R&D Building Biomes bug?

[a5cent]

Hello

First time career mode player here. I'm trying to get the research points from the various KSC buildings, as I've read each is considered to be its own biome, but this isn't working for me.

I've fully upgraded the "Mission Control" and "Research and Development" facilities. The other facilities are partially upgraded. In the science archive I see that I have 6 science reports from the "R&D" biome. I want to get the science points from the other eight R&D buildings (central building, main building, observatory, etc).

I've built a research rover and I've driven into every building of the "Research and Development" complex. Whenever I conduct an experiment the results are always for the "Research and Development" biome. Despite its name, this is not the same as the "R&D" biome which I've already collected all science from. However, that's all I can find. It's as if I have two general biomes ("R&D" and "Research and Development"), but can't access any of the building specific biomes.

That I have two general biomes rather than one general biome and 8 building specific biomes looks like a bug to me. Can anybody confirm, or am I doing something wrong?

 

 

[Just Jim]

19 minutes ago, a5cent said:

Hello

First time career mode player here. I'm trying to get the research points from the various KSC buildings, as I've read each is considered to be its own biome, but this isn't working for me.

I've fully upgraded the "Mission Control" and "Research and Development" facilities. The other facilities are partially upgraded. In the science archive I see that I have 6 science reports from the "R&D" biome. I want to get the science points from the other eight R&D buildings (central building, main building, observatory, etc).

I've built a research rover and I've driven into every building of the "Research and Development" complex. Whenever I conduct an experiment the results are always for the "Research and Development" biome. Despite its name, this is not the same as the "R&D" biome which I've already collected all science from. However, that's all I can find. It's as if I have two general biomes ("R&D" and "Research and Development"), but can't access any of the building specific biomes.

That I have two general biomes rather than one general biome and 8 building specific biomes looks like a bug to me. Can anybody confirm, or am I doing something wrong?

 

 

I've run into problems getting the R&D buildings to register, and the easiest way I found is to find a small staircase, and quite literally drive up it with the nose of a "biome buggy" rover. Sometimes it's the easiest way, shy of landing on the roof of a building. 

"Biome Buggy" rover:

I don't have a picture of me doing this, sorry, but if you look how that rover is designed, you should get the idea. The nose can slide right up a staircase, and that usually gets the building biome to register when you're running your test(s)

 

Edited July 5, 2018 by Just Jim

[bewing]

The biomes at the buildings at KSC are collectively labeled "minibiomes". To get experiments done at the building minibiomes, you have to touch the building.

There are also "area" minibiomes, where you only have to be driving across the minibiome -- and you do not have to touch anything to get those. The generic "Research and Development" area biome is one of those.

 

[Just Jim]

46 minutes ago, bewing said:

The biomes at the buildings at KSC are collectively labeled "minibiomes". To get experiments done at the building minibiomes, you have to touch the building.

There are also "area" minibiomes, where you only have to be driving across the minibiome -- and you do not have to touch anything to get those. The generic "Research and Development" area biome is one of those.

 

Exactly... what he said!!!

One other thing I forgot to mention. Be ready to hit your breaks the instant you touch a building. I know, I know, this seems like a no-brainer. But I can't tell you how many times I hesitated just half a second... which was just long enough for the rover to roll backwards and lost contact. There have been (many) times where I had to do it two or three times before I got the rover to stop and maintain contact long enough to run every test.

[Laie]

1 hour ago, bewing said:

To get experiments done at the building minibiomes, you have to touch the building.

Touching the building is not enough. I'm under the impression that I have to get "into" the building, that is, that my vehicle has to stick it's nose into some kind of crevice, like the door over some stairs, or a recessed window.

Between that and collider glitches, I once managed to collect data while flying over the wind tunnel. Upon landing I could even recover some of the experiments.

[bewing]

No, all you should need to do is touch it. Depending on the version of the game, you may need to maintain contact with it.

 

[pincushionman]

There is a map on Reddit of the minibiomes, but it only shows the locations on the fully-upgraded KSC…and certain biomes are available at certain levels. Does anyone know of a better set of maps that has all upgrade levels?

