Do rivers still exist?

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm trying to collect all the science and I have yet to find a river on Kerbin.  The only sources for splashed down at <x> are lakes and I'm not finding lakes in all the biomes.  Obviously I haven't checked every square km of Kerbin but I keep moving around (Bon Voyage autopilot) and pull the camera back looking for blue--and finding nothing in highlands, mountains or on the ice.  There's a lake in the northern ice but I see no way to use it--the edge of the ice pack is a sheer cliff face, to get there I would have to land a rocket on it.

[Aegolius13]

Dunno about rivers, but you could try a VTOL to get the ice lake.   Or drop a rocket sitting on an inflatable heat shield.   They make great floats.

Or heck,  you could drop anything into the lake and then just recover it. 

[fourfa]

There's usually a little wiggle room around the boundaries - I bet if you land a seaplane in the water near the ice shelf and bump into the ice, you'll be splashed in the ice shelf biome. 

I swear I've found lakes in mountain and highland to the north of KSC but I don't have coordinates. When I've gone hunting for rare biomes, it's always been with a STOL plane with lots of wing, easy to land slow and stop on a dime

Edited January 13, 2017 by fourfa

[Loren Pechtel]

21 minutes ago, Aegolius13 said:

Dunno about rivers, but you could try a VTOL to get the ice lake.   Or drop a rocket sitting on an inflatable heat shield.   They make great floats.

Or heck,  you could drop anything into the lake and then just recover it. 

I got annoyed at the lake being inaccessible and used Vessel Mover to drop my rover into it--got the northern ice sheet science that way.  I also found a narrow band around the southern ice sheet that was water but classed as ice.  That leaves me with highlands, mountains and ice caps (these terrain types never touch the ocean) that I haven't found water, as well as the reverse case--landed at water.  Elsewhere I found it said that a two-cockpit craft would do this but it didn't work for me.  (My rover was by it's very nature two-cockpit.  The first step was to EVA one kerbal and put him in a command seat so I'm in a position to get all science.

14 minutes ago, fourfa said:

There's usually a little wiggle room around the boundaries - I bet if you land a seaplane in the water near the ice shelf and bump into the ice, you'll be splashed in the ice shelf biome. 

I swear I've found lakes in mountain and highland to the north of KSC but I don't have coordinates. When I've gone hunting for rare biomes, it's always been with a STOL plane with lots of wing, easy to land slow and stop on a dime

I'll hunt there.  I've seen rivers in earlier versions but I can't find a hint of one in 1.2.

With the Bon Voyage autopilot rovers work pretty well (it doesn't really handle steep terrain properly--it's pathfinder doesn't look at the fine details on terrain and calls it passable/not passable on the coarse terrain.  It can deliver you to a slope where you'll slide but you're guaranteed not to have to slide too far because overall it must be flat enough so there must be a flat area nearby to balance the steep one) and it's hands-off, no flying a plane around for ages.

The result is a pretty crazy looking rover, though.  The basic framework has all the science but it also has 6 cubic fuel tanks and thuds on them (so I can go airborne for a moment to get flying low science) and it has a post coming up with jet engines (so I can go out onto water--steering is a royal pain, though!) and solar cells.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Loren Pechtel

[fourfa]

Ah - I'm a plane enthusiast and mine fly hands off at 4x time warp while I look around. Different strokes!

[Benjamin Kerman]

Suggestion: Use Kerbnet, or whatever it's called on a satellite to see the different biomes. It is a new feature on 1.2, so you can see where you need to go and place waypoints. 

[Loren Pechtel]

2 hours ago, Benjamin Kerman said:

Suggestion: Use Kerbnet, or whatever it's called on a satellite to see the different biomes. It is a new feature on 1.2, so you can see where you need to go and place waypoints. 

I have ScanSat birds up there, finding the biomes isn't the problem.

The problem is locating water within those biomes to get the "splashed down at" science.

BTW, I did find ice cap water--there's a big lake up north that I thought was entirely tundra water but I found a sliver of ice cap water in it also.  I'm now left with only highlands and mountains and I can't find a bit of water and figuring out how to do landed at ocean.

