Quick tip for early career mode science

[michaelhester07]

1.0 hit science from contracts with a nerf sledgehammer. If you're struggling to get early science and have enough tech to reach kerbin's moons you can get some easy science.

The trick is "in flight low over x" where x is a biome.

1. Launch to the Mun or Minmus with enough deltaV for orbital maneuvers (about 1500 should do for Mun and 1000 for minmus if even that).

- I use the mun for the directions. the same works for Minmus.

2. Setup a polar orbit before you reach your periapsis. Burn toward anti-normal till your trajectory is inside the Mun, then burn north on the navball till the trajectory is outside of it. Repeat this till your trajectory passes over the Mun's poles.

3. Raise or lower your periapsis with normal and anti-normal nodes (blue nodes) until it is lower than 50,000 meters.

4. Warp to the periapsis and burn retrograde to circularize your orbit.

Now that you're in the Low flight zone you can do EVAs whenever you see a feature that looks like a biome. As you pass over the feature, have your pilot EVA, then while sitting on the ladder do an EVA report. re-board your ship to store it. You get about 20 science per report for mun and 40 per report for Minmus. Mun has about 12 biomes for 100 or so science. If you brought a scientist along you can use the Goo and Material experiments as well during this. Make sure your report said "in space low over (biome)" and not "in space high over Mun". If it said "high" your orbit needs to be lower.

Mun's biomes are fairly obvious. Pretty much every large crater is a biome. Some of the small craters are biomes and the smaller ones combined into "midlands craters" or similar. There should be at least 15 biomes you can tag in flight.

Minmus's biomes are a bit weird compared to normal biomes. All of the mountain slopes are in the slopes biome. Plateaus and flatlands fall into 3 biomes: Lowlands, midlands, highlands. This mostly depends on the altitude of the land. Each lake is its own biome and the poles are combined into a single biome. There should be about 12 you can hit.

Between the two moons you should be able to get somewhere around 600 science. Be sure to get the High flight biome eva report and the crew report for high and low before you go home. If you have access to the thermometer and pressure sensor experiments these both work in space now so make sure to run those as well. They reset for free and are massless.

Spend it on essential systems first (struts, fuel lines, first solar panels and batteries) and on science experiments.

[Falkenherz]

Thanks. IMO, figuring out how and where to get science points from is one of the harder, or should I say, more tedious tasks in early career mode.

Trying to work out a systematic order, starting from most efficient:

means:

- crew report; can be sent via antenna without loss

- goo

- jr. lab

- EVA

- thermometer

- (seismic; only for ground)

- (barometer; only for altitude i.e. not biomes specific)

- mobile lab (there´s a specific thread somewhere for how to work with it)

where:

- driving around the KSP (cheaty, absurd, but I take what I can get); did not check if low flight yields something, too

- low flight over close-by coastal line, water, grassland, highlands, mountain, desert (tundra, if you manage to time well over the old airport on the island)

- landing on said biomes

- high atmosphere

- sub orbit

- orbit

- high orbit

- Mun high orbit, orbit, sub orbit (burn retrograde to make periapsis dissapear for a moment then burn back prograde)

- Minmus high orbit, orbit, sub orbit

- Mun polar low orbit (in order to catch all different biomes while the planetoid turns under you)

- Minmus polar low orbit

This is just theory; any additional tips are welcome. Best thing would be to do a checklist, because I find it a bit difficult to get an overview from the archive.

[Wanderfound]

There's enough science around the place that grinding for scraps really isn't necessary. However, if you get stuck, there are a few easy ways out.

1) That "polar orbit for EVA reports from above every biome" also works on Kerbin. You don't need to get back in the capsule each time; just right click and store data.

2) The quickest and easiest way to collect science from near KSC is via short-range science missiles. Probe core, parachute, Science Jr, goo pods, battery, small thrust-limited SRB, tailfins. If you don't have probe cores yet, just use a Mk1 capsule instead (and add a decoupler above the SRB for a safe abort). If you've got launch clamps, mount the missile on one of these, pre-aimed in the intended direction, pitched at about 45°. If you fire half a dozen of these off in various directions, you should hit ocean, shores, mountains, grasslands, highlands and desert biomes. Costs very little in either √ or time.

