[1.12.x] - Modular Kolonization System (MKS)

[sh1pman]

1 minute ago, voicey99 said:

 

Considering your inconsistency, I'm guessing you used the ranger habs, the common function of which is currently broken.

Yep, I did use Ranger habs.

[jd284]

26 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

Through experimenting in the VAB, I think the formula for additional habtime is simply [kerbalmonths specified÷crew] and for bases with commons it is [total kerbalmonths*multiplier÷{if common's crewcap is exceeded}(crew÷common's crewcap)]. By default all crew slots contribute 1 kerbalmonth (1 KM=30 days) each with a multiplier of 0.25; the multiplier rises to 1 when any habtime module is installed and for bases with commons see the 2nd equation.

Thanks, that makes some sense. And if I have more than one commons the multipliers are added, I think.

But basically that means the crew capacity rating of habs that just give months and no multiplier is irrelevant. Maybe it should be omitted in the info box to not cause confusion.

[LatiMacciato]

quick question: is there a reasonable way to move a large resource lode (2500 tons!!)? (found some on Mun)

Edited January 31, 2017 by LatiMacciato

[sh1pman]

Just now, LatiMacciato said:

quick question: is there a reasonable way to move a large resource lode (2500 tons!!)?

 Skycrane with karborundum torch drives.

[gamerscircle]

22 hours ago, gamerscircle said:

I have a basic scavenging noob question.. It would seem that it works, but supplies don't seem to scavenged.. is there something that I am missing when it comes supplies?

 

I thought I would re-ask on this, 

[damerell]

10 hours ago, blakemw said:

And it's all very well and good to just say "well I abstain from using the MPL so I want the rewards to be lower" but a stock-a-like mod should be balanced around options in stock.

This is a fair point, but equally the MPL is so horribly broken, I'd hate to see every mod feel the need to follow suit.

[blakemw]

1 minute ago, damerell said:

This is a fair point, but equally the MPL is so horribly broken, I'd hate to see every mod feel the need to follow suit.

As I said I'd consider 1/10th the effectiveness of MPL to be acceptable, but not 1/100th the effectiveness.

Stock KSP is not meant to be a low yield game, you can make heaps of money and science very quickly, you can upgrade every facility within days of starting a new career and I think you can unlock the entire stock tech tree in a month or something. So the yields on mod stuff can't be too low or it just feels very inconsistent.

Edited January 31, 2017 by blakemw

[zabieru]

10 hours ago, blakemw said:

The thing about science is that it's very easy to farm using MPLs, the science farming technique is to make a space station with a MPL and 2 scientists and put it in a polar orbit of Mun or Minmus, do high/low gravity scans (and other experiments but gravity scans can be done many more times) which should provide about 1500 data, the lab will produce about 500 science every 50 days with lvl3 scientists. If you still want more science you just replace the station with a new one and rinse and repeat, or if you want science at a faster rate you have 2 or 3 MPL's (on the same station) and run them in parallel, so you can make thousands of science every 50 days and only need to visit 1 station to claim it all. In terms of life support just use nom-o-matics and a big tub of fertilizer and a hitchiker can and viewing cupola - this'll easily support the scientists until the lab runs out of data.

Roughly speaking a science specialist in a mun base generates science at about 1/30th the rate of a scientist in the MPL lab, that means you need to provide him with life support and hab for 30x longer to get the same science yield, not only that but because it's on the surface rather than in orbit it makes everything much harder, I'd say that putting aside duration of stay it's *at least* 3x harder to put a kerbal on the surface of Mun than in orbit, so in total the science specialist is about 1/100th as effective as the scientist in the MPL, that's an *irrelevant* level of science. And here's the thing, even if the science rewards were 10x higher, it would still be 10x harder making science with a base than the "MPL cheese factory", it would still be a really bad way to make science, it just wouldn't be so abysmally bad as to be irrelevant.

And it's all very well and good to just say "well I abstain from using the MPL so I want the rewards to be lower" but a stock-a-like mod should be balanced around options in stock. I would say that being 10x worse is probably acceptable, being 100x worse is not. But there would be a good argument to be made for making a science specialist generate science at almost the same rate as a scientist in a MPL, since a MPL can be used in orbit while a base must be on the ground which is much more challenging in many ways.

"Balanced against stock" does not mean "about as good as the best thing in stock." Given that MPL-farming produces massively greater science rewards than any other technique in stock (5x as a baseline, but as you say it also lets you re-use experiments and get infinite science from Kerbin orbit), we're essentially talking about the science equivalent of ion drives. It's entirely fair to call an engine mod "stock-a-like" and "balanced against stock" even if none of the engines has the specific impulse of ion or nuke engines. (But I don't really know where you're getting the idea that this is a stock-a-like mod: it's not, it's much harder than stock in many areas.)

