New Mobile Processing Lab mechanics

[basic.syntax]

Are you sure that it is processing science on kerbins surface or rather kerbins stuff itself yields little data?

Most of the mechanics are discussed in the first 6 pages of this thread.

Scientists matter, but also how much data you have matters. Where the lab is located at does not matter for the conversion, but it does impact how much data you get from a given experiment. Also there is a penalty for using one on Kerbin (you will get about 1/10th of the data)

I interpret this as: installing science into the MPL on Kerbin, no matter the source, is nerfed hard. You get a bonus for installing science into the MPL while landed in its source biome, off Kerbin. If you brought back an MPL full of data from an outer planet, and landed it on Kerbin, I think it would keep researching at the same rate.

[Enkiel]

I finally landed mine, added 220 data to it... but i can'T activate it? there's 2 scientist in it, and lab status is operational... but its research is "inactive"...

am i doing somethign wrong?

there's batterie attached to the Jr in the bay, and plenty of solar power....

[basic.syntax]

I finally landed mine, added 220 data to it... but i can'T activate it? there's 2 scientist in it, and lab status is operational... but its research is "inactive"...

am i doing somethign wrong?

there's batterie attached to the Jr in the bay, and plenty of solar power....

You should see a button next to "Start/Stop Research." Buttons don't show up while time-warping.

[Enkiel]

here's what happen when i click the lab....

- - - Updated - - -

for some reason, i can't activate the antenna either..... uhm....

- - - Updated - - -

Actually, i can't interract with anything unless its with a kerbal....

I can't open my solar array, but if i EVA one of them, i can....

[basic.syntax]

here's what happen when i click the lab....

Uh-oh. Need a command pod or probe core to control things. Time for a rescue mission

You could actually restore that to working condition, if you could drive up to it with a rover that has a Claw. Grapple the stuck craft, and just like docking, it will be control-able.

Edited May 30, 2015 by basic.syntax

[Enkiel]

SH*T.... seriously, i been tinkering with that damn thing for 2 days.....

ah well... time to restart....

[Enkiel]

I did it! God it was annoying....

Now i have 2 lab, one on Mun, one on Minmus. Together they bring over 2 research/day.... it did cost me around 300k, but i'm already getting benefice from being able to do mission on the surface with the guys already there...

[Smurfalot]

Yes. Also a scientist can restore them if you don't want to drag a lab around.

The lab still lets you re-use material and goo modules, right?

What is the range for resetting experiments using the MPL? Do they have to be directly attached to the MPL or just the ship?

[mrklaw]

Can you send scientists or the pilot (yes I should have used a probe core) out on EVA without affecting the lab? I would expect science production to slow or pause, but I don't want to lose or reset anything.

I'd like to do some biome hopping without sending yet another kerbal, so was going to send a probe and use a scientist to collect data and reset the experiments

[Reactordrone]

What is the range for resetting experiments using the MPL? Do they have to be directly attached to the MPL or just the ship?

As long as you're docked to it the lab can reset experiments. You only need 1 crew member in the lab to do that and they don't need to be a scientist.

[DarkGravity]

Yeah, I've been having some weird issues with clearing experiments. I have a MPL landed on Minmus attached to a ship. 4 scientists in all plus a pilot. The Clear Experiments button doesn't always pop up after I run experiments. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I've had to manually go reset them several times now.

[Sawyer7as]

Which, if you are actually honest with yourself, is every bit as much a cheat as just editing your persistent.sfs and adding the science directly. You can abuse the labs and cheat, but you are only cheating yourself, and delusional if you refuse to admit that it's cheating.

If you don't want to bother doing science the interesting way, just don't do it. If you don't abuse the lab, there is no balance issue with it, it's actually very slow, to the point of only narrowly avoiding being frustratingly slow.

Edit: And in a game like KSP, there is absolutely nothing wrong or dishonest with cheating. It's only wrong or dishonest if you try to deny it.

Your not cheating if it's in the game

[DarkGravity]

Your not cheating if it's in the game

It is still possible to cheat even in solo games. But since the whole point of a solo game is to amuse yourself, there is no wrong way to play a solo game, including cheating.

Edited June 5, 2015 by DarkGravity

[Murph]

Your not cheating if it's in the game

Totally, completely, entirely, absolutely 100% wrong. It's entirely possible to cheat, as the game makes absolutely zero effort to actively prevent cheating, which is the correct implementation for this type of game. The game does enforce certain things, but that is never primarily to prevent cheating, it is all about making the game mechanics work for those who are not actively seeking to cheat. It is entirely your responsibility to avoid cheating if you want to honestly claim that anything you have done is "no cheats involved".

