Mobile Processing Lab of Babysitting

[Red Iron Crown]

First, it encourages folks to visit their science bases once in a while.

Why is that desirable? What gameplay value is there in periodically visiting the base/station to click "transmit"? (Honest, non-snarky questions.)

[Laie]

For example, I get to Minmus, recover un surface sample, get back to my MPL un Minmus orbit. I "process the experiment" to get points over time until it fades (?)

Yes, that's how it works.

But what about my experiment in the R&D archives ? Is it visible ? Can I take again this experiment on Minmus surface (same biome)?

After processing, the lab has data to work with. However, the initial science results are still there and can be transmitted or recovered as usual.

A very brief how-to:

1. have science lander.
   
2. collect science, store in command pod.
   
3. dock with lab, left-click pod to "review data", then process as much as the lab can take (not that much, really).
   
4. undock from lab. All science results are still in the pod.
   
5. recover pod on kerbin for instant science as usual.
   
6. lab will be busy for a good long while.
   

If you want to get really serious, you may have several pods in your science lander and collect every result several times. Upon docking with the lab, you go EVA, take one pod's data and transfer it to the lab so it will be available for later processing.

Edited May 5, 2015 by Laie

[Tw1]

Well, one transfer to Jool takes about a year IIRC, and since I suck at multitasking I basically live in 100,000x warp when exploring it. The lab fills with science in about ten or fifteen days, compared to the transfer time it's nothing. I don't actually feel like I'm waiting.

I don't think it's meant to feel like waiting. But, it is possible to understand that time is passing in the kerbal universe, and act accordingly.

Man, I was like you until I tried that. It's not "some", it's literally "click here to win". 500 science every minute. Virtually for free. Virtually unlimited. I'm bored as heck and I just can't stop. It's better than ice cream, believe you me, I've tried both.

This is a flaw in the way career mode has been set up. If the game is about scoring points, yes, it's click to win. But, if the aim was to run a space program, and having it still there for ages provided some benefit, which went towards offsetting some cost, or enabling you to continue, or expand your space activities, there wouldn't be a problem.

Why is that desirable? What gameplay value is there in periodically visiting the base/station to click "transmit"? (Honest, non-snarky questions.)

IDK, maybe if there were some surface activities you could do with you kerbals while you were there....Maybe one day... Though it might be nice to check on the things you've set up every so often.

Edited May 5, 2015 by Tw1

[fairytalefox]

This is a flaw in the way career mode has been set up. If the game is about scoring points, yes, it's click to win. But, if the aim was to run a space program, and having it still there for ages provided some benefit, which went towards offsetting some cost, or enabling you to continue, or expand your space activities, there wouldn't be a problem.

Yes, I believe something is wrong with career mode. If all you want is building and flying rockets, you have sandbox mode. Career mode is kinda for people who want to be provided with an objective. And the only visible objective is the tech tree. For me, playing after unlocking all the techs is like playing Skyrim after killing The Bad Guy - you can talk to people, hone skills, clear dungeons, loot corpses and things like that, but it's kinda meaningless because The Story is already over.

I really, really want KSP to have something awesome followed by the final cutscene and credits. Hey, even Minecraft - the sandboxiest sandbox in the world - has a dragon to kill and credits to watch after that! Are we rocketeers worse than miners&crafters? I think we aren't.

But for now, the last nodes in the tech tree are everything I have.

[X-SR71]

No no! Objectives are contracts! Especially World First Contracts.

And some are quite challenging.. Fly by Minmus, Duna, and Jool in a single ship? Quite a challenge to me..

[fairytalefox]

No no! Objectives are contracts! Especially World First Contracts.

And some are quite challenging.. Fly by Minmus, Duna, and Jool in a single ship? Quite a challenge to me..

As far as I know, contracts are a) random and endless. It's like trying to dry a well with a bucket - all you get is tons of water, which is good if you need water but... you know... not my type of things.

