When do missions to test parts usually become available?

[morph113]

I haven't played KSP since in a few months. I am not sure if it is a bug caused by a mod or if it is intended this way, but so far in my career save I haven't gotten any contracts yet to test any kind of part. The only contracts I got were the ones with launching a vessel, reaching X height, reaching space, sending data from around Kerbin space, rescuing a Kerbal and the Mun mission. I run a lot of addons, but all of them are up to date.

So when do you usually get contracts for testing various parts in certain situations? I play on the hardest difficulty and hitting a wall right now, I can't get enough funds to run expensive missions or to unlock all parts in the various science nodes because I simply don't get any missions except rescure kerbal X from around Kerbin or send science data from around Kerbin and the mentinoed Mun mission. I also fast forwarded the time. So should I have gotten contracts already for testing parts or any kind of other contract? If yes, then I guess I need to check which mod causes this issue. Otherwise I might have to send 20 more inexpensive probes into space to send date and get a bit of money.

[SkyRender]

Part contracts can occasionally be a bit buggy in how they spawn. Sometimes you run into the issue you have, where they just don't show up for whatever reason until you've done a bunch of stuff. It's likely supposed to be tied to reputation, except that I've seen saves with sub-25 reputation earned having part contracts become available, while a game with 100+ reputation earned doesn't get part contracts to show up for ages.

[morph113]

Well I got over 500 reputation. I also used the debug command to refresh the contracts but it will always only load the same 3 or 4 kind of contracts, only offered from different agencies. I guess I will keep sending cheap probes into space for now to gather as much science and get money as possible and see if more contracts will unlock. Otherwise I don't know. The logs doesn't show any unusual and mods also shouldn't effect the contracts, even "Fineprint" shouldn't temper with the stock contracts. Well I'll see how it goes, at least I have finally a purpose to use cheap probes for missions.

[tater]

I got them pretty much right away after I completed the first "achievement" type missions (5000m, orbital, etc). They are the same dumb missions as 0.24.2.

[morph113]

Ok I just started a new savegame and got a contract to test a part right after the 5000m mission. I guess for whatever reason the other savegame is bugged then.

[biohazard15]

I suspect this might be a rare bug - sometimes, if you do several initial contracts in one launch, new contracts won't spawn. Try to do them incrementally (Which actually will be beneficial in case of "Reach X height" - you might do several of them for extra funds and rep)

[morph113]

Yeah thats what I always do, I did the exact same thing and used the exact same parts for my first mission. Anyway, seems to work now.

[SkyRender]

I've noted the contract refresh bug in 0.24.2 as well, actually. It's just less obvious since it was far more rare that you would get zero procedural contracts after you cleared out the first four non-procedural ones. You can watch it in action if you decline procedural contracts, in fact: unless you decline one of the "seed" contracts (which ones are seems random), you won't see any new contracts pop up. But once you decline (or complete) a "seed" contract, suddenly the list properly refreshes and new ones are generated. Even then it's still buggy; I did a mass-decline recently to test it, and ended up with fewer and fewer procedural contracts showing up, culminating in only 4 procedural and one non-procedural contract on the list where before there had been 9 procedural and one non-procedural.