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

[Jacke]

3 hours ago, Warrior_Me said:

I think the basic system of spending science as a resource is fine. Apart from the player's natural curiosity it is the only thing incentivizing going to space in the first place and is at the center of the game's progression system as a whole.

There's also the contracts (including the automatic World's Firsts) that when a player achieves the goals in space, they receive the rewards.  Especially using Contract Configurator, these rewards can be virtually anything.

 

11 minutes ago, SciMan said:

NASA doesn't send experiments to distant worlds to learn how to make better rocket engines. That's backwards. What NASA does is build better rocket engines so they can get science experiments to distant worlds.

So how do you get better rocket engines? You invest in science research RIGHT AT HOME.

Exactly!  Using rockets as well as R&D to develop new versions is how rockets improve.

 

11 minutes ago, SciMan said:

What you DO send experiments to other planets for is (for one) to learn if they were ever capable of supporting life, and to learn if they currently possess the resources needed to create a self-sustaining colony there.

There's also just finding out what things are like out there.  Every probe to every planet, every orbital observatory, every crewed mission has improved our knowledge of space and the bodies out there.

[mcwaffles2003]

4 hours ago, SciMan said:

I was writing a big post about how you should need science of some sort to get the ideas for new part concepts, and then it takes money and time to do the R&D to actually produce parts from those concepts, but now I'm thinking we don't even need a science points system.

The reason is simple. NASA doesn't send experiments to distant worlds to learn how to make better rocket engines. That's backwards. What NASA does is build better rocket engines so they can get science experiments to distant worlds.

So how do you get better rocket engines? You invest in science research RIGHT AT HOME. The reason for this is that the laws of physics, and therefore the results of your experiments, don't change based on where you are, and when you're designing a rocket engine the experiment results that matter are the ones from materials science. Barring some formerly undiscovered stable chemical element with different properties to anything we already know, what we're left with is figuring out what ratio to mix elements in to get metals that are strong at high temperatures and pressures. That right there is what gets you better rocket engines.

What you DO send experiments to other planets for is (for one) to learn if they were ever capable of supporting life, and to learn if they currently possess the resources needed to create a self-sustaining colony there.

In other words, you need science experiments to figure out where to put your colonies, not to get a better rocket engine to use.

Heck we already know that it should be possible to build a fusion powered rocket, the problem isn't the science, it's the ENGINEERING. Which for rockets is mostly plumbing. Engineering is what makes science results into something you can hold in your hand. And 99% of the science has been figured out long ago.

I largely agree with this though I vehemently believe that a second, and critical, objective to science should be learning how to approach the planet in the first place. 

Science should fundamentally be a tool moreso than a progression mechanism. 

[SciMan]

Some of the first ideas for sending manned missions to Mars were using lifting-body gliders (Von Braun mars landers).

It took several probes (flybys and later orbiters) to determine that the atmosphere was in fact quite problematic. The information gathered by several flyby and orbiter probes painted a problematic picture: Mars' atmospheric density is in a "sour spot" where it's really hard to take advantage of it. The atmosphere of Mars is dense enough that reentry heating is high enough to require a heatshield of some kind, but also not dense enough to enable use of parachutes alone to land things on the surface. In other words, you need a heat-shield to protect the craft (heavy), then you need a REALLY BIG parachute that works all the way from supersonic to subsonic to slow down most of the way (heavy, fragile, and complicated), and then you need a rocket powered braking stage to actually soft-land on the surface (heavy).

How this relates to KSP 2 is like this:

I think that science experiments done in orbit or on a flyby trajectory should be able to determine the atmospheric characteristics of a planet or moon via a sensor part you put on (good place for the atmospheric spectro-variometer or a new instrument).

The trajectory of a probe, measured over the course of a fly-by or orbit of a planet or moon, should be able to be used to estimate the mass (and therefore the SOI) of that planet or moon. This doesn't require a sensor on the probe to do, just tracking it via the tracking stations over a period without any propulsive maneuvers, and the longer you observe it the better the estimation is. This means that a high and/or highly eccentric orbit will give you the best estimates, simply because you can observe it over a longer period before it leaves the sphere of influence of the target planet or moon.

