Abusable Contract Mechanics

[Rusty6899]

Technically you can get anywhere at any time, it's just that trying to do it (far enough) outside the transfer window is very, very expensive. A 5km/s transfer during the window could very easily become a 20km/s transfer if you're far enough outside the window - and that's the best case.

Well, if we are just talking about Duna and Eve, the transfers are around 1km/s during transfer window. It will obviously cost more, but neither is going to be 20km/s. Anyway, I think it is better to give newbies a few game months before expecting them to go interplanetary. Remember that if they miss a Duna window they could be waiting a few game years until they get another chance.

[Anquietas314]

Well, if we are just talking about Duna and Eve, the transfers are around 1km/s during transfer window. It will obviously cost more, but neither is going to be 20km/s. Anyway, I think it is better to give newbies a few game months before expecting them to go interplanetary. Remember that if they miss a Duna window they could be waiting a few game years until they get another chance.

http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ According to this, the worst case for duna is just over 11km/s, including using an aerobrake maneuver to slow down when you get there. For somewhere like moho or eeloo it's much worse.

Edited December 22, 2014 by armagheddonsgw

[UberFuber]

There's a lot of potentially good tweaks suggested. How about this one?

Since the original "abuse" comes from the fact that you can keep cancelling contracts to get the one you want...

How about have cancelling a contract takes a certain amount of reputation (perhaps 10% to 25% of the contract's own reputation penalty)?

The idea is that your agency loses reputation if you keep telling someone outright that "no, you're not doing this".

[Anquietas314]

There's a lot of potentially good tweaks suggested. How about this one?

Since the original "abuse" comes from the fact that you can keep cancelling contracts to get the one you want...

You should not be cancelling contracts in that situation. Declining them is different - you never agreed to the terms of the contract in the first place.

[SkyRender]

There's a lot of potentially good tweaks suggested. How about this one?

Since the original "abuse" comes from the fact that you can keep cancelling contracts to get the one you want...

How about have cancelling a contract takes a certain amount of reputation (perhaps 10% to 25% of the contract's own reputation penalty)?

The idea is that your agency loses reputation if you keep telling someone outright that "no, you're not doing this".

If you mean declining them, then hell no. Not how the contract system stands as it is. Right now your contract list can get completely polluted with tedious, near-impossible, and/or completely worthless contracts. I've lost count of how many "visual survey" and similar contracts I've had to decline now just to get something actually worth doing to spawn, not to mention the "test [part] flying over Kerbin" contracts that often demand stupid-fast airspeeds at given altitudes and pay out far worse than more profitable base/station/satellite missions.

[Rusty6899]

http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ According to this, the worst case for duna is just over 11km/s, including using an aerobrake maneuver to slow down when you get there. For somewhere like moho or eeloo it's much worse.

Well, that is probably being a bit pessimistic. It can take 11km/s, but only if you deliberately want it to. If you leave on day ~720 and choose to take a stupid route it is 11km/s. This gives you a travel time of 350 days. If you leave on the same date, however, you could spend less than 5km/s and be there in 240 days. So by choosing an odd route you are costing yourself 6km/s and 110 days.

I think this is far from the discussion about whether Duna and Eve's windows should be brought forward. Eeloo, Jool and Moho have much more regular transfer windows (just over a year for Eeloo and Jool and a lot less for Moho, which has a long transfer window every 135 days). Those windows are unlikely to effect a new players ability to go interplanetary quickly as they are not primary targets, and the windows come round fairly regularly.

For a new player, Duna and Eve would be the two main targets. Duna's transfer window is around day 220, I feel this is fair to give new players time to pick up the basics to have a good chance of making the window. At no point in the first 400 days, will a direct transfer from Kerbin to Duna, with aerobraking, cost more than 2000km/s if you time it right.

For these reasons, I think experienced players should bear the burden of the extra 0.5-1 km/s delta-V if they want to go to Duna "early" rather than force inexperienced players to rush for a deadline (if they are even aware the deadline exists), considering it takes 800 days until the next transfer window.

