Lack of "Test Part" contracts outside Kerbin

[Kerano]

KSP v0.25.0.642, no mods.

I decided to start a stock career where I'd accept and complete every single mission. One of the things I've noticed along the way:

Part test contracts are extremely rare outside of Kerbin, even in the endgame.

Here is a screenshot from the current point in my career, where I've been to all bodies in the Kerbal universe.

Those aren't just the contracts I've currently accepted, that's every contract I can take right now. In the past I always had about 15 contracts on the go at any one time; now I only have 5 offered to me and the number keeps diminishing.

In total I've completed 127 contracts in this game to date, and of those only 6 were part tests outside of Kerbin: 1 around the Mun, 1 around Minmus, 2 on Duna and 2 around Pol. This seems very odd because in my previous career (v0.24.2), I had dozens of part tests just around the Mun and Minmus at the point where I'd only completed about 80 contracts.

I really enjoy the part test contracts, especially those outside Kerbin because they add a unique challenge of "how will I build my rocket to be able to test this part?". It seems however that the frequency of these types of contracts has been turned way down in the v0.25 update, which is disappointing to me.

(On another matter, the funds from completing part test missions outside Kerbin need major tweaking - e.g. testing KR-2L around Kerbin gives nearly identical funds compared to testing KR-2L on the surface of Duna... ~750,000 on Normal in both cases, despite the fact that one test is far more difficult than the other.)

[Claw]

That's good feedback. I don't know for sure if they turned them down, but they may have. There were also people complaining of the opposite. Too many "test part XX" contracts.

~Claw

[Kerano]

Some notes after completing 196 contracts in stock KSP v0.25.0.642 and essentially "winning the game" with over 25 million in the bank and contracts coming up on a repeating cycle:

- Rewards need better scaling. The first time you complete a "plant flag" or "return science" mission around another body, the funds often barely cover the cost of the mission (and sometimes not even that). The next time you get the mission however, you can complete it for free if your craft is still sitting there, and the reward does not diminish. I have reaped millions of funds from "flag gardens" around single landing sites.

- Part test contracts are still pretty common (~1/3 of total contracts when accepting everything), but are almost exclusively allocated at Kerbin even in the endgame. When I've explored every body, I expect to see part tests shift elsewhere in the solar system rather than constantly getting the same tired "LV-909 on Kerbin" test.

- On the very rare occasion when a part test is issued outside Kerbin, the reward does not scale appropriately relative to testing in Kerbin orbit. Testing a KR-2L in Kerbin orbit gave 796,000 funds; around Minmus 146,000 funds; on the surface of Duna 722,000 funds. Testing the Sepratron I in suborbital flight on Kerbin gave 15,000 funds; in Pol orbit 30,000 funds. Testing the TR-2V Stack Decoupler in Kerbin orbit gave 73,000 funds; in Pol orbit 88,000 funds.

- Science to Funds strategy should be at least an order of magnitude more powerful than it currently is. Gaining 10,000 science is incredibly hard work, and coverting that to a measly 100,000 funds is a bit of a joke. Funds to Science is broken in the reverse sense, and needs to be at least an order of magnitude less powerful... far too easy to max out the tech tree after just a few missions.

- The same plant flag/transmit science contracts are repeated over and over in the endgame. Surely part tests around other planets would be more interesting - at least it would keep me designing new rockets rather than just grinding cash in "flag gardens". Hopefully this issue will be partly addressed with the introduction of the Fine Print mod in the next update.

Here is the breakdown of my 196 completed contracts in stock KSP v0.25.0.642, for anyone interested:

Fixed initial missions - 6

Rescue Kerbal - 5

Explore celestial body - 14 (notably excluding Laythe)

Plant flag - 36

Science data around Kerbin - 9

Science data outside Kerbin - 51

Part test around Kerbin - 59

Part test outside Kerbin - 6 (1 Mun, 1 Minmus, 2 Duna, 2 Pol)

Edited October 21, 2014 by Kerano

[Starman4308]

- On the very rare occasion when a part test is issued outside Kerbin, the reward does not scale appropriately relative to testing in Kerbin orbit. Testing a KR-2L in Kerbin orbit gave 796,000 funds; around Minmus 146,000 funds; on the surface of Duna 722,000 funds. Testing the Sepratron I in suborbital flight on Kerbin gave 15,000 funds; in Pol orbit 30,000 funds. Testing the TR-2V Stack Decoupler in Kerbin orbit gave 73,000 funds; in Pol orbit 88,000 funds.

