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Science mode ... which percentage of science reward?


Frag2000

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Hi guys,

first of all ... I love this game. I played around 150 hours so far (in science mode) and I am not even out of the Kerbin, Mun and Minmus yet. But my save game broke yesterday and it seems that I won't be able to fix my save file.

Link to my issue here, in case you feel like taking a look: Stuck in the Astronaut complex issue...

So since I want to play and that I now have now a better overview of the game, I will start a new Science game again. But there is one thing that I noticed in this game; It is way to easy to farm science points when you get access to the science processing lab. I just visited few biomes on Kerbin, Minmus and the moon and I was really close to finish up unlocking the complete tech tree!!!

So I think that I will lower the science rewards (in the difficulty setup) for my next game. So here is the question:

For you guys who play that game for a LONG time, what would be a good balance as far as the percentage of science rewards in the difficulty setup. My feeling is that we should only be able able to unlock like 30-40% of the components while visiting all biomes of the Kerbin system (kerbin, mun and minmus). 

What percentage of science did you try out? And what was the outcome?

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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52 minutes ago, Frag2000 said:

It is way to easy to farm science points when you get access to the science processing lab.

Yup, you are not the first person to make that observation.

My own solution to that is not to lower the science percentages... it's just don't use the science lab, ever.  There, problem solved.  :)

54 minutes ago, Frag2000 said:

For you guys who play that game for a LONG time, what would be a good balance as far as the percentage of science rewards in the difficulty setup. My feeling is that we should only be able able to unlock like 30-40% of the components while visiting all biomes of the Kerbin system (kerbin, mun and minmus). 

What percentage of science did you try out? And what was the outcome?

Will totally depend on individual tastes, of course.

For myself:  I like to leave the science percentages set as they are.  Yes, this means it's not too hard to max out the science tree with just Mun and Minmus.  However, that doesn't hurt my gameplay experience, since I still get what I want from the game.

First of all, given that I boycott the science lab... maxing out the science tree requires an awful lot of repetitive Mun/Minmus biome hopping.  I'm fine with a fair amount of it, but I've been playing KSP so long and gone through so many career playthroughs at this point that "hit every biome on the Mun" is a lot less appealing than it used to be :wink: ... and so I have the option of deliberately setting out for Duna or Eve or wherever, just as soon as I have enough tech for it, and round out the tech tree there.

Besides... the only way for science to be really "even" is if it requires exploring the whole solar system to unlock the whole tree.  And that's basically impossible to have:  if you scaled the science down far enough that you actually had to do that, then you'd have so little science available in the Kerbin system that you'd be lucky to leave Kerbin's SoI at all.

So, it's pretty much inevitable that you're going to peg the science meter before completing an exploration of the solar system.  It's just a question of how far you get.  For me, I don't mind pegging it relatively early on.

"Well then," I hear you ask, "what drives you to explore after you've maxed out the tech tree?"  Simple:  It's exploration that drives me to explore.  :)  Whenever I start a new career, I have a "story arc" in mind-- how am I going to play this one, what goals do I have, what are my priorities, and (importantly) what's my "success" criterion?  In other words, what does "done" look like?

I decide all that ahead of time.  I don't just play at random until I get bored:  I have a set of goals that I start the career with, I've already decided what constitutes "done", and when I get to that point I'll start a new career with a different set of goals, settings, mods, whatever.  It's how I keep KSP fresh for year after year.

So, given that I've got that "story arc" all figured out... maxing the tech tree isn't an end goal, it's just one of the steps along the way.  And depending on the story arc, it may even be a fairly early step.

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Like Snark, I don't use the lab.  In fact, I've NEVER used the lab, not even for just fooling around.  Edit: I also don't adjust the science before I start the game.