[Anquietas314]

Rusty6899: Don't misunderstand me, I agree that the current transfer windows are mostly okay. I realise 11km/s is a little pessimistic for Duna, but for a reasonable transfer delay at a bad time, you do get pretty close to that (9-10km/s). Moho's another beast though - its inclined, low orbit can make some transfer windows quite a bit more expensive than others, not to mention you'll arrive at a pretty crazy velocity (if you don't pick a nearly-ideal time to transfer) with not a great deal of time to slow down before you leave the SoI again. You should double check your figures though (and units! ), because there are times within the first 400 days that do cost up to 3200 m/s for a reasonably short trip to Duna. If you're going to take longer than 400 days on the trip then you may as well just wait for the next window. You'll get there and back slightly later, but your poor Kerbals won't need to be stuck in a can for a (kerbin) year

[Nemoricus]

I see a lot of people saying that these contracts are exploitable or abusable, but not very many talking about why they are exploits. Let's look at how the mechanics work together to encourage this sort of behavior.

1. There are no fixed costs in the game. You don't pay upkeep on the facilities, you don't pay salaries, and there's no penalty for sitting around doing nothing. Everything you need to pay for is purely discretionary. This means you can sink every fund into whatever it is you want, which is the first step.

2. There are no on-going costs for a mission. There's no limit to how many missions you can have going simultaneously, there's no need to pay the techs to track the mission, the controllers to monitor it, parts don't wear out, there's no life support, and so on. This means that, subject to the constraints of orbital mechanics, you can leave a spacecraft wherever you want and it will be there whenever you come back to it. The only costs a mission has are the ones it incurs at launch. This is the second step.

3. There's no opportunity cost for declining a contract. You can refresh the contract list however much you want until you get the contract you want. There's no reputation penalty, no financial penalty, and the contracts refresh immediately if you decline one you don't like. This is the third step.

4. Contracts can be completed by any vessel that meets its requirements, which means that the spacecraft you left in orbit can complete science missions. This is the fourth and final step.

Once you have orbital science contracts, there's nothing stopping you from getting an arbitrarily large amount of money by putting a satellite into orbit.

There's a few ways to fix this. The first is to introduce the dreaded time-based mechanics. This is also the one I think is preferable.

1. Upkeep gets paid on buildings per time period, Kerbals get salaries every so often, and if you run out of money, things stop working until and unless you get enough to pay the balance.

2. Every active mission takes up a slot at the tracking station. If you have too many simultaneous missions, then you can't launch anything new until an old one ends. Also, every active mission requires a certain amount of money to keep track of, possibly depending on the cost and part count of the vessel itself.

3. Contracts refresh on a timer, like every day or week. Evey contract you decline is one you don't get back until the timer elapses, so you might end up taking a less than ideal contract to ensure that you can make ends meet.

4. With the above changes, this ceases to be an issue and can be left as is.

Alternatively, if time-based costs are unpalatable, the only alternative I can see being viable is mission based costs.

4. List first because it is the most important to address in this scenario, contracts have to be assigned at launch and can only be completed by the spacecraft that was launched to fulfill them. You can't park a spacecraft in orbit and have it fulfill any and all contracts you throw at it. You have to specifically launch one to fulfill it. This really renders the rest moot, but I'll look at them nonetheless.

1. Contracts have a surcharge based on the level of your facilities and how many Kerbals you have employed. This would give some pressure to accept more difficult but higher paying contracts, since they have to cover not only the cost of the vessel, but the cost of maintaining your space program.

2. On-going costs in this system don't matter. If a mission takes a long time, it takes a long time. You can't get any new contracts without launching a new mission.

3. There should be some cost to declining a contract, even if it's more or less a nominal charge of funds. Players will eventually have to pick a contract, whether or not it's ideal.

[SkyRender]

Sorry, Nemoricus, but no. Your concept violates the golden rule of game design: you do not take control away from the player. Whenever you have a dilemma of game design wherein players favor grind over variety, the answer is not to force variety, it is to incentivize variety. Taking the option away by making the player suffer an inferior system is never a good idea, especially not if said system hinges upon a random number generator (which the contract system currently does).

A better solution to this entire problem of contract spam is to give players more incentive to actually run missions that don't involve contract spam. Which forces us to ask the essential question: why are players spamming those contracts? The answer is simple: they're easy, they pay well, and they're basically impossible to fail. The takeaway from this is that the alternatives are too difficult, don't pay nearly well enough, and/or are very easy to fail. My go-to example at this point of bad contracts are the aerial/visual surveys. Their payout is atrociously bad for what they ask you to do, their precision requirements are excessive, their engineering requirements are excessive, and ultimately they take far too long to complete. Adjustments are badly in need for this variety of contract, for as it stands, they just take up space on the mission control contract list to tempt players who haven't tried them yet and don't yet realize that they're horrible.

