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Making Minmus more challenging


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On 1/23/2020 at 3:37 PM, dave1904 said:

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. 

Correct, Noobs as a rule, DO NOT FARM, I went to minmus one time and did not farm until i had already sent probes to eve and duna.

Edited by kspnerd122
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16 minutes ago, kspnerd122 said:

Noobs as a rule, DO NOT FARM

My first mission to Minmus was a mining truck with a big orange tank.  And I was definitely a noob.  I didn't even know that the OX solar panels didn't retract and snapped a few off.

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Science is totally broken anyway. Some people think it's way too easy by default, and others (like me) think it's too grindy by default.

Yes, Minmus is much easier to reach and land on than Mun, but how many people realize that at first? Mun seems like it should be easier, but it's not. I don't consider this a bad thing, however.

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22 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

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.

You do realize that would make a 10% science game ultra-difficult, right? As in, you'd barely be able to unlock the Mk1 landing can before running out of science in Kerbin's SOI.

Don't complain about the game being too easy if you're playing on easy mode all the time, mate. If you feel it's too easy to get up the tech tree, that science multiplier option is there for a reason. Yes, you're probably going to ask what masochistic individual would play that way (I do), but like it or not, it's still a stock option. And if your proposed change breaks the stock game, you're not approaching the problem the right way.

Edited by Fraktal
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it seems that you only want minmus to become a graveyard for all the ships of noobs that landed but got stranded, also I get removing some biomes but im playing a game with 60% Science and it is already very hard for me.

the sci mult slider is there for a reason

you want a harder game limit the amount of biomes you can visit, e.g 1-2 biomes a planet, but dont make the game hard on newer players

also ksp2 will not alter the rotational axis as to not force old players to vastly change how they play and make the game hard for noobs who just came from ksp 1 thinking they can do well, but then you need to launch on inclanation, im playing after kerbin so inclanation actually matters when visiting guardian and nemesis

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As a noob, I had barely noticed minmus was even there before I had set foot on the mun. So it couldn't even cross my mind that it could be cheaper deltaV-wise (I'm not even sure I knew much about deltaV or deltaV maps anyway).

Kind of sidetrack:

Spoiler

Sure I could have read a guide or something before starting and screwing my kerbals over several times, but - for me personally - I've learnt a long time ago this is one easy way to ruin the enjoyment of most games. So I'll only research or look into something after I've done it or if I've hit a dead end for so long it's becoming frustrating. After some 400 or so hours at the game I still don't watch KSP videos because I haven't been to all planets yet and I don't want to ruin the fun of discovering and seeing them for the first time on my own.

Imho, anyone who starts a game knowing minmus is there, how to get to it and that it's cheaper than the mun should have already ramped up the difficulty settings (and probably by quite a bit) for a balanced game. KSP's learning curve is already pretty darn steep. It would be interesting to know the % of the playerbase who actually even gets to orbit. When I loaded the game for the first time I had no idea about what an apoapsis even was and I was completely overwhelmed by the tutorials.

Edited by luizsilveira
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6 hours ago, kspnerd122 said:

im playing a game with 60% Science and it is already very hard for me.

I'm playing with 10%. Right now, I completely harvested Kerbin, the Mun, Minmus and near-Kerbin Kerbol orbit for all science I've got unlocked (crew/EVA reports, temperature, pressure, goo, material exposure and surface sample) in each biome and each situation, plus transmitted temperature and pressure readings from all biomes on Ike and Gilly, plus some orbital data of the same of Eve and Duna.

This is the current state of my tech tree, 2 years and 338 days after starting this particular save:

JdSWdKo.png

A grand total of ONE of these latest nodes have been unlocked with a laboratory. All of the rest have been painstakingly collected via grinding. If all but two of Minmus' biomes were to be eliminated, I'd be lacking another three nodes. So yes, Minmus in its current form is REQUIRED for the stock tech tree at minimum possible science income in order to get the gear for a manned Duna flight. Nukes and ions? I'd be happy to have them before my first manned mission to Eeloo if I'm intent on visiting everything in order of proximity to Kerbin without excessive reliance on laboratories (which is another thing the "science system is too easy" crowd keeps complaining about year by year).

Thus is my opinion.