Further, since you can simply put an MPL on your base and get both science Kolony rewards and MPL rewards (helps to have a rover to hit nearby biomes, of course, but biome corners are likely spots to put MKS bases anyway), you can't balance Kolony rewards as a replacement for the MPL without also doubling the efficiency of MPL-farming.

Finally, since "don't use the MPL like that" is a popular choice among players, and since it's a bit harder to not-use science kolony rewards than it is to not farm an MPL (sure, easy enough to just not bring a Pioneer or not hit the button, but if you want the funds/rep you're stuck with the science), it seems appropriate to balance around the likely desire of some portion of the playerbase not to get MPL-farming-like science payouts from Minmus before they even hit Duna.

[jd284]

24 minutes ago, gamerscircle said:

I thought I would re-ask on this, 

You have my reply directly under your original post...

[zabieru]

7 minutes ago, blakemw said:

As I said I'd consider 1/10th the effectiveness of MPL to be acceptable, but not 1/100th the effectiveness.

If we were to consider, say, one year in Minmus orbit as the baseline science-collecting activity, let's balance the MPL, kolony rewards, and a grav detector. Grav detector gets, what, eight biomes? 80 science per for low, ~50 for high, I think? So about a thousand science. MPL gets, eh, something like eight thousand, and that's repeatable next year and the year after, etc.

If science rewards were balanced to your 1/10th figure, that would make kolony rewards about as productive in the first year as the grav detector, and infinitely repeatable as well, and that's before tripling for your difficulty-of-landing multiplier. "One tenth of an MPL" is still significantly more productive than any other science activity in the game."

[blakemw]

9 minutes ago, zabieru said:

 

Further, since you can simply put an MPL on your base and get both science Kolony rewards and MPL rewards (helps to have a rover to hit nearby biomes, of course, but biome corners are likely spots to put MKS bases anyway), you can't balance Kolony rewards as a replacement for the MPL without also doubling the efficiency of MPL-farming.

 

Ground is fairly ineffective for MPL because of the lack of gravity scans, you can't do a MPL farm on the ground it's just using a MPL normally. I suppose it's really the gravity scanner which is the broken half of the cheese factory because it allows generating so much data for so little effort. (I just tried a MPL cheese factory to the max to see how effective it can be without any restraint in it's use, and I'd completely filled the labs with gravity scans *from equatorial Kerbin* before even reaching orbit of Mun. The gravity experiment is just ridiculous in how much data it yields).

Edited January 31, 2017 by blakemw

[gamerscircle]

4 minutes ago, jd284 said:

You have my reply directly under your original post...

You did!  I started to read that, but I thought it was for someone else and didn't finish it.  The supplies are connected to a series of warehouse enabled containers, but they are for Mat Kits and Machinery.. so, you are saying that for scavenging, I need a container [empty or not] for supplies for the scavenging?

Now, based on your answer, if and when I get this sorted out, will those supplies be included when I click on the 'green' cub that shows sup, EC, etc?

 

[zabieru]

14 minutes ago, blakemw said:

Ground is fairly ineffective for MPL because of the lack of gravity scans, you can't do a MPL farm on the ground it's just using a MPL normally. I suppose it's really the gravity scanner which is the broken half of the cheese factory because it allows generating so much data for so little effort. (I just tried a MPL cheese factory to the max to see how effective it can be without any restraint in it's use, and I'd completely filled the labs with gravity scans *from equatorial Kerbin* before even reaching orbit of Mun. The gravity experiment is just ridiculous in how much data it yields).

Surface samples and seismic scans, plus the landed grav scans, plus "in space low" starts at 1cm ground clearance, plus you can always collect the orbital ones on your way down (or from your next taxi run).

[TauPhraim]

13 minutes ago, gamerscircle said:

will those supplies be included when I click on the 'green' cub that shows sup, EC, etc?

That shows supplies inside each vessel only. You don't see "available" nearby supplies, even if they are "scavengeable".

[sh1pman]

15 minutes ago, gamerscircle said:

You did!  I started to read that, but I thought it was for someone else and didn't finish it.  The supplies are connected to a series of warehouse enabled containers, but they are for Mat Kits and Machinery.. so, you are saying that for scavenging, I need a container [empty or not] for supplies for the scavenging?

Now, based on your answer, if and when I get this sorted out, will those supplies be included when I click on the 'green' cub that shows sup, EC, etc?

 

You need an actual warehouse with supplies inside. Kontainers, Redi-Paks, ISMs will work. USI-LS round containers, on the other hand, will not work. Ranger Hab module with supplies inside won't work either, even if it is connected to another warehouse that doesn't have supplies storage. If your Warehouse runs out of supplies, that's it, scavenging stops, even if there are more supplies somewhere else on that vessel.

Supplies in warehouses will not be included in the LS window report, it only considers the supplies that are physically on the same vessel where the kerbal is stationed.