So long as you build efficient rockets, Munlandings can be done with very little tech. I normally aim for a Munar fly-by as soon as I have batteries, and landings once I have solar (you can go earlier, but I usually play with TAC-LS, which makes electricity a bit more of a life-and-death issue).

Once you're on the Mun, the tech tree is wide open; you can get enough science from a few Munlandings to acquire all of the tech you need for basic interplanetary trips, and it just snowballs from there.

[Falkenherz]

I am a bit confused what you can store and how much you can store in a vessel?

Crew report: 1

Experiments (goo, jr lab, thermo, etc): up to 5 ?

EVA: unlimited?

Surface samples: ?

Trying to plan another maximum efficiency Mun run; I missed all those biome over there on my first run because I did not have enough dV left for a close polar orbit.

IIRC there was a video from Scott Manley who demonstrated some run like this?

Edited May 5, 2015 by Falkenherz

[Wanderfound]

I am a bit confused what you can store and how much you can store in a vessel?

Crew report: 1

Experiments (goo, jr lab, thermo, etc): up to 5 ?

EVA: unlimited?

Surface samples: ?

Trying to plan another maximum efficiency Mun run; I missed all those biome over there on my first run because I did not have enough dV left for a close polar orbit.

IIRC there was a video from Scott Manley who demonstrated some run like this?

"No duplicates", basically.

The other complication is that the capsule has two science storage "areas". Let's call 'em "active" and "storage". When you first do a crew report, it goes into the "active" bit. When you get out of the capsule and use the right-click menu to "take data" and "store data" it moves it from active to storage. Each scientific instrument also has its own "active" store.

Active can hold one bit of science: crew reports for the capsule, temp readings for thermometers, etc. Storage can hold an infinite amount of science so long as there aren't any duplicates (i.e. one from every biome is fine, two of the same type of scan from a single biome isn't). The Science Laboratory (which is further down the tech tree than you are now, I think) can hold an infinite amount of science, duplicates included.

Right clicking on any instrument while an EVAing Kerbal is nearby will give you the option to remove its data, which you can then place into the capsule storage. Doing this will disable Science Jrs and Goo Pods, but it can be done repeatedly on thermometers etc.

The first few episodes of Scott's latest tutorial series cover this in some detail; back when career mode was first introduced, he did a show-off video demonstrating how to finish the tech tree in only two launches. I don't recommend trying that for yourself, though; it's not much fun to do.

If it were me, I'd concentrate on getting to a Mun landing [1]. Once you can reliably do that, science pretty much looks after itself. Munlandings are doable with only 1.25m parts; it doesn't require a huge rocket.

[1] OTOH, my initial Mun missions were preceded by many fatalities and strandings. My first "successful" landing saw the legs flex just enough on touchdown to tap the engine into the ground hard enough to break it. The follow-up mission landed perfectly...then fell over sideways thanks to a sloped landing spot. You get the idea; I think I had 20+ Kerbals on the Mun by the time I got one back alive.

[Falkenherz]

Thanks, things start to look much clearer now! I am just wondering how to manage once I touched down on Mun. How does science pretty much look after itself then? It seems I have to bring along a lander-hopper which can touchdown in all those different biomes before I can get any more science from down there?

Right now, I had my first station contract and used it to bring a mobile lab into orbit, feeding it with all available EVA and experimental data. Data input is about 90 points: science yield is about 0.0x per day, with a maximum of five times those 90 points, i.e. 450 points. Ouf, I for sure still need a lot more science points!

I plan to move it now to Mun polar orbit and fill it further up with data, hoping to accelerate the science process. Then I want to move it onwards to Minmus and launch a second mobile lab to land on Mun. I hope these two are enough to open most of the 160point-part of the tech tree? How long will it take according to your experience?

