KSC Microbiomes since 1.3

[Duke Leto]

I started a Career mode game in 1.2 while running a few mods.  The mandatory 1.3 update hit, and so I put the game on hold until the modders caught up to Squad.

This took rather longer than expected.  (ie. Squad's release schedule seems DETERMINED to prevent it from ever happening, but I eventually decided having everything 1.4 compatible was enough .)

I had long since mined out the science from the KSC microbiomes, but started a new project to gather the completed experiments from round KSC in order to have some science points for my orbital station to play with.  I was surprised to find I was getting full credit for the "Vehicle Assembly Building" while trying to get science from the VAB tanks, and the same was true for "Spaceplane Hanger" when I tried to access the SPH Main Building.  I THINK what's happened is that VAB Main Building and SPH Main Building have been replaced by these two new biomes, which are also what you get if your craft is touching the slopes leading to the platforms supporting the various tanks.  And that since the names of the biomes are different the game misreads my saves as their being incomplete.  (And it's much harder to get a rover to touch the tank biomes, which is what is presently driving me up the wall.)

I want to confirm this so that the list of KSC biomes on the wiki can be updates.

Anybody else been seeing this?

[theJesuit]

@Duke Leto, some of these change to new biomes or give more science when upgrading to new facilities.

I don't think I've seen notes where KSC mini biomes have changed.

I'd like to introduce you to my friends at the Kerban Environmental Institute.

They changed my life in career mode saves.

Peace. 

[Superfluous J]

Upgrade R&D and drive around to each building with your science car. It's crazy.

Soon we won't even need to leave the peninsula to unlock the whole tech tree.

[wumpus]

I haven't built a "science car" since I downloaded "For Science!" (a mod that collects the science without the required "science dance").  I came to the conclusion that it was faster to simply go to Minmus and grab the science there.  If you really want to unlock the tech tree, hit all the Minmus biomes (should take well under 1k delta-v, easy if you left a fuel tank in orbit that you can refuel at).

Driving around with "for science" ought to unlock plenty and do it quickly, not sure if it helps to science the same biome before and after an upgrade.

[Duke Leto]

I think there might be some confusion about what it is I'm asking here.

I already have access to the [x] Science mod, which seems to be producing inaccurate answers relating to the KSC microbiomes.  (VAB Main Building and SPH Main Building no longer appear to exist under those names, but are listed in [x] Science.  It does indicate that the Island Airfield is not its own surface biome, and I suspect the same will be true of the two new launch sites if I get the Making History expansion)  I also wantonly and deliberately chose NOT to use the KEI "automatically grab all the KSC science points" mod.

I made my initial science car for getting the full value of the KSC microbiomes and exhausted the research tree by visiting different Mun and Minmus biomes hundreds of game days ago and have since used the Open Source Tech Program at 100% to push up my reputation to 95%, and now have all Science being converted to funds with 100% commitment to Patent Licensing.

The repeat of the science car drive I'm doing now is vastly more obsessive, pointless and insane.

I'm deliberately going around KSC getting copies of completed experiments that give 0 (or much reduced) science points when transmitted or recovered, and my intention is to launch them en masse into LKO and put them into the Sci Lab there, then process them all in the lab so my two scientist kerbals can make a couple hundred funds per game day until the cows come home.  (Assuming spherical cows in a vacuum, obviously.)

I was surprised to find that VAB Main Building and SPH Main Building no longer seem to exist and their replacements "Vehicle Assembly Building" and "Spaceplane Hanger" give full credit as new science for all the experiments. 

I DID look at the version history and saw nothing relating to this change, hence my asking the forum about it.

More strangely, the various launchpad peripheral buildings (water tower, tanks, round tank, flagpole) seem to count as separate biomes from the launchpad, but all of them are considered the same as each other for the purpose of recovering science or storing multiple experiments in the same command module or kerbal, but not the main launchpad biome, and they are all labeled as "Launchpad" in the main game interface, but NOT the itemization of recovered science in the craft recovery interface.

Does the above make any sense?

[theJesuit]

@Duke Leto it does make sense and now I think about it, using KEI, I can have different values of these biomes depending on whether I have a fresh save and run KEI straight away or after a quicksave or going into a building.  It's never really bothered me as it seems to come out in the wash and comparatively. 

