Reduce Contract duration

[Sirrobert]

Currently, contracts might aswel not have a fail timer, with how long you have to satisfy them. 10 years for a trip to Minmus is just redicilous.

I suggest we reduce the time you have to do a contract to something meaningfull. To Mun and Minmus, a month, and Kerbin orbit, a week for example. Still more than enough time, but atleast it's possible to forget about it and fail

[mdosogne]

I think contracts and strategies need some serious rebalancing. Not only do I have much too long to complete some contracts, they offer way too high a payout which (with some strategies) make the game too easy.

Case in point: I've been playing the game since 0.18, so I thought I'd try out some "hard mode" settings and started a new career mode with custom difficulty settings:

- initial funds, science and rep set to zero

- science, funds and rep rewards set to 50%

- funds penalties: 250%, reputation penalty 500% (although this is a moot point because I have yet to fail a contract)

I spent ~4h playing the game in 0.25. Two attempts to get to kerbin orbit, a mün flyby, minmus landing (2 biomes) and return, and a mün landing (1 biome) and (nearly-botched) return.

All but the last tech level is unlocked (but not all purchased). How is this possible?

a) Unpaid Research (20%) Outsourced R&D (30%) and c) a some WAY over-paid contracts (even at 50% setting):

1. plant a flag on minmus. I picked up this contract while already landed there, since it hadn't appeared yet when I launched. Advance $6k, Completion $32k. Strategies translate this to an extra 526 science.

2. Test Kerbodyne KR-2L in suborbital trajectory over Kerbin. Advance: $79k Completion $242k plus 3.2k science, plus 4.2k science from strategies.

That last one feels plain old cheaty; 7400 science without getting to a stable Kerbin orbit?! Sure it cost me some funds, but I still took home $180k from this mission alone. The ship itself took 10 minutes to build; cost 48k to launch; went straight up (as a single stage, SRBs and all), (nearly) straight down, was recovered at 96%, and gave enough science to unlock all but the last tech level.

How is it that this Kerbodyne test contract gave 173 rep, when rescuing Podnard Kerman gave only 9?

I'll have to try this again, with contract payout set at 10%; or stay away from the outsourced R&D, which feels a bit unbalanced.

[dryer_lint]

Yeah, contracts and strategies need a lot of re-balancing. I set the Outsourced R&D strategy to only 15% and managed to unlock nuclear engines and Kerbodyne parts with a bunch of contracts, but as far as classic gameplay goes, only one trip to the Mun! A while ago, I found a contract to test the RAPIER in Kerbin orbit... for 1,000 science points! We need some serious re-balancing.