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Make rovers useful


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Rovers are the ultimate probes for NASA but they have effectively zero scientific value in KSP.  Biomes are too far apart to be reasonably driven between, at best you can land next to a dividing line and then drive over it--but you can probably do better with rockets than hauling all the extra mass for a rover.

Thus I suggest the following changes to surface science:

1)  Increase the maximum science for any given experiment/biome.

2)  Decrease the science recovered from conducting an experiment.

3)  Simply redoing the experiment will gain you nothing--to get more science you need to be some specified distance away from the initial position.  (To simplify the data: Record where an instrument lands.  Additional data is based on your distance from that point, no need to track every spot you got science.)

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How about this:

1. Get rid of science points entirely and make the experiments grant reputation instead (more about this here and here).

2. Generate points of interest based on the rover landing site (if a mission asks you to land in a crater then the next points of interest/sites should appear in that crater and its vicinity).

Another "tweak" to the science system will do nothing. The system is flawed and trying to balance it will not work. SImply giving more or less points to a biome's full reward is just another "tweak". We've been delivered many of them and guess what? Career, the tech tree and science system are still broken.

A proper mission generation overhaul could fix so many problems and yet the developers don't care. Because "tweaking", right?

Edited by Veeltch
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I've come to the conclusion that KSP is a rocket physics simulation first, a game second. I recently read an indie developer blog detailing a new game mechanic/feature the dev was working on implementing in the upcoming alpha of his game. It pointed out something that stood out to me in regards to KSP (and now that I think about it, the recent v1.0 release of Starbound): The "gameplay" mechanics used don't feedback into one another well (if at all) and feel tacked on. (Starbound has some other quibbles I have for it, but this isn't the place for it.) The developer went over his thoughts on the mechanic, how to make it interesting, useful; basically how its would be a value-add to the game and it's integration with the other systems and mechanics in his game. (Well, I thought it was a good read...)

Looking back on what I know of the KSP development history, KSP's focus in development was on the simulation part far more than anything else. (And I mean that literally: look at the UI issues, general lack of truly interesting long-term content, etc.) KSP had quite the development history, mainly because it was being developed by a crew that had no game development history or experience to begin with. Said crew tried VERY ambitious project as their first task, no less. Honestly, you can (still) see the problems that brought about: stability issues, relative lack of content, disparate behavior in the game, lack of cohesiveness/unity (pun mildly intended) in design, etc. I know I'm gonna sound spoiled saying this, and I hate it, but it's says a bit about a release when a year later with plenty of updates, there were minimal content additions and FAR more stability/performance changes. And I don't mean small ones here and there. I mean BIG changes. You have the recent 1.1 and the upcoming 1.2 updates. It's great that the devs are doing what they can to continually fix/improve the "game", but sometimes I think the game went to 1.0 sooner than it should've.

I say that because I find it very peculiar for something to have practically a complete ground up rewrite within a year or two after release when it was already a long time in development. Granted, the KSP team has far more manpower now. Not only that, it's manpower that seems to have a better grasp on the situation now compare to the beta era. I certainly don't envy them. Code refactoring is a *bleep*.

KSP's underlying foundation is being worked on so they can build on top of it better. I say don't worry about the "game" aspects until they have a stable foundation and platform to actually build a game on. They've torn down the house to rebuild the foundation (the code refactoring), so let's just wait to see the new house they build for themselves after before trying to "fix" things. What's the point in fixing something when it might be reworked soon, anyway?

The best advice I can say about not being satisfied with an aspect of the current KSP is to find (or make, perhaps request) a mod that helps alleviate that problem for the time being.

Edited by StahnAileron
Changed some formatting because the forum autodefining acronyms irks me sometimes... (Seems I shouldn't try using caps as an emphasize method on this forum...)
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50 minutes ago, klesh said:

Points of interest, with actual interesting things there would be better than just a random lat/long.  That of course would require the surfaces of planets to be interesting too.

Yeah, but that would require a **lot** of points of interest to make it viable.  It would be the best answer, though.

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Just brought a rover to the Mun for the heck of it, since I've never bothered actually using them for the reasons listed in the OP.

