Bug #24752
Updated by Dunbaratu over 4 years ago
When the game spawns a derelict ship in orbit of Duna for a rescue contract, it can spawn that ship in an orbit that intersects Ike's sphere of influence and thus get flung by Ike's gravity assist out into solar orbit, away from Duna so it becomes a contract requiring far more delta-V to achieve than it would have if it had still been around Duna.
This was raised once as an issue in this tracker as ID #16082 but that issue was closed with the claim the user should know enough to realize the contract would do this and it should be "chalked up to experience". But I've never been able to tell how to see what the orbit of the contract will end up being until *after* I've accepted the contract. Before I accept it, all I know is "the orbit will be around the body called _____, and given how much money its it's worth it's probably not a simple equatorial low orbit contract." But *which* particular orbit it will have I don't know yet. To know it will get flung by Ike I'd need a more concrete picture of the orbit *before* taking the contract. If I can't get my hands on that information through the player's UI, I disagree with the claim that the player should be able to know it's going to happen.
Also, it never happened with for example a Kerbin rescue contract getting flung by the Mun. It must be the case that somewhere in the game there are config numbers for making these contracts that defines allowed ranges of orbit parameters. I suspect the config for Duna's contracts is configured with numbers that allow orbits that touch it's moon's sphere of influence. Since I haven't seen this happen with rescue contracts around other bodies, I'd assume it's an exception for Duna and its it's relatively close moon Ike, and thus not a thing a player could be expected to think is "as intended" behavior. It's not the way things work elsewhere in the game.
This was raised once as an issue in this tracker as ID #16082 but that issue was closed with the claim the user should know enough to realize the contract would do this and it should be "chalked up to experience". But I've never been able to tell how to see what the orbit of the contract will end up being until *after* I've accepted the contract. Before I accept it, all I know is "the orbit will be around the body called _____, and given how much money its it's worth it's probably not a simple equatorial low orbit contract." But *which* particular orbit it will have I don't know yet. To know it will get flung by Ike I'd need a more concrete picture of the orbit *before* taking the contract. If I can't get my hands on that information through the player's UI, I disagree with the claim that the player should be able to know it's going to happen.
Also, it never happened with for example a Kerbin rescue contract getting flung by the Mun. It must be the case that somewhere in the game there are config numbers for making these contracts that defines allowed ranges of orbit parameters. I suspect the config for Duna's contracts is configured with numbers that allow orbits that touch it's moon's sphere of influence. Since I haven't seen this happen with rescue contracts around other bodies, I'd assume it's an exception for Duna and its it's relatively close moon Ike, and thus not a thing a player could be expected to think is "as intended" behavior. It's not the way things work elsewhere in the game.