I'd like to chime in here a bit: for those of us who use RSS or other scaling mods, it would be nice to have easy-ish places to set the scaling of rewards. Testing parts in atmosphere is 100% as easy as it is in stock, suborbital almost as easy, anything past that much more difficult because you need hugely more delta-V to get anywhere. If I have to figure out how to write the mod myself, I'll do it, but I'd need to know where to look to modify it.

- Science to Funds strategy should be at least an order of magnitude more powerful than it currently is. Gaining 10,000 science is incredibly hard work, and coverting that to a measly 100,000 funds is a bit of a joke. Funds to Science is broken in the reverse sense, and needs to be at least an order of magnitude less powerful... far too easy to max out the tech tree after just a few missions.

Agreed on that. Funds -> science is absurdly broken.

- The same plant flag/transmit science contracts are repeated over and over in the endgame. Surely part tests around other planets would be more interesting - at least it would keep me designing new rockets rather than just grinding cash in "flag gardens". Hopefully this issue will be partly addressed with the introduction of the Fine Print mod in the next update.

Maybe it would be possible to, once you've used an instrument to transmit science, render it unable to do so for any more contracts, and have Kerbals unable to plant flags for contracts until they've been recovered? It would at least force you to send duplicate probes or have duplicate experiments (preferably only for Science Jrs and Mystery Goo, as otherwise you can spam physics-less thermometers all day).

[Kerano]

I'd like to chime in here a bit: for those of us who use RSS or other scaling mods, it would be nice to have easy-ish places to set the scaling of rewards. Testing parts in atmosphere is 100% as easy as it is in stock, suborbital almost as easy, anything past that much more difficult because you need hugely more delta-V to get anywhere. If I have to figure out how to write the mod myself, I'll do it, but I'd need to know where to look to modify it.

Fair point, you'd definitely want to tweak the rewards when using the real scale solar system mod. Being able to apply multipliers to different rewards in some reasonably simple way would be very useful. For instance, you might choose to set:

- Suborbital contracts at Kerbin = 50% reward value

- Orbital contracts at Kerbin = 100% reward value

- Contracts around the Mun = 200% reward value

- Contracts on the surface of Duna = 500% reward value

It could also be nice to have some sort of knob to tweak the contract frequencies, especially for part tests which people seem to have mixed feelings towards. For example:

- Set frequency of part test contracts at Kerbin: NEVER ----- RARE ----- OCCASIONAL ----- REGULAR ----- COMMON

- Set frequency of part test contracts at the Mun: NEVER ----- RARE ----- OCCASIONAL ----- REGULAR ----- COMMON

- Set frequency of part test contracts at Duna: NEVER ----- RARE ----- OCCASIONAL ----- REGULAR ----- COMMON

Or alternatively for a simpler version with similar effects, you could just have two knobs: one for Kerbin and one for "other bodies".

Being able to adjust the frequencies as you play would be cool too - so for instance if I'm getting tired of the Mun after a few missions there, I could set my preferences to receive less contracts there and more elsewhere for a while.

Maybe it would be possible to, once you've used an instrument to transmit science, render it unable to do so for any more contracts, and have Kerbals unable to plant flags for contracts until they've been recovered? It would at least force you to send duplicate probes or have duplicate experiments (preferably only for Science Jrs and Mystery Goo, as otherwise you can spam physics-less thermometers all day).

But what's to stop recovered flags from being replanted at the same site? What I'd suggest is to limit each command pod to containing just one flag, so that to plant multiple flags with a single mission you'd at least have to design an unusual and awkward craft with multiple command pods. Maybe couple each flag with a unique identifier as well, so that recovering and replanting an old flag doesn't count for the completion of a new contract. (Alternatively, if there are biomes everywhere in the next update then maybe you could only get a reward for planting a flag in a different biome to one you've already planted in.)