[Snark]

...And the only visible objective is the tech tree. For me, playing after unlocking all the techs is like playing Skyrim after killing The Bad Guy - you can talk to people, hone skills, clear dungeons, loot corpses and things like that, but it's kinda meaningless because The Story is already over.

I really, really want KSP to have something awesome followed by the final cutscene and credits.

I'm actually really happy that KSP doesn't have a "win" condition, or an ending.

For me, what makes KSP so brilliant (and the reason why I'm still playing it avidly, as much time as I can get, more than a year after starting, without getting tired of it) is precisely its free-play, open-ended nature. Like other great games of this ilk-- SimCity (pre-5) springs to mind-- there's no "win condition" or specific objective that has been artificially imposed by the writer of the game. The game is what you make it.

If KSP had a "you win" condition with cut scene, I know what I'd do. I'd go "wow, neat!", and work really hard to get there, and then be all excited when I get the big cutscene... and then I'd put the game down and never play it again. Because I'm "done".

However, as it stands, there's no such thing as "done"-- or, rather, I get to decide what "done" means, and I can change my mind again and again to play it over and over.

Yes, "unlock all the nodes in the tech tree" is one form of "done", and I did that. But then I just pick other "done" conditions, such as "get all the science possible out of the Kerbol system." (this was back in pre-0.90 days when only Kerbin/Mun/Minmus had biomes). Or "fully exploit Jool system" (after biomes added).

All sorts of variants possible:

1. Install Kethane. Add self-imposed restriction "no orbital debris, no throwaway hardware" (e.g. discarded boosters from Kerbin ascent need to be soft-landed with a 'chute). Visit every body in Kerbin system.

2. Same deal, but do a grand tour that visits every body in the system without returning to Kerbin or shipping any supplies out.

3. Install RemoteTech, try everything that way.

4. Install Karbonite + Extraplanetary Launch Pads. Work up to "launch my first small workshop + miner", then complete the game (whatever I've decided that means) without ever launching anything else from Kerbin.

4. Pick some arbitrary win condition (e.g. "land on and return from body X"), with a goal of doing it in as few total launches from Kerbin when starting from scratch.

5. Same deal, but goal is "complete by earliest possible calendar date."

6. Same deal, but "with the least amount of tech researched."

...it goes on and on. Having a "you win" condition supplied by the author of the game would color the whole experience, even if I choose to ignore it. It would add a pressure to the game design that everything has to be seen through the lens of "how does this feature contribute towards the goal of winning". The Sims doesn't need a "win", nor does SimCity 4... and I think KSP gets along better without it.

I understand that opinions vary and others won't necessarily see it this way... but this feature (or, rather the lack of it) is a major part of the reason why KSP grabs me in a way no other game has for a very long time.

[Temeter]

Btw, funny side-note:

I think we can take this thread as proof that Squad sometimes indeed knows better what the community wants than the community does.

[KerbMav]

Just grab your ModuleManager and use:

@PART[Large_Crewed_Lab]	
{
	@MODULE[ModuleScienceConverter]
	{
	@scienceCap = 100000
	}
}

Not yet tested, but will in a few.

[KerbMav]

So this worked, I can leave my lab sitting around processing and come back anytime I want without it stopping to produce science - the data limit being tight into the processing speed kept me from tampering with that number though.

My newest eye-balls-popper is the time it takes for experiments to be prepared into data: Sitting before my screen to wait for 2min+ until an atmospheric experiment gets loaded ... ?

[Kuu Lightwing]

Solution: reduce lab speed to 0.1x current

[78stonewobble]

Personally? I rather like the concept, but I cannot say whether it's balanced, in regards to when one "should" finish the tech tree and what not.

I would prefer though, to not have limits on data and science. I should just input the experiments I've done and take out finished or "processed" experiments ready to get transmitted or returned.

I'm allready visiting e.g. the spacestation when returning experiments and when picking them up. It's seems a bit too micromanaging and clickfesty to visit in between to manually process experiments in a specific order.

I do like tho, what it adds to the science module and gives you somewhat incentive to build spacestations, bases or just more challenging landers.