Also, I'm using Galileo's Planet Pack, which completely replaces the Kerbol System, including Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus (it's now Gael, Iota, and Ceti).  The planet pack has limited Gael-SOI biomes available for science farming.  I think Gael has maybe five major biomes (plus a few minor ones - the volcano near the space center, inland water, etc), not including the science farming around GSC, Iota has four only, and I think Ceti has five.  I've more or less mined all the science possible for those three places, minus a few points here and there where I'm just going to leave them.  That's gotten me roughly 1/3 of the way through the tech tree, although admittedly, I have a heavily modded game (over 90 mods, not including CKAN or Module Manager), which includes Community Tech Tree (expands the tech tree to include new nodes for parts from other mods such as Nertea's Near Future series of mods, Scansat, Universal Storage, and other stuff.

I've currently got probes at three of the eleven planets included in the mod, with another five awaiting transfer windows - three of those going to the planets I've already got probes at with more advanced science equipment than what I had when I sent the original three out.  Like the stock Kerbal system, the amount of science you get the farther you go increases, but at a lower rate.  At the moment, I've only unlocked two tech tree nodes in the 1000 science column, and still have four or five in 550 area to unlock.  And one in the 300 line (nuclear engines).

I also have KR&D (Kerbal Research & Development), which allows you to upgrade parts by spending science.  Usually, for each level of upgrade, you increase the stats by 10%, but each level of upgrade costs twice as much science as the previous level.  Things that can be upgraded are mass (reduces by 10% each level), ISP, heat tolerance, fuel capacity, etc.  The mod is primarily intended for the endgame when you've maxxed out the tech tree but have tons of science, but there's nothing stopping you from upgrading parts before then, although you obviously will need to gather more science to unlock higher tiers.  Nearly every part can be upgraded.  The only ones that can't are those that use/need other mods like Interstellar Fuel Switch, tweakscale, or anything that has on the fly changing of parts.  In fact, it's a little tricky to install those mods if you already have KR&D installed, or vice versa, since KR&D blacklists those types of mods.  CKAN will refuse to add them, and you'll need to manually install them (not that that's all that difficult).

Edited by MaxxQ
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I really like the way you play the game snark. It is in fact quite inspiring.

About the processing lab, before getting access to it, I thought from the description that it would give you the exact same point as bringing back the science data to Kerbin. So it would just avoid you to travel back and forth to Kerbin. I really liked the idea. But it seems that it is not the case, you could generate few hundreds point of science just by processing in that lab the data of a single Mun biomes.

Would you agree with me that if it would just give you the same amount of science point as bringing back the data to Kerbin it would be well balanced? The lab would simply take processing time and power (like it already does), would give you the same points, would require Transmit but would just avoid you the trip back home.

With this adjustment, the science reward would feel balanced.

Also, MaxxQ, that KR&D mod looks VERY interesting. I will take a look at it now.

Edited by Frag2000
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1 hour ago, Frag2000 said:

Would you agree with me that if it would just give you the same amount of science point as bringing back the data to Kerbin it would be well balanced? The lab would simply take processing time and power (like it already does), would give you the same points, would require Transmit but would just avoid you the trip back home.

With this adjustment, the science reward would feel balanced.

That's actually pretty close to how the science lab originally worked, when it was first introduced to the game:  it gave a boost to the percentage you recover if you transmit the science.

When the new (i.e. current) behavior came out, my initial reaction was pretty much identical to yours:  "hey, that's an unbalanced game-breaker, what the hell?"  Strongly negative.

However... I don't think it's something that needs "fixing", because the current point of the science lab is not to balance, the game, as I play it.  Rather, it's a deliberate design attempt to provide value to people who have a very different play style from you and me-- and which, it turns out, is a surprisingly (to me, anyway) large contingent of KSP players.

See, when you or I play the game... the gradual uncovering, obtaining, and use of science as one explores the solar system is the point of the game, or at least an awfully big part of it.  "Oh boy, I got to a new place and now yummy science" is a major endorphin rush.  The fact that it's hard and takes time-- i.e. that we have to wait for the science, and spend a lot of time and effort to get it-- adds to the anticipation and therefore our perceived reward when we finally get it.  So for someone who plays like that, the science lab is an unbalanced letdown of a game-breaker.