There's actually nothing wrong with cheating in this type of game. There is absolutely no competitive element, no reward (other than satisfaction), no advantage gained. Cheating in the real world is wrong and dishonest most of the time, and very often shows poor ethical and moral character traits. Cheating in virtual worlds, where you are gaining nothing of substance from another participant in the virtual world, it's neither ethically or morally wrong, but it is still cheating. Cheating in a virtual world, then denying that you have cheated, that is either delusional or dishonest (and if it's dishonest, then it's basically as bad in terms of character flaws as cheating in the real world, as the dishonesty is in the real world and not in the virtual world).

I am proud to say that I routinely cheat in all games of this type, when I feel like it. I always openly admit when I have cheated, which entirely satisfies my morals and ethics. I reckon that probably more than 90% of people playing this game probably cheat on a regular basis (the nature and extent will vary), and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that (just don't ever deny it). Equally, I enforce rules on myself and avoid cheats when I want to actually enjoy the feeling of satisfaction from having truly achieved something. Even when enforcing rules, there can still be entirely acceptable cheats (which are still cheats, despite being quite acceptable), such as to deal with broken or flawed game mechanics. There are grey areas on the boundary between cheating and not cheating, but many other things are clearly cheating or clearly not cheating.

Edited June 5, 2015 by DuoDex

[DarkGravity]

Wow. Harsh!

Maybe we should go back to talking about the MPL.

Is there any way to selectively remove experiments stored there? I recently sent my MPL to Minmus and then came back to Kerbin. I had a few experiments stored that I couldn't process into data right away that were worth quite a lot of data, and several other experiments stored that weren't worth much data. Once back in LKO, I wanted to remove the low-data-value experiments and leave the few high-data-value experiments, but I couldn't figure a way to do that. Is it possible?

Edited June 5, 2015 by DarkGravity

[Murph]

Wow. Harsh!

Possibly slightly stronger than I would have preferred. I should have spent longer reviewing my words.

Do note, however, that I said "There's actually nothing wrong with cheating…". The remainder is to explain how/why I simultaneously see real world cheating as bad, and virtual world cheating as perfectly acceptable. That goes to the root of the issue, that people are either afraid of the word "cheat" or see it as automatically a negative thing. It is not a negative thing at all, only denying it is negative. The context makes a vast difference, between real world, competitive multi player, non-competitive sandbox games like KSP, etc. The message is intended to also say "embrace your cheating, be proud of it, it's nothing to be ashamed of".

N.B. I am not singling out any individual. Opinions and philosophy on the matter may legitimately vary.

Maybe we should go back to talking about the MPL.

Yes.

Is there any way to selectively remove experiments stored there? I recently sent my MPL to Minmus and then came back to Kerbin. I had a few experiments stored that I couldn't process into data right away that were worth quite a lot of data, and several other experiments stored that weren't worth much data. Once back in LKO, I wanted to remove the low-data-value experiments and leave the few high-data-value experiments, but I couldn't figure a way to do that. Is it possible?

No, it's not possible right now, at least not in stock. The experiment results UI is really the problem, it's no longer fit for purpose in the new context of labs taking possibly game years to get through their work. Hopefully Squad can see the issue, and the complete UI rewrite in 1.1 for Unity 5 will improve it significantly. In a nutshell, the problem is a mix of the slow rate of the lab research combined with the reasonable expectation to have something like an orbital lab which processes experiments from that orbit and the surface below, before the experiments are returned to Kerbin. There's just no way to extract already processed experiment results for return to Kerbin. It's also impossible to actually properly see what you've got stored there, once there's more than about 10 results, as it's too difficult a memory exercise while paging through them to answer questions such as "which biome(s) is/are missing?" or "how much unprocessed science do I have left?".

We strongly need a list type UI that lets us see at a glance the complete set of experiment results stored there, with indicators for which have been processed, which have return-to-Kerbin science available, which have transmit science available, etc. That list type UI would be the obvious thing for "take individual result", "take all processed results", "take all results with return value", "transmit all results with transmit value", etc.

[DarkGravity]

I'd settle for "Take this one result? Y/N" and thumb through them one at a time myself.

[Murph]

I'd settle for "Take this one result? Y/N" and thumb through them one at a time myself.

That would be better than nothing, sure, but it's still a horrible interface for when you end up with 50+ results stored (which isn't really all that unlikely or unreasonable). Any more than about 10 results, and a forced one click per result and one result per "page" is a dreadful interface. So, even if you happened to think that 50 is unreasonable (I don't, but someone might), it's the same problem with 20 results (and I struggle to see how anyone would think of 20 as being unreasonable).

