Rework contracts- except Science from Orbit, which just needs a nerf.

[DeadMG]

These things are ridiculous. It seems to me like the game always has one of these up. All you have to do is put a satellite in orbit around each body and you can instafulfill the contract by transmitting 0 science data of gravity scan. Then it just respawns over and over again.

I'm on the fence about this.

On the one hand, it was a nice motivation to actually use satellites, probes and such, which I previously had absolutely no use for whatsoever. It's actually been quite motivating to launch quite a few satellites.

On the other hand, it totally blows away every other contract. Especially those SUPER annoying "Test X part in Y place" contracts. As long as you have a satellite in orbit around all of the bodies you've "explored" so far, you have basically infinite resources.

I think that contracts really need re-working. They should directly reward different ways of playing the game- like "Land probe on X body" vs "Land a manned craft and return it safely", "Put satellite into orbit", "Put super-heavy object on the ground safely", "Land on a particular point on a body", etc.

The current contracts divide into three groups- "Stuff I'd do anyway", like explore another celestial body, "Stuff I'm never gonna spend my time doing no matter how many imaginary points you give me", like "Test explosive decoupler on escape trajectory from Mun" or "Plant the fourth flag on Mun", and "Stuff that gives every reward possible whilst being fun to play", which is exclusively "..... transmit science from orbit". Those still need a little nerf.

I'm going to say that contracts should really be mostly in the 3rd category.