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How to use the ground experiments?


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has not found any description here. Do you need one solar panel for each other piece? used one of each item and solar pannels says it does not produce power I find. 
only thing working is that the central say it is connected to two experiments. 

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it seems pretty simple to me:

Every unit (except the power producing units) consumes 1 "power unit". So a full science loadout (weather/ionographer, go-ob, passive seismometer, and control unit) needs 4 power units. 5 if you use the antenna unit (I guess you don't need that if you have a nearby craft relay... I'm guessing a probe core and a relay antenna could work).

The solar and RTG units produce 1 power each as a baseline. They get engineer bonuses.

In sandbox I had a (maxed out) engineer place a solar panel, and it produces 4 power units instead of 1. I haven't determined the power bonuses to engineer level yet, but it seems that it will start at 1-2 (maybe a level 0 engineer still gives a bonus?), and go up to 4 by level 5.

I don't know how the solar unit output varies with distance to kerbin, nor how it handles day/night cycles, so...

Anyway, with no engineering bonus, on kerbin, you need 1 panel for each piece. With a level engineer, it seems to be 1 panel per 4 pieces, on kerbin.

*Edit* Just tested, level 0 engineer: solar panel produces 2 power instead of 1

level 1 engineer still produces 2 power

I'm going to guess levels 2 and 3 produce 3 power,

and levels 4 and 5 produce 4

 

Edited by KerikBalm
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Does anyone have any insight into the science generation mechanics?  So far I've been able to glean:

  • To work, an experiment has to have sufficient power (per OP question) and a control station nearby.
  • The experiment also has to have a connection back to Kerbin, using normal CommNet rules.  The control station has a weak antenna, and you can either deploy a stronger one, or piggyback on normal relays.
  • When all these conditions are met, the experiments (other than the passive seismometer) will generate a certain rate of science per time.  This is not wacky data like the MPL, this is just straight science into your account.
  • The passive seismometer instead generates science when you crash stuff into the planet nearby -- the most Kerbal way possible.
  • The higher the level of scientist who deployed the experiment, the more science the experiment will generate.
  • You do not need to, or get bonuses from, having Kerbals stationed nearby.  The scientist and engineer bonuses are determined at the time of deployment.

 

Does that all seem right?  And has anyone figured out the following?

  • Is there a limit, or a penalty, for deployment of multiple copies of the same experiment?  And is that for the whole solar system, or per world, or per biome?  
  • Does the science generation rate for a particular experiment eventually stop, or degrade over time?  Seems like it should, to matching existing limits from regular science collection or the MPL.  And so you can't complete the whole tech tree by deploying one thing and time warping 100 years.
  • Does the science collection rate depend on the quality of signal, or is it an on/off thing?
  • Does the solar power unit care how far you are from the sun, or the angle of exposure, like normal solar panels?

[EDIT] Per info in the grand discussion thread, you can get science from a given experiment once per planet.

Edited by Aegolius13
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2 hours ago, Aegolius13 said:
  • Does the science generation rate for a particular experiment eventually stop, or degrade over time?  Seems like it should, to matching existing limits from regular science collection or the MPL.  And so you can't complete the whole tech tree by deploying one thing and time warping 100 years.

Yes, it does. Though the mechanics are not clear or may be bugged. 

I deployed some experiments on the Mun at three biomes and they continued to drip feed science over several in-game years. I then deployed some on Duna at a single biome and got a couple of notifications of science generated and then never heard from them again. 

So it might be that deploying to multiple biomes extends the science generated? Or its bugged. Or there is something else going on. 

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Here's what I can contribute:

  1. You MUST have a communications dish for any set-up not placed on KSC itself.  Even set-ups a few yards off the side of the runway require a dish to transmit science.
  2. 2-star engineers do indeed confirm @KerikBalm's suspicion that their solar panels produce 3 units of power, at Mun.  But we have an RTG power unit so I think it's safe to assume that power production falls off about the same as with other solar panels.
  3. Modules slide relative to each other, or get eaten by the Kraken, over time.  Sadly, the initial deployment radius for connectivity always applies so within a week or 2, some module of your set-up will slide too far away (or just cease to exist) to continue functioning.  If this happens to your power or communications, you'll know immediately because your message buffer will get spammed many times per second with "screen messages" complaining of the problem.  The only cure is to go to the tracking station and terminate the control unit of the set-up.  But even if you do this immediately, you'll still have well over 100 such messages to delete.  Both of these issues have been put on the Bug Tracker.
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5 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:
  1. You MUST have a communications dish for any set-up not placed on KSC itself.  Even set-ups a few yards off the side of the runway require a dish to transmit science.

