So what is a "Research Lab"?

[RocketBlam]

I've got a mission to land a base on the Mun.

The mission states that I must include a "Research Lab."

I must confess, I have no idea what a "Research Lab" is supposed to be.

At first I thought it must the the SC-9001 Science Jr., because in its description, it calls it a "self-contained laboratory." But then I thought it must be the Mobile Processing Lab. But that's not called a "Research Lab" either.

Honestly, I have no idea what this is supposed to be. I wish they would be more accurate about what I am supposed to include here.

[AlexinTokyo]

It's the Mobile Processing Lab.

And you're correct, it would be better if the contract descriptions were more precise.

[monophonic]

It is the Mobile Processing Lab. The Science Jr. is called a "Materials Lab" IIRC. And I agree the terminology should be more consistent

Edit; Ninjad, from Tokyo no less.

[katateochi]

It's the Mobile Processing Lab.

And you're correct, it would be better if the contract descriptions were more precise.

The part contracts really need to have a picture of the part. I've been playing for years and I still don't know all of the part names.

*looks at contracts for several available part contracts -> goes back to VAB to look up parts -> goes back to contracts, realizes I have a goldfish memory -> opens KSP wiki on the side. (this is not a good workflow!)

[Caelib]

It's the Mobile Processing Lab.

And you're correct, it would be better if the contract descriptions were more precise.

I agree with this. The most ideal scenario would be if the contracts displayed the icon/picture of the part(s) involved in everything ... I know they are renaming the engines and that will help but if a contract had a visual list of the parts involved, that would be incredibly helpful!

EDIT: katateochi beat me to it ... I basically just repeated everything already said ...

Edited April 10, 2015 by Caelib

[RocketBlam]

If they would just call it the name they gave the part, that would be good enough for me.

"Have a Mobile Processing Lab at the outpost."

There. Done. A picture would be nice, but just the right name would be good enough for me.

[OhioBob]

The Science Jr. is called a "Materials Lab" IIRC.

I believe it's called a "Materials Bay" in the contract descriptions.

[monophonic]

I believe it's called a "Materials Bay" in the contract descriptions.

Yes, it is. *mild facepalm* I guess it's time for an IDNRC.

I Did Not Recall Correctly

[RocketBlam]

FYI, I notice that we are here in 1.05, and this still hasn't been fixed.

[Snark]

31 minutes ago, RocketBlam said:

FYI, I notice that we are here in 1.05, and this still hasn't been fixed.

Did you file a bug?

Edited December 14, 2015 by Snark

[RocketBlam]

Well it's not really a bug, is it? It's just wrong information.

[Snark]

12 hours ago, RocketBlam said:

Well it's not really a bug, is it? It's just wrong information.

That's a bug.    Log it.  If you like, you can mark it as "suggestion" rather than "bug" (there's a field for that in the bug form), but honestly, I'd just call it a bug.  Squad can always reclassify it if they disagree.

Apologies for the length of the rant below.  I'm a software engineer, and users' hesitancy to log bugs against my stuff is a long-standing pet peeve of mine.  Most software engineers I've known share the same attitude, and I'm guessing Squad is no different.  So I gotta get this out of my system.

<rant>

Seriously, log it.  The KSP devs can't fix what they don't know about, and the best way to get visibility is to log a bug, because that guarantees that somebody who matters will look at it and decide whether and when to fix it.

The devs don't have the bandwidth to read everything in this forum.  Yes, some of them do spend a lot of time here (@NathanKell, in particular-- I see a lot of posts from him in here, when he'll step in to provide an authoritative answer to a particular technical question).  However, there's just no way for them to cover everything.

Don't be shy about logging bugs.  Obviously I can't speak for Squad, but I've been a professional software engineer for a very long time, surrounded by other professional software engineers, and I'll say this:  We take pride in our work, and we want our work to be great, and we're highly motivated to fix problems.  When you log a bug on a software product, you are doing the engineers a favor.  They like it.

That's not to say you should waste folks' time, or that a bug report is always the best venue.  Two things in particular that (IMHO) do not belong in a bug report:

• Feature requests.  i.e. the "bug" is basically "missing feature", where you're asking for someone to design and implement something that doesn't exist.  There's nothing wrong with feature requests, but they don't really belong in a bug database because, first, they're typically a lot of work to add, and second, there's no way for Squad to gauge how important it is to add the feature unless there's a feel for how many people need it.  There's a "Suggestions" forum which is the perfect place for this sort of thing.
• Complaints about as-designed behavior.  i.e. the thing you're calling a "bug" is something that they did on purpose because they like it that way.  "My rocket keeps flipping" would be such an example.  Aerodynamic stability is supposed to be important, it's why they put it in there, they want you to have to think about how your rocket is shaped.  So it's not a "bug" if your poorly-designed rocket flips around.  (A counterexample would be "it's impossible to reenter with a capsule + heatshield because it keeps flipping over and burning up."  That was a legitimate bug in 1.0, which they quickly fixed because it wasn't intended behavior.)  That doesn't mean you have to agree with what they decided, but a bug report isn't really the right place.  Again, the "Suggestions" forum would be great for this.

Other than the above:  anything that negatively impacts the player's experience, which isn't intended behavior, is a bug.  I don't think that anyone at Squad consciously intended to obfuscate the contracts.  I don't think anyone started to write "Have a Mobile Processing Lab at the outpost" and then stopped and thought to themselves "no, that's too easy, better make it harder to understand" and wrote "research lab" instead.  Almost certainly what happened was that it simply didn't occur to them that a player might not know what "research lab" means, and they had 100 other things to do that day and didn't spend much time thinking it through.

Fixing this sort of information is a great bug report because it causes legitimate customer pain, and (this is likely the real kicker, from Squad's point of view) is probably very quick and easy to fix.  This is a well-understood and reproducible problem, and it's just text, not program logic, so they don't have to do a bunch of testing to see whether the fix breaks stuff.  If it takes more than ten minutes of some developer's time to fix, I'd be surprised.

</rant>

So it's a good bug.  Log it. 

 

[CSE]

I think the name in the contract is (usually?) the name of the property which gives parts the right behaviour, so that more than one part could be eligible to meet the requirements. Right-clicking on the part in the VAB parts menu, I see the experiment named as "materials bay" for the Science Jr; and I see "science lab" for the mobile processing lab. It's good for letting mod parts satisfy stock contracts and vice-versa.

It definitely makes it difficult to find the right parts though. Perhaps parts-for-active-contracts could all be highlighted the way prototype parts are.