However... there are a lot of folks with a very different play style, with different motivations.  Folks for whom the way you or I play the game-- painstakingly gathering science from everywhere-- isn't a rush, it's a grind.  They may like career, but they don't like having to exhaustively mine out all the biomes for science, and the science lab gives them a way to work around that.

Here's a forum thread that I consider a must-read-- not just the OP, go read through the comments.  It was a real eye-opener for me:

An awful lot of players choose never to leave Kerbin's SoI.  Lots.  Maybe even most.  I was flabbergasted when this was borne in upon me, since it's so different from my own play style that it hadn't even occurred to me.  And the important thing to realize is that these people's way of playing is just as valid as anyone's-- it's not because they're "dumb", or have short attention spans, or anything else negative.  They simply like doing different things than I do.

And this gets to the crux of the issue.  KSP is a free-play game.  There are so many different aspects to the game, and so many different ways to experience those aspects, that every player can choose what KSP is to them.  That's a huge part of the beauty of this game:  it can be what you want it to be.  So even though it's the case that the science lab is about as useful to me as a bicycle is to a fish... that doesn't mean that it's necessarily "wrong".  Simply that I'm not the target audience; it's there to facilitate an alternate play style that I happen not to prefer.  Changing it to the behavior you describe might benefit you or me-- but it would be taking away from people who like to play KSP differently.

That's why I don't begrudge its existence.  I'm glad that KSP enables multiple play styles:  that means more people play KSP, which gives Squad more of a financial incentive to put resources into KSP development, and everybody wins.  So I just pretend the science lab doesn't exist, avoid using it, and get on with my game.

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An awful lot of players choose never to leave Kerbin's SoI.  Lots.  Maybe even most.  I was flabbergasted when this was borne in upon me, since it's so different from my own play style that it hadn't even occurred to me.  And the important thing to realize is that these people's way of playing is just as valid as anyone's-- it's not because they're "dumb", or have short attention spans, or anything else negative.  They simply like doing different things than I do.

And this gets to the crux of the issue.  KSP is a free-play game.  There are so many different aspects to the game, and so many different ways to experience those aspects, that every player can choose what KSP is to them.  That's a huge part of the beauty of this game:  it can be what you want it to be.  So even though it's the case that the science lab is about as useful to me as a bicycle is to a fish... that doesn't mean that it's necessarily "wrong".  Simply that I'm not the target audience; it's there to facilitate an alternate play style that I happen not to prefer.  Changing it to the behavior you describe might benefit you or me-- but it would be taking away from people who like to play KSP differently.

That's why I don't begrudge its existence.  I'm glad that KSP enables multiple play styles:  that means more people play KSP, which gives Squad more of a financial incentive to put resources into KSP development, and everybody wins.  So I just pretend the science lab doesn't exist, avoid using it, and get on with my game.

 

Heh, i'm one of those until recently. But i have the excuse that a couple of long breaks means the last version i seriously played was ohhh, 0.17 somthing, back when mainsails where new and squeaked and docking ports where cute creatures you fed kerbals to and stuff.

 

Given my tendency to over engineer and to be a bit conservative with using parts i have no experiance with that made out of kerbin trips tough as 1.25m part with the old optimisation and my old PC couldn't build big enough. Now i'm doing half and half, using the lab to get a jump start on certain things, but i'm also working on a duna emergancy relay to rescue a probe headed there with several hundred science aboard allready from minimums and eve flyby's and another couple of hundred at duna if i play my cards right and the dv holds.  Despite the fact that i've had to build a 7 kiloton rocket with over 40kps of dv on the pad to do it, (the emergency that is, the probe i'm rescuing ran to somthing like 1kt and a few hundred k credits if memory serves me right), and looking at expenditures in the 3.6-4 million credit range.

