First Contract - my thoughts

[Kasuha]

I missed great deal of the First Contract fever as I was safely away from my PC and internet for two weeks during the release. Thus my late feedback about it.

First thing I must say is, I like the contract system, and I like it a lot. Honestly, I like it better than the whole science system and the main reason is, the contract tells me where to go and what to do, unlike Science where I need to figure out what is missing in a long list of what I already have.

Since certain stage I am playing completely without making science measurements and contracts still provide me enough science points that I already almost uncovered the whole tech tree.

The contract system does have the problem I was afraid will be there, though. If you build a fleet of reusable ships which return all their parts to KSP, you're rich. If you build classical rockets where you lose majority of parts during the mission, you lose a lot of money. I don't like that approach. Or rather, I am missing the freedom of choice to run my space program either way because in real world, reusable technology is not that much (if at all) cheaper than 'classical' rocketry.

A few more thoughts about contracts available at the moment:

- I don't see the reason to distinguish between suborbital, orbital, or escape trajectories for tests. I don't think there is any real-world difference between them, you're in vacuum, microgravity, and . In my opinion, just specifying the body, the situation (landed/splashed/flying), altitude and speed range should suffice. Eventually specifying whether the speed is surface- or orbit-related.

- Some tests (particularly engine tests) can be 'cheated' and still count. You just tweak the engine fuel to zero (if it is SRB) and its thrust to zero and you're safe to run the test without it having any ill effects on your ship. Convenient but not very realistic, real-world scientists would be probably rather angry if you tried that on them. In my opinion the game should be slightly more strict in this regard and e.g. require the engine will run at least one second at full thrust.

- It would be really nice if there were contracts (e.g. from R&D Department) to perform science measurements which are still missing in science archives. Not just 'send us some science from Mun' but specifically - perform temperature measurement when landed in Mun Midlands, for example. If nothing else it would cut on the bother of figuring out what am I missing. Plus the test case could tell me via its green checkmark whether I am sitting in Midlands or not.

[r4pt0r]

as always you make great points, and I agree with all. your last point about the midlands though, you really should have something on the hud to indicate the current biome.

I think contracts as the only source of funds isnt good. I know we will be able to trade science for funds(probably with the admin building they are working on), but I would like the option to take out a loan for a probe mission to eeloo or whatever you want.

[BlackAdder128]

I agree that real-world less-reusable rockets should be viable, specially considering the real-world difficulty in properly qualifiyng parts that have participated in re-entry for safety, although I don't want to comment too much on the topic, as I haven't spent enough time with contracts to find out if non-reusable rockets are viable.

There are a few reasons I haven't spent much time with contracts yet:

1. My 9-yr old has discovered Kerbal space program and spends a fair amount of time flying planes and blowing stuff up

2. I have recently discovered the X3 games (what they lack in realism they make up for in immersion)

3. Contracts don't feel that compelling compared to my pre-exisitng hopes and expectations

Focusing on item #3, as I've posted once elsewhere, I would really like the option to focus more on putting up space infrastructure than testing parts or performing one-time "government-funded" mission types. Putting up specialized satellites and space stations or maintaining them for science and profit sounds marvelous, especially as enabling steps for that big Duna base down the road. Crafting a frankenstein rocket to make profitable the testing of half a dozen parts for pocket change to get to the next "government-funded exploration mission" is just not as motivating.

I've been made aware there are some mods that meet my expectations a little better than the stock game, and I'll go down that road one of these days, but I personally would really like to see space infrastructure as an optional cash focus in the stock game at some point. I thnk that would make a much stronger career mode.