[Zzabur]

Recently I've got a ship with a lab and some science tools to the Jool's SOI. I admit it was kinda challenging and quite interesting, no complains here. And then...

1. Fill the lab with science data.

2. Process the data while fast forwarding.

3. Transmit science.

4. If there's not enough free space in the lab, go to step 2.

5. Go to step 1.

I'd say, it's more like a babysitting simulator than a space sim. Not challenging, not even difficult. Just tedious. Click-click-click-wait-click-click-click-wait, repeat until you win.

Is it just me or?..

That's why i am using Life Support mods. Staying far away from Kerbin means a lot of issues to deal with. I found it not realistic the way you describe it, but when you have to deal with life support, you can't just fast forward infinite times. Then you'll find challenging to resupply the lab station, you can also bring some crew back. Also sending 10 kerbals in space with life support for a very long trip can be difficult, so you wille have to send them with multiple ships.

I use some mods to make the game more challenging, with life support, time based stuff is not only clicking anymore.

[Joonatan1998]

It makes the grindiest and most boring way to gain science into the easiest way.

Even with "Don't like it?: don't use it" I think that it isn't a very good addition to the game.

Many players, especially new ones, will choose the easiest path, because in most games that is something that is smart to do. The easiest way shouldn't be the extremely boring one. (the same reason I don't like mun/minmus having so much grindable biome science.)

Edited May 7, 2015 by Joonatan1998

[Mr. Scruffy]

I'm actually really happy that KSP doesn't have a "win" condition, or an ending.

For me, what makes KSP so brilliant (and the reason why I'm still playing it avidly, as much time as I can get, more than a year after starting, without getting tired of it) is precisely its free-play, open-ended nature. Like other great games of this ilk-- SimCity (pre-5) springs to mind-- there's no "win condition" or specific objective that has been artificially imposed by the writer of the game. The game is what you make it.

[...]

I disagree. It would be more like ´civilization´ - still playing 4 and that after having seen the various endgame scenes maaany times.

And just like with civ, there should be various possible endings to this story. A couple of ways to win, and one or two to lose. And a couple of incidents the story would be hung on:

1. Once you have upgraded the mission control (? the one that shows your ongoing flights) building to the top tier, an amount of time is randomly chosen within a certain range (say 6 months to 3 years), after which an asteroid with collision course to kerbin is discovered. You need to prevent impact or the game will be over after it hits.

2. Once that is done, or at the start of the game, another time is chosen by the game, at which kerbol will go nova (this could be in the range of 25 to 50 years maybe). Notification of this is given in due time in the game. This can be prevented, by discovering the anomalies (we´d need something like scansat for that) and ulimately finding some alien tech that can stop kerbol going nova. You´ll have to do some hard mission with it, to save kerbin (think spock in Star Trek XI). You do this for extra points/time, as you can (IF you can) skip right to the ultimate goal of:

3. Build a ship that can hold and sustain many (like MANY) kerbals and bring it to a well defined trajectory at a certain speed (+ many other possible requirements, like a drill or whatnot), leaving the kerbol system, thus ´emulating´ colonization of another star system. After which the game tells you, you won. Imagine having to assemble some real monstrosity for this, running multiple fueling mission, after dozens of assembly missions. Then you start bringing up the passengers - again hardly doable in just one go. Finally comes the crew... i can imagine the tension being quite high when you actually start the burn...

1&2 would give a some mild time-pressure - just enough to make it matter in the long term. After you dealt with 2, you can take your merry time for 3.

Now, this might not be everyone´s cup of tea. But i think a sufficient number of players would enjoy something like this in career mode to warrant making it an option during its setup, maybe. Could also come in form of a (cheap) to-pay-extra-DLC.

EDIT: Those are of course just ad-hoc examples...

EDIT2: If you fail 2, the game will be over, but at least you´d get to see some awesome cutscene... ;D

Edited May 7, 2015 by Mr. Scruffy

[WhirlwindMonk]

Snip.

