How does everybody feel about the current set of stock experiments?

[Jacke]

On 8/29/2020 at 5:01 PM, SciMan said:

What I'm getting at is that where we have some magic "science points" system, we should have a menu where you can, without launching any rockets, decide to spend money on R&D to investigate in a given department, which will pay off with new engines (EDIT: Or whatever that department of research would develop, ie. looking into space habitation would give you more space station parts), that then require testing (this is where you launch the rockets) to finalize the design for parts that you can then incorporate on any vessel you choose.

Put another way, KSP has it backwards. Sure, certain sciences let you do engineering which lets you build better rockets. But not all of them.
In fact, most of the time it's the better engineering that lets you do better science. Figuring out how to build a better rocket is an engineering problem, but it's a science problem to figure out what a rocket is. Science shows you concepts, engineering is combining those concepts in a way to create something useful.

Of course with KSP 2 maybe not even having a money system, that would probably go the way of the dodo as well.

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As it is, the KSP 1 science system is not good enough because you are not driven to explore any further than Mun/Minmus, that's enough to complete the tech tree. That's fine for someone who doesn't want to explore further, but at the same time the question could be asked why even bother putting the other planets in the game if you don't have to explore them all to unlock everything?  ....

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TL:DR Science system has to go, hopefully money system too, perhaps replace it with some sort of "tech level" for the colonies to limit what you can build. They already said they're going to be limiting what kinds of resources a small colony will be able to supply to a craft, so this could just extend that some.

Good points.

You can turn down science rewards to 10% and face a real challenge advancing through the default tech tree.  In fact, that might go too far, requiring interplanetary missions to unlock some technologies that should be able to be developed independent of how far and how well things have been explored interplanetarily.

KSP and KSP 2 both need a system where techs get unlocked by researching, developing, and testing and using new concepts and parts.  The rewards from exploring out in space should feed back into the career, I'm just not quite sure how best to do that.

[RizzoTheRat]

One of the things I really love about KSP is that the base game is pretty simple, and there's a host of mods available to turn it in to something else.

The general concept of career mode with the science unlocking the tech tree allowing you to build ever more capable craft to fulfil more complex contracts is great.  The lack of connection between the science gathered and the parts developed isn't realistic but it does make it accessible to new players.  I like the idea a few have mentioned here of having different science disciplines (astronomy, chemistry, materials...) that contribute to different parts, but would that make the game harder for new players?

Personally I always play with RemoteTech and ScanSat, and establish a communication network and then send probes to map bodies before I land, so I can see where the different biomes are and find relatively flat bits, but most new players just want to blast their way to the moon and the additional steps required would be pain for them.

I do think the Tech tree could do with a bit of a reshuffle though, putting probes up before crewed vessels would be more realistic.