stoani96 Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Hey guys!Awesome Mod! The best, i would say, it just adds a lot more sense to the game, great work! But i have one question:How do planetary bases work? Has it to be one single building (craft) or is it possible to make, for instance, a Lab-Module and beside this two living-modules? Do they have to be connected?I just realized that there are two seperate mission points to accomplish (build lab and facillity for 6 Kerbals), so i guess that it is possible to set up a base with multiple (2) buildings... .is that right?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spheniscine Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 I think they have to be connected as one craft, whether it is built that way or docked together. The mission points are separate but must all be fulfilled simultaneously; they uncomplete as soon as your active vessel doesn't meet the criterion (similar to part testing missions). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arsonide Posted October 21, 2014 Author Share Posted October 21, 2014 I know exactly what is occurring in that image with the asteroid! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scottiths Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 (edited) Is there a way to zoom in super far on the map or a way to get actual directions to a waypoint? I have been driving this rover aimlessly trying to hit the points, and I don't really have any idea where they are...Nevermind. I figured it out. Edited October 22, 2014 by Scottiths Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcirish3 Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Congrats on the announcement for integration with 0.90, way to go! One of the best mods out there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitchz95 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Just had an idea for a new contract: send a probe out of the solar system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spheniscine Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Is there a way to zoom in super far on the map or a way to get actual directions to a waypoint? I have been driving this rover aimlessly trying to hit the points, and I don't really have any idea where they are...Nevermind. I figured it out.I find rover waypoints kinda difficult to work with... the navball points skyward, and the "correct" position for the waypoint ends up being at the bottom, hidden by the heading indicator... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arsonide Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 I find rover waypoints kinda difficult to work with... the navball points skyward, and the "correct" position for the waypoint ends up being at the bottom, hidden by the heading indicator...Try to rotate your root part by 90 degrees. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shand Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Try to rotate your root part by 90 degrees.I'd second this.my advise would be to construct all rovers in the SPH, use selectroot (one of my essential mods), and put the whole rover in the subassembly section... go over to the VAB and put it on ya rocket (if desired). your rover will point in the right direction, have bilateral symetry and be on top of a rocket. the subassembly option is a massive plus for me of the latest builds of KSP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigD145 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Just had an idea for a new contract: send a probe out of the solar system.We already have "send a newly discovered asteroid out of the solar system". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitchz95 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 We already have "send a newly discovered asteroid out of the solar system".But that's not a probe, is it? If a company is willing to pay for a lump of rock being flung away from Kerbol, why not a simple scientific probe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul23 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Does this mod allow for "more rescue missions"; In some way I like them, but they're always nearly the same (equatorial orbit around 100km height of kerbin). Would be fun to have much more variance here (not only kerbin, but also mun, minmus, duna etc etc (even solar? - that would take many years to fullfill though). Would just love to have a bit variance there instead of always the same type of orbits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arsonide Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 But that's not a probe, is it? If a company is willing to pay for a lump of rock being flung away from Kerbol, why not a simple scientific probe?I try to avoid "functional overlap" where the player is doing the same thing with different objects. That's the primary reason satellite contracts give you an orbit to match rather than a specific position to rendezvous with. Rescue contracts already function as a rendezvous contract, so turning the satellite contract into another rendezvous contract would not have been fun. Lots of people know how to use the UI features to rendezvous with something, and it's surprising how many of them don't know how burns actually affect their orbital trajectory. Satellite contracts give those people an opportunity to learn, and everybody else an opportunity to do something new and different.Does this mod allow for "more rescue missions"; In some way I like them, but they're always nearly the same (equatorial orbit around 100km height of kerbin). Would be fun to have much more variance here (not only kerbin, but also mun, minmus, duna etc etc (even solar? - that would take many years to fullfill though). Would just love to have a bit variance there instead of always the same type of orbits.This issue is why I had to write my own orbit generator for satellite contracts. It's a great idea, but I am not sure what can be done about it at this time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul23 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I try to avoid "functional overlap" where the player is doing the same thing with different objects. That's the primary reason satellite contracts give you an orbit to match rather than a specific position to rendezvous with. Rescue contracts already function as a rendezvous contract, so turning the satellite contract into another rendezvous contract would not have been fun. Lots of people know how to use the UI features to rendezvous with something, and it's surprising how many of them don't know how burns actually affect their orbital trajectory. Satellite contracts give those people an opportunity to learn, and everybody else an opportunity to do something new and different.This issue is why I had to write my own orbit generator for satellite contracts. It's a great idea, but I am not sure what can be done about it at this time.Can't you just "change" the orbits of lost kerbals once they are generated? - Heck I could do it by file editing the save file. As for orbital overlaps: would be best if you saw a "line" to your current spaceship's orbit from the inclination points.