[1.10.1] SCANsat [v20.4] -- Real Scanning, Real Science, at Warp Speed! [September 9, 2020]

[smjjames]

21 minutes ago, KocLobster said:

Is there an easy way to make sure orbiting probes with these scanning devices are always pointing towards the celestial body?

The orientation of the probes makes no difference, that is, the instruments don't care if they are pointing towards the celestial body or not.

[KocLobster]

@smjjames
Oh I hadn't realized that, it just seemed like that would logically be necessary.

 

Can someone tell me if I'm doing this right? I think I calculated that I am producing enough electriccharge, and in the map it shows the scanner constantly beaming down the green thing, signifying it should be working. The planetary mapping box though is just a ton of static, it doesn't seem right. Also, the multi spectral sensor doesn't show if it's working optimally when I right click, just shows "start scan". Is it actually lacking power? Also, attempting to analyze either nets 0 science. It LOOKS like I have no electric charge, but I believe it's accumulating it as fast as it's using it, so I believe that I actually have enough. I don't really know though.

http://imgur.com/C1FGK85

Edited March 7, 2016 by KocLobster

[Loren Pechtel]

14 minutes ago, KocLobster said:

@smjjames
Oh I hadn't realized that, it just seemed like that would logically be necessary.

 

Can someone tell me if I'm doing this right? I think I calculated that I am producing enough electriccharge, and in the map it shows the scanner constantly beaming down the green thing, signifying it should be working. The planetary mapping box though is just a ton of static, it doesn't seem right. Also, the multi spectral sensor doesn't show if it's working optimally when I right click, just shows "start scan". Is it actually lacking power? Also, attempting to analyze either nets 0 science. It LOOKS like I have no electric charge, but I believe it's accumulating it as fast as it's using it, so I believe that I actually have enough. I don't really know though.

http://imgur.com/C1FGK85

The few of them that I flew seemed to need to do the "Start Scan" before they produced any data and strangely enough never produced any data below about the tropic of Capricorn even though the satellite certainly went there.

[DMagic]

@KocLobster It looks like you aren't generating enough power. You probably only have enough power to run one scanner at a time. It's hard to get the optimum power generation when using the flat panels, since they aren't usually running at 100%

The problem here is in the way that SCANsat tries to keep turning the scanners back on when you run out of power. You wouldn't want the scanners to shut off when they run out of power, otherwise you would have to restart them every time the vessel went behind a planet's shadow. But when you don't have enough power to run them even on the daylight side of the planet the scanner will keep flicking on and off. 

You can try to wait until the panels drift into an orientation that allows for you to shut off one of the scanners. But the only real option may be to turn on the Infinite Electricity in the Alt+F12 menu, turn off the scanners, then turn off the infinite EC again. Just turn on one scanner at a time and be careful about EC. Or you could just turn them both on and immediately leave the vessel. KSP doesn't have any way to track EC usage when the vessel isn't active.

It's irritating, but I haven't gotten around to figuring out a good way to handle the issue.

@Loren Pechtel It sounds like your vessels may be moving out of scanning range during parts of their orbit. Each scanner has minimum and maximum scanning heights. Check the SCANsat wiki for info about getting into good scanning orbits.

[Loren Pechtel]

2 minutes ago, DMagic said:

@KocLobster@Loren Pechtel It sounds like your vessels may be moving out of scanning range during parts of their orbit. Each scanner has minimum and maximum scanning heights. Check the SCANsat wiki for info about getting into good scanning orbits.

I put a biome scanner into a 250 km orbit with a 90 degree inclination.  I got complete scanning of everything north of the tropic line (clear up to the pole) and nothing below it.  The same result in Kerbin, Mun and Minmus.

[DMagic]

@Loren Pechtel That's strange. Do the other scanners work? Have you tried turning on the biome overlays in the ALt+F12 menu to see if they actually show biomes below that latitude.

[KocLobster]

I too am using a 250km polar orbit, with the periapsis and apoapsis being almost exactly 250km. What's weird is that I knew the biome scanner used a lot of EC, but I thought the other device used only a fraction of the amount the biome scanner did. I thought for sure I'd produce enough EC..but I guess not. I guess I'll have to send this probe back to Kerbin and try again. Unfortunately, I haven't bothered unlock the next group of solar panels, seems that's a must now. Thanks for the help DMagic.