Unless you have Kerbnet turned off in settings. 

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15 hours ago, Foxster said:

Unless you have Kerbnet turned off in settings. 

Well yeah, there's that ;).

ALSO, if you DO have KerbNet on, AND you have a ship with a connection next to the set-up (like the ship that delivered the parts), then the set-up will link to the ship's antenna and transmit.  Even if the ship's antenna isn't a relay.

-----------------------------

In other news, there appears to be 3 separate factors that decrease the amount of science you get per transmission:

  • Skill of the scientist who placed the experiment.  1 star only gives 35% science, 2 stars gives 45%
  • KerbNet signal strength.  From the deployable dish on the backside of Mun to the smallest (earliest) relay antenna to Kerbin seems to take the science down about 50%, even with the DSN jacked up in the settings.
  • For the seismograph only, the distance of the crash from the module.  This seems to be a linear function because if you impact on the module's antipode, you get 50% "distance attenuation".

As to the seismograph in general, it seems that the bigger the ship you crash, and the faster it's going, the more science you get.  You also get the points for on-rails crashes without having to fly the ship into the ground yourself.  No points for splashdowns and Kerbin's atmosphere generally slows boosters down so much that you get no points even when dropping massive stacks during launches over land.  So you can't really milk your routine launches for science with the seismograph.

Edited by Geschosskopf
typos
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  • 1 month later...

I have taken the liberty of testing some of the aspects of deployable science to quench my curiosity and here's what I found (game version 1.7.2):

1) Each experiment device keeps gathering science until its science meter reaches 100 % (and I am a dum-dum for not having noticed that before). After that, all activity of the module stops.

2) During its operational time, each module sends the newly acquired scientific data to Kerbin. The rate of transmission taking place is a mystery to me. It definitely seems come at different times from Mun and Minmus, so maybe signal availability plays a role? Note that I had relay satellites orbiting both celestial bodies in question, so there was SOME signal available at almost all time.

3) Different modules generate science at different rates. Yep. By the time my goo camera reached 100 %, my ionograph was still at some 75 %. It goes without saying they were both deployed at the same time and on the same body (Mun).

4) Just like the in the stock game, deployed solar panels are not friends with time warp. It often happens that during the fastest timewarp, all power is either on or off, regardless of Mun's rotation in respect to the Sun.

5) No sliding! I was pleasantly surprised to learn that neither of my experiments have drifted anywhere, and that's both while being the active vehicle AND in the background during time warps. Granted, I managed to find a plateau that was slanted less than 0.4 %, so I don't know, that might have helped.

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17.3 patch has introduce some new bug with deployed science. Been getting spammed about every 30 minutes of game time with messages about the goo experiment from a deployed science kit on the mun. The messages are saying the transmissions sends successfully, but occurs so frequent gets very annoying. When warping at high time values, the message spam is almost non-stop. 

The message is only appearing briefly in the upper left of screen AND does not require clearing the message queue (upper right box) , so this is slightly different bug then the bug already described. Appears to be a new bug introduced with 17.3.

Seems many things with these deployed science kits are not being fully tested.

 

 

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On 7/12/2019 at 1:50 PM, fragtzack said:

17.3 patch has introduce some new bug with deployed science. <snip>

Seems many things with these deployed science kits are not being fully tested.

 Totally agree! I’m getting 0.081 science per message. This is kind of silly.

Edited by BlueZed
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*Note to self, and others. Ensure the deployed solar-powered  science station  with seismograph has sunlight during an impact event....

And with 1.7.3 I’m also getting spammed center-screen with science messages, about every 10 in game minutes. With the messages to clear. A few days of warping and I have a hundred messages to click-to-clear

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  • 4 weeks later...

Perhaps a really dumb question - I read early on in the thread that science output is affected by the level of the Scientist deploying, but simultaneously comments about how power is adjusted by the Engineer.  Am I too assume that you should then have the scientist deploy the controller and experiments, and in turn have an engineer deploy the local power and transmitter to optimize the configuration?

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4 hours ago, LanderDude said:

Am I too assume that you should then have the scientist deploy the controller and experiments, and in turn have an engineer deploy the local power and transmitter to optimize the configuration?

