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

[BudgetHedgehog]

For konsistency I also threw in keliostationary, keliosynchronous, and Kolniya.

Please, I implore you.. rethink this. Those are god-awful. Keosynchronous etc, I can (almost) stand that - I'd prefer Kerbosynchronous ("Geo-" refers to "land, earth" etc and is Ancient Greek (from Gaia, the embodiment of Earth)). Unless you're suggesting Kerbals had a similar language and history to the Greeks, "Keo-" makes no sense. "Kerbo-" makes more sense because it at least sounds like it come from the word "Kerbin", which is where "Geo-" comes from - Gaia.

I could go on and on about the "K-Syndrome" and how much I really dislike it, but pls.. no keliostationary..

Kolniya is fine, by the way. Molniya was named after a certain set of satellites, it's pretty difficult to come up with a completely random name and hope people understand you mean Molniya, so yeah, whatever, Kolniya.. but jeez, keliosynchronous.. Just synchronous and stationary do fine..

[Jaxx]

I like it. People obsessed with realism would do well to obsess on a more realistic game, and not bring their obsessions to bear against other people.

[arkie87]

Looks awesome! Will definately download.

What about new rescue missions from orbits/surface of other planets/moons?

[Arsonide]

I have released 0.56a. It'll appear on Curse when it is approved, and it is on KerbalStuff now.

This patch will reset your contract board, finish any active contracts you care about.

Here are the changes:

• This patch does modify what gets saved in satellite deployment contract save data. As such, the contract board will get a courtesy reset when you patch. Please finish any contracts you are actively working on before patching.
  
• 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.
  

I could go on and on about the "K-Syndrome" and how much I really dislike it, but pls.. no keliostationary..

I could go on and on about how it really doesn't matter for a game about green space men that live on a planet called Kerbin. It's fun, I like it, and it was in the wind before you posted. Enjoy it. If I get enough feedback against it, it'll change.

Edited August 17, 2014 by Arsonide

[BudgetHedgehog]

This patch will reset your contract board, finish any active contracts you care about.

Again?! I haven't even upgraded to the previous version because there were a few outstanding contracts I wanted to complete but real life was against me (hooray for 60-hour work weeks...) but if I had upgraded, I'd need another contract wipe? Wow.. Is this going to be a regular thing?

I could go on and on about how it really doesn't matter for a game about green space men that live on a planet called Kerbin. It's fun, I like it, and it was in the wind before you posted. Enjoy it. If I get enough feedback against it, it'll change.

Fair enough, it's your mod, after all. I've given my feedback on it, I still have it installed and will likely keep it installed because hey, more contracts.. But yeah, your mod, you decide what to do.

Just a side note: I don't mean to come across as arrogant or anything, that's not the intention. I'm just writing stuff and it isn't really being passed through a filter because that part of my brain isn't working right today, it seems. Had to give interviews and I swear to god, my mouth was on autopilot...

[Matt_Sharkey]

Hey just tried out the 0.56A and one major issue is aligning the ascending node to 0 degrees lat. especially when the orbit is an equatorial one. im having a huge problem trying to accomplish this on minimus.

[Arsonide]

Again?! I haven't even upgraded to the previous version because there were a few outstanding contracts I wanted to complete but real life was against me (hooray for 60-hour work weeks...) but if I had upgraded, I'd need another contract wipe? Wow.. Is this going to be a regular thing?

Contract wipes actually aren't required, but a bunch of goofy things start happening if you don't, because things initialize to default values if they can't find save data. For instance, all orbits would be equatorial for a few days of in game time until new contracts generated. For the first few versions I put this in big bold letters every patch: Manually wipe or expect goofiness. However, I still got false bug reports for goofy things, and it was cutting into my development time, tracking down these non-issues. Thus, any time new save data is encountered, I force a contract wipe. Configuration is coming soon, and I can make this a setting that you can disable, but I do not recommend it.

It probably will be necessary for about half of the patches, if I had to estimate. There have been a few where it was not necessary. In this particular patch, I had to move the orbit generation up to the contract from the parameter, and pass the data down through the save file, because people requested the ability to see the data in the contract text, thus modifying the save data, and forcing a reset.

Fair enough, it's your mod, after all.

I weigh feedback a lot more than my own thoughts. It's guided several whole features. The whole satellite deployment contract was something I'd planned to do later, but it came now because of feedback. Sometimes feedback goes both ways. With "geostationary" I was getting feedback both ways. In these instances, I have to "average" the feedback, and I got much more feedback in favor of K-Syndrome in this instance. Personally I like geostationary, but keostationary is fun, and if I'm going to use that, I want consistency across the board. The people said keostationary, for the most part. On the forums and in the chat rooms, so that's what I went with.