There should be many things you can determine by sending a bare probe core that has a telemetry connection to the space center, with no experiments on it, just by observing its trajectory while it's drifting or orbiting. How much solar wind pressure is exerted on the probe, atmospheric drag if any, total mass and the distribution of that mass in the body it's orbiting (this requires an orbit), stuff like that.

I'm sure there's more, but you really only need to land on the surface to exploit surface resources or do some kinds of geology (many kinds of geology can be done from orbit).

[pandaman]

Nothing much wrong with the experiments themselves.

It is the way the gathering of 'science' relates (or rather doesn't relate) to developing tech is implemented that is the problem. 

[swjr-swis]

On 8/20/2020 at 2:03 AM, SciMan said:

And 99% of the science has been figured out long ago.

We sure like to think so, don't we. Has it though? How many times across our history have we essentially made this same statement, only to learn something new and bam, everything we thought we knew needs correction and we get a flurry of new inventions and applications based on our latest '99%' mark.

There are still a good number of rather fundamental questions that we know we haven't figured out yet, and we have no clue how paradigm-breaking any of them may be.

[Daniel Prates]

The main issue with the current sci experiments system is that it is lacking in "roleplay" aspects. Merely clicking "do science!", reading the same text and profit points becomes repetitive eventually.

But.... that will simply have to do, even again in KSP2, as there is really no other choice. Because:

A) the alternative of a click-and-profit science would be to make the science experiments their own mini-game. Do we want that?

B) how is career mode progression supposed to work without it? Unlockable parts and gathering the points it takes to unlock is such a game landmark that it would be unrecognizable without it.

As @pandaman said above, there is room to improve how data is PROCESSED. Maybe points could go to a data pool and from there it would take time to unlock techtrees or whatever.

2 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

We sure like to think so, don't we. Has it though? How many times across our history have we essentially made this same statement, only to learn something new and bam, everything we thought we knew needs correction and we get a flurry of new inventions and applications based on our latest '99%' mark.

There are still a good number of rather fundamental questions that we know we haven't figured out yet, and we have no clue how paradigm-breaking any of them may be.

The romans thought the had "unlocked" all possible tech in their time too.

Edited August 27, 2020 by Daniel Prates

[Okhin]

Well, a stock option to transfer science to a lab, without being docked to it would be nice. It would allow for a science network to be built around a celestial body to make it work, but it would be more convenient than needing to carry data via kerbals to labs in orbit, and for science probe to transfer back to the closest lab (or to kerbin if someone chose to).

Some experiments (such as the one related to seismic data where you have to crash things into orbital body) might be non passive, but the reward should be high enough. And well it still should be about collecting data, the formulation of theories is made into labs, not on a deployed science unit.

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, Daniel Prates said:

A) the alternative of a click-and-profit science would be to make the science experiments their own mini-game. Do we want that?

Why not? A minigame could also be keeping the experiment at certain conditions prolonged periods of time, requiring specific orbits or to land at specific biomes/terrain features.

I'm thinking about the "landing puzzles" Nate was talking about in one of the early interviews.

 

40 minutes ago, Daniel Prates said:

Unlockable parts and gathering the points it takes to unlock is such a game landmark that it would be unrecognizable without it.

I sincerely hope that this isn't what the Devs think, I don't want KSP stuck to a badly though placeholder system because "that's tradition".

The "science is money to buy parts" system is inherently flawed and difficult to expand without breaking the balance of the game.

 

Even using only KSP1 mechanics you could integrate the requirement for orbital scans with the experiments to make them more situational, the strategy system to remove the direct relation between science point and tech unlocking and the "test part" contracts to make the system more interesting and deep without adding any new mechanic.

 

 

 

[mcwaffles2003]

Idea... What if there were a variety of types of labs and each one can only process a certain set of sample experiments and some sample experiments required the lab to be processed (can't be processed on the ground at KSC). This would turn the lab from a multiplier to a requirement to continue scientific discovery. It would push the player to begin setting up a space station and orbital infrastructure making for a smooth transition to interplanetary colonization.