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bdito Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I don't know if this has been asked before but is it possible to make contracts that build off previously completed contracts? An example would be to build a very basic space station (ie, just a command pod with electricity & power generation) and then a following contract that adds other parts to it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spyre2000 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 The "problem" with rescue kerbal missions is that if you have TAC LS installed you can't do anything more than orbit around Kerbin because the Kerbals would die before you arrived there. However this does bring me to some other mission types that are also sort of rendezvous. 1) Besides Kerbals can you spawn in ships? If so putting a Kerbal in one of those would potentially be great for TAC LS issue. 2) Have rendezvous with an adrift probe that has some science part on it and docking port, you have to dock and transmit it's information. 3) Can you use existing ships as reference points for a contract? For example say previous contract was to setup a station and now are offered one to expand it's crew capacity, add research module, add science equipment, resupply(aka dock so it's total fuel/food/water/etc increases to curtain level) and so on. 4) If you can't do orbits on Kerbals can you just drop them on a planet so we have to land and pick them up? 5) Taxi/Ferry missions... can you have it so you have to take kerbal to someplace other than Kerbin? So you have to get the kerbal then take him to specific location on another planet. I try to avoid "functional overlap" where the player is doing the same thing with different objects. That's the primary reason satellite contracts give you an orbit to match rather than a specific position to rendezvous with. Rescue contracts already function as a rendezvous contract, so turning the satellite contract into another rendezvous contract would not have been fun. Lots of people know how to use the UI features to rendezvous with something, and it's surprising how many of them don't know how burns actually affect their orbital trajectory. Satellite contracts give those people an opportunity to learn, and everybody else an opportunity to do something new and different.Variety is the spice of life though. Doing the same or similar thing with different objects gives a bit more variety. Otherwise like with the probe missions I pretty much built one cheap probe design and just keep sending it up into orbit. Thus far the only shake up I've seen is it once required me to have a Goo container on board and I didn't notice that because after half a dozen probe launches before it hadn't change. You say you want people to learn from the contracts, or at least imply it with talk of learning how to do orbits on probe missions, well necessity is the mother of invention and if you change up the requirements it forces people to build new designs. That said I think the send a probe out of the solar system is a bad mission contract because it's practically a free-be. In the stock game there are 2 types of missions I accept every time because they are free-bes. First is test part while landed, just put on launch pad thrust at 0 then active and collect reward. The second is part test escape trajectory from kerbin, this is because you just slap an unman probe control on a bunch of cheap solid state boosters plus the part that needs testing and launch straight up. I think the developers intended you to do it the normal way of going into orbit then leaving put this way is more fuel efficient and it doesn't matter where your going you just have to be leaving orbit. After that you test the part and collect your reward. The probe out of solar system is basically the same thing, throw a ton of delta-v on a ship and go straight. No real challenge or interesting gameplay there.Now if you could actually track individual ships on some level that opens up options. So if the leave the solar system mission was more a voyager style endeavor that would be great. So it's mission is to do a fly by within a curtain distance of a couple planets or moons before leaving the solar system that could be interesting, try to teach people to do gravity assist maneuvers as that will be the more efficient way to accomplish the contract. I have quite a few ideas for contracts but not sure how feasible they are given what you may or may not be able to keep track of and do with the contract system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spheniscine Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 (edited) As for orbital overlaps: would be best if you saw a "line" to your current spaceship's orbit from the inclination points..Yeah that is currently missing; however I have learned a kinda crude way of finding your ascending/descending nodes: position your camera so that both your current orbit and your target orbit look like straight lines (you should end up viewing right through the center of the orbited body). The "intersection" is your ascending/descending node.While we're talking about rescue missions, they need more variety. I suppose having the first one or two be the relatively easy "low near-circular near-equatorial orbit around Kerbin" would be fine (learning to rendezvous is difficult enough for a new player, heck, I should know), but after that the game needs to start throwing some curveballs at you... highly inclined, high orbit, retrograde, highly eccentric, or around other bodies, or any combination of these, (or even, if you want to be truly nasty, "escape trajectory out of Kerbin"? Or even "collision course with Kerbin" [wow I'm evil; think about how bad people'll feel passing up those missions]) with correspondingly increased rewards.At the very least it'd allow me to add more rescue crosses to my ribbon without "accidentally" stranding kerbals for that Edited October 23, 2014 by Spheniscine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitchz95 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 The "problem" with rescue kerbal missions is that if you have TAC LS installed you can't do anything more than orbit around Kerbin because the Kerbals would die before you arrived there.Kerbals that spawn in space are classified as SpaceObjects until you get within 2.3km of them. So TAC Life Support isn't an issue until it's classified as an EVA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spheniscine Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 (edited) Try to rotate your root part by 90 degrees.I'd second this.my advise would be to construct all rovers in the SPH, use selectroot (one of my essential mods), and put the whole rover in the subassembly section... go over to the VAB and put it on ya rocket (if desired). your rover will point in the right direction, have bilateral symetry and be on top of a rocket. the subassembly option is a massive plus for me of the latest builds of KSP.But it won't fit the Rovemate or whatever chassis I try to build that way; it's difficult enough to keep this thing from flipping over as it is >.