Science...

[TNM]

well, i'm still going through the tech-tree, i'm not rushing. i'm trying to do it in a realistic manner, but i noticed that at some point you NEED sience to get the right parts for you next mission. For example i want to do the Moon mission only once i can do it apollo-style, meaning 2 vehicles. Well, look where the docking port is, look where the 3 men capsule is. Getting all the relevant sience to unlock that stuff only by staying IN Kerbin-System needs you to dry out the biomes.

So yea, i experienced the grind, too. I use action groups of course, but there is a time-grind. I'm doing it for the first time, so i can live with it. I don't know how it will be after the next updates when i'm doing it the 2nd, 3rd time. All i need to fix it, at the time, is an action group command for "transmission". Thats it.

[Garek]

The problem with the Apollo-style Mun mission is that if you make the required parts cheap enough for it to work without grinding, you would be rushing through the science tree even more than at the moment. What would be needed for that are more parts after the current end of the tech-tree, e.g. dedicated parts for interplanetary exploration. I would very much like that, but I understand that it couldn't be done for .22.

[EatVacuum]

If you limited each experiment to one transmission per biome per mission but the points generated were always the same percentage of the max, maybe adjusted upwards a bit to balance, it could allow you to a reasonable amount of science for a lot less clicking.

I'm also not fond of the diminishing rate of return, in the RW sometimes early experiments reveal less data but open up possibilities - more questions or more theories to test. The classic example is the last moon mission - a single rock picked up by Shmitt, a geologist, answered more questions about the age and formation of the moon than all of the rocks gathered on previous missions. Hmmm, this situation might be a better argument for the "breakthrough" idea previously mentioned than for my own.

I'd love to have seen a science system where doing science generated ideas for new experiments. The science bay could just be a container for carrying the experiments to where you can execute them. The results would be the usual science points plus new experiments until you reach tthe end of the chain for each biome. Hmmm, I wonder if this could be modded...

Lastly, you should be able to transfer science between docked vehicles. Right now you can't do the Apollo style command module + lander missions. You have to bring the lander back to get the science home. :-(

Edited October 24, 2013 by EatVacuum

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I will be the first to admit that I LOVE the idea of doing science in KSP, as it adds another element of realism in a semi-realistic game about little green dudes shootin stuff into space HOWEVER... I will also be the first to admit I hate grinding. Something that I learned to hate in an MMORPG I miss dearly. No, not World of Warcraft lol. Anyway. After spending 3 years, 219 days 8 hours and 14 minutes in a career mode game from start to unlocking ALL tech nodes on the stock tree and including the MJ node, the science here feels grindy.

Let me explain:

You launch a mission with say a capsule and Jeb, a goo canister a materials bay and orbit Kerbin or the Mun. You fly past biome after biome doing the same thing: crew report, eva, materials and goo. over and over until you see: 0.0 science earned. Then, you do this again with the thermometer and the other assorted science goodies. You do your landed EVA's, crew reports and so on, along with the previous stuff, and soil samples. In the end, you spend hours clicking away to the point where you stop reading what your doing and just watch the numbers and electrical warnings scroll past until you get enough science to unlock all nodes. While, I admit that I know this is the first incarnation of Career AND Science, it got tedious, especially on long duration flights where the goal was as many landings and biomes and what not as possible for as much science as possible.

Has anyone else experienced this sort of burn out on science as I have, or am I just unique and approached it wrong?

Thats pretty much what grinds my gears since i found out, that you can Spam-Transmit your science without the loss of any Information.

How about this solution:

Lets say you can get 1000 Science Points from a soil sample.

You can transmitt about 250 Science Points with one Transmission of Soft data (like appearence, weight, etc) but nothing more.

To earn the other 750 Science Points you have to bring the Sample (Hard Data) back to Kerbin for further analyses.

This would stop the fun-killing spam transmissions and If you tweak the power consumption, you can run out of power with one transmission as you do by sending 20-30 transmissions right now.

I am not sure why there is any dataloss right now when transmitting temp, gravity or acceleration data even from a LKO.

But we are in an Alpha-Version and I am not whining here about 0.22. I love to do science but I want to share my experience with it.

Edited October 24, 2013 by MalfunctionM1Ke

[AndrewBCrisp]

I'm also not fond of the diminishing rate of return, in the RW sometimes early experiments reveal less data but open up possibilities - more questions or more theories to test. The classic example is the last moon mission - a single rock picked up by Shmitt, a geologist, answered more questions about the age and formation of the moon than all of the rocks gathered on previous missions. Hmmm, this situation might be a better argument for the "breakthrough" idea previously mentioned than for my own.

I'd love to have seen a science system where doing science generated ideas for new experiments. The science bay could just be a container for carrying the experiments to where you can execute them. The results would be the usual science points plus new experiments until you reach tthe end of the chain for each biome. Hmmm, I wonder if this could be modded...

Lastly, you should be able to transfer science between docked vehicles. Right now you can't do the Apollo style command module + lander missions. You have to bring the lander back to get the science home. :-(

It might be possible to have an experiment management system similar to how kerbonauts and subassemblies are managed right now. How about this:

We get a part called the "equipment bay" - like command pods or the Hitchhiker it is empty on its own, but we can load it with certain experiments. Command pods themselves could also contain experiments (though ideally not as many as the equipment bay as the command pods also have to carry kerbonauts) in addition to the existing functionality of crew reports, EVA reports, and sample storage. Say, something like this:

1-Kerbal command pod - no on-board experiments (no room, realistically)

3-Kerbal command pod - 2 on-board experiments.