Perhaps some sample experiments could have a time factor associated with them as well to mimic degradation of samples.

 

 

Also, a fun experiment to include could be setting up an interferometer in space for detecting gravitational waves similar to LIGO. It could require 3 parts that must make and maintain a right angle (2 mirrors and a half mirror+laser assembly). You would have to assemble this structure in orbit and the bigger it is the more science you get for it (as it gets exponentially larger there is a linear increase in the science retrieved)

Edited August 27, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[Daniel Prates]

4 hours ago, Master39 said:

Why not?

If people get bored by repeating the click+profit science, there is no reason to imagine they would not be bored by minigames too. With the aggravation that it not takes going through the pain of exhausting a minigame you've done 100 times already yet another time. 

The truth of the matter is: if you want to fly around the kerbol system doing whatever the hell you want without let or hindrance, sandbox mode is there. And if you feel you need a challenge other than the flights themselves, career mode ABSOLUTELY NEEDS obstacles to surpass. Doing a sci experiment on the "click'n'profit" is, well, a pretext to do something. But its all there is to it really. A minimum "click'n'profit" science part may seem bad mechanics,  but it is better than no science, and better than polluted science experiments. So it is the worst system there is, except for all the others. 

This discussion is interesting but a bit pointless really; you will consider my preference the worst and I will consider your preference the worst too, and people will get into "my choice is better, well, because" kind of argument. 

What I will say again, KSP could use improvement in with processing gathered data. I imagine another KSC building housing a GUI where parts are unlocked by the sum of different sci points (say, "bio", "mechanical" and "engineering" or something like that), and different experiments yield different points that combine into different parts. There is room for improvement there, and elsewhere. But NO SCIENCE PARTS, or MORE COMPLEX TO OPERATE? 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Daniel Prates said:

So it is the worst system there is, except for all the others. 

Well, my point it's not "my system is better", my point is: " there shouldn't be a requirement to keep the old system because that's how KSP1 works".

They should start fresh and design something not based on "that's something I thought of in an afternoon and implemented in a week".

[swjr-swis]

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

"that's something I thought of in an afternoon and implemented in a week"

Literally how some of the best inventions in human history have happened.

[pandaman]

To me there are two basic types of 'science'.

Type 1. That which primarily furthers knowledge of 'the universe'.  Search for ET life, studying solar flares etc. Studying the planets etc.

Type 2. Advancing the technology used to get type 1.  Researching improved engines and fuels etc. developing more advanced and efficient ways of getting to, and exploring, more distant places.

There is some crossover, such as learning about the atmosphere will help with working out how to land, but fundamentally I see Type 1 as being the fund earning 'contracts'.  Delivering and conducting scientific experiments for paying customers or agencies that yield relatively little in terms of advancing the tech.

Wheras Type 2 is the opposite, and is done primarily as part of the preparation to fulfil a type 1 contract, or other goal the player dreams up   Equipment tests and R&D etc.

Take the Moon landings, they collected rocks etc and learned a lot about the Moon by going, but none of that helped with developing the craft to get there, that all needed to be done first.  Yes they learned a lot more about the 'how' in the process of actually 'doing' and improved things with each flight, but none of that was as a result of analysing the rock samples.

KSP 1 career basically just treats it all as Type 1, which is it's biggest failing.

[Brofessional]

I would rather have contracts require the execution of various science objectives, and then you use the money and rep you get from contracts to fund your R&D department. Functionally science objectives wouldn't change much, just how they apply to tech tree progression.

Kind of unrelated but along with such a science system I also think it would be neat if there was a government vs commercial choice in how you progress your space program. Like the government path gives you annual funding while the commercial path gives you more funds from completing contracts, and each would focus you on different types of contracts like science vs tourism. Neither would lock you out of doing anything, just give you different options with how you progress and sort of role-play your space program. The existing admin building sort of fills that role now, but the execution of it is underwhelming and not very impactful on gameplay.