While I like the idea of a "victory condition" (so long as you can continue to play after completing it), I think there needs to be a lot more done to make it good than what you've described. The biggest difference between Civ and KSP is that Civ has a significant random element from the start. What the world looks like, where you start, what other civs are in the game, which ones ended up close to you, what resources you get, etc., not to mention the huge variety of civ choices you have that change how the game plays regardless of those other elements. That's what makes doing the same ending a hundred times still fun, because it may still be the science ending, but a science victory as Babylon on an archipelago map is a very different game than a science victory as Greece on Pangaea with the Huns planted on your doorstep from year 1. KSP doesn't have that. As it stands, there is nothing, no starting choices nor random elements, that would force you to approach that asteroid collision or sun explosion or resettlement project differently from the game prior. This is already a problem with career mode, where there's very little to differentiate one game from the next that would make you want to start a brand new game after "finishing" one. That's something that needs to be fixed first before victory conditions could really add anything to the game, in my opinion.

[Kobymaru]

Man, I was like you until I tried that. It's not "some", it's literally "click here to win". 500 science every minute. Virtually for free. Virtually unlimited. I'm bored as heck and I just can't stop. It's better than ice cream, believe you me, I've tried both.

Install a life support mod. Suddenly your "free" science becomes very, very expensive science.

[KerbMav]

Solution: reduce lab speed to 0.1x current

Does lab speed not control the conversion speed from data to science?

I meant the uploading of experiments into the lab, it beats some slower transmission times by far - I would even trade the double use (process/return) of experiments for a faster/instant upload into the lab.

Combined with a larger data and science capacity (with the conversion speed depending on the amount of available data capped at X) I think this would make most players less unhappy?

[Kuu Lightwing]

It was the answer to "I have a problem with stopping the timewarp to manage my lab". Well, reduce the speed at which you get the science maybe such a nerf might be reasonable, actually.

I seriously don't see much problem with the lab... Well, You could babysit it to grind science, but if that's how player wants to play the game, well, it's his choice.

[MacroNova]

I have a lab churning away over the Mun. I visit it every so often to restock and transfer more skilled scientists. I check in between missions to transmit the science. System works great for me.

[78stonewobble]

It was the answer to "I have a problem with stopping the timewarp to manage my lab". Well, reduce the speed at which you get the science maybe such a nerf might be reasonable, actually.

I seriously don't see much problem with the lab... Well, You could babysit it to grind science, but if that's how player wants to play the game, well, it's his choice.

But why have the extra menu clicking, when it's allready motivated someone to deliver science to the lab, regularly and pick it up regularly and/or design a bigger lander to get it on the surface? That just seems to micromanaging to me...

[Kuu Lightwing]

Why would you put lab on the surface D:

However I do get your point. Maybe science limit is unnecessary. But not sure about data limit. It could technically go because you still need to fill it with science, but I think some management is needed.

[RoverDude]

I have a lab churning away over the Mun. I visit it every so often to restock and transfer more skilled scientists. I check in between missions to transmit the science. System works great for me.

That's pretty much how it is supposed to work. You have it churn away while you do other things, and get an occasional gift of a dollop of science.

FYI - all of the options (max science, conversion rates, etc.) are all in the config for the adventurous.

[arkie87]

Why would you put lab on the surface D:

If you put the lab on wheels, you could drive to another biome...

But i suppose with the science/data limit, there is no point since you can fill it up in one biome even...

[panzer1b]

Im from teh age when sandbox was the only mode, and while i did actually give career/science a try, neither really fits with my playstyle. Especially when that playstyle happens to be placing massive fleets of warships all over the kerbol system and then engagingin massive broadside shootouts using BDArmory or even just stock missiles. Those .50cals make for some really cool space battles, they have such low dmg but they make it look like those prolonged starwars styled battles where each side is just spamming plasma cannons at each other for minutes with neither side actually being wiped out.

Ofc doing this stuff in career makes absolutely no sense without hacking funds (as its kinda hard to get any science or usefulness out of a destroyed ship ). That and ive always liked the open sandbox nature of the game, things like grinding, xp limits, science harvesting, and doing repeated boring events just doesnt work for me.