Hey just tried out the 0.56A and one major issue is aligning the ascending node to 0 degrees lat. especially when the orbit is an equatorial one. im having a huge problem trying to accomplish this on minimus.

LAN checks are skipped and autopassed for inclinations under 1 degrees. I've got your back!

Edited August 17, 2014 by Arsonide

[Matt_Sharkey]

LAN checks are skipped and autopassed for inclinations under 1 degrees. I've got your back!

Okay, my problem may reside in the fact that it was a contract from 0.55A.....I'm a bad boy.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I'm going to repost some contract type ideas I had from the old thread so others can peruse and/or add ideas. The more varied the contracts we can get, the better.

Satellite repair/maintanence.

Rendevous with, and EVA within' X meters of a generic spawned satellite in orbit.

- Either EVA within' X distance for Y amount of minutes, or grab on to a ladder attached to the satellite. This is only to cater to stock. Reliance on mods like KAS could be troublesome otherwise.

- The satellite despawns once the contract is complete and the player leaves the loading distance. This is to prevent clutter from multiple finished contracts.

- The mission fails of the satellite is disturbed from its orbit (within' sane bounds of course), or even outright stolen. And there is a followup penalty that is DOUBLE if the player completes the contract, but then turns around and yoinks the sat in order to make money off the 'recovered' parts.

Satellite Recovery

- Similar to a 'rescue X kerman' mission. Except instead of an easy to move crew capsule, the player gets the arduous task of figuring out how to build a vehicle that can pluck a satellite of contract-specified parameters out of orbit and return it safely to the ground.

- The monetary stipend for this mission is lower, but is offset by the recovery value of the satellite itself.

- The size and mass of the satellite is bounded to a few tons max to keep things reasonable.

Seismic Test

- A two part mission where the player must first land a seismograph on the surface of a specific body. Then the player must crash a second vehicle of a specified minimum mass into the ground within a few kilometers distance, above say, 100 meters per second. (Or other reasonable speed.)

- The payout is heavy on the science, but low on money and rep.

Site Specific Landing

- Very simple. Land at these coordinates via any means. (May require some creative finagling with landing designs depending on the terrain.

- We said LAND, not drive. Point of transition from flying to landing must be within' the error radius of the landing site.

- Error radius size determined by a difficulty scalar.

- Additional parameter for landing and the lander having to actually survive for a few seconds, up to ten minutes. (To ensure the player designs a lander that doesn't immediately tip over and/or fall apart.)

- Slope checking if possible. (Kind of dumb to land on the side of a cliff.)

Tight Budget Mission

- Special variation of any other contract specifically to be difficult. The mission must be done without the launch vehicle exceeding a specific launch cost. The agency contracting you can't pay otherwise.

- Payout in money for this mission is break-even, but earns significant reputation points.

- The penalties for this mission are much lighter than normal. The agency contracting you know it's hard, and won't be surprised if you fail.

-- Even better if the mission can be built to handle mission success, but failure in the budget handling. (With a penalty related to how much cost overrun there was.)

[Arsonide]

Please, I implore you.. rethink this. Those are god-awful. Keosynchronous etc

I had a great idea in modder chat come up. Since I am implementing configuration next, I will put these strings into the configuration file to allow customization. That would satisfy everyone.

[Renegrade]

I had a great idea in modder chat come up. Since I am implementing configuration next, I will put these strings into the configuration file to allow customization. That would satisfy everyone.

I don't suppose the configuration could involve an option to change the amount of science we get from contracts? Could be simple like a scaling factor - 1.0 being normal, 0.5 being half, 0.0 being none, 2.0 being double, etc.

Pretty please?

[Arsonide]

I don't suppose the configuration could involve an option to change the amount of science we get from contracts? Could be simple like a scaling factor - 1.0 being normal, 0.5 being half, 0.0 being none, 2.0 being double, etc.

Pretty please?

Reputation, Science, and funds will be tweakable on a per contract basis, and you'll be able to tweak how many contracts can pop up for each type as well. This will actually allow users to help me balance things.

[Renegrade]

Reputation, Science, and funds will be tweakable on a per contract basis, and you'll be able to tweak how many contracts can pop up for each type as well. This will actually allow users to help me balance things.

Oh, sweet! That sounds great, thanks!

By the way, regarding the contract resetting - should I just kill the satellite ones prior to installing, or all of 'em?

[Arsonide]

Oh, sweet! That sounds great, thanks!

By the way, regarding the contract resetting - should I just kill the satellite ones prior to installing, or all of 'em?

I will kill them for you. There's no need to do anything. The message was just a warning that they will be killed. All contracts get affected.

[Advacar]

So I was about to come in and complain about accepting two of the same orbit mission, because I to guess which of the orbits was the correct one (and got it wrong). But, it looks like the new version adds specific numbers, which is great. Thanks!