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9 hours ago, Fraktal said:

You do realize that would make a 10% science game ultra-difficult, right? As in, you'd barely be able to unlock the Mk1 landing can before running out of science in Kerbin's SOI.

The fact you can now turn science down to 10% and still play the game isn't a great argument to keep science values the same.

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It is if removing most of the science from Minmus bottlenecks the player to the point where you'll have to reach Duna with something built out of 200+ 1.25m parts lagging the game to oblivion because you can't afford any Rockomax parts without launching unmanned rovers at every single celestial body outside the Kerbin SOI. That is, if you even have the antenna range to reach there because you can't afford the RA-2 either.

I'm not saying it's impossible (I know better than to say that to an experienced KSP player). I'm merely saying that if the default difficulty is too easy for you, the solution isn't to raise the difficulty for everyone. That way lies madness. Some think being able to reach the top of the tech tree within the Kerbin SOI is cheap, so what? KSP isn't a competitive game and you're not forced to play as such, so let people play however they want.

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I find it hard to think like a new player, it's true.

However I was a new player when career mode first came out, and back then every planet had one biome. IIRC there was somewhere between 3 and 4 times the tech tree worth of science in the whole game.

As a new player, I thought that was perfect and have lamented every single science change (which have without exception have added science points without adding anywhere to spend them) since.

Edited by 5thHorseman
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6 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

The fact you can now turn science down to 10% and still play the game isn't a great argument to keep science values the same.

The entire science system is fundamentally broken, because KSP is fundamentally a sandbox game with a leveling-up progression mechanism tacked onto it. The heart of the gameplay is "play it your way". And yet, over and over, these forums are always full of people insisting that other people are playing it wrong.

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Also There is a fundemental problem with this, im playing beyond home by @Gameslinx and there are only 14 biomes across all moons of rhode, i don't have nukes after visiting both lua and ash after visiting armstrong I will just barely have the gravioli, science labs, and large solar panels, i would need to go to hydrus with a rover, minimum, before i could get ions, RTG's(I go for them because i will soon return to the kerbolar system with a large colony ship that will set up near Janus, what is left of jool, Also in this version GAS GIANTS ARE LANDABLE and I may not complete the tech tree until visiting the Kerbol System and transmitting science back.

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On 4/9/2020 at 7:31 AM, kspnerd122 said:

Also There is a fundemental problem with this, im playing beyond home by @Gameslinx and there are only 14 biomes across all moons of rhode

There's another camp in the argument of the balance problems of science progression. The stock planets, all of them, have too many "biomes." idk about KSP 0.9 and older but my guess is the reason that Mun and Minmus have so many biomes is that the tech tree was fleshed out and most other stock worlds didn't exist yet so the moons were given so many biomes so that you could mine enough science to finish the tech tree. Now, though, the bigger problem is that you can easily finish the tech tree before leaving Kerbin's SOI which defeats the idea of visiting the other worlds. Some will say that biomes are rightfully plentiful only on worlds that can have a wide and thriving ecosystem and several climates (Kerbin, Laythe, maybe Eve and Duna) and the remaining "biomes" on the lifeless worlds should not exist (or better, be properly made into a separate geography based system to help with charting the surface of a world. Not important to science but maybe still important to ISRU).

It's likely that Gameslinx agrees with this, and so kept the biome count short on those moons (also they're all really low gravity. There's little reason for them to have many biomes). If your tech tree can be completed before you leave Rhode's SOI you have much less reason to leave, and that makes for a great waste of the efforts of Gameslinx or any planet maker.

Squad won't nerf the stock moons because that will (sadly) needlessly upset a lot of existing players, and in any number of ways, it won't be worth their effort to do so. But I'll mention that there was a base game update where several stock bodies had their biome counts raised by a lot to make them more attractive in the progression games.