Edited December 22, 2014 by SkyRender

[Anquietas314]

SkyRender: I actually enjoy those survey contracts (on Kerbin!). The ones on Mun/Minmus/etc I ignore unless I'm going there anyway, in which case it's just a source of bonus science/funds for what I find a moderately interesting challenge (imho).

[Rusty6899]

SkyRender: I actually enjoy those survey contracts (on Kerbin!). The ones on Mun/Minmus/etc I ignore unless I'm going there anyway, in which case it's just a source of bonus science/funds for what I find a moderately interesting challenge (imho).

I'm quite the opposite. I'm pretty amateurish at making planes, so I prefer to zip round Minmus taking the temperature and looking out the window for excessive rewards. They do pay too much. I spent 25k on a very overpowered ship that can take care of 2 or 3 survey/temperature contracts. The contracts pay out up to 300k funds and 300 science (on Hard, so 500k/500 science on Normal). One advantage is that this does stop you spamming "Science from space near..." contracts, but the payout seems too high.

Well maybe not too high exactly, I think the game would make more sense if contracts payed out less, but the buildings were cheaper to upgrade. The way it is at the moment, they just seem to be giving the parts away far too cheaply when compared with funds in the rest of the game.

[Anquietas314]

Rusty6899: I'm also playing on hard difficulty settings, though with quicksave and revert - because to hell with losing my $50k spaceplane -- and more importantly jeb -- because of a tiny design flaw that only applies in stock physics or crashing because e.g. I got distracted / cat decided to sit on the keyboard, etc. Those contracts pay about 50k on Kerbin/Mun, ~80k on Minmus (because I haven't done any of those yet I think). The "deploy a base" ones however are more in line with what you say.

Minmus is easy to fly around in orbit; Mun is a heart-attack waiting to happen. The one "while flying below" contract I did on Mun, I very nearly lost a kerbal because there was a huge hill right after the marker in my orbit. Spaceplane building takes a bit of practice but it's not that hard

[Moesly_Armlis]

Guilty of contract spam abuse!

But your honour the funds was just sitting there asking to be taken.

So what about the idea of a difficult to complete misssion contract that takes skills to accomplish and must risk the lives of all three of your special kerbals. Once completed than recieve a large payout for funds/science/reputation. It might relieve some pressure/temptation to grind.

[Anquietas314]

So what about the idea of a difficult to complete misssion contract that takes skills to accomplish and must risk the lives of all three of your special kerbals. Once completed than recieve a large payout for funds/science/reputation. It might relieve some pressure/temptation to grind.

What if some or all of your "special kerbals" - I assume you mean Jeb, Bill and Bob - are already dead?

Some of the later contracts are already quite brutal for new players to be honest.

[Rusty6899]

Rusty6899: I'm also playing on hard difficulty settings, though with quicksave and revert - because to hell with losing my $50k spaceplane -- and more importantly jeb -- because of a tiny design flaw that only applies in stock physics or crashing because e.g. I got distracted / cat decided to sit on the keyboard, etc. Those contracts pay about 50k on Kerbin/Mun, ~80k on Minmus (because I haven't done any of those yet I think). The "deploy a base" ones however are more in line with what you say.

Minmus is easy to fly around in orbit; Mun is a heart-attack waiting to happen. The one "while flying below" contract I did on Mun, I very nearly lost a kerbal because there was a huge hill right after the marker in my orbit. Spaceplane building takes a bit of practice but it's not that hard

I think the 3 star survey missions were 27000 funds/location with 4 locations and over 200k funds for completing the contract. I haven't done one on Mun yet as Minmus seems the much easier target, considering you can adjust your orbit by coughing out the window, pretty much.

I had to restart my game after killing Jeb. I was trying to control my thrust when landing back on Kerbin, to avoid a heavy touchdown. Unfortunately, I pressed shift 5 times, you can guess the rest.

I have build functioning planes before, but they are all very much trial and error. I think I might practice in sandbox before I strap Jeb in.

[Anquietas314]

you can adjust your orbit by coughing out the window, pretty much.

Well, not quite. This is Minmus we're talking about, not Gilly or Pol

I had to restart my game after killing Jeb. I was trying to control my thrust when landing back on Kerbin, to avoid a heavy touchdown. Unfortunately, I pressed shift 5 times, you can guess the rest.