I have had my share of crashes on Mun in 0.9 beta. But I cheated my way through by reloading the flight... or I quickly would have been broke and got back to satelite launching (pretty pboring IMO).

I keep forgeting that the game will probably get boring once I have all the tech, but nevertheless, I really would like to have more options to build my vessels from than I have now.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Falkenherz

[Wanderfound]

Thanks, things start to look much clearer now! I am just wondering how to manage once I touched down on Mun. How does science pretty much look after itself then?

It "looks after itself" in the sense that:

1) Until you scrape the Munar and Minmusian science wells dry (which will take a long time, there are plenty of biomes and a variety of scientific instruments), all it takes to pick up another 500 science is a quick jaunt back to one of the muns. Landing in a single spot with a ScienceJr/Goo Pod/Thermometer/etc will allow you to collect about 200 science. In addition, the gravity is low enough that once you get comfortable with landing it requires very little fuel to hop between neighbouring biomes, doubling your potential science. Or you could just put the lander on wheels, or build a ground station with a laboratory and rover, or an orbital station with a lab, fuel depot and lander, or whatever else your creativity suggests.

2) Once you've done the Mun and Minmus, next stop Duna. The science multipliers of the destinations increase the further they are from Kerbin; a single interplanetary trip can haul in a colossal amount of science points. The game is designed to encourage you to keep pushing further out into the system.

It seems I have to bring along a lander-hopper which can touchdown in all those different biomes before I can get any more science from down there?

You have docking ports?

If so, you don't need a lander that can hop all over the Mun; it just needs to be able to get down and back up once. After getting back into Munar orbit, rendezvous with your orbiting laboratory to refresh your Science Jrs and Goo Pods, refill your lander from the big fuel tank that you also have docked to your laboratory, then rinse and repeat as desired. Never carry fuel down to the surface when you can leave it floating in orbit instead.

Right now, I had my first station contract and used it to bring a mobile lab into orbit, feeding it with all available EVA and experimental data. Data input is about 90 points: science yield is about 0.0x per day, with a maximum of five times those 90 points, i.e. 450 points. Ouf, I for sure still need a lot more science points!

The slow automatic trickle of science from a lab is a minor bonus that was only introduced in 1.0. The main purpose of the orbital lab in previous versions was to allow you to re-use Goo and SciJr's, and to enhance the transmission percentages if you can't be bothered carrying the samples home. I have to confess that I'm not 100% certain of exactly how the labs work now.

plan to move it now to Mun polar orbit and fill it further up with data, hoping to accelerate the science process. Then I want to move it onwards to Minmus and launch a second mobile lab to land on Mun. I hope these two are enough to open most of the 160point-part of the tech tree? How long will it take according to your experience?

About as long as a piece of string...

Don't get too hung up on the science. Land on the Muns, send robot probes to all the planets, and you'll pick up enough science as you go along that the tech tree will gradually open up for you. Save the science-grinding tricks for the times when there's just that one part that you need to unlock before sending off your next big mission.

Try to abandon the normal gamer mindset; your goal is not to "beat" the game, and finishing the tech tree doesn't mean that you've won. This is Kerbal: the only way to lose is to not have fun.

I keep forgeting that the game will probably get boring once I have all the tech

I wouldn't count on that. There are a lot of planets to explore, Easter eggs to find, challenges to compete in, screencap travelogues to write, mods to experiment with and Kerbals to kill. Er, rescue, I meant.

[Falkenherz]

Ah, one more question: "Never carry fuel down to the surface when you can leave it floating in orbit instead."

Wouldn´t that depend? If I landed the mobile lab plus a 720-fuel tank on Mun and let a "hopper" do suborbital jumps to, say, 8 different biomes, it should be cheaper to just "hop back" and refill on the ground than having to establish orbit every time again just to refill?

When I did this "refill in orbit" exercise in 0.9 with a small lander with 90 units of fuel and that small spark engine, I felt I lost a lot of fuel just by having to go to orbit and rendez-vous again.