[Xaidian]

So I may being showing myself as the rocket newb that I am but I am having trouble figuring this out:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/110197558/screenshot5.png

I have a contract to place a Satellite around Kerbin.

Apo 400,000m

Per 400,000m

Inclination 0

Longitude of Asc Node 0

5% Deviation limit

I have matched the Equatorial Orbit as indicated with a very tight 400,000m +/-50m Satellite.

However the orbit is not checked as satisfied.

The Ascending Node tooltip reads 106.6 degrees. I have no idea why.

The Descending Node reads -73.4 degrees. Again, no idea.

I might be wrong but it seems that if I zero out the ascending node I will still be left with 180 degree descending node.

I am not sure how to satisfy the requirements of the contract.

[Arsonide]

So I may being showing myself as the rocket newb that I am but I am having trouble figuring this out:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/110197558/screenshot5.png

I have a contract to place a Satellite around Kerbin.

Apo 400,000m

Per 400,000m

Inclination 0

Longitude of Asc Node 0

5% Deviation limit

I have matched the Equatorial Orbit as indicated with a very tight 400,000m +/-50m Satellite.

However the orbit is not checked as satisfied.

The Ascending Node tooltip reads 106.6 degrees. I have no idea why.

The Descending Node reads -73.4 degrees. Again, no idea.

I might be wrong but it seems that if I zero out the ascending node I will still be left with 180 degree descending node.

I am not sure how to satisfy the requirements of the contract.

Those numbers look suspicious. Your briefing says "A specific orbit" around Kerbin, which means this was a randomly generated one, but 0 eccentricity, 0 inclination, and 0 LAN? Buy me a lottery ticket if that was randomly generated. If not, something went wrong. Was this orbit typed into the save file manually? The ascending node and descending node are behaving as they should. They mean less on equatorial orbits, and behave oddly, but they are 180 degrees from each other, which is normal behavior. The stock AN and DN nodes show a range from -180 to 180 instead of 0 to 360, so that is what I did with my nodes. I have some questions:

1. Are you going in the right direction? Is your orbit spinning in the same direction as the spinners?

2. Is this an old contract that you had pre patch by chance? (This should not be possible, but it's always good to cover my bases.)

3. How exactly (be specific) did you accept this orbit, and approach it? Did you close the program at any time between accepting the contract and going into the flight, or do anything else similar to that?

4. Can I see a save file?

EDIT: I have a theory...when inclination gets below 1 I autopass LAN checks, because it is hard to see differences in LAN at that low inclination. In this patch I added a check against argument of periapsis into the orbit matching logic, but you have eccentricity of 0, so your argument of periapsis is going to be hard to match, I'd think. Perhaps another automatch is coming to a hotfix near you.

Edited August 18, 2014 by Arsonide

[Zach9236]

So I may being showing myself as the rocket newb that I am but I am having trouble figuring this out:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/110197558/screenshot5.png

I have a contract to place a Satellite around Kerbin.

Apo 400,000m

Per 400,000m

Inclination 0

Longitude of Asc Node 0

5% Deviation limit

I have matched the Equatorial Orbit as indicated with a very tight 400,000m +/-50m Satellite.

However the orbit is not checked as satisfied.

The Ascending Node tooltip reads 106.6 degrees. I have no idea why.

The Descending Node reads -73.4 degrees. Again, no idea.

I might be wrong but it seems that if I zero out the ascending node I will still be left with 180 degree descending node.

I am not sure how to satisfy the requirements of the contract.

I see your SAS is toggled on. To complete "put ... over at ... " style contracts I've had to toggle it off for a fair amount of time.

[Xaidian]

1. Are you going in the right direction? Is your orbit spinning in the same direction as the spinners?

2. Is this an old contract that you had pre patch by chance? (This should not be possible, but it's always good to cover my bases.)

3. How exactly (be specific) did you accept this orbit, and approach it? Did you close the program at any time between accepting the contract and going into the flight, or do anything else similar to that?

4. Can I see a save file?

EDIT: I have a theory...when inclination gets below 1 I autopass LAN checks, because it is hard to see differences in LAN at that low inclination. In this patch I added a check against argument of periapsis into the orbit matching logic, but you have eccentricity of 0, so your argument of periapsis is going to be hard to match, I'd think. Perhaps another automatch is coming to a hotfix near you.

Thanks for the reply and Edit.

The edit I'll leave to you because I really only kinda understood it.

Your previous questions I will answer as I can:

1 - I am pretty sure I am going the correct direction. hopefully the save file will bear that out.

2 - This was a new contract.

