Biome overlay in map view

[Pthigrivi]

This is one of those fairly simple quality of life improvements I'd love to see in vanilla. Maybe its the way I think but I find it much easier to plan my landings when I can see biomes in map view. We can already do this using the debug menu but the lighting is a little janky and it should really be an integrated part of career and science mode. I do like SCANsat, but for the stock game I think it could be okay if it just unlocks with the survey scanner or by some other method. Or maybe because we'll have more timed experiments soon it should be like SCANsat? Hard for me to say...

This image is from Orbital Survey Plus by Wheffle:

Edited May 16, 2019 by Pthigrivi

[Rocket In My Pocket]

+1

Yeah, it'd be nice if there was someway to unlock this view in Career, like a building upgrade, or maybe requiring a polar sat with a survey scanner like you said.

[KerballingSmasher]

There is a mod for this! Somewhere on CurseForge is a mod called ScanSAT, that I use a lot to not only get more science but also to get more detailed info on where I'm landing.

There's a mod for this... what a generic answer on my part...

[Pthigrivi]

51 minutes ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

There is a mod for this! Somewhere on CurseForge is a mod called ScanSAT, that I use a lot to not only get more science but also to get more detailed info on where I'm landing.

There's a mod for this... what a generic answer on my part...

I use it myself! And its great! I think its a legit question whether the real-time surface scanning dynamic it uses might be worth doing in stock. On the one hand it fits in with the whole time-based experiment thing and shows players why you want to place a surveyor in a polar orbit, on the other it is more complicated and time-consuming and maybe the simple instant unlock like the resource scanner uses is more straight forward for stock. Maybe I'll add a poll to this thread...

Edited May 16, 2019 by Pthigrivi

[sumghai]

I definitely would prefer a scanner that gradually reveals the biome overlay, rather than a magical insta-unlock part - this would nicely complement the upcoming Breaking Ground DLC's science-over-time mechanic.

[DMagic]

It's not just that it takes time to scan something with SCANsat. I think it's more important that it allows for something other than a polar orbit (which doesn't really ensure coverage anyway, but why would we need to know about orbits...). Maybe you only care about the equatorial region, so you can just scan from a low inclination, or maybe you can scan strips of the surface in successive flybys.

My biggest problem with the stock mechanic isn't the time required, it's that it teaches by telling you what to do, instead of letting the player try different techniques to scan the planet and see what happens.

The science part of scanning is sort of just an afterthought, as it follows naturally from the idea of a progressive scanning mechanism; scan half the planet get half the science, and so on.

[Pthigrivi]

5 hours ago, DMagic said:

It's not just that it takes time to scan something with SCANsat. I think it's more important that it allows for something other than a polar orbit (which doesn't really ensure coverage anyway, but why would we need to know about orbits...). Maybe you only care about the equatorial region, so you can just scan from a low inclination, or maybe you can scan strips of the surface in successive flybys.

My biggest problem with the stock mechanic isn't the time required, it's that it teaches by telling you what to do, instead of letting the player try different techniques to scan the planet and see what happens.

The science part of scanning is sort of just an afterthought, as it follows naturally from the idea of a progressive scanning mechanism; scan half the planet get half the science, and so on.

This is a pretty persuasive argument. KSP is at its best a spatial engineering puzzle and this is one of those places where that intuitive learning process is right there in the playing. This to me overrules any concerns I have about survivorship bias in the poll, that really resource and anomaly mapping should work in the same way. 

[Xurkitree]

We really need KerbNet to expand. A small live FoV isn't very useful. It should be able to generate Resource, Biome and Terrain maps over time, while picking up and adding anomalies to them.

[Blaarkies]

There might be too much weight placed on science farming, the concept of science per binome. Landing in one wasteland, then hopping over to another similar looking wasteland 500m away doesn't bring anything to gameplay
High grade science would be far more rewarding if you had to land at specific spots which only a few are randomly predetermined on the planet/moon (on mountain tops, crater edges, valleys, etc.). Seeing all the binomes in map view is still much better than struggling with kerbnet, marking spots for landing and getting the same results at the end but having a lot of boring timewarping as well.

[DMagic]

9 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

This is a pretty persuasive argument. KSP is at its best a spatial engineering puzzle and this is one of those places where that intuitive learning process is right there in the playing. This to me overrules any concerns I have about survivorship bias in the poll, that really resource and anomaly mapping should work in the same way. 

I really can't overemphasize how much I hate that line "this scanner requires a polar orbit" (or whatever the message is when you try to use the M700); NO! It does not require a polar orbit! 

In a game that is all about showing you how things like orbit, launch profiles, landings, etc... work this is the worst case of telling and not showing.

[Pthigrivi]

The other thing that would need to happen is moving the survey scanner much earlier in the tech tree, probably to the 90 science level so players could use it on early munar scanning missions. Id been thinking a ways back on how to let the stock experiments enable real information rather than just science points a ways back. If the scanner itself scanned for biomes, but you also needed a gravioli detector on board to scan for resources that would create an unlock closer to when the information was useful.