The suggestion about only allowing each science instrument to be counted for contract completion once seems like a decent one, though you'd have to have the proviso that the limit only applies once for each biome/body - so you can get multiple contracts completed from the same instrument as long as it's in a different biome/SOI. I'll also note that the main way I've been exploiting getting science "around" a planet/moon in my game is to just EVA a Kerbal and get a report while he's using his jetpack - or in the case of the higher gravity bodies, while he's falling down the ladder. That probably shouldn't be a valid method of completing a contract. (EVA report: "I hit my head on the ladder at Eve." Contractor: "Excellent work, here's 200,000 funds!")

Edited October 22, 2014 by Kerano

[Starman4308]

Fair point, you'd definitely want to tweak the rewards when using the real scale solar system mod. Being able to apply multipliers to different rewards in some reasonably simple way would be very useful. For instance, you might choose to set:

- Suborbital contracts at Kerbin = 50% reward value

- Orbital contracts at Kerbin = 100% reward value

- Contracts around the Mun = 200% reward value

- Contracts on the surface of Duna = 500% reward value

If it winds up becoming a mod, I'd probably try to have an "easy config" where you set a multiplier for getting to LKO (it takes X more dV, thus your rocket will be a flat e^Y=X times larger), and a general scale value which gets plugged into a function to estimate generically how much more difficult it is (so, for the 6.4x RSS config I use, you would plug 6.4 into the config or GUI window, and it would automatically figure out which multipliers to set).

But what's to stop recovered flags from being replanted at the same site? What I'd suggest is to limit each command pod to containing just one flag, so that to plant multiple flags with a single mission you'd at least have to design an unusual and awkward craft with multiple command pods. Maybe couple each flag with a unique identifier as well, so that recovering and replanting an old flag doesn't count for the completion of a new contract. (Alternatively, if there are biomes everywhere in the next update then maybe you could only get a reward for planting a flag in a different biome to one you've already planted in.)

The suggestion about only allowing each science instrument to be counted for contract completion once seems like a decent one, though you'd have to have the proviso that the limit only applies once for each biome/body - so you can get multiple contracts completed from the same instrument as long as it's in a different biome/SOI. I'll also note that the main way I've been exploiting getting science "around" a planet/moon in my game is to just EVA a Kerbal and get a report while he's using his jetpack - or in the case of the higher gravity bodies, while he's falling down the ladder. That probably shouldn't be a valid method of completing a contract. (EVA report: "I hit my head on the ladder at Eve." Contractor: "Excellent work, here's 200,000 funds!")

My idea was to set a flag variable on each Kerbal: "I've planted a flag for a contract, I can't do that any more until I've flown back to Kerbin and been recovered". While "instrument can be re-used in multiple biomes for multiple contracts" is probably better for gameplay, that's a lot of flags to set for each instrument: having just a single "I've been used for a contract" would shrink the complexity of it all. It could also be generically replaced with "take a rocket with a size 3 black box module to point X, activate" type of contract.

[stardestroyer]

KSP v0.25.0.642, no mods.

I decided to start a stock career where I'd accept and complete every single mission. One of the things I've noticed along the way:

Part test contracts are extremely rare outside of Kerbin, even in the endgame.

Here is a screenshot from the current point in my career, where I've been to all bodies in the Kerbal universe.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87213001/KSP/Lack%20of%20contracts/screenshot640.jpg

Those aren't just the contracts I've currently accepted, that's every contract I can take right now. In the past I always had about 15 contracts on the go at any one time; now I only have 5 offered to me and the number keeps diminishing.

In total I've completed 127 contracts in this game to date, and of those only 6 were part tests outside of Kerbin: 1 around the Mun, 1 around Minmus, 2 on Duna and 2 around Pol. This seems very odd because in my previous career (v0.24.2), I had dozens of part tests just around the Mun and Minmus at the point where I'd only completed about 80 contracts.

I really enjoy the part test contracts, especially those outside Kerbin because they add a unique challenge of "how will I build my rocket to be able to test this part?". It seems however that the frequency of these types of contracts has been turned way down in the v0.25 update, which is disappointing to me.

(On another matter, the funds from completing part test missions outside Kerbin need major tweaking - e.g. testing KR-2L around Kerbin gives nearly identical funds compared to testing KR-2L on the surface of Duna... ~750,000 on Normal in both cases, despite the fact that one test is far more difficult than the other.)

Hi, I'm haveing your same issue. Is there a way to fix it?