[Loren Pechtel]

55 minutes ago, DMagic said:

@Loren Pechtel That's strange. Do the other scanners work? Have you tried turning on the biome overlays in the ALt+F12 menu to see if they actually show biomes below that latitude.

I never tried to launch any other scanners.  I just put the scanner bird up to know where to find the biomes to collect science from.  I'm about to launch scanning birds in my current game, I'll see what happens.

[smjjames]

3 hours ago, Loren Pechtel said:

I put a biome scanner into a 250 km orbit with a 90 degree inclination.  I got complete scanning of everything north of the tropic line (clear up to the pole) and nothing below it.  The same result in Kerbin, Mun and Minmus.

That sounds like the bug that I've encountered before where the small map would show everything north of the tropic line (or thereabouts) and the rest below would be blank. The big map should show everything normally.

[Loren Pechtel]

5 minutes ago, smjjames said:

That sounds like the bug that I've encountered before where the small map would show everything north of the tropic line (or thereabouts) and the rest below would be blank. The big map should show everything normally.

Just put up my scanning birds, they worked like they should and I'm kicking myself--I forgot the antennas.  There's 90 science out there and no way to get it.  In the previous game the big map also had a gap but it wasn't obvious there was one in the rectangular projection.  Select polar and it's very clear what's going on.

[Brigadier]

Glad you found the problem.

[Loren Pechtel]

32 minutes ago, Brigadier said:

Glad you found the problem.

No, because I don't know what I did differently.  This design was a bit more compact than before but that shouldn't make a difference.

[DMagic]

@smjjames The terrain map error was caused bya problem in the way SCANsat precomputes some of the terrain data. That wouldn't be problem with biome maps. That's why I thought there might be something wrong with the actual biome map.

@Loren Pechtel You can always send a Kerbal up to collect the data.

[Loren Pechtel]

1 hour ago, DMagic said:

@smjjames The terrain map error was caused bya problem in the way SCANsat precomputes some of the terrain data. That wouldn't be problem with biome maps. That's why I thought there might be something wrong with the actual biome map.

@Loren Pechtel You can always send a Kerbal up to collect the data.

How can a Kerbel collect the data?  There's no way to board.  Do I EVA over to it?

[DMagic]

@Loren Pechtel Yep EVA over.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

20 minutes ago, DMagic said:

@Loren Pechtel Yep EVA over.

 

Minmus and Mun shouldn't be a problem.  The Kerbin one is awfully expensive to get to, though.  Hopefully I'll have extra fuel coming back from one of the moons, the plane change isn't that expensive that far out.

[smjjames]

37 minutes ago, Loren Pechtel said:

Minmus and Mun shouldn't be a problem.  The Kerbin one is awfully expensive to get to, though.  Hopefully I'll have extra fuel coming back from one of the moons, the plane change isn't that expensive that far out.

You can do it very cheaply out at Minmus, especially if you do it at apoapsis, or even do it when leaving Minmus.

[Loren Pechtel]

41 minutes ago, smjjames said:

You can do it very cheaply out at Minmus, especially if you do it at apoapsis, or even do it when leaving Minmus.

Turns out there's an easier way, albeit a bit of a cheat:

I slapped another scanner on a bird, activated it and the science was immediately available.

[Deimos Rast]

@DMagic I'm loving the updated UI (the added Zoom Map - is that entire thing new, or has that always been there?).

Quick question though: I'm looking to boost the science return on the scan results. I found ScienceDefs.cfg and where the relevant values are, and I edited them, and sure enough I'm getting more science in game now. But "baseValue" and "scienceCap" are they scaled or multiplied in any way? (Also, I'm assuming dataScale is the Mits?) I was looking for a Multispectral scan base value of 250 and a cap of 500, so (they were 20 each) so changed the values according. Now, however, in game, whenever I hit analyze, I get 202.5 science @ 750 Mits (come to think of it, I might have used different values earlier than 250/500) but everytime I hit Analyze/Transmit it's another 202.5 science.

TLDR: Is there a scaling effect going on?

--edit--

actually, it turns out my science isn't increasing at all, so it probably isn't being transmitted fully and is still the same data. Above post can probably be disregarded, but I'm still curious if it's scaled in anyway.

Cheers.

 

Edited March 7, 2016 by Deimos Rast

[DMagic]

@Deimos Rast The zoom map isn't new, it was opened by right clicking on the big map in previous versions.