Edited July 6, 2018 by pincushionman

[Zhetaan]

@a5cent:

I've had the best luck by driving up to a building, stopping just in front of it, and then driving forward to nose into it slowly (so as not to break anything important).  I get more consistent results when I set the various science experiments to activate with an action group (you don't need custom groups for this; I tend to use 'Abort'); once you have the science, you can move data around at your leisure.

@pincushionman:

I don't have a better map, but I can tell you that the microbiomes add on to what was there before with the exception of the VAB South Complex, which appears at level 2 and disappears at level 3.  By the by, @bewing, what's the story behind that?  Did the developers include that single piece of permanently missable content solely to troll the completionists?  I've seen quite a few career games where the VAB was kept at level 2 specifically until the last science experiments could be unlocked, all to ensure that that precious 2.3 points or what-have-you of South Complex science made it to the archives.

[bewing]

Any story behind that is lost in the dim mists of time, at this point.

(Well, except for the fact that adding that South Complex minibiome raised the total number of Kerbin biomes at the time to 42. I assume that was cosmologically significant.)

Edited July 8, 2018 by bewing

[a5cent]

Thank you for the helpful answers everyone. I'm using KSP 1.4.4 (steam) BTW.

@bewing

Thank you. Based on your explanations, something clearly isn't working as it should. For some buildings, I got my science points on the first try. Others took me 15 minutes of randomly bumping and snuggling up to buildings to finally get the points. Having absolutely no idea why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't isn't exactly a lot of fun. I spent forever trying to find the correct collision with the "R&D small lab" without success. Then, by chance, I asked for a crew report while my rover wasn't touching any building at all (and standing closer to the central building than the small lab), and that worked. From that position I could do all my experiments for the small lab building. Here's a screenshot:

https://i.imgur.com/7vZ3NQm.png

This is certainly a bug. Is there something funky about my "rover" that might be making this difficult?

There's also something off about having one general area biome called "R&D" and another being called "Research and Development". That's the same thing with different spelling only. Worse, looking through the science archives I can find experiments for "R&D" and "ResearchandDevelopment" (no spaces), but I can't filter for the later, as there is no such entry to click on. This looks like a bug to me as well.

Do you think I should report any of this as a bug somewhere?

@Just Jim

Thanks for your picture. I don't yet have the technology to recreate it, but it did make me put the pod at the very front of my rover, which seems to work better than it did previously.

I've since harvested the science points from every building but the corner lab, but I'm giving up on that. The fiddling is too frustrating to be worth it.

 

 

 

Edited July 7, 2018 by a5cent

[Laie]

On 7/6/2018 at 4:13 PM, Zhetaan said:

Did the developers include that single piece of permanently missable content solely to troll the completionists?

These microbiomes came when destructible buildings were introduced. For some reason or other, which building is in what state of damage is tracked through biomes.

That this provides the player with a lot of easily collectible science was a side effect, and as I remember it, noone was too happy about it at the time. Just think about it: the step about tripled the number of Kerbin biomes, putting the majority of them right at your doorstep. The reasoning was that a) you don't have to harvest KSC in order to play the game, and b) if you do, it's not going to upset the game balance all that much.

At any rate, noone put any effort into making KSC science easily collectible. If you're a completionist and want it all, that's your problem, not Squad's.

[Zhetaan]

On 7/8/2018 at 5:18 AM, Laie said:

These microbiomes came when destructible buildings were introduced. For some reason or other, which building is in what state of damage is tracked through biomes.

That makes some sense.  Personally, I think it would be interesting to be able to destroy individual parts of a complex rather than have the damage add up to some 'all-or-nothing' break point, but I certainly do not want to have to write the code.  The reason it piques my interest is because every other building upgrade only adds something to the previous tier.  The South Complex is the only one out of everything that disappears during an upgrade.

You're right about completionists who want it all having a problem, though; I've seen some people actually bemoan the fact that, even with cheats, there's no way to get 'SunSrfLanded' science.