 

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i would agree, most planets in beyond home have 4 biomes, after visiting hydrus, scaythe, scindo, ash, lua, and armstrong, im still not done with the tech tree, should i go to gateway, or fury next

don't remove biomes turn down the science mult, delete most of the biomes and create your own in your game, limit yourself to 1 biome per planet etc

don't make the game harder for everyone, simply make it harder for yourself

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5 hours ago, kspnerd122 said:

i would agree, most planets in beyond home have 4 biomes, after visiting hydrus, scaythe, scindo, ash, lua, and armstrong, im still not done with the tech tree, should i go to gateway, or fury next

don't remove biomes turn down the science mult, delete most of the biomes and create your own in your game, limit yourself to 1 biome per planet etc

don't make the game harder for everyone, simply make it harder for yourself

yes. I,  in my opinion love the Minty Ice Moon as I call it (I’ve never called it that in my life), and if you want a change, just make a mod. Or download one. Or make one and use it. Or don’t go to Minmus. Or do what Matt Lowne did, only harvest one biome per (non Kerbin) planet. Or-

 

whatever. I don’t want Minmus to be changed. Or science. It’s fine as is.

 

except for the weird placement of the RAPIER, that makes no sense in my opinion. Luckily KSP is easy to edit.

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10 hours ago, kspnerd122 said:

don't make the game harder for everyone, simply make it harder for yourself

If you could make these changes in a stock option screen this argument would be a lot more viable.

One of my biggest wants for KSP2 is the ability to do this sort of thing without relying on a mod that doesn't generally update until the next version of the main game comes out.

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When I finally went to Minmus (a couple of weeks ago), I did it in the same way as the Mun. I had to make an inclination change, which I suppose would be the 'new skill' to learn (though by that point, I'd already become proficient at matching inclination through rendezvous and docking).

When I arrived at Minmus, it was a pleasant surprise, both at how easy it was to land on (nice flat areas), and the dV cost. Having made eight landings on the Mun, it was actually fairly refreshing - and not just because of the minty cool surface. I didn't know it advance that it was technically an easier place to visit.

What it did allow me to do, was experiment with new and more ambitious designs. Knowing the dV requirement wasn't so strict, it meant I could try visiting multiple biomes. Or building a base. Or sending more than one Kerbal. The Mun was a challenge in just learning how to reach, land and return from a celestial body. Minmus was a playground for trying new things once I got there.

Edited by Chequers
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No. Don't change anything. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and it's definitely not broke in this case. Science multipliers are fine, although biomes are excessive. Of course, this may help noobs out (which is of course good), but it also means more experienced players are open to making themselves a new challenge by restricting themselves to one biome. It really isn't that hard to do that.

Edited by mabdi36
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/23/2020 at 6:14 PM, 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?

Nukes for duna? Duna is the easiest to reach place in the game in terms of dv.

Landing on Duna requires even less dv than landing on Minmus.

 

Edited by Kergarin
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Heck, I went to Duna on a skipper and a terrier. (I used the skipper to complete my orbit around kerbin, and I did about half of my orbital insertion burn to Duna with it then switching to the terrier. enough about Duna. Minmus, I have gone to twice now and was an incredible fun journey, being a wonderfully change from the more bleak mun.  If it was harder, many new players would be discouraged

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I would say that Minmus should stay mostly the same, but with a radius of about 90 km and a surface gravity of 0.06 g. However, I'd love a moon in an eccentric 60,000-80,000 km orbit at >45­° inclination and smaller than Gilly. It would certainly be a challenge to reach, but not ridiculously challenging.

Edited by KingKerb
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I think things are pretty good as they are.  Minmus is perfect for new recruits to the Kerbonaut Korps to practice aiming for a "far away" destination which can be a little fiddly for them to encounter, but yet isn't so hard as to frighten them off or make it impossible.

Matt Lowne did a series on Youtube in which he limited himself to grabbing science from just one biome per celestial body, and I really do think that doing this should help more experienced players who think getting science on Minmus is too easy; after all, nothing's forcing you to grab science from numerous biomes in one trip.

In addition, you can reduce the amount of science you get from each biome in the settings, don't use labs (which I seldom do), indeed I reckon you could make the game a real pig if you really wanted to.

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Actually, there are two ways of the KSP space race: science gathering and industry development.

In sense of the science gathering the Minmus is easy and nice.
In sense of the industry development the Minmus is the pure evil which makes pointless any development on the rocky Mun.

So, I believe just one additional checkbox is required in game settings:
[x] Retrograde Minmus

Off = current state, for science.
On = the Minmus on retrograde orbit gets harder to reach.

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