Newbish Scanning

[nholzric]

The scanning mechanic is pretty surprising. I'm disappointed.

First, there's an artificial limitation on the big scanner, it has to be >80 degrees inclined. But that makes sense because it instantaneously scans an entire planet!

Next, the medium sized scanner takes a snap shot and doesn't update as your craft moves. Unless you hit the update button. Except it continues to spin?

It's probably really hard to code something that scans some swath of planet underneath the scanner based on some altitude limitation leaving it up to the player to either scan the areas you want or figure out a good orbit to cover the entire planet. Oh wait. SCANsat.

I recommend making the large scanner scan swaths of the planet as it passes over, probably as a function of altitude; once this is complete you can remove the inclination hard-stop. I also recommend modifying the medium scanner such that it updates its GUI continuously to track as the ship moves. These features look like amateur hour based on the previews we've seen.

Maybe I'm wrong, I've only seen a couple of preview videos. I'm totally excited for Monday, I can't wait to get my hands on 1.0. KSP is rock'n and I'm so glad I bought into the early access, etc etc.

[klgraham1013]

That is disappointing.

[Giggleplex777]

The sad things is, we were supposed to get a complex Kethane-style resource system in 0.19, but instead we got this over-simplify version of it. In retrospect, the ore system isn't actually all that bad of an idea, but the new scanning system is absolute garbage.

Many of those parts were made for 0.19, and would have worked quite differently than what they do now. For example, the high-gain sensor was designed to make broad and generalized scans of a planet from far away, eg. a flyby situation. The narrow band scanner would have been used in a low-attitude polar orbit scanning satellite, where it would make narrow and more accurate scans in the manner of mapsats (requiring multiple passes). I like this system, but apparently it's too complicated for SQUAD, so they give us a POS system instead.

[Majorjim!]

The scanning mechanic is pretty surprising. I'm disappointed.

First, there's an artificial limitation on the big scanner, it has to be >80 degrees inclined. But that makes sense because it instantaneously scans an entire planet!

Next, the medium sized scanner takes a snap shot and doesn't update as your craft moves. Unless you hit the update button. Except it continues to spin?

It's probably really hard to code something that scans some swath of planet underneath the scanner based on some altitude limitation leaving it up to the player to either scan the areas you want or figure out a good orbit to cover the entire planet. Oh wait. SCANsat.

I recommend making the large scanner scan swaths of the planet as it passes over, probably as a function of altitude; once this is complete you can remove the inclination hard-stop. I also recommend modifying the medium scanner such that it updates its GUI continuously to track as the ship moves. These features look like amateur hour based on the previews we've seen.

Maybe I'm wrong, I've only seen a couple of preview videos. I'm totally excited for Monday, I can't wait to get my hands on 1.0. KSP is rock'n and I'm so glad I bought into the early access, etc etc.

I totally agree. The insta-scan is really cheap.. I just want squad to finish making changes to the game so I can mod it into what I beleive it should have always been.

[Joonatan1998]

I don't really like the insta scan at all.

But it is better than a system that forces you to leave the computer running for hours at slow timewarp to eventually scan the whole planet.

At least make it require a full orbit around the planet.

[Commander Jebidiah]

Now this is something i never knew of but hey, atleast its not like kethane when you had to sit on the satellite to scan.

[klgraham1013]

I don't really like the insta scan at all.

But it is better than a system that forces you to leave the computer running for hours at slow timewarp to eventually scan the whole planet.

At least make it require a full orbit around the planet.

ScanSat doesn't require that.

[Joonatan1998]

ScanSat doesn't require that.

Yes, scansat is probably the best scanning method I have seen in KSP.

I mostly meant that this is less annoying than Kethane. (Even the largest the scanners only cover tiny area under the satellite + it doesn't work on high timewarp/unfocused...)

[Robotengineer]

I will probably delete the Squad scanning parts and rely on SCANsat scanning, which acts like a real scanner.

[Eric S]

ScanSat doesn't require that.

Sort of. It still requires the time, you just don't have to leave the satellite focused. You still have to find something else to do while the scanning takes place, and that is the issue. The stock system has the same basic requirements (you need to get into a mostly-polar orbit, a flyby or equatorial orbit won't work) and doesn't have the "find something else to do" requirement. Sure, it glosses over avoiding resonances between the body's rotational period and the satellite's orbital period, making sure your satellite has enough power to continue functioning while in the planet's shadow, etc, but as a simplified mechanic it works fine.

I can see where the simplification bothers people and they prefer to mod in something more realistic, but that's fine and the same can be said for every other simplification in the game.

I'll probably still be installing ScanSat myself, in fact, but not because I like the way it scans better.

[TMS]

Not a fan of the concept, either. But that's how karbonite worked anyway (back when I last used it): add scanner, and hey presto... insta-scanned! So I'm at least happy that it does actually have some piloting requirement associated with it.

I can totally see the logic behind it, in that most scanning orbits will need to be roughly polar and that you don't want to wait for multiple orbits for it to complete, so why not just make it a condition that scanning has to happen in a polar orbit and have it instantly scan?

Well, I guess I'd kinda hoped that it would reward accurate piloting proportionately. Stuff up your insertion? Well, guess you're not gonna get great coverage. Missing a patch? See if you can alter your inclination to hit it. Not happy with your orbit? Try figuring out the optimal inclination and altitude (remember the ISA MapSat orbital parameter thread, back in the day?). These are all golden bits of gameplay mechanics - the stuff of player and skill-led randomness that adds depth, detail and reward - which feel like they're being intentionally tossed away.

