Iodun

2 -> 4 crew => double research speed 500 -> 1000 storage => double research speed 0.25 -> 0.5 scientistBonus => double research speed So after all this module should be 2 x 2 x 2 = 8 times as fast as the stock module...

I never played this mod, but as I understand the description their science lab is more a less a larger science experiment hub that can perform a variety of different experiments. Of course we could transform all available MPLs do exactly the same, but the idea behind my mod is to keep the functionality as is and just try to balance it and make it more interesting. At the moment its primarily config based and modifies the values of as many mobile processing labs as possible. Some mods simply have duplicates of the stock MPL with the equally bad balancing and my mod will create some variety there. Different labs have different crew requirements and different data storage capacities. I don't like balancing on arbitrary values so I created equations for EC and research speed. The future plan is to also add some more labs with custom models. Maybe I have luck and some people provide them for me. Life support mods are good and make it a bit more difficult to simply time warp to victory, but apart from TAC its still kinda easy to provide the necessary supply to do it. You also have to keep in mind, that experiments can be processed in multiple labs at the same time and I actually like this idea. Essentially I can slow down research speed as much as I want... it only means you need more labs to get the same output. A reasonable and realistic scenario I have in mind is that a mission to another planet like duna for example expects a science output of around 2000 points. So you take one of the smaller labs with you to duna and store all experiments inside it. On your 250 days trip back home the lab and your onboard scientist already produced around 500 extra science for you. Your first action in the kerbin SOI is to dock to your space station with the 4000 storage lab and your whole expert science team and process all experiments there again, before you finally deliver the results to kerbin. A even larger chain has two smaller 1000 storage surface labs on another planet and its moon, a transfer ship with a 2000 storage lab and a space station with a 4000 storage lab.

Balanced Science Labs Introduction The amount of science that can be gathered from the kerbol solar system by experiments only is far higher than what is needed to unlock the whole tech tree. The stock science lab essentially allows you to multiply this science gained from experiments by a factor of 6. The lack of stock life support makes it especially easy to deploy some science labs and time warp until the tech tree is unlocked. Some people like the system as is and others started to completely ignore the lab and call it OP. To make the science labs comply with my personal playstyle I decided to make some rather substantial changes to the respective config files and I happily share those with you. General Intentions Science labs allow you to double the science gained by experiments (factor 2 instead of 6) Science labs are supposed to do some background processing while running other missions There should be no need to babysit science labs all day long [*]Science labs combine the knowledge gathered from single experiments and produce further science A lot of data should be necessary to do that efficiently [*]Science labs produce science based on given data independent of their current location It should not make a difference where you process your data [*]Science lab is a mid to late game utility You need a lot of data input for reasonable science output You need skilled scientists for reasonable output [*]Balancing is done with respect to typical travel times to other planets Practical Implementation Data and science storage has been heavily increased BEFORE: 500 NOW: 1000 to 8000 [*]Science multiplier has been decreased BEFORE: 5 NOW: 1 [*]Surface and context bonuses have been removed [*]Necessary research time has been increased Features All labs with the same number of crew are equally fast Independent of the maximum storage capacity [*]The more scientists a lab supports the lower is the efficiency For example a lab with 2 crew has the maximum speed of 1.92 crew A lab with 12 crew has the maximum speed of 6.72 crew only 1 scientist produces 5.0 science per day 2 scientists produce 1.92 * 5.0 = 9.6 science per day ... [*]EC is calculated based on storage and maximum crew 1 EC per 1000 storage 1.5 EC per scientist workplace [*]Labs only work efficiently when their capacities are maxed out A 4000 storage lab with only 2000 data works on 50% speed A 4 crew lab with only 2 crew also works at 50% speed Always choose a lab that perfectly matches your mission! Supported Labs Mobile Processing Lab MPL-DSD-1 (Included) Small orbital data collector/processor Data/Science storage: 2000 Min. | Max. crew: 1 | 1 Cost (Entry Cost): 4000 (10000) Mass: 3.5t EC per second: 3.5 Max. performance: 5.0 sci/day (1 x 5 star scientist; 2000 data stored) Mobile Processing Lab MPL-LG-2 (Stock science lab) Large orbital data collector/processor Data/Science storage: 4000 Min. | Max. crew: 1 | 2 Cost (Entry Cost): 8000 (20000) Mass: 4.0t EC per second: 7.0 Max. performance: 9.6 sci/day (2 x 5 star scientist; 4000 data stored) UKS Pioneer Module (Orbital) (USI Kolonization System) Large orbital data collector/processor Data/Science storage: 4000 Min. | Max. crew: 1 | 2 Cost (Entry Cost): 50000 (8000) Mass: 4.5t EC per second: 7.0 Max. performance: 9.6 sci/day (2 x 5 star scientist; 4000 data stored) UKS Pioneer Module (Surface) (USI Kolonization System) Smaller data processor for planetary surfaces Data/Science storage: 1000 Min. | Max. crew: 1 | 2 Cost (Entry Cost): 50000 (8000) Mass: 4.1t EC per second: 4.0 Max. performance: 9.6 sci/day (2 x 5 star scientist; 1000 data stored) K&K Planetary Laboratory (Kerbal Planetary Base Systems) Smaller data processor for planetary surfaces Data/Science storage: 1000 Min. | Max. crew: 1 | 2 Cost (Entry Cost): 4000 (10000) Mass: 3.55t EC per second: 4.0 Max. performance: 9.6 sci/day (2 x 5 star scientist; 1000 data stored) UKS Training Akademy (Surface) (USI Kolonization System) Larger data processor for planetary surfaces Data/Science storage: 4000 Min. | Max. crew: 3 | 12 Cost (Entry Cost): 35000 (8000) Mass: 4.5t EC per second: 22.0 Max. performance: 33.6 sci/day (12 x 5 star scientist; 4000 data stored) Download Coming soon... Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Powered by ModuleManager. Contributions The model for the Mobile Processing Lab MPL-DSD-1 was taken from a similar mod called DSD Mobile Labs - Enhanced Mobile Processing Labs. If you don't like the slow research speed of my mod, but still want some MPL improvements you can try this one instead. The guy who created this mod wasn't online last days, but its licenced under CC so I guess this should be fine. I hope to give him some models back at some point in the future. Recommended Mods [TABLE=width: 100%] [TR] [TD]Community Tech Tree Planetary Base Systems USI Kolonization Systems USI Life Support[/TD] [TD=align: right][/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