[mcwaffles2003]

2 hours ago, Brofessional said:

I would rather have contracts require the execution of various science objectives, and then you use the money and rep you get from contracts to fund your R&D department. Functionally science objectives wouldn't change much, just how they apply to tech tree progression.

Kind of unrelated but along with such a science system I also think it would be neat if there was a government vs commercial choice in how you progress your space program. Like the government path gives you annual funding while the commercial path gives you more funds from completing contracts, and each would focus you on different types of contracts like science vs tourism. Neither would lock you out of doing anything, just give you different options with how you progress and sort of role-play your space program. The existing admin building sort of fills that role now, but the execution of it is underwhelming and not very impactful on gameplay.

Have you tried strategia?

[Superfluous J]

On 8/14/2020 at 5:10 PM, Jacke said:

I dislike simplistic tech systems that industrialize R&D into grind out points, put points into machine, get tech back.

Real world tech improvements also need existing tech to be used to find out what works and what works better.  I want that in KSP.

The contract system and its missions give a mechanism to do this.  I've wanted to put out a mod that would do this for a while.

Me too, but every time I try to mod anything more complex than "change this default value to some other default value" my brain explodes.

Also, every time I think of this amazing way to modify the science/money/tech system, 3 days later I realize how garbage it is. It's like when you wake up from a dream where you had a great idea, and by the time you're done showering you realize that the idea is not just impossible, but stupid even if it WAS possible.

[James M]

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Have you tried strategia?

Strategia <3 (Although Media Circus is kinda OP)

[nightingale]

3 hours ago, James M said:

Strategia <3 (Although Media Circus is kinda OP)

Pulls out my Nerf bat...

[dave1904]

20 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

We sure like to think so, don't we. Has it though? How many times across our history have we essentially made this same statement, only to learn something new and bam, everything we thought we knew needs correction and we get a flurry of new inventions and applications based on our latest '99%' mark.

There are still a good number of rather fundamental questions that we know we haven't figured out yet, and we have no clue how paradigm-breaking any of them may be.

I think he was referring to propulsion and not science in general. Its exaggerated to be fair but you are taking it out of context. You are generalizing "us" because of claims individuals made. Most intelligent people in history were 100% aware of how little they knew.

 

[swjr-swis]

2 hours ago, dave1904 said:

I think he was referring to propulsion and not science in general. Its exaggerated to be fair but you are taking it out of context. 

Even strictly kept to the context of fusion, interpreting it as 'the science of fusion', and only considering the tiny subportion of people close to the subject, the sentiment is still quite true. We, or I should say they since I am not a (fusion) scientist, have been 99% on the verge of a breakthrough to achieve exploitable fusion for.... how long now? How many announcements have we seen already, just in my lifetime alone (and they were working on this since before my time already).

I'm not belittling their work or achievements in said field, mind you. I perk up and excitedly click on Every. Single. Headline. I see on the matter (plasma?). Every. Time. One of these days though. Any time now.

 

2 hours ago, dave1904 said:

You are generalizing "us" because of claims individuals made. Most intelligent people in history were 100% aware of how little they knew.

No, I was using 'us' because I consider myself one of those that keeps falling for that trap despite being aware of how little I know. It was an amusing moment of self-awareness. Since I had let a chuckle escape inadvertently, I decided to share it with the class.

Our self-perceived level of intelligence stems from the things we are certain we know. And we let ourselves be lured into making very confident ... let's be kind and say nonchalant... nonchalant claims based on said knowledge. I'm humbled practically every day by the way a simple question from a being of 'lesser intelligence' smacks me right in the face and makes me go 'hmm'. Parents in particular must know what I am talking about.

[dave1904]

11 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

Even strictly kept to the context of fusion, interpreting it as 'the science of fusion', and only considering the tiny subportion of people close to the subject, the sentiment is still quite true. We, or I should say they since I am not a (fusion) scientist, have been 99% on the verge of a breakthrough to achieve exploitable fusion for.... how long now? How many announcements have we seen already, just in my lifetime alone (and they were working on this since before my time already).

