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Does anyone know how exactly the reputation points are awarded in Kerbal Space Program?

I have read about reputation and know that it acts as a sort of currency. I also know that a 1000 points is the (theoretical) maximum reputation, which can probably never be achieved as the points awarded decrease "exponentially".

However, it is the nature of this decreasing amount of points that I am interested in. As I gain more and more reputation, how can I know or at least estimate how many points I will be awarded for my next mission? What is the exponent in this relationship or what is the actual mathematical dependence of reputation points awarded and current reputation level?

I thought that perhaps as I progress, the reputation awards for the contracts will transparently decrease and this will be evident when accepting a mission. However, it seems that I actually do not get the points that are listed in the Mission Control Centre, but rather some reduced amount. I seem to have been stuck around 800 (or 80 %) reputation for ever ...

Getting a good idea of how my reputation will progress is difficult for several reasons:

  • The graphical reputation bar is difficult to gauge and moves imperceptibly at this point.
  • The reputation summary showing the exact reputation after a successful mission is only available after completing manned missions, so I miss on what happened in between.

The purpose of this question is to get an idea of how far it is worthy to develop the reputation level (to get more and harder missions and better rewards, as per the wiki) and when to start trading it off for funds or science.

If this cannot be answered, here is an easier subquestion: Does this magic formula for awarding reputation apply only for reputation gains or the losses too? That is, do I always lose 1 reputation point for declining a mission, regardless of my current reputation level?

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  • This should be testable with modded contracts and/or save file editing. Anyway, my educated guess would be that the formula for reputation gain probably looks something like new_rep = old_rep + gain * (1000 - old_rep) / 1000. And I wouldn't be surprised if it was flipped around for losses into something like new_rep = old_rep - loss * (old_rep + 1000) / 1000.
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 11:12

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There wasn't an expontial descrease in awarded Reputation... at least not as such... the reputation awarded seems to be awarded as the value given on the contract.

I did some testing on it a while ago... around 0.8 and this all may have changed considerably since then but at that time...

Reputation of 1% to 30% was awarded at ~ 10 points for each % point

Reputation of 31% to 60% was awarded at ~ 20 points for each % point

Reputation of 61% to 80% was awarded at ~ 50 points for each % point

Reputation of 80% to 95% was awarded at ~ 200 points for each % point

Reputation of 95% to 100% was awarded at ~ 500 points for each % point

These are rough figures as i only did missions and checked how much the reputation changed, but the points awarded never came in at less than was stated so it didn't decrease, but the cost to increase from 99% rep to 100& was hugely more than from 1% to 2%

If anyone comes up with the exact numbers i'd be happy to hear them but i've never actually seen a mission give me less reputation then what is stated in the contract.

If they have changed it to a 1000 max cap then all the above may end up being worthless... if so apologies

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