Thats true... after all it is a bit strange that the location of the lab is important when the data is generated. I guess the devs thought it would be too simple without this mechanics, but implementing this modifiers for the data -> science part instead would have introduced too much complexity. This would mean that the science you receive always changes when the lab is moved and that you have to keep track of all experiments currently researched in the lab. The player then would also want to know which experiments are still processing to find out when he can safely move the lab. That requires quite some implementation effort on the backend side and also some new UI elements. Instead the devs went the easy way and simply said they check the location and bonuses when the data is generated... after that step there is only that generic bunch of data left and the lab does not care anymore where exactly it came from. So I guess you can either remove that part completely by setting the bonuses to zero to make it more realistic, but then you have less variation for your mod. Or you stick to the system the devs implemented... or you implement your own one that continuously tracks the experiments to be researched and the location of the lab. From what I know TAC LS consumes ressources much quicker compared to USI LS. So with TAC LS the science return could and should be higher to be balanced correctly. Maybe the 5x modifier actually makes sense there, I don't know. I just did some simple calculations regarding USI LS and noticed you can keep those 2 scientist alive forever with just a few tons of supplies and can abuse the time warp again. With only one inline module of supplies you can run your lab a few hundred days and produce a few thousand science. Also keep in mind that if the data bonus modifiers are removed you can keep your lab in kerbin orbit without a problem and easily send lots of supplies or all that stuff TAC uses. Then there is not much anymore that keeps you from time warping until the tech the is unlocked. I fear the restriction to integer values actually is a huge problem. There is no way to make one lab a little bit faster or slower. If you lower the science value you instantly have a super speed lab and you cant easily compensated for that with one of the other modifiers that only have linear impact on the speed. The current amount of data stored in the lab is also part of the equation and changing the maximum amount of data that can be stored indirectly influences that value if I understand it correctly. So if you create 2 labs and the only difference is that one lab has a maximum data storage of 1000 instead of 500 those labs would be equally fast if you fill them both with only 500 data. But the lab with the larger data storage can become much quicker if you actually fill it up with more than 500 data and reaches the highest speed with 1000 data. That sounds awesome and I am really looking forward to your plugin/mod. Sorry I wasn't able to help with the equation, but from what we can currently see it really does not look too good. An exponential modifier that only allows integers is just rather useless. The only thing that could be tried is to keep all numbers for 2 testing labs the same and increase the researchTime modifier for one lab by 1. This makes the adapted lab much slower than the usual one. Now the dataStorage can be increased step by step until the speed of the new lab is the same as the speed of the usual one again (for maximum amount of data stored). This is then more or less the implementation enforced value that you have to accept if you dont want to create your own plugin. With a bit of luck you get the same speed with a few thousand data storage capacity. With bad luck this value has to be much greater and is not useful anymore. EDIT: Instead of just talking I decided to actually do something useful... researchTime + 1 leads to 1/10 of the research speed dataStorage * 2 leads to double the research speed scienceMultiplier = 1 researchTime = 6 dataStorage = 500 @100% => 28.3500 sci/day researchTime = 7 dataStorage = 500 @100% => 2.8350 sci/day dataStorage = 1000 @50% => 2.8350 sci/day @100% => 5.6700 sci/day dataStorage = 2000 @25% => 2.8350 sci/day @50% => 5.6700 sci/day @100% => 11.3400 sci/day researchTime = 8 dataStorage = 500 @100% => 0.2835 sci/day dataStorage = 1000 @100% => 0.5670 sci/day dataStorage = 2000 @100% => 1.1340 sci/day dataStorage = 4000 @100% => 2.2680 sci/day researchTime = 9 dataStorage = 500 @100% => 0.0284 sci/day EDIT2: I investigated this further by changing only one variable and keeping the others constant. Im quite sure this is the correct equation: sci/day = dataStored * scienceMultiplier * sumScientistStars * scientistBonus * 1/10^researchTime * 22680 Example: dataStored = 500 scienceMultiplier = 2 sumScientistStars = 5 (one scientist with 5 stars in the lab) scientistBonus = 0.25 researchTime = 7 (default) 500 * 2 * (5 * 0.25) * 1/10000000 * 22680 = 1000 * 1.25 * 0.002268 = 1.25 * 2.268 = 2.835 sci/day