As for the science generator why not send a couple of mat labs and goo from high low orbit and of Kerbin and Mün and use that science?

Peace.

[Duke Leto]

RE: Alternate science processing sources.  I was going to get the orbital experiments too, more funds that way. 

There seems to be something really screwy going on with how my game handles the building biomes now, so I made a post trying to explain the situation in the KEI thread you linked to, since linuxgamerguru should know his way around the map by now...

[Fraktal]

Actually, the VAB/SPH Main Building biomes do still exist, according to the [x] Science mod. You just need to be in extremely specific locations around them (like, centimeter-accurate, nigh-impossible-to-get-without-hacking-gravity) or your rover will be detected as being in biomes that are unlisted in [x] Science and give science data, but the game doesn't track their progress so you'd never run out of science.

[magnemoe]

On 8/4/2018 at 5:46 PM, wumpus said:

I haven't built a "science car" since I downloaded "For Science!" (a mod that collects the science without the required "science dance").  I came to the conclusion that it was faster to simply go to Minmus and grab the science there.  If you really want to unlock the tech tree, hit all the Minmus biomes (should take well under 1k delta-v, easy if you left a fuel tank in orbit that you can refuel at).

Driving around with "for science" ought to unlock plenty and do it quickly, not sure if it helps to science the same biome before and after an upgrade.

Yes, I tend to roll an capsule with go an material lab to get data from pad, runway, ksp and perhaps causeway. 
The science car makes most sense if you miss a few science to unlock something nice. 

And yes Orbit, the moon orbit, usually Mun landing for contract then Minmus, go in style, as you say, leaving some fuel on the transfer stage is smart if you have docking ports. 
This should set you up for making an base on Minmus. 

[Duke Leto]

I eventually worked out that the old biomes were still around, got all my experiments and sent them to my station...

But the process of grabbing them all was both tedious AND a matter of ridiculous rover position experimentation.

I'm absolutely at a loss as to why Squad made this change.

[Zhetaan]

5 hours ago, Duke Leto said:

But the process of grabbing them all was both tedious AND a matter of ridiculous rover position experimentation.

I'm absolutely at a loss as to why Squad made this change.

I've found that in order to get the buildings and such, it's necessary to drive the rover (gently) into the wall and apply the brakes such that the rover continues to maintain contact with that wall.  In a few cases, I had to wire the science experiments to an action group and activate that while I simply kept driving the rover into the wall:  it was the only way to guarantee results.  In my experience, that's worked that way since microbiomes were introduced.  The Flag Pole was always the tricky one; it's got such low hp that the act of collecting the science usually requires paying for a new flag pole.

Edited August 6, 2018 by Zhetaan

[Duke Leto]

 

3 hours ago, Zhetaan said:

I've found that in order to get the buildings and such, it's necessary to drive the rover (gently) into the wall and apply the brakes such that the rover continues to maintain contact with that wall.  In a few cases, I had to wire the science experiments to an action group and activate that while I simply kept driving the rover into the wall:  it was the only way to guarantee results.  In my experience, that's worked that way since microbiomes were introduced.  The Flag Pole was always the tricky one; it's got such low hp that the act of collecting the science usually requires paying for a new flag pole.

What you are describing is not what is happening now.  Getting into contact with the building sometimes puts you in the generic new building for the KSC area like "Spaceplane Hanger", and sometimes puts you in the original building specific biome, like "SPH Main Building".  How does the game decide which?  Hell if I know, but it is MUCH harder to get to the individual buildings.

I MAY be going completely insane, but my recollection is that as of version 1.2, the last time I did the KSC biome drive for raw science points instead of getting the experiments for lab data, circa February of this past year, all you had to do was have the craft touching a part of the building to be "in" the biome for the purposes of activating your experiment action group.  (MechJeb 2 has a display which tells you what surface biome the rover is in.)  A Kerbal standing on the parked craft to collect this data would also be in the biome for surface samples and EVA purposes.  (You could also use an extensible part from a parked rover to reach out and touch the walls )

I can understand Squad removing the biomes completely to eliminate what even I see as somewhat exploity player behavior.  But why leave them in the game and make access to them a matter of luck?  That just increases player frustration.