3 - However, when I changed to this version I had an old contract out for a polar orbit that was incomplete at the time of change. It morphed into a contract almost exactly like this one (same parameters and on screen guides) but with a goo can requirement. I canceled that one and took another SAT contract and go this one. I cannot reliably remember if I closed the program at any point. I do not remember doing so until I tried to match it once. After that I reset and reloaded to see if it was an error.

4 - The save information is here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/110197558/quicksave%20%233.sfs

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/110197558/persistent.sfs

This is the vessel used though the save should have that:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/110197558/Mercury%20II.craft

I will say that I am running a lot of mods but none of them deal with the contract system to my knowledge. If you want a full list I could rez it up.

The vessel on this mission should be made from stock parts entirely. It should be flying still under the Mercury II designation from the Tracking Station.

[JeffreyCor]

Just thought I'd add it, I also got a contract to put a satellite into a specific orbit and it also has 0 inclination, 400,000m Ap and 400,000m Pe just like Xaidian reported. Maybe a good time to get the lotto ticket

[Arsonide]

Just thought I'd add it, I also got a contract to put a satellite into a specific orbit and it also has 0 inclination, 400,000m Ap and 400,000m Pe just like Xaidian reported. Maybe a good time to get the lotto ticket

If you guys don't mind, how soon after patching did you get these missions? The matching logic I can see, this is more concerning, because these are default values for orbits, meaning you are not loading the generated values properly.

I need to hotfix this pronto.

[Renegrade]

If you guys don't mind, how soon after patching did you get these missions? The matching logic I can see, this is more concerning, because these are default values for orbits, meaning you are not loading the generated values properly.

I need to hotfix this pronto.

I've got one of those missions too, it showed up very quickly. It was possibly there as soon as I loaded.. but it was one of the first I accepted for sure. I have a satellite there within a twentyth of a percent-ish, and it refuses to acknowledge the orbit match.

I've been cancelling through a bunch of them, and none of the others are showing that 400km/0/0 business, if that helps.

Oh - one thing I noted, I did successfully complete a very eccentric orbit one, but it was lying about the An/Dn figures on the tooltip thingies. It completed properly when I visually matched the orbit, but the tooltip for the An was saying like 124-ish degrees :S

Edited August 18, 2014 by Renegrade

[Flanders]

Please, I implore you.. rethink this. Those are god-awful. Keosynchronous etc, I can (almost) stand that - I'd prefer Kerbosynchronous ("Geo-" refers to "land, earth" etc and is Ancient Greek (from Gaia, the embodiment of Earth)). Unless you're suggesting Kerbals had a similar language and history to the Greeks, "Keo-" makes no sense. "Kerbo-" makes more sense because it at least sounds like it come from the word "Kerbin", which is where "Geo-" comes from - Gaia.

I could go on and on about the "K-Syndrome" and how much I really dislike it, but pls.. no keliostationary..

Kolniya is fine, by the way. Molniya was named after a certain set of satellites, it's pretty difficult to come up with a completely random name and hope people understand you mean Molniya, so yeah, whatever, Kolniya.. but jeez, keliosynchronous.. Just synchronous and stationary do fine..

Could not agree more, please no "add K to every word"-sillyness.

[Kaa253]

Reputation, Science, and funds will be tweakable on a per contract basis, and you'll be able to tweak how many contracts can pop up for each type as well. This will actually allow users to help me balance things.

This sound wonderful.

I use Fine Print together with Mission Controller 2 (MC2) as do others from what I have read on the forum. In MC2 I have opted for "hard core" mode which makes all your craft up to 6 times more expensive. This is great for balance against the stock game contracts which pay far far too much and hence would give me no economy management challenge to my career whatsoever. Fine Print by default currently has sensible contract funds payouts compared to the stock contracts but when used in combination with the hard core multiplier I cannot do many of your contracts without making a significant loss. So I do them anyway as they rock

With tweakable funds (and assuming I stay with the MC2 hard core setting) I could multiply all your funds rewards by a factor of about 4X (a first guess). The aim being to make about half of them just marginally profitable.

[Arsonide]

I've got one of those missions too, it showed up very quickly. It was possibly there as soon as I loaded.. but it was one of the first I accepted for sure. I have a satellite there within a twentyth of a percent-ish, and it refuses to acknowledge the orbit match.

I've been cancelling through a bunch of them, and none of the others are showing that 400km/0/0 business, if that helps.

Oh - one thing I noted, I did successfully complete a very eccentric orbit one, but it was lying about the An/Dn figures on the tooltip thingies. It completed properly when I visually matched the orbit, but the tooltip for the An was saying like 124-ish degrees :S

The ascending node tooltip is going to go all over the place when your inclination is similar to the inclination you are matching. Before you matched inclinations, was the ascending node icon in the correct location?