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1 hour ago, Snark said:

That's actually pretty close to how the science lab originally worked, when it was first introduced to the game:  it gave a boost to the percentage you recover if you transmit the science.

When the new (i.e. current) behavior came out, my initial reaction was pretty much identical to yours:  "hey, that's an unbalanced game-breaker, what the hell?"  Strongly negative.

However... I don't think it's something that needs "fixing", because the current point of the science lab is not to balance, the game, as I play it.  Rather, it's a deliberate design attempt to provide value to people who have a very different play style from you and me-- and which, it turns out, is a surprisingly (to me, anyway) large contingent of KSP players.

See, when you or I play the game... the gradual uncovering, obtaining, and use of science as one explores the solar system is the point of the game, or at least an awfully big part of it.  "Oh boy, I got to a new place and now yummy science" is a major endorphin rush.  The fact that it's hard and takes time-- i.e. that we have to wait for the science, and spend a lot of time and effort to get it-- adds to the anticipation and therefore our perceived reward when we finally get it.  So for someone who plays like that, the science lab is an unbalanced letdown of a game-breaker.

However... there are a lot of folks with a very different play style, with different motivations.  Folks for whom the way you or I play the game-- painstakingly gathering science from everywhere-- isn't a rush, it's a grind.  They may like career, but they don't like having to exhaustively mine out all the biomes for science, and the science lab gives them a way to work around that.

Here's a forum thread that I consider a must-read-- not just the OP, go read through the comments.  It was a real eye-opener for me:

An awful lot of players choose never to leave Kerbin's SoI.  Lots.  Maybe even most.  I was flabbergasted when this was borne in upon me, since it's so different from my own play style that it hadn't even occurred to me.  And the important thing to realize is that these people's way of playing is just as valid as anyone's-- it's not because they're "dumb", or have short attention spans, or anything else negative.  They simply like doing different things than I do.

And this gets to the crux of the issue.  KSP is a free-play game.  There are so many different aspects to the game, and so many different ways to experience those aspects, that every player can choose what KSP is to them.  That's a huge part of the beauty of this game:  it can be what you want it to be.  So even though it's the case that the science lab is about as useful to me as a bicycle is to a fish... that doesn't mean that it's necessarily "wrong".  Simply that I'm not the target audience; it's there to facilitate an alternate play style that I happen not to prefer.  Changing it to the behavior you describe might benefit you or me-- but it would be taking away from people who like to play KSP differently.

That's why I don't begrudge its existence.  I'm glad that KSP enables multiple play styles:  that means more people play KSP, which gives Squad more of a financial incentive to put resources into KSP development, and everybody wins.  So I just pretend the science lab doesn't exist, avoid using it, and get on with my game.

I think is a very astute post, but even though I agree with 90% of it in principle, I still think the MPL is overpowered.

It's completely true that a game should have multiple paths to success to appeal to different play styles, but game balance means ensuring that those different paths have similar difficulty curves, effort/cost vs. reward, and so forth. The MPL should definitely exist so that players who don't leave the Kerbin SOI can complete the tech tree, but when you compare the effort, difficulty, design challenge, etc. that it takes to fill out the first 3rd of the tree (before you get the MPL) to the effort/difficulty/challenge it takes to fill out the rest (after you unlock the MPL), it's not a smooth curve at all. The very fact that you refuse to exploit the MPL because it unlocks the tree too fast and/or easily, is a convincing warning sign that the MPL is unbalanced overall, not just an undesirable option for one type of playstyle.

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My play style in career mode evolves as we move from one major revision to the next.  At first was was taking all the advice I could find on advancing the tech tree, but as things progressed, I found that once I had the basic skills, like docking and landing, I found that just grinding science didn't give me the thrill that experimentation and learning how to do things I had only read about. 

In my latest career, I decided just to advance the tech tree as efficiently as I could, and left a lot of the science gathering to science labs around Mun and Minmus.

