signal, or something along those lines. At each point you are given science, but you do not perform experiments currently.

[rabzoue59]

I like the sound of this mod, really ! it gives a new dimension of actually contracts. Well done, i wait for update of other big mods you know the routine, and get this one for sure .

thanks man

[Seshins]

yes! just the contracts ive been waiting for. Thank you good sir.

[porkmanvi]

If I'm currently using extra contracts and I've got a few contracts in progress from that mod, will it mess up my save if I delete Extra Contracts and replace it with Fine Print? Should I wait till I complete those before switching over to this mod?

[rynak]

First, if this is only delivers half of what it claims and the screenshot implies - holy *****! This could become just as gamechanging, as passenger transport and multiple landing sites.

Please note that the contracts do not appear until you can complete them. You need wheel technology for rover contracts, for instance.

The mod does not currently acknowledge any parts that implement modded modules, this will change in future versions.

Careful about this, please. Some people including me like to tweak the game and the techtree to their taste. It would be nice, if you would not hardcode specific parts or techfields into the source, but rather have a configfile, where we can specify criteria for conditions to be met. Something like:

// Rover tech is assumed to be available, if at least one of the following techfields are researched
rover_techfields = foo, bar, baz
// Rover tech is assumed available, if one of the following parts are researched
rover_parts = blub, blah

Even better would be, if the above were in a format that can be changed via modulemanager. This way, other mods can for example add their parts to the list.

[Arsonide]

If I'm currently using extra contracts and I've got a few contracts in progress from that mod, will it mess up my save if I delete Extra Contracts and replace it with Fine Print? Should I wait till I complete those before switching over to this mod?

The mod can ignore the extraneous data, but I don't recommend it. Go into your game, kill off the contracts, save, delete Extra Contracts, and install this.

Some people including me like to tweak the game and the techtree to their taste.

When the mod is looking for something like wheels, it looks for ModuleWheel, which means any wheel that implements the stock module, including any mods that do so. When it looks for part technology, it's looking for the name of the stock parts, so if you move it from one node of the tech tree to another, that won't matter, as long as the name of the part is the same. Moving them doesn't affect it, you would have to delete all of the stock antennae for it to not register antennae, for instance. There's probably a better way to do this, and I will look into it, but that is how it works now.

Edited July 28, 2014 by Arsonide

[Sarayakat]

This sounds great. Just what the contracts system needed. Now, keep your nose to the grindstone and keep developing. Let us hear no moaning about a place called "RL" or whatever. Where is that anyway, Rhode Island? Sri Lanka? Not important.

EDIT: Just kidding btw, thanks for sharing your work. Just wanted to make sure my attempt at humour doesn't offend. A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out...

Edited July 28, 2014 by Sarayakat

[BlazingAngel665]

It would be really cool if you could use Kerbtown to spawn interesting topography or geology at the sites you are visiting. Sorta like Easter eggs, but generic low poly models procedurally placed.

[helgeras]

This seems to be exactly what I wanted for contracts

What does "DELETE EXTRA CONTRACTS BEFORE INSTALLING" mean? Should I not have any active contracts when I install the mod?

Also, the warning on KerbalStuff: "The mod is still in development, it has become more stable over time, but I still recommend you back up your saves." makes me a bit nervous

Is there a risk that I will destroy my save files using this?

How long should I keep the backups before I am sure that the save is ok?

[Arsonide]

This seems to be exactly what I wanted for contracts

What does "DELETE EXTRA CONTRACTS BEFORE INSTALLING" mean? Should I not have any active contracts when I install the mod?

Also, the warning on KerbalStuff: "The mod is still in development, it has become more stable over time, but I still recommend you back up your saves." makes me a bit nervous

Is there a risk that I will destroy my save files using this?

How long should I keep the backups before I am sure that the save is ok?

"Extra Contracts" was the name of this mod as I was developing it. I changed the name when I released, to "Fine Print". That line is saying to delete the old mod before installing the new one. As far as your saves go, that is up to you. Personally I have not had any save corruption issues during development, and I've done a lot of crazy stuff during debug, so don't be too worried about it. The mod is quite stable now. I'm just putting that message there as a general advisement, I would advise that with any mod really.

I will rephrase some things, thank you for your feedback.

