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Making Minmus more challenging


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Minmus surface science is very imbalanced, In terms of DeltaV it is easier to reach than to land on the Mun and it possible to farm science there, opening most of tech tree in one flight. My suggestion is to decrease science coefficients, but most importantly, to make Minmus more difficult to reach. The idea is to change its inclination to something like 30 degrees. In this case players will have to learn how to launch at certain inclination. This is basically new game mechanics for many players, because most of the time they launch with zero inclination and correct orbit later if necessary.

It is also more logical step in keeping the challenge with player progression as it is more advanced level of orbital mechanics compared to zero degrees launch to the Mun. I think this is the reason why Minmus is already inclined, but I think 6 degrees is just not enough, you still can reach Minmus without thinking much about orbital planes.

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In my opinion, the point of Minmus is to give you RAPIERs and NERVAs before you go off to Duna or Jool. And the inclination is big enough that you don't always get an encounter if launching equatorial.

Do you really want to go to Duna without nuclear engines?

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3 minutes ago, fulgur said:

In my opinion, the point of Minmus is to give you RAPIERs and NERVAs before you go off to Duna or Jool. And the inclination is big enough that you don't always get an encounter if launching equatorial.

Do you really want to go to Duna without nuclear engines?

Yes. In fact, I've gone to Duna on a Poodle before.

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Every experienced player launches their minmus rocket at the correct inclination so that they are not required to do correction burns anyway. 30 degrees and 7 degrees are basically the same for us. Maybe 50m/s in total? For noobs its probably 250m/s because they launch 0 degrees and burn at the inclination nodes. It only punishes noobs and they are not the ones farming the entire science tree in one launch. They will be forced to learn launching on correct inclinations in KSP2 and it will make the game so hardcore for them. 

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2 hours ago, dave1904 said:

Every experienced player launches their minmus rocket at the correct inclination so that they are not required to do correction burns anyway.

I don't. I also don't do correction burns. Neither is really necessary with a 6 degree tilt and no time limit. I just aim myself to meet Minmus at the next AN/DN and then burn either a little more or less than normal to meet it when it's there.

If it was tilted 30 degrees this would be less attractive, though I'd have to actually try it to see if it was unattractive enough to actually launch into the correct inclined orbit.

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6 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I don't. I also don't do correction burns. Neither is really necessary with a 6 degree tilt and no time limit. I just aim myself to meet Minmus at the next AN/DN and then burn either a little more or less than normal to meet it when it's there.

If it was tilted 30 degrees this would be less attractive, though I'd have to actually try it to see if it was unattractive enough to actually launch into the correct inclined orbit.

Nah, I do the same thing all the time and it doesn't really matter what the inclination is. It's only a matter of timing and not difficulty. It's the same as getting a capture from a polar orbit. (scan sat probs) The way you do it is how I get to gilly and Bob all the time. It does require more effort than Minmus but those kinds of burns are far beyond what early players should be thinking about. 6 degrees is the perfect learning curve. 

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9 hours ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

Well, actually, I've never gotten far enough in a save to unlock it! XD

You should install better time warp and use 15x physics warp. 1 hour burns are finished in 4 min. That's assuming you ever get that far. 

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In my view, it's not really the coefficients or ease of getting there that are any sort of problem.

The issue is biome farming: that data from the ninth biome is worth the same as data from the first. Deal with that, and Minmus is what it should be IMO: a stepping stone that takes a little finesse to get to, easier than Duna, harder than the Mun (in terms of learning the game, I am aware Minmus requires less dV to get to).

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I think minmus is "hard" enough as it is. but I get it, once you learned the trick it is not hard at all.

IMO it is like this:

1- Kerbin, you learn to orbit
2- Mun, you learn to aim for moons with the right inclination
3- minmus, you learn how to get the right inclination

4 duna, learn to aim for other planet with the same inclination.

and so on, each body becomes more difficult the further you go away. and from a game standpoint it is really well done.