 This gave me the opportunity to try new things like a Free Return from the Mun,  building an effective refueling base and orbiting station,  and astroid capture and mining.  The tech tree kinda filled itself out while I was doing these things.  I haven't left Kerbin's SOI as of yet on this career, but now with all my science going to finance, I have plenty of cash to continue on...

Like I said, my play style changes from revision to revision, and the ability to do this is probably the main reason I have been playing this game with the same enthusiasm since Rev 0.18....

What a great game this is!!!

Edited by themonk
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1 hour ago, Xavven said:

still think the MPL is overpowered.

It's completely true that a game should have multiple paths to success to appeal to different play styles, but game balance means ensuring that those different paths have similar difficulty curves, effort/cost vs. reward, and so forth. The MPL should definitely exist so that players who don't leave the Kerbin SOI can complete the tech tree, but when you compare the effort, difficulty, design challenge, etc. that it takes to fill out the first 3rd of the tree (before you get the MPL) to the effort/difficulty/challenge it takes to fill out the rest (after you unlock the MPL), it's not a smooth curve at all. The very fact that you refuse to exploit the MPL because it unlocks the tree too fast and/or easily, is a convincing warning sign that the MPL is unbalanced overall, not just an undesirable option for one type of playstyle.

Point is well taken.  However,

1 hour ago, themonk said:

My play style in career mode evolves as we move from one major revision to the next.  At first was was taking all the advice I could find on advancing the tech tree, but as things progressed, I found that once I had the basic skills, like docking and landing, I found that just grinding science didn't give me the thrill that experimentation and learning how to do things I had only read about. 

In my latest career, I decided just to advance the tech tree as efficiently as I could, and left a lot of the science gathering to science labs around Mun and Minmus.

^ This.  This right here.  The science lab is for this guy.  :)

1 hour ago, themonk said:

What a great game this is!!!

And on this, I think, we're agreed.  :)

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Currently I set my science reward to 30% because I have the Kraken science mod installed and I get science from the Kerbin SOI far too easily. I might reduce it to 10% to give me more reason to go out to other planets. Or I'll install that mod that makes you able to upgrade parts with science. (forgot its name :()

I try to avoid farming science because I like to play like Snark; mainly driven by exploration and curiosity.

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One of the things I like about the New Horizons mod is how it spreads out the science. This mod rejiggers the solar system, adding lots of planets and moons, rearranging the stock ones.

In New Horizons, Kerbin is a moon (among many) of a gas giant.  This makes for interesting exploration of multiple moons.  The science return is scaled down so that you need to hit all the local moons to get the same effect as hitting Mun/Minmus in stock. One of the things that lets it get away with the scale-down is the moons' relative accessibility: they're reachable with a Mun-mission tech level, so cutting the science doesn't strangle your space program.

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I'm playing a science game with tons of mods. I've reduced my science gain to 70% and I think the Outer Planets mod reduces the %bonus for all biomes.

 I also have a lot of parts mods and the community science tree mod to spread them out. They soak up the science points after they are earned. 

 Play style is also key. I use the MPL only in the mid game and I only visit each biome once. And I don't just time warp to collect science points, I run concurrent missions while collecting points.

 This is the first time I tried something like this so it will still be too fast for me but I think it is a good place to start from.

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Very interesting inputs from everyone here. This is surprising how this community is mature ... it is far from the common first person shooter one LOL

This being said, anyone here aware of small mod that would nerf the science processing lab to get the same amount of science points that you would get if you would bring back the same data to Kerbin? With this, I would be very happy. I could do my exploration missions without having to do back and forth trip to Kerbin. So I would get my science point, but not at a ridiculous speed.

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15 hours ago, Snark said:

Besides... the only way for science to be really "even" is if it requires exploring the whole solar system to unlock the whole tree.  And that's basically impossible to have:  if you scaled the science down far enough that you actually had to do that, then you'd have so little science available in the Kerbin system that you'd be lucky to leave Kerbin's SoI at all.

