zabieru

Surface samples and seismic scans, plus the landed grav scans, plus "in space low" starts at 1cm ground clearance, plus you can always collect the orbital ones on your way down (or from your next taxi run).

If we were to consider, say, one year in Minmus orbit as the baseline science-collecting activity, let's balance the MPL, kolony rewards, and a grav detector. Grav detector gets, what, eight biomes? 80 science per for low, ~50 for high, I think? So about a thousand science. MPL gets, eh, something like eight thousand, and that's repeatable next year and the year after, etc. If science rewards were balanced to your 1/10th figure, that would make kolony rewards about as productive in the first year as the grav detector, and infinitely repeatable as well, and that's before tripling for your difficulty-of-landing multiplier. "One tenth of an MPL" is still significantly more productive than any other science activity in the game."

"Balanced against stock" does not mean "about as good as the best thing in stock." Given that MPL-farming produces massively greater science rewards than any other technique in stock (5x as a baseline, but as you say it also lets you re-use experiments and get infinite science from Kerbin orbit), we're essentially talking about the science equivalent of ion drives. It's entirely fair to call an engine mod "stock-a-like" and "balanced against stock" even if none of the engines has the specific impulse of ion or nuke engines. (But I don't really know where you're getting the idea that this is a stock-a-like mod: it's not, it's much harder than stock in many areas.) Further, since you can simply put an MPL on your base and get both science Kolony rewards and MPL rewards (helps to have a rover to hit nearby biomes, of course, but biome corners are likely spots to put MKS bases anyway), you can't balance Kolony rewards as a replacement for the MPL without also doubling the efficiency of MPL-farming. Finally, since "don't use the MPL like that" is a popular choice among players, and since it's a bit harder to not-use science kolony rewards than it is to not farm an MPL (sure, easy enough to just not bring a Pioneer or not hit the button, but if you want the funds/rep you're stuck with the science), it seems appropriate to balance around the likely desire of some portion of the playerbase not to get MPL-farming-like science payouts from Minmus before they even hit Duna.

Maybe some different config presets for funds/science/rep would be a good option? Because I like the way the kolony rewards are tuned, presently. As has been noted, the Science rewards are underwhelming, but I think that's a feature, not a bug: I like Science to be kind of a driving force in my games, the thing that pulls me out to new places. Having the ability to trivially unlock everything by setting up a moonbase and timewarping is, eh, not really desired. Likewise, I'm not a huge fan of scraping up funds. I don't really expect a space colony at the MKS stage to be financially self-supporting, I expect the homeworld to be paying for things. The idea that kolony rewards generate enough funding to support the supply runs needed seems, well, about right to me.

Nice work! Still planning on re-doing the cockpit to cover that blank front, I take it? (You could also leverage some other form factor, maybe Nertea's MkIV spaceplane cockpits or the Honeybadger, for that matter.)

I suppose it depends on whether a full Stupidity bar means "dumb as a box full of rocks" or "at the lower end of the astronaut corps," i.e. still pretty damn smart (by kerbal standards, anyhow). Given the Courage apparently runs from "brave enough to ride a kerbal-built rocket into space" to "brave enough to enjoy same," it'd make sense if full-stupidity was actually pretty sharp.

Hm. I've also noticed KER and Mechjeb don't seem to know what to do with IntakeATM-driven engines, which makes sense (can't exactly calculate delta-v, now can you?) but it'd be nice to get TWR and thrust torque values in the VAB. I deleted the FS parts folder as well, as I'm very lazy and didn't feel like doing an MM patch. I've the same errors in my logs, but haven't had any bad behavior as a result, so it's probably okay.

IntakeATM is air. I think it's governed by stock mechanics, not CRP, since the stock jet engines work the same way. Do stock jets work for you? Can you post a screenshot of the rightclick menu for the fan, in (attempted) operation on the launchpad/runway?

Yep, as my next paragraph says.

The counterargument there is that it's a lot easier to make a spacious and homelike space station than it would be to build a big, comfortable base on Eve. Enclosing more volume so you have a bit of room to stretch your legs isn't hard when it's just vacuum outside, but when it's high-pressure toxic gasses, well... Also, there's a question of whether we're talking about kolonization bonuses in general or the 500%-gives-you-infinite-hab thing in particular. The former should absolutely apply to space stations: you don't think years of experience living in space stations will help make them more functional and habitable? The latter, maybe not. I tend to think that if people can learn to live in cities and on ships or oil rigs, it's not difficult to imagine we could learn to live on space stations too. But maybe I'm wrong! Really, the problem here is that we can sort easily by SOI, somewhat less easily by situation (because you do run into some issues if your base does a little hop...), but the logical categories here don't break down well in those terms. It'd be nice to have one rule for everything orbital, one rule for everything landed on small airless bodies (most moons, Dres and Eeloo), and another rule for each atmosphere. And, of course, you'd want to keep Geology bonuses on a per-SOI basis, even for orbital refineries. That's way too complicated to implement, though, I expect.