For the science it takes the cap value defined in the sciencedefs.cfg file, multiplies that by the scanning coverage value (so you only get 100% science when you have scanned at least 95% of the planet), then multiplies that by the standard planetary situation modifier for high orbit (1.5 for Kerbin, 2.5 for Minmus, 5 for Eve...).

So with the standard cap value of 20 you should get 30 science for a 100% scan of Kerbin, 50 for Minmus, etc... but less if you haven't fully scanned the planet.

I don't think changing the base value will have any effect.

The only way I can think of for it to give you less than the full cap value is for the scan not to be complete. But, then again, the science system is kind-of confusing under the hood, so weird things might happen if the base and cap values don't match.

[Deimos Rast]

1 hour ago, DMagic said:

@Deimos Rast The zoom map isn't new, it was opened by right clicking on the big map in previous versions.

For the science it takes the cap value defined in the sciencedefs.cfg file, multiplies that by the scanning coverage value (so you only get 100% science when you have scanned at least 95% of the planet), then multiplies that by the standard planetary situation modifier for high orbit (1.5 for Kerbin, 2.5 for Minmus, 5 for Eve...).

So with the standard cap value of 20 you should get 30 science for a 100% scan of Kerbin, 50 for Minmus, etc... but less if you haven't fully scanned the planet.

I don't think changing the base value will have any effect.

The only way I can think of for it to give you less than the full cap value is for the scan not to be complete. But, then again, the science system is kind-of confusing under the hood, so weird things might happen if the base and cap values don't match.

Well the current situation is that I have 3 satellites having just 100% scanned kerbin, minmus and the mun and their data is each worth exactly 202.5 a piece, no variation, which is odd. Also, I'm not getting any actual science transmission value from them, even though it says I should. I suspect what the problem is that I already transmitted the data at the old values (and forgotten about it, bad memory) and the 202.5 represents the "remainder" or "difference" between the old and the new, which for some reason registers in game as "new science." What's odd is that they are all at exactly the same value.

I won't really know for certain until I get to a new planet, which unfortunately is rather far off.

Anyway, the information you provided above is what I was after, and I have something to work with now.

Thanks!

[Loren Pechtel]

2 minutes ago, Deimos Rast said:

Well the current situation is that I have 3 satellites having just 100% scanned kerbin, minmus and the mun and their data is each worth exactly 202.5 a piece, no variation, which is odd. Also, I'm not getting any actual science transmission value from them, even though it says I should. I suspect what the problem is that I already transmitted the data at the old values (and forgotten about it, bad memory) and the 202.5 represents the "remainder" or "difference" between the old and the new, which for some reason registers in game as "new science." What's odd is that they are all at exactly the same value.

I won't really know for certain until I get to a new planet, which unfortunately is rather far off.

Anyway, the information you provided above is what I was after, and I have something to work with now.

Thanks!

Now that I think about it with the stock settings I got exactly the same science from Kerbin and Mun.  While there's a bird at Minmus with data I haven't been back yet (I forgot an antenna!) so I haven't looked at what it has.

[Deimos Rast]

I actually just solved it as I posted the above.

The Kerbin SCAN Satellite had the data worth 202.5 science; the other satellites some how registered it as their own as well. I transmitted it (from the Kerbin SCAN Sat) successfully, and the option to transmit science disappeared from the others.

Not sure if this is an actual bug or not, or just a coincidence.

[Loren Pechtel]

10 minutes ago, Deimos Rast said:

I actually just solved it as I posted the above.

The Kerbin SCAN Satellite had the data worth 202.5 science; the other satellites some how registered it as their own as well. I transmitted it (from the Kerbin SCAN Sat) successfully, and the option to transmit science disappeared from the others.

Not sure if this is an actual bug or not, or just a coincidence.

Related--I was able to pull the data off the Scansat using a scanner on another bird in the same SOI.  I figured it worked because it was looking at the SOI rather than the satellite itself.

[Deimos Rast]

Here is my log in the off chance it's of use. It's not a complete log (till game close) and doesn't capture the successful transmission of the "bad" data (as my game has since overwritten that log unfortunately) but it does show me trying to transmit that same data from the other two satellites, so that bit might be of interest.

Also of possible relevance was that I was using hyperedit to...adjust....orbits of the other satellites (from minus/mun back to kerbin) which might have affected things, but hasn't in the past.

Cheers.