Nonsense. It'd be easy to just make the tech node costs more exponential.

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21 hours ago, Frag2000 said:

This being said, anyone here aware of small mod that would nerf the science processing lab to get the same amount of science points that you would get if you would bring back the same data to Kerbin?

Have never heard of such a mod.  That's okay, though... thanks to ModuleManager, we can write our own!  :)

@PART[Large_Crewed_Lab] {
    @MODULE[ModuleScienceConverter] {
        // Reduce how-much-science-does-data-turn-into
        // by a factor of 5.
        @scienceMultiplier /= 5
    }
}

Just use Notepad or whatever to create a new config file somewhere in your GameData directory, then just paste the above into it.  (Doesn't matter what you name the file, as long as it ends with ".cfg".  The file doesn't have to be directly in GameData itself; can be in a subfolder if you like.)  As long as you have ModuleManager installed (which you probably already do, if you're running various mods-- lots of mods bundle it), then the above ought to do the trick.  You can also tinker with any of the other numbers associated with the science lab, too (such as "how fast does it convert data into science), if you are so inclined, by adding additional tweaks to the above.

(Caveat:  I'm not in front of my KSP computer right now, so I haven't verified firsthand that the above will work, but I expect it will.)

 

20 hours ago, theend3r said:

Nonsense. It'd be easy to just make the tech node costs more exponential.

Well, sure, one could design the whole solar system's science returns that way, or tinker with the science costs of the tech tree all up and down.

But that would be a matter of game design (i.e. something for KSP to do in stock, or something for a mod to do), which is not what we're talking about here.  Both of those are outside the scope of the current discussion, which concerns "what can a player do?", which is basically limited to just sliding the overall science-return slider up and down.  (And possibly doing some MM tweaking, for the more tech-savvy users, though it would be a fairly lengthy set of config to write.)

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3 hours ago, Snark said:

Have never heard of such a mod.  That's okay, though... thanks to ModuleManager, we can write our own!  :)


@PART[Large_Crewed_Lab] {
    @MODULE[ModuleScienceConverter] {
        // Reduce how-much-science-does-data-turn-into
        // by a factor of 5.
        @scienceMultiplier /= 5
    }
}

Just use Notepad or whatever to create a new config file somewhere in your GameData directory, then just paste the above into it.  (Doesn't matter what you name the file, as long as it ends with ".cfg".  The file doesn't have to be directly in GameData itself; can be in a subfolder if you like.)  As long as you have ModuleManager installed (which you probably already do, if you're running various mods-- lots of mods bundle it), then the above ought to do the trick.  You can also tinker with any of the other numbers associated with the science lab, too (such as "how fast does it convert data into science), if you are so inclined, by adding additional tweaks to the above.

(Caveat:  I'm not in front of my KSP computer right now, so I haven't verified firsthand that the above will work, but I expect it will.)

 

If this work, I will ship you a beer via usps.

Just a small question. You divided the amount of returned point by 5, is it usually multiplicated by 5 in the Large_crewed_lab in the vanilla KSP or you did a guess?

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1 hour ago, Frag2000 said:

You divided the amount of returned point by 5, is it usually multiplicated by 5 in the Large_crewed_lab in the vanilla KSP or you did a guess?

The former.  :wink:

In stock KSP, if you've got a science result and have the choice of "return it to Kerbin" versus "stick it in the science lab", the lab will give you (eventually) 5x the science return.  So, the ModuleManager patch above, which cuts that by a factor of 5, will reduce it to what you would have gotten by returning to Kerbin.

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I usually play with the science slider somewhere between 60 and 80%. Sometimes I set the slider much lower and give myself some starting science so I'm not stuck.

I honestly wish there were better options to use the MPL without it being so broken because I really love setting up space stations and such. The fix from above kinda works, but the issue is also time invested vs. rewards. It can take a while to process that data and it can be annoying if you miss your next launch window waiting for science from the MPL to unlock a crucial part. Then when you finally make it, you're swimming in science points.