Yes. Mostly. AFAIK it doesn't matter who sets up the controller or the transmitter. But all science experiments will generate science faster if they are set up by a scientist, and the power modules (solar panel or RTG) generate more power when set up by an engineer. (See e.g. OX-Stat-PD on the Wiki)

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On 8/13/2019 at 1:23 PM, AHHans said:

Yes. Mostly. AFAIK it doesn't matter who sets up the controller or the transmitter. But all science experiments will generate science faster if they are set up by a scientist, and the power modules (solar panel or RTG) generate more power when set up by an engineer. (See e.g. OX-Stat-PD on the Wiki)

Much appreciated!

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  • 6 months later...

Well I've just started playing around with this stuff and didn't seem to get bonuses for four star engineers and scientists but I need to try again to make sure I was doing it right.

Also, even though I have one power unit per experiment, some experiments still say unpowered. I need to play around  more, but some good advice here guys, cheers

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2 hours ago, ConArt70 said:

Well I've just started playing around with this stuff and didn't seem to get bonuses for four star engineers and scientists but I need to try again to make sure I was doing it right.

Give it another try. If you are sure that it doesn't work, then it helps if you could add a screenshot with the PAW (the "right click windows") of the deployed modules open.

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Perhaps my question fits well in here?  Level 4 Engineer deploys 2 Solar arrays, and the Comms units.  Level 4 Scientist then deploys the Ion, the control unit and the Goo (in that order).  This is on Ike, with no relays in the Duna area at all.  

We load up, get back to Kerbin, see a few notes that there is no CommNet available, but when I go to the tracking station, I see a bunch of green lines between the ground station and Kerbin.  I'm getting 4 units from each Solar, but the control unit says "experiments connected 0", but the connection of the Comms unit is 0.90.  All 6 modules are very close to each other, put down by the correct Kerbal and I have a signal.  Why would each experiment say it's done 100%, but transmitted 0%?  

I have a quicksave of the team still in orbit of Ike, so I could just head back down and reset stuff (plenty of dV), but I'd be guessing what to do differently.....

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6 hours ago, MPDerksen said:

This is on Ike, with no relays in the Duna area at all.

You probably had no commnet connectivity at the (relatively few) moments that the experiments tried to transmit. See my explanation here:

 

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12 hours ago, AHHans said:

You probably had no commnet connectivity at the (relatively few) moments that the experiments tried to transmit. See my explanation here:

 

I'd like to vote you as "most helpful poster of the week" :).
so now I have 2 options.  1:  drop out of orbit, and hold the units until there is CommNet connection (lame, but good practice to try landing in a specific spot, but also risky if I have enough dV for a second drop).  2:  ALT+F12 and call both contracts complete.

Anyone know the range of the deployable Comm Unit?  I think I read in one of the Wiki pages that it's 10Gm?  Should be fine from Ike pretty much all the time, right?

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8 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:

Anyone know the range of the deployable Comm Unit?  I think I read in one of the Wiki pages that it's 10Gm?

The extra comm-dish has indeed the same strength as the strongest antennas. That is not the problem, but if there is no relay around, then you don't have a line-of-sight for at least half of the time. (When you are on the other side of the planet / moon.)

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2 minutes ago, AHHans said:

The extra comm-dish has indeed the same strength as the strongest antennas. That is not the problem, but if there is no relay around, then you don't have a line-of-sight for at least half of the time. (When you are on the other side of the planet / moon.)

So it can be deployed on Eeloo and make it back to Kerbin w/o a Relay? (Tracking Station fully upgraded)

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1 minute ago, MPDerksen said:

So it can be deployed on Eeloo and make it back to Kerbin w/o a Relay? (Tracking Station fully upgraded)

Yupp. As long as it is on the side of Eeloo that points towards Kerbin and a DSN antenna is in sight.

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1 minute ago, AHHans said:

Yupp. As long as it is on the side of Eeloo that points towards Kerbin and a DSN antenna is in sight.

Helpful.  Thanks.

So, back-up to a previous Save Game and set them only once I have connectivity, or ALT+F12 and call it good?

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2 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:

So, back-up to a previous Save Game and set them only once I have connectivity, or ALT+F12 and call it good?

That's up to you.

My station on Vall - that had only intermittent connectivity via a station in orbit around Jool, just inside Tylo(*) - will get a visit soon. Well, soon-ish, not before my mining lander arrived at Jool and maybe also only after the battery upgrade for the rover arrives and I can finally use the scanner arm. But as you can see, I need to land again at Vall anyhow.

(*)I didn't know that Vall is tidally locked to Jool, and thus that the relay on a lower orbit around Jool is never within reach of the station....

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