Edited July 28, 2014 by Arsonide

[helgeras]

Thanks for the quick reply. I kinda guessed it just was just a standard disclaimer, but just wanted to be sure.

I am going to try it out now, thanks for making this!

[lodestar]

Well... I started a new game to test it, and I get a lot of aerial survey contracts, filling all my list. Even if I decline them, another aerial survey takes its place and I have to cancel many of them to see anything else.

[steve_v]

Just had to say: This Rocks :-)

Thanks dude.

[rynak]

Is there a risk that I will destroy my save files using this?

Umm, you're playing kerbal space program - the game where anything and everything might randomly be eaten by the space kraken, and where people crash into planets by merely walking on their surface.

Your save is at risk anyways, regardless of if/which mods you're playing, so unless you about every two hours or so zip up your current saves dir, and name it saves###.zip, you will loose dozens of hours of gameplay eventually.

What you should instead be asking is, if this mod might cause you to invest a lot of effort into something you can't feasibly finish anyways. For kerbin-related missions, i'd say no. For anything interplanetary, i would say "why? but OF COURSE!"... after all, interplanetary missions aren't something you can do in a few kerbin days. Until this mod is stable, i'd say: Don't take a specific interplanetary mission, until you're about to go there anyways. This way, even if it turns out you can't finish the contract, you don't end up empty handed.

[Arsonide]

Well... I started a new game to test it, and I get a lot of aerial survey contracts, filling all my list. Even if I decline them, another aerial survey takes its place and I have to cancel many of them to see anything else.

Typically that's how missions work, if you cancel one, a lot of the time he will generate a similar one to take it's place. If you have wings unlocked, aerial missions will be offered to you, I think you just got the luck of the draw on getting a lot of them. In a future version I plan on adding "chances" for missions to show up, to decrease the appearance of certain ones that are hard, like ARM and station/base building, those should be rarer.

However, without wing technology they don't show up, I just tested that on my end by starting a new game and going past the tutorials. Are you saying you don't have wings unlocked and they are still popping up?

Until this mod is stable

I wouldn't have released it without being sure of it's stability. I tested it for over a week on my rig, but I'm also wise to the fact that people have different computers and that random edge cases will show up. The code is designed to react to these situations intelligently even if they do happen, and even to happen they would require a user to like, go into their saves directory and start modifying values manually. Trust me, I sanitized everything against these cases when I had a chance. I mainly put that note there so that if an edge case did pop up, someone would post about it, and I'd know it happened.

Edited July 28, 2014 by Arsonide

[rynak]

Arsonide: How about not only imposing a chance, but also a maximum limit? That is, if there are already N missions of a given type, don't add more? The cap might not even be missiontype specific.... say, no more than 4 unaccepted extra missions of the same type?

[Catullus]

It'd be nice to be able to opt out of certain types of contracts, but that's really more suited to the base game level, not in this mod. Great concept, I'll be trying it out for sure.

[nismobg]

Can you make contracts to map the easter eggs around planets with rovers or build bases nearby?

[veryinky]

However, without wing technology they don't show up, I just tested that on my end by starting a new game and going past the tutorials. Are you saying you don't have wings unlocked and they are still popping up?

Can confirm, 5 of my missions are aerial survey, I have Stability and Flight Control technology which give "winglets" but don't have Aerodynamics or Flight which give actual wings (and jet engines).

I do have rover wheels unlocked and it gave me a mission to drive a rover to explore 23 areas on Kerbin, for 3750$ and 8 science each.

Neat, though 23 locations?

[Arsonide]

I will look into restricting the aerial surveys to higher technology levels.

Still balancing the numbers, remember, a rover mission ends when you find the right point, you don't have to go to all of them. Higher difficulty levels do get more waypoints and slightly further apart. However, you get rewarded with each one you pass through, which can get really profitable if it takes you a while to find the right one.

Edited July 28, 2014 by Arsonide

[Jasonden]

Was enjoying "Extra Contracts", and have been impressed with the mod and your efficiency in adding to it! Will try this ASAP.

[Arsonide]

The next mission is going to be satellite deployment. I've already begun work on rendering the target orbit that the agency wants you to be in on the map:

Yes I realize that's a wide orbit for a satellite.

Also I'm keeping a close eye on the feedback you guys are providing, and tweaks to mission availability and difficulty will be present as well.

Edited July 28, 2014 by Arsonide