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I feel Minmus is an appropriate difficulty for new players, while Mun would be restrictively hard. I'd prefer keeping it easy and making science payoff less than Mun. The current science multipliers on the surface are:

Kerbin 0.3x, Mun 4x, Minmus 5x, Duna 8x, Ike 8x

I recommend re-balancing these to:

Kerbin 0.3x, Mun 4x, Minmus 2x, Duna 9x, Ike 6x

Science payoff should reflect difficulty of getting there, not just distance and delta-v. While Ike is comparable in gravity to Mun with the added challenge of reaching Duna orbit first, it has the same payoff as recovering science from the surface of Eve, one of the most challenging tasks in the game.

Edited by Electrollama
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I think Minmus is meant to be easy for gameplay purposes...

Going to Duna, Laythe, etc without the full tech tree is boring anyway. Excess Science can produce funds... so there's self financing missions without dealing with contracts.

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Nah, Minmus is fine as it is. The orbital inclination is good as it is too since it's similar to what you see on other bodies, which means it's possible to practice all kinds of manoeuvres with it. Increasing it to 30 degrees would just make it pointlessly annoying for new players without making much difference for experienced ones who encounter it at the An/Dn anyway.

As to the Sci coefficient, decreasing it to 2x would just mean more early-game grind which is dull rather than fun. A light rebalance might be OK (e.g. Mun 5x/Minmus 4x) but not more than that. You can always dial down the Sci rewards in the difficulty settings if you prefer a slower early-game progression.

Also: I like it that the Sci multipliers aren't directly tied to gameplay considerations, such as the difficulty of getting there. In fact if it was up to me, I'd make them less balanced -- I'd base the multipliers on our ideas about how much we could actually learn by visiting a body. Smaller bodies have fewer biomes of course. 

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1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

A light rebalance might be OK (e.g. Mun 5x/Minmus 4x) but not more than that. You can always dial down the Sci rewards in the difficulty settings if you prefer a slower early-game progression.

I agree, I actually made that change in some versions of my custom systems...

Then I thought it made sense to switch their orbits too. Many people go to Mun first, when Minmus is actually easier. I think the distance  puts people off, the plane change is not really a big problem either.

I don't know, it makes more sense to me to switch the orbits and science modifiers, Minmus as a trainer, Mun as the next, bigger challenge.

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  • 2 months later...

i belive making minmus harder would punish new players, you may think it is easy but when i first started, my first rocket limped into an orbit, do you want to make the game harder for new players who may come to the game and realise that minmus is extremely hard to reach than when they first leaned it

also this would break all existing games if the orbit was altered, if something is at minmus, Save Corrupted

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you may not think inclanation changes are that bad, but that is because you can fly efficiently enough to have the fuel to do the burn. new players have a hard time getting to the mun and minmus, I thought the mun would be harder, before i crash landed on it and all that was left of my lander was a capsule, an experiment contianer, and science stuff do you want new players to get stranded at minmus

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On 1/23/2020 at 9:14 AM, fulgur said:

In my opinion, the point of Minmus is to give you RAPIERs and NERVAs before you go off to Duna or Jool. And the inclination is big enough that you don't always get an encounter if launching equatorial.

Do you really want to go to Duna without nuclear engines?

I never use RAPIERS or NERVAs for anything.

Duna is easy to get to using chemical engines, but I tend to use electric propulsion from Near Future.

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Do Not make minmus hard because of "science farming" Noobs don't farm for science they might go to 2 biomes and call it a day and go home, making the inclanation that ridiculous would only punish noobs because they have no idea that going at the acending node makes it easier to get there(I do that for every minmal mission now) Pros get inclantaion, Noobs Don't STOP TRYING TO PUNISH NOOBS.

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Yeah the best way to stop science farming of Minmus is to remove most of the biomes. Flats and Not Flats. That's it. Problem solved.

Same with the other bodies. 3-4 biomes per planet, 1-3 per moon.

In my day each planet was a single biome, and we were THANKFUL!

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