< Edited October 23, 2014 by Spheniscine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spyre2000 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 (edited) Kerbals that spawn in space are classified as SpaceObjects until you get within 2.3km of them. So TAC Life Support isn't an issue until it's classified as an EVA.TAC LS calculates the LS resources used since the kerbal appeared. I have had several Kerbals INSTANTLY die when I got within 2.3Km because they ran out of supplies. So sure you can wait YEARS to go rescue them but once you enter range and LS updates they die.EDIT: I do recall the mod thread mentioning this problem when contracts were added and I thought the mod author said something about increasing the supplies on a kerbal to allow for extended EVAs. But unless something else changed in that lastest TAC LS patch kerbals for rescue mission die if you wait to long to pick them up. Edited October 23, 2014 by Spyre2000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wanderfound Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I try to avoid "functional overlap" where the player is doing the same thing with different objects.While I endorse the desire not to have too much repetitive stuff, you're missing a lot of possible variety here. Each contract type could be tweaked into several related variations, expanding the possibilities without necessarily inducing any more repetition.Satellite placement contracts: differing equipment requirements, self-propelled or not, differing scientific payloads, leave-in-place vs place-then-retrieve.Aerial survey: you're already varying location and height (a bit, I'd like to see individual altitudes per waypoint). Adding time requirements and equipment delivery/retrieval can expand these into racing, rescue, firefighting, urgent supply, emergency delivery, etc.Rover survey: similar variability to above. Adding the requirement for heavy equipment delivery or retrieval could turn these into trucking contracts. "Deliver this 100t rocket by ground to the final testing workshop".You get the idea.Pushing an asteroid out of the solar system is fun. So is firing off an interstellar probe. Why not have both?- - - Updated - - -TAC LS calculates the LS resources used since the kerbal appeared. I have had several Kerbals INSTANTLY die when I got within 2.3Km because they ran out of supplies. So sure you can wait YEARS to go rescue them but once you enter range and LS updates they die.EDIT: I do recall the mod thread mentioning this problem when contracts were added and I thought the mod author said something about increasing the supplies on a kerbal to allow for extended EVAs. But unless something else changed in that lastest TAC LS patch kerbals for rescue mission die if you wait to long to pick them up.I had no problem rescuing kerbals from orbit with TAC-LS. Just don't dawdle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spheniscine Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I had no problem rescuing kerbals from orbit with TAC-LS. Just don't dawdle.Unless rescue contracts get expanded to include high orbit or other bodies Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arsonide Posted October 24, 2014 Author Share Posted October 24, 2014 While I endorse the desire not to have too much repetitive stuff, you're missing a lot of possible variety here. Each contract type could be tweaked into several related variations, expanding the possibilities without necessarily inducing any more repetition.Satellite placement contracts: differing equipment requirements, self-propelled or not, differing scientific payloads, leave-in-place vs place-then-retrieve.Aerial survey: you're already varying location and height (a bit, I'd like to see individual altitudes per waypoint). Adding time requirements and equipment delivery/retrieval can expand these into racing, rescue, firefighting, urgent supply, emergency delivery, etc.Rover survey: similar variability to above. Adding the requirement for heavy equipment delivery or retrieval could turn these into trucking contracts. "Deliver this 100t rocket by ground to the final testing workshop".You get the idea.Pushing an asteroid out of the solar system is fun. So is firing off an interstellar probe. Why not have both?- - - Updated - - -I had no problem rescuing kerbals from orbit with TAC-LS. Just don't dawdle.The issue isn't a lack of possibilities, I assure you that most of these ideas were brought up and discussed from a design perspective with my team while I was creating Fine Print - that is, me and my artist buddy. The issue is moreso a need for "coverage", if that makes sense. Any time I add something, I want it to be something that covers the broadest range of gameplay possible. A "hole" in the design if you will that needs to be plugged. Every time I added a contract, I look for the biggest opportunity. For instance, the first contracts created were rover contracts, then base and station contracts, because these things needed purpose. This opens up a lot of gameplay, but yes I might miss a few minute details or variations along the way, and that is mostly a matter of time.TLDR: "Why not both" - because these things take time to develop, and I try to allocate that time to the most efficient things. I do have a giant list of ideas saved on my hard drive that I add to whenever a great post like yours pops up, and I dive into it whenever I get time to implement new things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryusho Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 Mostly curious, but is this safe to use -along side- Mission controller Extended, with the things it adds, If it, and this can be used alongside eachother, then that will open up so -many- contracts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arsonide Posted October 24, 2014 Author Share Posted October 24, 2014 Contracts are self contained systems, so you can use multiple contract addons alongside each other, they should not interfere with each other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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