I suspect that stock KSP won't have the depth a lot of us expected it to have two or three years ago. I've kinda come to terms with that! Devs have come and gone, other concerns have shot up the priority list and (I suspect) there are other pressures that exert influence over the development process. It's probably to be expected that some stock features will be heavily abstracted in order to expedite development.

What's more important is whether KSP as a platform remains open enough for these choices to be altered by the modding community. Personally, chances are, I'll repurpose the stock parts for ScanSat, then take a look at alternative resource mods.

[nholzric]

I suspect that stock KSP won't have the depth a lot of us expected it to have two or three years ago. I've kinda come to terms with that! Devs have come and gone, other concerns have shot up the priority list and (I suspect) there are other pressures that exert influence over the development process. It's probably to be expected that some stock features will be heavily abstracted in order to expedite development.

It always hurts when the parts you care about get glossed over. There's a lot of stuff folks care about more than me... real life planet scale, maximum re-usability, whatever else. And here's something that's important to me - putting satellites in intelligent orbits for science and now that it's been simplified it sucks.

I guess it makes mods all the more awesome - that thanks to modders' creativity and hard work I'll be able to restore this little bit of "realism" that I care about. Still, I believe this particular simplification reflects badly on KSP more than whatever convenience it is to players who can't be bothered to think about intelligent orbits.

(I'd feel differently if this weren't 1.0, given limited development time I'd totally understand this type of simplification with the expectation that it'd be fixed (like the souposphere) in future releases)

[tntristan12]

I'm not immediately 100% opposed to insta-scan, but I do think scanning the *whole entire planet* strains my disbelief somewhat. Can't they just make it so it scans all visible parts of the planet at the time that the scan is begun? That way, if you're at a higher altitude, you have more parts of the planet visible (possibly at the expense of resolution, which I understand is not the main selling point of the large scanner anyway).

I just wish a little more thought were put into this feature.

[Twreed87]

Now that I know it requires a highly inclined orbit, i'm fairly okay with it. I mean what's the real practical difference between getting the info right away and time warping through a few orbits?

[Brotoro]

Eh...if I was concerned with the time aspects of insta-scan, I could put my satellite into a polar orbit and decide how many days I'll have to leave it sitting there before I allow myself to view the data.

But it would be nice if it could do a partial scan of the planet in non-polar orbits (have it just show results for latitudes (plus and minus 10 degrees) covered by the scanners orbit. That way if you make it to some distant planet, limping in without enough fuel to get into a 80°+ orbit, you could still scan for the accessible resources under your orbit.

[Kerbart]

First, there's an artificial limitation on the big scanner, it has to be >80 degrees inclined. But that makes sense because it instantaneously scans an entire planet!

The limitation of needing an inclination beyond 80° isn't that artifical; how else would you scan the entire planet.

The instant scan... well, in a game where you can timewarp, Harv probably figured that it wouldn't make that much of a difference. Perhaps there were technical considerations we can't quite grasp.

[Superfluous J]

I prefer it the way it was implemented by RoverDude. The only thing it removes is boredom and tedium.

Feel free to mod those back into the game under the banner of realism. I'll go without.

[tntristan12]

I agree with 5th. I'm willing to accept insta-scan as an abstraction, but I could do without the artificial limit on inclination. I will probably also be time warping through a few orbits before I allow myself to scan, anyway. I kinda wish a full scan would take at least one orbit to complete.

[CaptRobau]

The inclination requirement makes it a bit easier to swallow, although I personally can't wait to see what SCANSAT can do with the built in resource map view. Combine that with swath scanning and the ingenious science collection system (the percentage of the planet scanned determined the science payout, but repeatable so you could get 100% with multiple missions).

[tntristan12]

I will say this in favor of the inclination requirement: at least it encourages more diverse orbits from the player.

[Superfluous J]

The inclination requirement is there so you have to do (almost) all the same maneuvering you'd need to do for a full scan, minus the wait.

I wish though that the requirement wasn't there and if you had a 45 degree orbit, you'd know from +45 to -45 but not the poles.

[ymir9]

Now that I know it requires a highly inclined orbit, i'm fairly okay with it. I mean what's the real practical difference between getting the info right away and time warping through a few orbits?

Any of the myriad things that can go wrong to a probe during a mission:

- power failures

- staging errors

- signal loss

- part failures (if you're using the awesome dang it! mod)

Scanning for me has always been a stressful affair. Once I'm finally in place I want to finish scanning as quickly as possible and move on to my next objective before something inevitably goes wrong.

Honestly, between this and the still absent tier 0 buildings, I find myself just wishing Squad would finish KSP so mods would stop breaking, and I would stop having to worry about restarting my career game.

I struggle to think of any features that KSP 1.0 is introducing that haven't already been covered by mods in a more extensive way.

I can only think of the thumbnails on the load craft buttons and the ablative shader, are there any others?

[gmiddlemass]

Yes, scansat is probably the best scanning method I have seen in KSP.

This 100%. The Insta scan is a bit disappointing but at least its something and it may even change in a future update, perhaps it could be tied into the difficulty slider... "easy" keep it as it is, to "Hard" requires a precise orbit/altitude and multiple passes.

I'm just glad we have something like it in the stock game now.

EDIT: Typo

[klgraham1013]

I struggle to think of any features that KSP 1.0 is introducing that haven't already been covered by mods in a more extensive way.

I can only think of the thumbnails on the load craft buttons and the ablative shader, are there any others?

Clamber! I feel like I'm the only one excited by clamber! Actually being able to use ladders to their fullest extant!

[CaptRobau]

You're not. No longer will we have to build ladder systems that are more ingenious than the rockets themselves.