There's a big river that goes into the mountains to the NE of KSC but it doesn't help--the river is actually entirely "shores" biome.

For anyone that's stumbled on this thread with the same problem:

Ice caps:  Go north from KSC to the ice.  There's a big lake between the ice and tundra, the east bit of the lake is ice.

Northern Ice Shelf:  Big lake in it (apparently inaccessible to rovers) and at sea right next to it.

Southern Ice Shelf:  At sea right next to it.

Tundra:  The lake mentioned with ice caps or on the other side of the pole there's also a lake.

Highlands:  I haven't found any.

Mountains:  I haven't found any.

Grasslands:  Lakes are abundant.  Zoom as far away as you can still see the terrain.

Deserts:  I found one in the desert SW of KSC.

Badlands:  Go over to the continent with a bunch of them, I found one in the NE of all those blobs of badlands.

Shores:  Duh!

Water:  Duh!  What I haven't found is how to get landed on water.

[Benjamin Kerman]

3 minutes ago, Loren Pechtel said:

I have ScanSat birds up there, finding the biomes isn't the problem.

The problem is locating water within those biomes to get the "splashed down at" science.

BTW, I did find ice cap water--there's a big lake up north that I thought was entirely tundra water but I found a sliver of ice cap water in it also.  I'm now left with only highlands and mountains and I can't find a bit of water and figuring out how to do landed at ocean.

There's a big river that goes into the mountains to the NE of KSC but it doesn't help--the river is actually entirely "shores" biome.

For anyone that's stumbled on this thread with the same problem:

Ice caps:  Go north from KSC to the ice.  There's a big lake between the ice and tundra, the east bit of the lake is ice.

Northern Ice Shelf:  Big lake in it (apparently inaccessible to rovers) and at sea right next to it.

Southern Ice Shelf:  At sea right next to it.

Tundra:  The lake mentioned with ice caps or on the other side of the pole there's also a lake.

Highlands:  I haven't found any.

Mountains:  I haven't found any.

Grasslands:  Lakes are abundant.  Zoom as far away as you can still see the terrain.

Deserts:  I found one in the desert SW of KSC.

Badlands:  Go over to the continent with a bunch of them, I found one in the NE of all those blobs of badlands.

Shores:  Duh!

Water:  Duh!  What I haven't found is how to get landed on water.

Mountains can be found just West of the KSC. I believe there are also highlands west of the KSC as well, but check me on both of these. I think there is a website out there with interactive biome maps of Kerbin... I will try to find it again and post the web address. Good luck!

 

Edit: Again, I understand your problem is landing on these biomes. Mountain would be difficult, but there is a plateau there that you might be able to parachute to. 

Edited January 13, 2017 by Benjamin Kerman

[bewing]

3 hours ago, fourfa said:

I swear I've found lakes in mountain and highland to the north of KSC but I don't have coordinates.

For years, people have been complaining to the devs that Kerbin biomes were untidy. Eventually, a few too many devs came to agree with this, and in 1.2.0 they suddenly decided to tidy up all the biomes on all the CBs including Kerbin. I personally thought that it was a huge mistake to give in to this neat-freak hysteria over tidy biomes. (Who ever heard of biology on Earth being tidy? Nature is not tidy, and the biomes in KSP shouldn't be, either.) I blame this move squarely on the neat freaks that were complaining for so long.

But the devs spent (wasted ) hours and hours tidying the crap out of all the biomes. So now the tidy crowd got their wish. I personally don't like it. And yes, the devs specifically said "We don't think that KSP needs to provide both landed and splashed situations for all biomes on Kerbin." However, I have still been able to get splashed in every biome on Kerbin except highlands. It was clear that the splashed mountain and ice cap biomes that I found were errors in the biome map -- they were very small, and I only found one of each of them so far. During further tidying (which is indeed planned to happen), they seem likely to disappear, also.

There are also plenty of spots on the edges of the ice shelves where you can still get landed on water without cheating.