And...yeah. Pretty much worthless, driving anywhere takes years, using x4 warp is out of the question as you'll flip or break a wheel inevitably. Biomes are too far apart, it would be simpler and easier to just bring some extra fuel and fly over to the next one. Besides the novelty of "Whee! I'm driving in low gravity on the Mun!" I can't see any reason to ever actually use a rover. Let's not even get into the planets where the gravity is too low to keep the thing on the ground.

I'm not sure what the correct answer to this problem is, but rover's are seriously disappointing in their current form.

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Rovers are useful to pinpoint the more ore rich spots, to do some survey missions, to tackle several biomes without expending fuel (assuming you land near a biome border) and, sometimes, driving them can be fun. A large rover with a claw can be useful as a mining rig/surface tanker

 

But they have huge problems: the wheels are pretty much broken. Even if they are fixed, I'm not sure large rovers are viable anymore since wheels can now only take so much weight and there is no gui to tell you that, driving at 4x is out of the question and it takes forever to reach anywhere (as Rocket in my pocket says), the scenery is dull, you will break the rover many times and since saving while moving is impossible, that means going back minutes of gameplay, you can't easily carry them to their destination unless they are a miniature, and there is no gameplay value in being in a planetary surface other than clicking on a bunch of parts.

 

I would like to know if Squad even acknowledges this issues (besides the wheels, I mean)

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It's not the problem of surface being dull. It's also dull in real life and yet people get excited when something new is discovered by Curiosity (or some other rover that's still active). It's because the real life rovers perform science and dig into rocks. The problem is with how the contracts and mission objectives are handled. You get about 5 surface points to visit if you accept the contract and once they are all visited the rover becomes useless. No point in driving the thing if a new contract asks you to visit a place on the far side of the planet you are on.

The problem is contracts. There should be a tool that would allow mission planning (pick a landing site and once the landing there is achieved decide wether to go north, south, east or west from there).

So IMO it should work like this: The player picks a rover program ("Duna Robotic Surface Exploration" or something like that). The program offers a bunch of landing sites based on biomes (decide if you want to land in biome X, Y or Z yourself). Then, once the game recognizes there's a rover landed (with wheels) it gives a few points of interest ("Visit point ABC-123 near your landing site"). You go there, visit the place and *CHING!* A new one pops out nearby (500m away, or so, just to not make the journey tedious)! The points of interest keep generating around the rover as long as the player is interested in roving. If he isn't, he/she simply marks the program as finished and gets the reward for it (and abandons the poor bugger on the surface of another world).

Nice surface features are finite and creating them is time-consuming. I'm not saying they shouldn't be in the game, but a real surface of a planet is not that interesting either. Unless we have bigger planets, that is. Points of interest are already in the game (the little pin-like icons that appear when a contract is chosen) and just need to be properly used in order to make the gameplay more fun (and to whoever is about to start a talk about what is fun and what isn't for them - don't even try).

Let's be honest, Curiosity and Opportunity are slowly driving around and performing what a geologist would do. Brushing dust off is not that exciting.

Edited by Veeltch
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On Mun two rover landings let you finish the science tree, East farside crater / canyon give you 7 biomes inside of 5 km. East crater gives four. 
You want to land an rover on an biome hotspot or at least an intersection.

I mapped all biomes on Eve using two rover landings. I had to drive around 60 km but 30 of it was to get both splashed down on midland. 

Part of the problem is that you can just jump around with an lander instead, on Eve this is not an option. Unmanned rovers also have limited value because how the science system is set up. 

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1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Unmanned rovers also have limited value because how the science system is set up. 

I agree. The science system is ridiculous. Who the hell decided that forcing the players to go somewhere should unlock you more parts? That's just limiting and nothing else. It doesn't even encourage exploration since you can finish the tree by biome-hopping one planetary body/a moon. It could've been done so much better.

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4 hours ago, Veeltch said:

I agree. The science system is ridiculous. Who the hell decided that forcing the players to go somewhere should unlock you more parts? That's just limiting and nothing else. It doesn't even encourage exploration since you can finish the tree by biome-hopping one planetary body/a moon. It could've been done so much better.