I'm not belittling their work or achievements in said field, mind you. I perk up and excitedly click on Every. Single. Headline. I see on the matter (plasma?). Every. Time. One of these days though. Any time now.

 

No, I was using 'us' because I consider myself one of those that keeps falling for that trap despite being aware of how little I know. It was an amusing moment of self-awareness. Since I had let a chuckle escape inadvertently, I decided to share it with the class.

Our self-perceived level of intelligence stems from the things we are certain we know. And we let ourselves be lured into making very confident ... let's be kind and say nonchalant... nonchalant claims based on said knowledge. I'm humbled practically every day by the way a simple question from a being of 'lesser intelligence' smacks me right in the face and makes me go 'hmm'. Parents in particular must know what I am talking about.

“You do realize as you grow older that almost nobody knows what they are talking about.”

― John Cleese  

[SciMan]

When I said we already know 99% of what we need to know to make better parts IRL, I didn't mean we know 99% of everything there is to know. I meant that further data from the types of experiments that KSP 1 has to offer, simply inform us of the conditions on another world, instead of informing us about how to do something to get better rocket engines or bigger fuel tanks or something of the like.

What I meant is that there's no fundamental difference between the starting fuel tanks and the largest fuel tanks in the game. Yet somehow those larger (and smaller) fuel tanks cost "science" to unlock. I can't explain it in any other way than "there is no reason, that's just how it works" which is an entirely unsatisfactory answer.

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.

Instead, what they could do to limit progression is have what parts you can construct tied to some statistics of a colony you build.
Throw out the science system entirely, because in KSP 2 we're no longer looking to discover the secrets of the universe, we're now looking for real estate to put a colony.

Of course, perhaps those colonies could be the only feasible place to do some certain experiments which either require very specific conditions (vacuum, microgravity, different atmosphere, low gravity, etc.) that are uneconomical or too dangerous to set up on Kerbin (the best example I can think of for that is a particle accelerator that is large enough that it needs to be launched in orbit and made of separate vessels, exactly the kind of thing you'd build a huge colony in space for).

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? And how do you balance that with the fact that going certain places almost requires certain equipment? Think about how hard it would be to do an Eve return mission without the inflatable heat-shield or drills and ISRU converters. Same with a Jool V mission.

I actually have a Jool V mission in the works right now, but before I unlocked those parts I wouldn't even consider it. The science return is going to be massive, but what do I do with all that science? I'm playing Science mode because i don't like the career grind but I still need a goal, which means Sandbox is just not going to do it for me. So I play Sandbox, and as soon as I unlock that last node I'm gonna stop playing this game for a while like I always do because "what's left to do that's got a reason to do it other than 'because I can'". I don't stop playing the game because I want to stop playing the game. It's because I get bored without a goal to work towards, and unlocking the tech tree is as close to a reason to do anything as you can get in KSP.

So the science system has problems, and I've detailed a few, yet I got "we know 99% of everything" thrown back at me as wrong. That's fair, it's wrong, but I feel like you missed my point. Perhaps this post will make my point more clear.

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.

Edited August 29, 2020 by SciMan
added info

[swjr-swis]

15 minutes ago, SciMan said:

So the science system has problems, and I've detailed a few, yet I got "we know 99% of everything" thrown back at me as wrong. That's fair, it's wrong, but I feel like you missed my point. Perhaps this post will make my point more clear.

Please don't take me too seriously. I wasn't throwing anything back at you - you made and make good points on the thread subject.

I reiterate: I was merely sharing a moment of self-reflection triggered by your comment. Nothing to see here, just the local village idiot snickering over the voices in his own head.

[SciMan]

That's fair, but it did make me take a second look at what I said and compose my thoughts in a better way, which I'm thankful for.

[James M]

On 8/28/2020 at 1:20 AM, nightingale said:

Pulls out my Nerf bat...

:0 Nooo! Not my free monies!!

Edited August 31, 2020 by James M