Protip: always, always disable sticky keys the moment you install windows. Also disable the ones relating to holding shift for 8 seconds and whatever the other one is.

I have build functioning planes before, but they are all very much trial and error. I think I might practice in sandbox before I strap Jeb in.

There is a mod listed in CKAN I noticed that lets you simulate launches before committing to them when you're on hard difficulty. I don't have the name to hand though.

[Seawolf]

Here's a discussion about the satellite contract abuse on reddit. I think it's relevant.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/2pwz28/idea_after_placing_a_satellite_in_orbit_for_a/

[SkyRender]

There is a mod listed in CKAN I noticed that lets you simulate launches before committing to them when you're on hard difficulty. I don't have the name to hand though.

I believe you mean this mod. Quite useful indeed.

[Anquietas314]

I believe you mean this mod. Quite useful indeed.

Yep, that's the one.

[Arsonide]

I can't say for sure if the "fix" actually works though. I've had 2 "plant a flag on the Mun" contracts already.

You should be able to get multiple flag plant contracts on a body, but now it won't spawn them unless the plant would actually take some work.

Regarding the satellite contracts, I don't see much of a problem with this. It still takes work to adjust to the new orbits, and if your satellite has that much delta-v, then work expended deserves rewards, right? The only real solution here would be to disable or otherwise take player control of the satellite away at contract completion, and I'm not much of a fan of that (see station/base contracts).

Still pondering the science contracts.

[Wanderfound]

I recently stumbled across an alternative to satellites for "science from space" contracts.

Due to the part count limitations of the new VAB, I used robotic landers for my Mun and Minmus exploration contracts. After hopping between a few biomes, these lightweight landers remained on the Mun and Minmus, with some fuel remaining but not enough to safely relocate once more.

But each lander has a thermometer, and "space above the Mun/Minmus" begins the moment you leave the surface.

It doesn't take much time or fuel to pop a lander 5m off the surface, run a temperature scan and drop back down again. Done it half a dozen times with each of 'em so far, for about √50,000 per go.

[cicatrix]

I have another solution for satellite spamming problem - just make the sat disappear after all conditions are met.

After all, some agency is paying money for you to put THEIR satellite (it's their money) into an orbit they designate. You did the job - fine, then pass the control over it to the customer. You get paid (presumably more than you had spent) and the customer got their satellite where they wanted it. The tracking station doesn't have to track it afterwards.

Also, this opens a whole new contract type that I wanted to see in KSP: repair a broken satellite.

[Wanderfound]

SkyRender: I actually enjoy those survey contracts (on Kerbin!).

Ditto.

I wouldn't want to do aerial surveys in a rocket, but they're a good source of easy science and cash once you've got fast aircraft running. Pulling 10G manouevres at Mach 5 in order to hit tightly clustered waypoints is tons o'fun to me.

It's fairly easy to do several survey missions in a single flight, and when you get in amongst the mountains on a low-altitude one there's fun trench-run action to be had as well. And the only cost of the mission is filling the gas tank on a small single-turbojet plane.

Edited December 23, 2014 by Wanderfound

[Wanderfound]

I think a lot (and I do mean a LOT) of the annoyance with the early contracts could be resolved just by putting Duna and Eve's starting points in their orbits closer to a Kerbin alignment. As it stands, Duna doesn't align until half a Kerbin year after the game starts, and Eve takes until some time in the second Kerbin year. That's a long wait, even with time acceleration to skip ahead.

Although it's not perfect, the immediate launch (i.e. within the first few weeks of a new game) window for Eve isn't bad. And if all you're sending is a lightweight probe with a thermometer and Science Jr, it isn't hard to pack over 8,000m/s of ÃŽâ€V onto a < 30-part / < √30,000 rocket.

You can get a one-way robot lander to Eve successfully launched as your first mission after unlocking solar panels.

[Anquietas314]

I wouldn't want to do aerial surveys in a rocket, but they're a good source of easy science and cash once you've got fast aircraft running. Pulling 10G manouevres at Mach 5 in order to hit tightly clustered waypoints is tons o'fun to me. [...]

http://i1378.photobucket.com/albums/ah120/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/screenshot38_zps74969724.jpg

That thing can fly at mach 5 with FAR? I'm quite surprised by that - the wing design should have pretty crazy stress on it from those speeds.