One of the bits of tidying they did was to mark every bit of every river as "shores". I think this was a huge mistake, too.

The biomes on Kerbin are now completely dull and boring, as far as I'm concerned. They are all neat and tidy and exactly where you would expect them to be (with a few tiny, very hard to find errors). *yawn*

But I hope that fourfa can find those lakes again and provide coordinates.

 

 

[fourfa]

14 minutes ago, Benjamin Kerman said:

Mountains can be found just West of the KSC. I believe there are also highlands west of the KSC as well, but check me on both of these. I think there is a website out there with interactive biome maps of Kerbin... I will try to find it again and post the web address. Good luck!

The problem is finding a bit of water so you can get an extra set of science data from "splashed down in Kerbin's Mountains" in addition to "landed at Kerbin's Mountains" for more extra science points

[Superfluous J]

I'm not sure if it works in 1.2.2 (because they redid the biome maps and I don't know how much they changed) but the Field Research contract pack for Contract Configurator has a "Rare Science" set of contracts.

On 6/1/2015 at 0:11 AM, nightingale said:

Rare Science - contract with suggested location for difficult biome/situation combinations (eg. Splashed down at Kerbin's Mountains).

 

[Benjamin Kerman]

Ah. I see what you are trying to do... That is difficult because of said "tidying up". I wish you all the luck in the world (or on Kerbin )! Personally, however, I just complete missions to gain science points, and don't bother going around the KSC to gather all science possible. (Except in early game, when science is hard to come by)

[Loren Pechtel]

16 minutes ago, Benjamin Kerman said:

Mountains can be found just West of the KSC. I believe there are also highlands west of the KSC as well, but check me on both of these. I think there is a website out there with interactive biome maps of Kerbin... I will try to find it again and post the web address. Good luck!

 

Edit: Again, I understand your problem is landing on these biomes. Mountain would be difficult, but there is a plateau there that you might be able to parachute to. 

No--I had no problem driving into the lower parts of the mountains and since I have ScanSat I have no problem finding them.  Plenty of mountain areas are passable, plenty of highland areas are not.  I've even gone catastrophically skidding in grasslands.  (The wheels could take it fine--the rover couldn't take the impact with the lake at the bottom of the hill.)

What provoked this thread was trying to find water in these biomes in order to get the "splashed down at" science.

All the flat biomes with the exception of the Southern Ice Shelf have lakes that qualify.  All coastal biomes can be gotten just offshore.  That leaves the elevated, inland biomes.  The ice caps touch a lake, I got them.  Now there are two.

4 minutes ago, Benjamin Kerman said:

Ah. I see what you are trying to do... That is difficult because of said "tidying up". I wish you all the luck in the world (or on Kerbin )! Personally, however, I just complete missions to gain science points, and don't bother going around the KSC to gather all science possible. (Except in early game, when science is hard to come by)

Actually, this started out with my trying to tidy up the science list in [x] Science! 

[nightingale]

6 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I'm not sure if it works in 1.2.2 (because they redid the biome maps and I don't know how much they changed) but the Field Research contract pack for Contract Configurator has a "Rare Science" set of contracts.

It works in 1.2.2 - I just re-generated the coordinates for places with "unusual" biome/situation combinations.

[Benjamin Kerman]

1 minute ago, Loren Pechtel said:

Plenty of mountain areas are passable, plenty of highland areas are not.  I've even gone catastrophically skidding in grasslands.  (The wheels could take it fine--the rover couldn't take the impact with the lake at the bottom of the hill.)

If you find yourself rolling on slopes, try building a roll cage to protect the delicate science instruments. If you are skidding down the hills, try adding drought chutes and adding an engineer to the crew roster to repack. 

5 minutes ago, Loren Pechtel said:

Actually, this started out with my trying to tidy up the science list in [x] Science! 

Ah. I thought we were brainstorming ideas of how to get to these difficult-to-reach places. My bad! 

[Loren Pechtel]

9 hours ago, Benjamin Kerman said:

If you find yourself rolling on slopes, try building a roll cage to protect the delicate science instruments. If you are skidding down the hills, try adding drought chutes and adding an engineer to the crew roster to repack. 