Well, that's actually another edge case: Kerbin doesn't get kolony bonuses. So Kerbin-orbit stations can never get the 500% infinite-hab thing. Therefore, in some ways living on Gilly (which is far from home and has just enough gravity to drink from a cup, maybe, with a straw) can be more hospitable than a nice big ring-station right above the homeworld.

Fair enough! I'll wait and try it out myself.

Making room/a version for Tundra modules with weight balancing would be nice too. I have more trouble balancing those, honestly, than kontainers (which at least give you the option of fiddling the sliders a bit, right?) EDIT: I was thinking you were aiming for 3.75m kontainers, which are a little narrower than Tundra mods due to being squared off rather than circular. But your OP says 5m, doesn't it? Which means it'd handle the modules just fine, size-wise, and it just needs to be able to weight-balance them.

Seems legit: they don't have a lot of ground contact, but the center of gravity should be fairly low (except you can't do that in KSP, of course) and it looks like there's room for little shocks in those legs. They ought to be fairly stable. Have you tried the ground tether? Does it work for this?

Some are top/bottom (mostly the 375 ones IIRC) and others are on the sides (250s). You can always do a little radial attachment node and stick the cradle to that, or probably just straight surface-attach the cradle... The leg controls are a little weird: see those sliders at the top of the PAW? If those are at 100 (the default) then "extended" and "retracted" look the same. Move them down a bit (gently!) and you'll get legs that extend more than zero meters.

Yeah, they're cheaper. Plus you'll notice that some of the roles get double kolonization bonuses: Farmers can only do part of what Scientists can (ag modules, but not lab research or whatever) but for Kolonization purposes they count as both a Scientist AND a Pilot. They're definitely not meant to replace or improve on actual astronaut-kerbals. They're mostly a solution for that lategame problem you used to have in MKS where you needed another engineer but the price to hire new kerbals was jacked crazy high by your multiple colonies and bases...

Anybody else getting insane-o-load with the new release? All my refineries/factories/etc are running like 3000% load, as are smelters and crushers configured for efficiency (which, before I turned off the smelters, was draining EC so fast I thought it was some kind of PDU/PL bug). Reactors were ramping up similarly in reaction, but heat efficiency meant they couldn't keep up. Doesn't seem to be affecting drills, though. I tried a quick delete-and-reinstall, but it's still acting weird. EDIT: Also, zee governors, ze do nothink. This is what they're for, right? But my workshop does 2341.98% with the governor at 1.0, and 2341.98% with the governor at 0.1 as well.

Re: cranes etc: On-site assembly can be handy, though I find attaching wheels and such a bit annoying (always seem to get something the wrong way 'round). I like to ship in the vehicle part fully-assembled so I can test it on the runway and be sure I'm sending something that can drive. If you're using the Konstruction parts, the PAL wheels will fold up rather nicely so it's not too difficult a launch package. For magnets, winches, or klaws, you might as well just launch the whole thing. If it's a crane/forklift/grabber, dboi's KIS-assembly suggestion is excellent. Much easier to ship in a truck chassis and then put the crane on top than to try and ship a whole crane.

Generally, the answer is "yes, so you can test mechanics/designs." If you think it's cheaty, a) you're right, b) don't use it for real, just for testing.

I wouldn't call it cheesy, considering every single USI/MKS storage part has the warehouse module, including those tiny little radial lunchboxes. The absence of the warehouse module from non-MKS storage seems like a question of practicality and origin, not balance. You might, however, want to restrict it to just ore, or ore and LF/O/MP.

As long as your main base has a logistics module, it will push excess resources TO planetary storage. If the logistics module has a pilot, it can also pull FROM planetary storage. With or without a logistics module, your base participates in "scavenging" and "local logistics." Scavenging is automatic and takes place within 150m (or 2km with certain parts). With scavenging, if you have an MKS module using a resource and attached warehouse-enabled storage for the resource, it will automatically source that resource within scavenging range and pull from warehouse-enabled storage modules. Local logistics has a range of 500m and is player-driven. Transfers don't happen unless you tell them to. In your example, the exotics miner would need: a) a source of exotics (like a drill) b) warehouse-enabled exotics storage (like an ISM, kontainer, etc).* c) a logistics module (doesn't have to be piloted to push). The main base would need warehouse-enabled exotics storage, and a piloted log module. *For MKS resources like exotics, the only non-warehouse storage will generally be MKS parts with the warehouse disabled. For other resources, most obviously ore, you can run into problems if you have storage modules that don't have the warehouse function at all. It's worth checking, or just standardizing on all-MKS parts for storage.