[Laie]

I'd settle for "Take this one result? Y/N" and thumb through them one at a time myself.

You can do that. For every item of science, you have the option to process, transmit, keep or discard.

It works good enough if you have a lab working through a stack of science: process, then discard (it even comes up again after processing so you don't have to search for it again). If you want to keep all data in order to later transfer it to another lab, however, the current UI leaves much to be desired.

[Pedro29]

Hello everyone, I just gave the mobile processing lab a try and I was quite astonished by the results!

I landed one on Minmus and I got sucked into time warping like crazy and monitoring the science piling up.

Without noticing it, I lost all my active contracts (it was in career mode) and gathered enough science to clear most of the tech tree (I only had tier-160 tech, my ship had 255 parts, with a lot of crappy solar panels to have enough power)...

Maybe there should be a warning when doing high speed time warping while focused on the lab, I feel like I took a shortcut and now I will come back to an older save.

I guess the correct way to use the lab is to set a permanent crew and let it work in the background?

Also I don't always have the "clean experiment" option available, maybe I'm doing something wrong.

Cheers,

P

[Falkenherz]

My work-around: I am thinking about a dual-pod lander, which thus is able to store every data set twice if you take a scientist along to reset the experiments. One set I transfer into the lab via an EVA, one remains in its pod and is sent to Kerbin.

Another, a bit more cheaty, option is just to land that MPL back on Kerbin and just send a new one out and just re-collect the "easy to get" orbital data.

Once you have explored a number of Biomes on Mün and Minmus, MPL´s are likely getting insignificant, anyways. I have seen players here claim that you will have maxxed out your tech tree after having visited Duna, anyways.

Edited June 25, 2015 by Falkenherz

[Juicy]

My work-around: I am thinking about a dual-pod lander, which thus is able to store every data set twice if you take a scientist along to reset the experiments. One set I transfer into the lab via an EVA, one remains in its pod and is sent to Kerbin.

Another, a bit more cheaty, option is just to land that MPL back on Kerbin and just send a new one out and just re-collect the "easy to get" orbital data.

Once you have explored a number of Biomes on Mün and Minmus, MPL´s are likely getting insignificant, anyways. I have seen players here claim that you will have maxxed out your tech tree after having visited Duna, anyways.

If you go totally OCD on experiments in every zone, you can fill out your entire techtree by having MPLs on Kerbin and either Mun or Minus anyway. Just make sure to recover the data after uploading it to the MPL, which can be a bit elaborate for experiments done on the Mun or Minums.

[Sharpy]

You don't need two pods and two sets of data. Have a kerbal remove the data from the pod, put it in the lab (or dock the pod), then "review" the stored experiments and click the lab icon on each. After they are processed into data, they can be removed from the lab and sent to Kerbin - the lab doesn't need to hold the results while it processes them. (OTOH, you will fill the 500 points of data quota very quickly, so you do need to keep a copy of the remaining experiments to add them to the lab as data space allows. So the extra pod idea is not without merit)

[Nich]

Also if you have duplicate experiments in your MPL you can take the experments from the MPL load them into a command pod, all duplicates will be separated out. Then process the results that you have that arnt duplicated and send the command pod back. Really though 1 landing on the Mun or Minimus will net you 500-700 data which translates into 1000ish science before you get your first ship to duna can even leave and another 1500 by the time you get there. Another 3000 by the time you have explored Ike and Duna and returned you probably wont even need science from the trip if you had an MPL at both the Mun and Minimus. Then you just max out the admin and sell all your science.

[Hazelnut]

My work-around: I am thinking about a dual-pod lander, which thus is able to store every data set twice if you take a scientist along to reset the experiments. One set I transfer into the lab via an EVA, one remains in its pod and is sent to Kerbin.

Another, a bit more cheaty, option is just to land that MPL back on Kerbin and just send a new one out and just re-collect the "easy to get" orbital data.

Once you have explored a number of Biomes on Mün and Minmus, MPL´s are likely getting insignificant, anyways. I have seen players here claim that you will have maxxed out your tech tree after having visited Duna, anyways.

I maxed out my tech tree by the time I got to Duna - a bit disappointing to be honest because I really enjoyed the tech climb... getting science to get better hardware to get to more science etc etc.

I have 4000 science from Duna trip already from just radioing home and the 7 MPLs I have running (3mun, 1min, 1ker, 1duna, 1ike) and want new toys to spend it on!! Looking at mods which add new stuff to unlock and I guess next tier of science nodes will be 2k each node right? ANyway suggestions and recommendations welcomed.