By: 610yeslovely
The K-Planes contract pack adds various contracts to encourage and reward building of planes from very early stages, through X-plane style rocket planes, to SSTO (single-stage to orbit) planes.
This mod is inspired by and indeed uses some assets, configuration from the original GAP mod, which is also a MIT license.
The original author of GAP inigma gave blanket permission to use anything and everything from GAP on the KSP Forums.
This pack is planet pack agnostic and tech tree agnostic, but the description assumes either Stock, semi-Stock (2.5x or 2.7x scale like JNSQ or KSRSS), or Earth-scale planets (RSS/RO/RP-1). The pack can also be used alongside GAP or deriviatives and does not need them for any shared assets, though some of the early contracts are almost the same as the milestones from GAP (because they were copied and made planet agnostic).
Initially you will find contracts to build your first powered aircraft, then several contracts which increase the speed, height and/or distance that plane can travel. Bonus points are usually awarded for landing back at the KSC Runway, but you can land anywhere that is safe.
After these the real K-Plane contracts arrive: building rocket powered air-launched X-1 style aircraft, acheiving Mach 1, 2, 3, getting to the stratosphere (18km to 50km for Earth scale) for sub-orbital flights.
Later contracts are more speculative and involve reaching Mach 4, Mach 5, to space (80km), and orbital. Some contracts require SSTO (single-stage to orbit) and some let you use boosters, but still require wings (think Space Shuttle), and some involve leaving satellites or cargo in space.
Far future contracts might include taking certain tonnage to other moons or planets and returning the craft and landing back at Kerbin/Earth.
I highly recommend installing mods using CKAN as it will correctly add required dependencies, however for those who like a more tedious life you can manually install them and possibly get less of my attention if there are issues.
Required Dependencies:
- ModuleManager
- Contract Configurator, which has releases for the latest 1.12.x compatible RO fork, see the forums Contract Configuration KSP Forums)
Recommended Part Dependencies:
- Firespitter for very early airplane parts
- KSPWheels and Kerbal Foundries for better landing gear (and rover wheels).
- AirplanePlus for airplane parts
- Eskandare Aerospace for even more airplane parts
- KAX for more airplane parts
- QuizTech Aero Pack for advanced airplane parts
- C.E.D.A. Aeronautics for moar airplane parts (you cannot have too many right?)
- B9 Aerospace Parts for advanced airplane, space plane parts
- B9 Procedural Wings for procedural wings of any size and shape
- Mk2 Expansion for advanced airplane, space plane parts
- Mk3 Expansion for larger space plane parts
- OPT Spaceplane Continued for high tech space plane parts
Recommended Helper Dependencies:
- AtmosphereAutopilot for a very good aircraft autopilot and SAS replacement
- NavUtils for runway landing navigation
- Waypoint Manager for managing waypoints
- Contracts Window for viewing contracts outside of Mission Control
- CapCom for accepting contracts outside of Mission Control
Recommended IVA Dependencies, to fly inside the plane:
- RasterPropMonitor (or RPM) allows IVA to be interactive.
- MOARdV's Avionics System (or MAS) the successor to RPM.
- Reviva which is one of my other mods, allows much easier installing/switch IVA mods.
Speeds are measured in m/s and are always the same for any planet. Roughly speaking Mach numbers are multiples of 343 m/s, though the actual Mach number will vary depending on pressure, temperature and altitude. However, since speed records are usually constrained by altitude, which do scale, non-stock scale planets will be harder due to the altitude requirements.
Correctly limiting to an actual Mach number is pretty complicated, in the future this may change.
Altitudes are scaled by the planets FlyingHigh, SpaceLow and SpaceHigh altitudes as follows:
- TroposphereLow : ~15% from sea level to FlyingHigh.
- TroposphereHigh : ~30% from sea level to FlyingHigh.
- StratosphereLow : ~40% from sea level to FlyingHigh.
- StratosphereHigh : ~70% from sea level to FlyingHigh.
- MesosphereLow : always equals FlyingHigh.
- MesosphereHigh : ~20% from FlyingHigh to SpaceLow.
- ThermosphereLow : ~40% from FlyingHigh to SpaceLow.
- SpaceLow : is where space starts in KSP.
- SpaceLEO : is roughly how high ISS travels, or about 12% from SpaceLow to SpaceHigh.
- SpaceMEO : always equals SpaceHigh, which in KSP seems to mean MKO / MEO (Mid-Kerbin or Mid-Earth Orbit).
The computations are algorithms which will work for any planet scale, but here are examples for common scales.
For Stock (1x):
- TroposphereLow: 3 km
- TroposphereHigh: 5 km
- StratosphereLow: 7 km
- StratosphereHigh: 13 km
- MesosphereLow, FlyingHigh : 18 km
- MesosphereHigh: 30 km
- ThermosphereLow: 40 km
- SpaceLow : 70 km
- SpaceLEO : 90 km
- SpaceMEO : 250 km
For KSRSS, JSNQ (2.7x), the atmosphere is usually very similar to stock scale, though SpaceLow is usually 10km higher. Therefore only slightly harder for Modern / Future contracts.
- TroposphereLow: 3 km
- TroposphereHigh: 5 km
- StratosphereLow: 7 km
- StratosphereHigh: 13 km
- MesosphereLow, FlyingHigh : 18 km
- MesosphereHigh: 30 km
- ThermosphereLow: 45 km
- SpaceLow : 80 km
- SpaceLEO : 430 km
- SpaceMEO : 2863 km
For RSS (Earth), the atmosphere is much thicker, so much higher altitudes are needed. Hard mode!
- TroposphereLow: 5 km
- TroposphereHigh: 10 km
- StratosphereLow: 20 km
- StratosphereHigh: 45 km
- MesosphereLow, FlyingHigh : 50 km
- MesosphereHigh: 70 m
- ThermosphereLow: 85 km
- SpaceLow : 140 km
Distance contracts are scaled by the planets circumference, again using algorithms that work for any scale. Below are examples for common scales.
For Stock (1x):
- Shop Hop : 50 km
- Domestic : 100 km
- Continental : 250 km
- Intercontinental : 750 km
- Polar : ~1,885 km
- Equatorial : ~3,770 km
For KSRSS, JSNQ (2.7x), over twice as far, not that much harder.
- Shop Hop : 130 km
- Domestic : 250 km
- Continental : 700 km
- Intercontinental : 2,000 km
- Polar : ~5,000 km
- Equatorial : ~10,000 km
For RSS (Earth), distances are ten times stock scale, so this is Hard Mode!
- Shop Hop : 530 km
- Domestic : 1,000 km
- Continental : 2,700 km
- Intercontinental : 8,000 km
- Polar : ~20,000 km
- Equatorial : ~40,000 km
- Fixed distance contracts, now seem to work better.
- Added Polar, Circum-Polar and Round The World distances.
- Some testing, but still not recommended for general gameplay.
- Most of the GAP milestone contracts now present.
- Progression should work, and everything should scale to homeworld scale.
- Only slightly tested, so probably still not recommended for general gameplay.
- Not really functional, but general idea started.
All content is MIT licensed.
- KASA logo derived from NASA svg downloaded from Wikipedia
- KACA logo dervied from NACA svg downloaded from Wikipedia
Source is available on GitHub.
KSP Forum is the home page for discussions.