I don't like current OP mechanics of the science lab and also read the forums for some information. The lab is a little more balanced when a life support mod is used, but its still producing too much science compared to the little supply consumption in USI LS. For my personal taste the lab is supposed to just produce a little bit of extra science in the background while running other missions. Looking at the values in those 2 config files its not really surprising you get such confusing results... imho its a mess and has nothing to do with reasonable variation. Values of the current stock science lab MODULE { name = ModuleScienceLab containerModuleIndex = 0 dataStorage = 500 crewsRequired = 1 canResetConnectedModules = True canResetNearbyModules = True interactionRange = 5 SurfaceBonus = 0.1 ContextBonus = 0.25 homeworldMultiplier = 0.1 RESOURCE_PROCESS { name = ElectricCharge amount = 10 } } MODULE { name = ModuleScienceConverter scientistBonus = 0.25 //Bonus per scientist star - need at least one! So 0.25x - 2.5x researchTime = 7 //Larger = slower. Exponential! scienceMultiplier = 5 //How much science does data turn into? scienceCap = 500 //How much science can we store before having to transmit? powerRequirement = 5 //EC/Sec to research ConverterName = Research StartActionName = Start Research StopActionName = Stop Research } Independent parts Experiments -> Data Maybe: Experiment science * (1.0 + SurfaceBonus) * (1.0 + ContextBonus) Or: Experiment science * (1.0 + SurfaceBonus + ContextBonus) homeworldMultiplier is also applied here (as a penalty) => Imho this part should be kept identical for all labs... [*]Data -> Science ratio Based on scienceMultiplier only 1 Data => 5 Science => Far too much for my taste... Essentially this means that you get more than 6 times the science per experiment! => Primary cause for the extreme misbalancing... [*]Data -> Science time constraints Based on researchTime AND dataStorage (And somehow also on the sum of stars of all scientists in the lab => scientistBonus) The exact equation seems to be absolutely unknown in this forum... The stock comment says researchTime is an exponential modifier! The stock comment says Larger = slower! dataStorage actually is part of the equation and influences the processing speed! => Most difficult part to tweak... => Most important part to balance against Life Support... Back to the values in the post above dataStorage 500 vs. 2000 -> slower vs. faster researchTime 5 vs. 7 -> faster vs. slower Those 2 values have the most influence on the outcome (exponential part of the equation). Most of the other values also have been changed (to cause absolute confusion), but I think those should be rather secondary (only linear influence). Reasonable tweaks and variation between labs Keep Experiments -> Data constant for all labs => or maybe adapt the bonuses a little to create stationary labs and highly mobile labs => stationary labs don't get much bonus from correct context => highly mobile labs are supposed to be moved around to benefit from the higher bonus values [*]Modify Data -> Science ratio a bit with the different labs => Quality of the lab maybe numbers between 0.5 and 1.0 (instead of the stock 5.0) => more expensive lab => better hardware => more science from the same data [*]Adapt Data -> Science time constraints to balance against Life Support mods Larger labs (higher dataStorage values) somehow have to be compensated with higher scienceMultiplier values => Therefore we need some sort of guess about what the equation looks like... :/ Integers are not enough here... 5 -> 6 makes a huuuge difference Hopefully floats are allowed?