ὁ σκοπός, οῦ: goal.
KSP contracts that specify goals, and leave mission design to the player.
The stock career mode, as well as modded careers inspired by the stock system, e.g., RP-1, have some contracts focused on ultimate mission goals such as
which allow for many different mission profiles: direct ascent, earth orbit rendez-vous, lunar orbit rendez-vous, etc.
However, many contracts instead force a mission profile onto the player; requiring that some experiments be made in specific altitude ranges, or even requiring that satellites be placed into specific orbits.
These contracts can quickly become dull and repetitive, as there is no tangible reason for the requested orbit, and the whole mission becomes a mere exercise in precision in orbital insertion. Such contracts can also result in messy interactions with mods such as Principia that perturb the orbits.
Σκοπός aims to provide a framework allowing these constrained contracts to be turned into goal-oriented contracts.
For instance, instead of a contract to put a communications satellite in geostationary orbit over a specific longitude, the goal would be to provide a sustained transatlantic connection—by any means necessary, whether it be an MEO or LEO constellation or a single geosynchronous satellite.
Similarly, instead of having a contract to put a specific imaging instrument in a specific orbit, the goal would be to image a target at a specific resolution, possibly with time or freshness contraints, whether with a small telescope on an aircraft or a larger one on a satellite in low circular orbit or in an elliptical orbit.
Likewise contracts for positioning systems would have goals based on the accuracy of positioning, rather than on the orbits of the satellite in the system, goals for space observatories would reflect what they observe, rather than where they are, etc.
The current prototype focuses exclusively on telecommunications. It is based on RP-1, but does not integrate with the RP-1 career; the current focus is instead to gather data on the solutions players come up with, so as to inform balance: it would be pointless to have theoretically flexible contracts that are balanced in such a way as to allow only one economically viable solution.
An earlier iteration of this idea was implemented by @SirMortimer, first under the name of KerbalismContracts, then under the name Σκοπός.