Lander-can - 1 onboard experiment.

1 m diameter Equipment bay - 4 on-board experiments.

2.5 m diameter Equipment Bay - 8 on-board experiments.

There could be different levels of experiments (basic, intermediate, advanced, etc), kinds (medicine, geology, physics, etc), and those could have different sizes. Say, one experiment takes up 2 experiment slots while another can take up 4. The different kinds of experiments could be unlocked in the tech tree as you go up, with basic experiments naturally coming first.

Experiments could be loaded on board either by clicking the appropriate tab in the VAB / SPH or a dialog when sending a vehicle to the launch pad / runway. If we can implement a transfer system for experiments - and kerbonauts - then we can move material from one command pod / equipment bay to another. The crew transfer system in the Crew Manifest mod might serve as a road map for that.

If and when astronaut training gets implemented, we could have kerbonauts trained in certain sciences and that can have an effect on experiment and sample science output.

We can also apply this to kerbonauts on EVA, having a deployable instrument package (like planting a flag, but leaving some kind of device behind to transmit data back).

[KerbMav]

Thats pretty much what grinds my gears since i found out, that you can Spam-Transmit your science without the loss of any Information.

How about this solution:

Lets say you can get 1000 Science Points from a soil sample.

You can transmitt about 250 Science Points with one Transmission of Soft data (like appearence, weight, etc) but nothing more.

To earn the other 750 Science Points you have to bring the Sample (Hard Data) back to Kerbin for further analyses.

This would stop the fun-killing spam transmissions and If you tweak the power consumption, you can run out of power with one transmission as you do by sending 20-30 transmissions right now.

I am not sure why there is any dataloss right now when transmitting temp, gravity or acceleration data even from a LKO.

But we are in an Alpha-Version and I am not whining here about 0.22. I love to do science but I want to share my experience with it.

We are mostly on the same page here - lots of experiments should be transmittable at 100% - others should only make a portion of a pool available for transmitting, if at all!

[engraverwilliam]

I am one for the science being different mini-games. Say you click a science hardware, a window pops up with the experiment/s you must click through the sequences. try different combos to get differnet results. implement a system that allows you to have virtually unlimited combos. the more unique the results, the more science points earned just make the point system in the .000s. Science is hard.

[dlmarti]

science grindy? no it is damn tedious.

[Caelib]

Career mode is a grind, Sandbox is not. You have but two options

[rosenkranz]

Given that this is the first iteration, it’s a pretty good first go. I know I’ve had a tremendous amount of fun playing with it.

Could it be improved? Absolutely. I’m sure there will be balancing passes on science gains and costs.

My suggestions?

Dang, the more I think about it the harder it is to think of something that would actually improve what’s been done.

About the only improvements I can think of are really just balancing items.

One might be to rearrange which tech nodes unlock which experiments. Mystery Goo and Materials Study up front seems a little odd. A better order might be Thermometer, Barometer, Seismometer, Gravimeter, and then the Mystery Goo and last up Materials Study.

Of course this would necessitate a rebalance of the science outputs of those parts.

Another improvement might be to the results messages. Right now there seems to be only one result message part per biome. Maybe 3 or 4 per biome would add more flavor to the activity.

Along this same line of thought, perhaps make it a curve. One result happens the most and gains X science, while 2 other results happen less often but gain bonus science. And the last result could be a rare event that gain bookoo (sp?) science.

Just some thoughts. I’ve got more, like satellite imaging experiments and such but I need roll those around a bit more in my head first.

[Peppe]

Repeated transmissions from the same category in the same flight should not be worth science.

You can delay that play-style if you move the antenna/any remote transmission options to late in the tree. You can still do some of the gimmicky stuff through multiple EVA reports, but your science instruments only get one recording. I'd also make anything that stores an experiment heavy, expensive, or both. Logically a thermometer is not heavy, so i say make it expensive to balance it as a science generator -- requires currency to be implemented...

[AlamoVampire]

I am not saying that this is not a fine go for the first iteration, it is just that, a lot of us who came here from MMORPG's are usually not that fond of leveling up, and in essence that is what is going on here, we are leveling up. Some of us are fine with a grind, others, who are older veterans of the MMO world <namely those who started in games that came out prior to World of Warcraft, just vanilla WoW here, not Burning Crusades or any of the other expansions> I myself started out in Final Fantasy XI, and learned the grind there. That is why I am not found of grinds, especially ones that net diminishing returns. In FFXI, when you killed your first monster, it netted a small sum of XP <experience points, or uh, science in KSP conversions lol>, the next one if you were quick enough, netted a small bonus and so on up the chain with each link netting MORE.

Someone said that, we will find the most efficient way to get to the end point, and it is true. Yes, I LOVED having my missions mean something, but, at the same time, each small mission was less efficient, which, sparked bigger missions with more stops and reports. This in turn, turns into the grinding spam fest of crew reports, eva's soil samples, science gear spamming in order to get the grind over as efficiently as possible.

What I am driving at I guess is this: there has to be a balance somewhere here, between, what is fun and meaningful and the high horsepower grindfest that it ultimately turns into when it goes from: hey this is cool and fun to hey, this is getting tedious how can I make this end quicker so it stops being a pain?

[Bothersome]

Well, the gist of what I think Squad was trying to do was to get people to go explore further places. To do that you had to build bigger crafts.

I think Squad should fix it so that you can only transmit data for points from a given location only once. And samples should not be able to be transmitted at all.

[AlamoVampire]

could be, could be.