The fundamental problem is that the points of scientific interest are too far apart for rovers.  The only place where they actually are useful is the KSC biomes.

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7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

On Mun two rover landings let you finish the science tree, East farside crater / canyon give you 7 biomes inside of 5 km. East crater gives four. 
You want to land an rover on an biome hotspot or at least an intersection.

This sounds interesting, actually, and could be used to "fix rovers". If biome mapping was a thing in-game, it would be easy to identify the hotspots, which would make perfect sites for rover landings.

That, or simply adding "hotspots" manually. Some place with several points of interest within a small area, small enough to require difficult precision landings if "lander hopping" was used. Underground caves could also be used. Just somewhere interesting to send rovers, where sending a lander would be too difficult or time-consuming, and a lone Kerbal with his jetpack can't do the job because various instruments are required.

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1 hour ago, Codraroll said:

This sounds interesting, actually, and could be used to "fix rovers". If biome mapping was a thing in-game, it would be easy to identify the hotspots, which would make perfect sites for rover landings.

That, or simply adding "hotspots" manually. Some place with several points of interest within a small area, small enough to require difficult precision landings if "lander hopping" was used. Underground caves could also be used. Just somewhere interesting to send rovers, where sending a lander would be too difficult or time-consuming, and a lone Kerbal with his jetpack can't do the job because various instruments are required.

Individual Biome multipliers for science returns could help with that, if a micro-biome (or hotspot) had high science returns, it'd be worth trying to pinpoint it with a rover.

It'd give something else for satellites to do as well, indicating the general area for something interesting from orbit.

It could add a bit of replayability to the game as well, if some of the hotspots are randomly scattered at the start of the game. (And something to do in the endgame, after you've unlocked the science tree, tracking down the hotspots you haven't found yet.)

They could act as targets for missions as well (Building up infrastructure around them, tourist destinations, etc.)

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48 minutes ago, Jimmidii said:

Individual Biome multipliers for science returns could help with that, if a micro-biome (or hotspot) had high science returns, it'd be worth trying to pinpoint it with a rover.

It'd give something else for satellites to do as well, indicating the general area for something interesting from orbit.

It could add a bit of replayability to the game as well, if some of the hotspots are randomly scattered at the start of the game. (And something to do in the endgame, after you've unlocked the science tree, tracking down the hotspots you haven't found yet.)

They could act as targets for missions as well (Building up infrastructure around them, tourist destinations, etc.)

I like the idea of hotspots, although I'm leery about tourists--the more places tourists can go the more scattered their desired objectives are and thus the more of a pain to complete.  If each contract were for a single destination/set of destinations this would certainly help tame it.  It would also help if we could have more active tourist contracts.

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On 30/07/2016 at 0:38 AM, Loren Pechtel said:

Rovers are the ultimate probes for NASA but they have effectively zero scientific value in KSP.  Biomes are too far apart to be reasonably driven between, at best you can land next to a dividing line and then drive over it-

I'm tempted to say, you can land on a 3-way intersection... but then if you can do that precisely enough you don't even need the rover.

I like the idea mooted in this thread of moderately-nearby science hotspots to drive around.

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If vessels were about to be moved without having to be an active vessel, it would simplify A LOT in terms of late-game gameplay. (Late-game = You know how to launch/fly/drive/land vessels well enough on a routine basis.) I get that KSP is a rocket sim, but at a later point in my experience, I want to be able to MANAGE my space program without having to be the pilot for every single mission I have in-flight that needs a maneuver or whatever done. I understand some actions needing the player's presence, like EVAs and docking, but a maneuver burn? Granted, something like this would need to be high up on the tech tree... (But research in KSP makes no sense either. How does a sample of Mun dirt help me figure out how to develop complex rocket components?)

RemoteTech had the idea with the flight computer (even though it was simplified), but you STILL had to have that vessel as active for it to do the burn. (At least last time I tried it. I find it wasn't worth the trouble.) I know there was a mod that would let rovers roam while not the active vessel. Something like that would make rovers at least more compelling to use, worthwhileness and payoffs notwithstanding.

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15 hours ago, Codraroll said:

This sounds interesting, actually, and could be used to "fix rovers". If biome mapping was a thing in-game, it would be easy to identify the hotspots, which would make perfect sites for rover landings.