Quick question though, is the MPL affected by the science slider? I was under the assumption that it wasn't although if the returns are a factor of the base returns then I would guess that it is indeed affected?

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6 hours ago, Snark said:

The former.  :wink:

In stock KSP, if you've got a science result and have the choice of "return it to Kerbin" versus "stick it in the science lab", the lab will give you (eventually) 5x the science return.  So, the ModuleManager patch above, which cuts that by a factor of 5, will reduce it to what you would have gotten by returning to Kerbin.

Its awesome snark. I will sure try it out and let you guys know. I have a new career now with 50% science rate ... ho its slow, but investing in science drone, searching for biomes and setup space lab is my thing :) I will try out your patch and will make sure to report back here. Since yes the processing time is very long, I may cut by 3 instead. 

 

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I wanted to use the MPL because it gave me a great reason to send research ships / bases to other worlds. I agree they can be abused though. My solution was two-fold:

  1. I reduced the MPL so that it only gave me 1 science point for each science point put it (instead of 5). At the same time I slightly increased the daily science conversion so that a exploration ship could spend 100-200 days above a planet and complete it's science mission - I have a MM config for it which I can post later.
  2. This is strictly a role play decision, but I decided that any given piece of science can only be processed by one science lab. If I send an exploration ship out, that ship gets to generate more science from it, but I don't also drag those experiments to a second or third lab.

Using this method I will never more than double my science when using MPLs, but I get to build cool research stations that actually do something. I also use USI-LS, so sending setting up long term crewed missions requires more planning than just sticking an MPL on a rocket and shooting it somewhere.

To counter the doubling of possible science I drop my return percentage down to 40-50%.

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At 100%, without science Lab and some dedication, you can clean the tech tree from Minmus/Mün/Kerbin alone.

So if you want to explore a bit more while exploring, go with something like 70%.

50% and you start to have to grind Kerbin too comfortably get to the Mün or Minmus.  But if you don't explore every biomes everywhere, you get to explore a lot.

Below 50% you just have to use the science lab to cope.  And I would do it shamelessly on Kerbin to sample as much stuff as I can (Probably design some kind of 727 with science lab).

 

Good luck.

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Well said @Snark - and as one of the weirdoes that doesn't play the same way as you :wink: , I thought I'd offer a slightly different perspective on the Science Lab and how it fits in with my play style.

I like infrastructure and I like flying interplanetary missions. So in my current (Science mode) game, I have space stations in orbit around Kerbin and the Mun, a shuttlecraft running kerbonauts between the two and satellite infrastructure to support them both. The Mun station doubles as a lab and a fuel depot for the shuttlecraft and it's supported by a mining lander for ISRU operations and an expeditionary lander for biome exploring. Meanwhile, I'm gradually building out my interplanetary comms network and running science/scanning probes to different planets as the various transfer windows open up.

I've barely touched Minmus and I expect to have most of the science tree filled out before I go there, as a prelude to sending a crewed expedition to Duna. (They'll both be Elcano style missions with big mobile bases). After that - who knows. Much of my current game though involves crew rotation every five months, making sure everyone sent to the Munar station gets their chance to walk on the Mun, etc. interspersed by bursts of timewarp to move everything along.

The Science Lab fits perfectly with that. It doesn't feel like an exploit because the science I get from it is more or less what I'd be getting from running the odd Minmus biome mission - I'm not warping ahead years at a time, grabbing a huge science windfall and calling it done. The lab just sits there in the background  nicely complementing  the science I'm getting from my interplanetary jaunts. I don't need to science-mine Minmus (which I've done before many times) and I don't need to worry too much about getting every last scrap of science from the Mun biomes either.

 

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I use the lab as a role playing device as another living space for the Kerbals to retreat to on long voyages.  I don't use it for science anymore because it is just too easy. 

Yeah and the Planetary Base Systems science lab looks really cool deployed what with the telescope and all...

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