Ah. I thought we were brainstorming ideas of how to get to these difficult-to-reach places. My bad! 

I haven't had any rolling problems.  The skidding problem was one time, I drove over one of those ridge lines and I found the other side very steep.  I was trying to steer to avoid the lake and spun out of control.  A couple more seconds and I would have been fine--I had vastly overpowered jet engines but they were off (they were intended to move it about on water, I was using solar power to the wheels on land) and they take time to spin up and aren't much use if you can't point in the right direction, either.

I started out simply trying to clear the Kerbin science off the list so stuff left to do would be easier to find and it turned out to be a lot bigger than I expected.

[Loren Pechtel]

12 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I'm not sure if it works in 1.2.2 (because they redid the biome maps and I don't know how much they changed) but the Field Research contract pack for Contract Configurator has a "Rare Science" set of contracts.

 

A big help.

It found me landed at waters (clearly a glitch, I was on the edge of an ice sheet) and splashed down at mountains (another glitch, the same lake where i found splashed down at ice caps also contains some splashed down at mountains even though there are no mountains about) but it now is only offering me offworld science.  I think there's no splashed down at highlands to be found.

[bewing]

1 hour ago, Loren Pechtel said:

It found me landed at waters (clearly a glitch, I was on the edge of an ice sheet)

What is ice made of? Why oh why do people think that finding water on an ice sheet is a glitch? That is exactly the sort of thinking that got all these biomes deleted off Kerbin in the first place. Water on top of ice is not a glitch. It's called "meltwater" and you will find it every summer on top of every ice sheet on Earth.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

5 minutes ago, bewing said:

What is ice made of? Why oh why do people think that finding water on an ice sheet is a glitch? That is exactly the sort of thinking that got all these biomes deleted off Kerbin in the first place. Water on top of ice is not a glitch. It's called "meltwater" and you will find it every summer on top of every ice sheet on Earth.

 

There's only a couple of spots right at the boundary, it looks like ice, not water.  Glitch.

[bewing]

Just now, Loren Pechtel said:

There's only a couple of spots right at the boundary, it looks like ice, not water.  Glitch.

There used to be a lot more, until people told the devs it was a glitch, so the devs deleted it all.

And the air doesn't look like anything at all. So is the air a glitch?

The game is supposed to be educational. Being educational is supposed to include using your imagination a teensy tiny little bit. Imagine the damned puddles of meltwater.

[foamyesque]

8 minutes ago, Loren Pechtel said:

There's only a couple of spots right at the boundary, it looks like ice, not water.  Glitch.

 

Personally I'm of the opinion that a lot of what @bewing says is basically trolling. Bad advice, etc.

Edited January 13, 2017 by foamyesque

[Benjamin Kerman]

As @bewing said, it is unfortunate that the devs made everything so neat. The world does not look like a perfect little present tied up with a bow! It is a messy, weird place with all kinds of weird places! 

[bewing]

9 minutes ago, foamyesque said:

 

Personally I'm of the opinion that a lot of what @bewing says is basically trolling. Bad advice, etc.

Yup, that's why Squad put me on the QA team last year.

[Benjamin Kerman]

13 minutes ago, bewing said:

Yup, that's why Squad put me on the QA team last year.

Guys! We don't need to insult each other! If you have a disagreement, take it up with each other, not in a public thread that has nothing to do with your bickering! @bewing @foamyesque

Edited January 13, 2017 by Benjamin Kerman

[Loren Pechtel]

28 minutes ago, bewing said:

There used to be a lot more, until people told the devs it was a glitch, so the devs deleted it all.

And the air doesn't look like anything at all. So is the air a glitch?

The game is supposed to be educational. Being educational is supposed to include using your imagination a teensy tiny little bit. Imagine the damned puddles of meltwater.

The right answer is when cleaning things up the devs should have added a few alpine lakes and perhaps added some submerged islands that give extremely shallow water--you're landed if you're touching the surface under the water.