[blakemw]

8 minutes ago, zabieru said:

Surface samples and seismic scans, plus the landed grav scans, plus "in space low" starts at 1cm ground clearance, plus you can always collect the orbital ones on your way down (or from your next taxi run).

The only way a MPL in a base is going to feel remotely balanced is if you *don't* grab the 1500-2000 data from gravity scans from kerbin and the moon on the way there.

[gamerscircle]

26 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

You need an actual warehouse with supplies inside. Kontainers, Redi-Paks, ISMs will work. USI-LS round containers, on the other hand, will not work. Ranger Hab module with supplies inside won't work either, even if it is connected to another warehouse that doesn't have supplies storage. If your Warehouse runs out of supplies, that's it, scavenging stops, even if there are more supplies somewhere else on that vessel.

Supplies in warehouses will not be included in the LS window report, it only considers the supplies that are physically on the same vessel where the kerbal is stationed.

Alright, that clears things up.. I have been taking the LS Tanks and just attaching them to landers and landing them in range;  However if the lander had an inflatable storage [for supplies] , then that would work?

[sh1pman]

2 minutes ago, gamerscircle said:

Alright, that clears things up.. I have been taking the LS Tanks and just attaching them to landers and landing them in range;  However if the lander had an inflatable storage [for supplies] , then that would work?

Only if you transfer the supplies into these inflatable storage modules. You also need to enable their Warehouse function, but I think that it's enabled by default.

I'd use the smaller supplies Redi-Paks for that purpose though, unless you need to store large amounts of mulch and fertilizer alongside the supplies.

Edited January 31, 2017 by sh1pman

[damerell]

3 hours ago, blakemw said:

As I said I'd consider 1/10th the effectiveness of MPL to be acceptable, but not 1/100th the effectiveness.

I don't think it's useful to compare to the MPL at all, but rather to be comparably effective to the unbroken bits of stock.

[blakemw]

 

11 minutes ago, damerell said:

I don't think it's useful to compare to the MPL at all, but rather to be comparably effective to the unbroken bits of stock.

You mean like being able to complete the tech tree in an in-game month without the MPL by just pillaging all biomes on Mun and Minmus?

KSP is not a game where the goodies trickle in slowly, if you put the work in they come in darn fast. The mod should be balanced accordingly, but it should also take into account difficulty settings in some way. So if the player sets science yields in difficulty to 10% then the kolony rewards should be reduced accordingly, so if the player wants slow progression they get it, but players who like the progression as it is by default can enjoy kolony rewards too (it's not like making and maintaining a base is a trivial effort, it's pretty darn hard and requires a 1000 point tech to even start getting rewards: it should be at least as rewarding as much easier things).

Edited February 1, 2017 by blakemw

[goldenpsp]

33 minutes ago, blakemw said:

 

You mean like being able to complete the tech tree in an in-game month without the MPL by just pillaging all biomes on Mun and Minmus?

KSP is not a game where the goodies trickle in slowly, if you put the work in they come in darn fast. The mod should be balanced however @RoverDude prefers, but it should also take into account difficulty settings in some way. So if the player sets science yields in difficulty to 10% then the kolony rewards should be reduced accordingly, so if the player wants slow progression they get it, but players who like the progression as it is by default can enjoy kolony rewards too (it's not like making and maintaining a base is a trivial effort, it's pretty darn hard and requires a 1000 point tech to even start getting rewards: it should be at least as rewarding as much easier things).

FTFY.

[PolecatEZ]

4 hours ago, LatiMacciato said:

quick question: is there a reasonable way to move a large resource lode (2500 tons!!)? (found some on Mun)

That's a case where you bring the mountain to Mohammed instead.  Karibou!

[Merkov]

Quick question for you guys: Is there any feedback that I'm not seeing when repainting flat kontainers? Full sized kontainers have different textures which make it easy to tell what you've repainted them to, but flat kontainers only have the one texture. Is there any way to see what you've repainted one to aside from swapping back to the vessel, right click, repeat?

[zabieru]

1 hour ago, Merkov said:

Quick question for you guys: Is there any feedback that I'm not seeing when repainting flat kontainers? Full sized kontainers have different textures which make it easy to tell what you've repainted them to, but flat kontainers only have the one texture. Is there any way to see what you've repainted one to aside from swapping back to the vessel, right click, repeat?

Nope. Same problem with the Karibou cargo-rack containers and the fuel tanks, last I checked. There are a couple of outstanding issues on github for these (we should probably consolidate them into one issue).

[jd284]

2 hours ago, Merkov said:

Quick question for you guys: Is there any feedback that I'm not seeing when repainting flat kontainers?

If your FireSpitter is up to date, you should be getting an onscreen message saying which resource it was repainted for. Even easier than trying to remember ISM numbering or kontainer abbreviations.