[Zhetaan]

2 hours ago, Duke Leto said:

What you are describing is not what is happening now.  Getting into contact with the building sometimes puts you in the generic new building for the KSC area like "Spaceplane Hanger", and sometimes puts you in the original building specific biome, like "SPH Main Building".  How does the game decide which?

As I understand it, the Spaceplane Hangar biome is the pseudo-hexagonal plot of ground upon which the SPH Main Building stands.  I gathered that this part was necessary because of the way the upgrade system works, but not having access to the KSP source code, I can't say for certain.  What I can say is that both exist and refer to different things that happen to overlap rather a lot; your difficulty almost certainly has to do with a disparity between the building collider and the biome boundary.  There isn't much in the changelog for 1.3, but that is the version where they made all of the terrain tweaks to fix the seams, smooth the runway, and otherwise stitch the planet together so that it maintained a comfortable illusion of reality, so given that KSC has the most irregular terrain on the planet, it's definitely possible.  You might try browsing the bug tracker and the Technical Support forum to see whether many others have had this problem.

However, it may be possible that there's something awry with your game; I know that that's not what you want to hear but I have personally found that transferring save states between versions can practically beg the Kraken to eat them.  Molon nome, so to speak.

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, Duke Leto said:

I MAY be going completely insane, but my recollection is that as of version 1.2, the last time I did the KSC biome drive for raw science points instead of getting the experiments for lab data, circa February of this past year, all you had to do was have the craft touching a part of the building to be "in" the biome for the purposes of activating your experiment action group.

That's exactly what I did in 1.4.3 about a month or so ago to get a ridiculous amount of science driving around R&D. Almost every building has its own biome in the fully leveled-up R&D.

Note, I don't think ANY lowest-tier buildings have it, you have to upgrade at least once.

[Duke Leto]

FYI, I did finish collecting all ~360 experiments from the various biomes and shot them into space yesterday, so it's no longer my problem.

If 5th Horseman could do the grand drive in 1.4.3, then the likeliest explanation is that I used too big of a rover, modifying a stock parts electric car from KerbalX for the job.

The reason I preserved saves between versions was that I had a very sophisticated Minmus fuel refinery set up and was working on a giant expedition to establish a similar one on Ike in tandem with exploring Duna, and I didn't like the idea of redoing all that setup work in a from scratch career.

I'm skeptical that the save could have caused this behavior though, because I don't think the save files contain any info about rendering the environment...

[Superfluous J]

FYI here's the car

[Duke Leto]

Album /a/Bs4xcP6 will appear when post is submitted

This is mine.  It's called "Less Ridiculous Science Rover" because a previous incarnation from a career played in 2015 was designed to retrieve previously collected experiments from biomes far from KSC by driving there and shooting two sci packages in rockets attached to the rear of the truck straight up in the air, changing focus to the launched rockets immediately, activating action groups of experiments on the rockets at appropriate altitudes, then parachuting them down to be collected by the rover and driven back to KSC to be loaded into a rocket and sent to the sci lab.

After a couple attempts to have the rover autopilot drive that setup to the mountains and the tundra and poles while I went to do something more useful, I realized that it was much easier to just get all three altitudes of data for a single biome in one go by having an orbiting ship kill all of its horizontal velocity in orbit and come straight down, letting Bob go EVA to retrieve the upper level atmosphere analysis and get a flying over EVA once the chutes opened, then getting all the lower atmosphere/flying experiments for the biome with an action group, getting Bob to clean and collect them, get a surface sample and and EVA, and get a landed version of everything, stow everything in the pod, have all the kerbals on board get recovered, and then have Jeb fly a plane to pick up the data and transport it to KSC for relaunch.

Thus this is the "Less Ridiculous" rover.

Note the radiator panel in the back for prodding buildings, although this never gets used now.  The KAS winch with harpoon attached was my very last experiment, the intention being to test if getting a harpoon into a wall would have the same effect as putting a wheel against the building's foundation.  Since KAS harpoons are not reusable, the experiment was abandoned, because having Bill access a fresh harpoon from a KIS container for each building was... ridiculous.

Edited August 7, 2018 by Duke Leto
Imgur wrong

[klesh]

1 hour ago, Duke Leto said:

Imgur wrong

I got you, fam.

 

[Duke Leto]

Thank you.