That, or simply adding "hotspots" manually. Some place with several points of interest within a small area, small enough to require difficult precision landings if "lander hopping" was used. Underground caves could also be used. Just somewhere interesting to send rovers, where sending a lander would be too difficult or time-consuming, and a lone Kerbal with his jetpack can't do the job because various instruments are required.

This exist already, the east west crater on Mun Is an goldmine, Tylo also has hotspots, you tend to get them in some biome borders.
On Tylo I did not go for an rover design but rater an SSTO with mining as I could reuse it on Laythe and later contract landings. 

 

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On 7/30/2016 at 4:01 AM, Veeltch said:

Another "tweak" to the science system will do nothing. The system is flawed and trying to balance it will not work. SImply giving more or less points to a biome's full reward is just another "tweak". We've been delivered many of them and guess what? Career, the tech tree and science system are still broken.

A proper mission generation overhaul could fix so many problems and yet the developers don't care. Because "tweaking", right?

First of all, I think it's extremely unfair(and rude) to say that they "don't care".  I'm sure they do care about it, but there are a lot of other things they consider higher priority.  The current science system is far from perfect, but at least to some extent it works and serves its purpose of giving the game some sense of progression.

Second, I can think of at least one "tweak" that would fix a lot of the issues with the current system, especially the ones raised in this topic.  The problem right now is that as soon as you do an experiment once in a given biome, you're basically done.  There's no points for doing that experiment again anywhere else in that biome, even halfway around the world.  Instead, it should be changed to something more like the following:

1. Doing the experiment immediately gives a certain number of points. 

2,  Leaving the instrument in the same location for an extended period of time will gradually generate some additional data which can either be transmitted back or recovered later for more points.  IRL, you don't just say, "Ok, this spot on the Moon is 15 degrees...done."   You can learn a lot more by seeing how it varies at different times of the day or year.  The rate at which points can be gained should probably decrease exponentially over time with some maximum amount that can be earned from one spot.

3.  Traveling to a different spot in the same biome should allow you to earn more points.  This new location would need to be a certain minimum distance away from any previous sites you have studied, maybe 1-2km at most so it's still practical to drive a rover there.  Each new spot within the same biome will give an exponentially decreasing multiplier to the number of points earned right away and over time from that spot, again with a maximum amount of possible points you can earn from that biome.

4.  All of the above are tracked separately for each biome, so going to an entirely different biome will give a completely new set of data that you can earn. 

5.  While they're at it, some adjustments to the relative values of transmitting vs. actually recovering the experiment should be made.  Some things like temperature readings should be able to be transmitted for full value.  IRL, it's pretty easy to say "Current temp is 75 degrees" and you wouldn't gain any additional info by actually getting the thermometer back.  On the other hand, something like a surface sample should give little or no data unless actually recovered.  Without an actual lab to analyze it, the astronaut is probably not going to be able to say much more than "Yup, looks like dirt..."  Maybe a highly trained geologist(ie level 3+ scientist) could be a bit more specific and give SOME points, but certainly nowhere close to the full amount.

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14 minutes ago, Hodari said:

5.  While they're at it, some adjustments to the relative values of transmitting vs. actually recovering the experiment should be made.  Some things like temperature readings should be able to be transmitted for full value.  IRL, it's pretty easy to say "Current temp is 75 degrees" and you wouldn't gain any additional info by actually getting the thermometer back.  On the other hand, something like a surface sample should give little or no data unless actually recovered.  Without an actual lab to analyze it, the astronaut is probably not going to be able to say much more than "Yup, looks like dirt..."  Maybe a highly trained geologist(ie level 3+ scientist) could be a bit more specific and give SOME points, but certainly nowhere close to the full amount.

Definitely.  Samples should have to be taken to a lab to get the science, anything where you haul the analysis equipment along should give full value for a transmission.  Bringing the instrument home doesn't help anything--and isn't even required anyway.  In my current game I have full science from Minmus and I haven't brought home any instruments from there.  It all came home via EVA to a tourist bus.  Thus it is all transmitted (from the instruments to the capsule) except for the surface samples.

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