Contracts

A company pays you to test something in flight. An achievement pays once and is gone; the contract board refills. Contracts are the work you can go back to when the first-time money runs out.

What a contract is

A contract is a paid job with a name on it. It comes from a company, it has a short brief, and it lists one to eight goals: things your ship has to do. Meet every one of them in a single flight, before the deadline, and the company pays the reward.

You are paid twice. Signing pays the advance straight away, and finishing pays the reward on top. The board writes both on every row, so +100 now · +460 done means a hundred credits the moment you accept and four hundred and sixty more when the goals are all met.

The board is the Administration's

The board lives on the Administration, the building on the Space Center's Earth strip. It is the only place a contract is signed. Its level decides two things: how many contracts you may have under way at once, and how hard the ones you are shown may be. A new Administration handles three at a time and shows only the first tier of work. Extend it and both grow together.

What you see on the board is a fresh draw each time: up to ten offers, picked at random from the tiers your Administration's level allows. Every offer carries its own countdown, and one that runs out is swept off and replaced. Ignoring an offer costs you nothing at all, so there is no hurry to sign something that does not suit the rocket you can build.

The contracts reference has the levels, the tiers and what each pays.

Every goal, in one flight

Goals are counted from the moment a rocket leaves the pad, and they reset on every launch. A contract asking you to fly a Parachute and then set the ship down on Earth wants both of those out of the same flight: launching with the chute today and landing something else tomorrow pays nothing. That is the whole shape of a contract, and it is why the interesting ones ask for two or three things that fit on one rocket.

One flight can finish several contracts at the same time, which is the real reason to keep a full slate under way. A rocket that carries a Parachute, an Engine and a Thermometer can be earning three rewards on the way up.

The deadline is real time

Accepting starts a clock, and it is a clock in the world outside the game: real days, running whether the app is open or not. Each row under way shows what is left of it, and turns amber in the last hours.

Let the clock run out and the contract fails. The advance goes back, with a tenth of it on top as the penalty, and the row moves down to the recent list with a ✕ beside it. That is the whole risk of taking one on: an advance you cannot earn out is a small loss, never a ruinous one.

Giving one up

A contract you cannot meet can be dropped where it stands. It costs exactly what missing the deadline costs, so giving up buys back nothing but the wait and the slot on the Administration's board. It is worth doing when the slot is what you want, and never worth doing to save money.

Because it costs real credits and cannot be undone, the button on that row asks twice: the first tap turns it red and names the bill, the second sends it. See Give up a contract.

The board is readable in flight

The flight is what meets the goals, so you can read the board without leaving the air. The flight menu carries a 📋 CONTRACTS chip with the number under way on it, and it opens the same board on the map as in flight. In there it is read-only and shows only what is under way: each goal grows a green tick the moment your ship meets it, so it works as the mission list for the flight you are in.

Offers and finished jobs are left out of the flight board on purpose. Nothing you could sign from orbit would be a job you could still fly. See See your contracts in flight.

Some jobs are used up

Most of the flight tests are asked once. When you accept one, the game decides then and there whether that company will ever put it in front of you again, and for a "prove this part works" job the answer is usually no. It is gone for good after that, for you alone.

Alongside them is the steady work, the jobs that always come back however often you fly them: bringing a capsule home, holding a long burn, and every piece of carrying work below. Those are what a veteran's board is made of, and they are the reason contracts count as income rather than a second helping of achievements. An offer you simply let expire is not used up, only redrawn.

Carrying work pays the bills

Jobs come in two kinds. A test proves a part — fly it, fire it, load it — and once you have taken one on it is usually gone for good. Transport is the other kind: carrying something for money. A passenger, a client's package, a satellite to its orbit. Those never retire, and they are what makes contracts an income rather than a second helping of achievements.

So the board keeps room for them. Two of its ten offers are filled from the carrying work before anything else is drawn — passenger runs first — which means that from the moment you own a Crew Capsule there is nearly always somebody waiting to be flown somewhere. Nearly always, not always — if you have already signed every one your Administration can show, the slots stay empty until one of them ends. The rows say TRANSPORT above the company's name.

Freight is carrying work with nobody aboard, and it is what you fly at the start: no early pod has a seat to spare for a passenger. A freight job wants something aboard, an altitude or a destination, and then the ship recovered — the RECOVER chip in the flight menu, not merely a landing on the ground. That is deliberate. Recovering a rocket refunds every part still on it, so a freight run flown in a ship you bring home whole pays the reward and costs almost nothing. It is the cheapest money in the game, and it is meant to be: it teaches the landing that everything later depends on.

The counts and what each tier pays are in the contracts reference.

Passengers

Some contracts hand you people. A tourist run puts one, two or four passengers on your roster the moment you accept, free, and the board names them on the row. There are eighteen of them and no two want the same flight: at tier 2 they vary the orbit — a hop, a lob to 300 km, a proper circular orbit, a long ellipse out to 1,500 km, a landing in the mountains — and at tier 3 the destination: lunar orbit, a crater floor, a flyby that never stops, Mars, one of its two little moons, a station. They are not yours to keep: they do not take up room at the Astronaut Center, they cannot be dismissed, and they leave when the contract ends however it ends.

A passenger still needs a seat next to an astronaut, so these jobs name the Crew Capsule in their first goal, and they finish on a recovery rather than a landing. Getting your passengers off the ship is the point. See The Meek for who is riding.

Contracts belong to the shared world

The board is part of the world everyone flies in. In sandbox it opens and tells you so, and nothing there can be signed, judged or paid. Fly sandbox for the flying; come back to the shared world for the work.