Is it just me, or is the Mobile Processing Lab way too OP?

[Two]

Ever since I landed my Mobile Processing Lab (with 2 L2 scientists inside) I have that feeling that science is just flooding in, and all I have to do is to wait for some time to buy everything. And all I did was to crash... um land a MPL on the Mun, grabbed all science I could on the way down and on the place I landed (no moving to other biomes), and the lab produces over 5000 science.

So I just have my satellite on solar orbit warp forward like 200 days, empty the MPL, rinse, repeat. And after like 30 minutes of waiting I can unlock all the lower science stages. And if I would have landed another one right next to it, I would have gained 10k science... or a third for 15k total... this feels way overpowered to me.

[NikkyD]

It's because you don't have cost per month, so time is free. A kerbal can survive in a capsule forever. Being immortal highlanders, THAT is op.

[Grumman]

Well something needs to be an overpowered source of Science, or we wouldn't get anything done!

[NikkyD]

If you can manage to land properly on minmus/mun with something rover-like you can get 3 biomes in one trip and that gives you about 1k per trip. 2 trips each nets in 4k science just from the moons. The 2+ MILLION for RnD lvl 3 is more of a problem.

[Miravlix]

1: It's totally weird to launch a MPL and time warp several months.

2: See 1

It only takes a Minmus mission that hits a few biomes to completely fill out the tech tree, so why your wasting your time with even launching and setting up a MPL is weird.

[NikkyD]

@ miravlix, its a new part that everyone wants to try out i guess. I built a MPL-base on the mun only to realize that it would net 0.4 science a day and would require more solar/batteries than i gave it. Trashed it.

[PB666]

Ever since I landed my Mobile Processing Lab (with 2 L2 scientists inside) I have that feeling that science is just flooding in, and all I have to do is to wait for some time to buy everything. And all I did was to crash... um land a MPL on the Mun, grabbed all science I could on the way down and on the place I landed (no moving to other biomes), and the lab produces over 5000 science.

So I just have my satellite on solar orbit warp forward like 200 days, empty the MPL, rinse, repeat. And after like 30 minutes of waiting I can unlock all the lower science stages. And if I would have landed another one right next to it, I would have gained 10k science... or a third for 15k total... this feels way overpowered to me.

[hc ipad] THis experience is different from mine, but if you had a rover with 2-each goo and mat-sci unit and 1 each temp, grav, vibr this i easy to achieve. The canyon area of the mun is a hotbed of sci. However, i place my lab in LMO and conducted numerous docking/Mun and a couple of refueling missions and basically filled out the entire tech tree in 0.25.

BTW i unlock all the lower sci tiers before leaving low kerbin orbit. There is a lot of science on the ground in KSC.

In response to NikkyD, I typically do no recycle a crew on Kerbin system orbits more than 4 landing missions. You can make the game more realistic by switching out crews on refueling missions an send your spent crews back with sci data. One effective way to do this is to collect them in LKE and then return them back as one group, this way you don't have to carry chutes and HS to the science objectives. In addition you can carry extra fuel and use this to retrograde break on reentry (at very low entry angle) with a complete science package and conduct science on th ground on Kerbin.

I generally keep enough retro fuel on reentry to at least slow my craft down to a speed that its SAS keeps it from tumbling. Also, I also add one crew capacity for each crewman year in orbit. This means for a 5 year mission would set a baseline of one capsule and one storage container. If a minimal Gilly mission takes 2 years then you Since a minimal science mission wants a MPL you need to have on pilot and one sci; the cap has 3, MPL has 2 and so i add one storage container.

The eve landing mission is basically suicide so 1 year of supply per crew i all that is needed.

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Well something needs to be an overpowered source of Science, or we wouldn't get anything done!

Science is 1% inspiration & 99% inspiration.

You can however get "Science" on the cheap from the american association for the advancement of science and place it on your coffee table for the admiration of the uninformed. :^)

[strigon]

Science is 1% inspiration & 99% inspiration.

erm...

[NikkyD]

Original from Thomas Edison "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Well something needs to be an overpowered source of Science, or we wouldn't get anything done!

I still think you can get way to much Sciencepoints early on before you leave the Kerbin System

[Tankman101]

Any time based mechanic is OP if you timewarp forward 200 days...

[Two]

It's because you don't have cost per month, so time is free. A kerbal can survive in a capsule forever. Being immortal highlanders, THAT is op.

Yes I think that is the general issue with the MPL: there is no maintenance assigned with it. So all you need to do is to wait, and time has no relevance in the game.

It only takes a Minmus mission that hits a few biomes to completely fill out the tech tree, so why your wasting your time with even launching and setting up a MPL is weird.

I am not sure on which difficulty you play, but scanning a few biomes on Minimus does absolutely not get you even close to filling out the tech tree on normal difficulty.

[haltux]

MPL is definitely overpowered. There has already been some discussion on this topic here.

The problem is that even if you don't "cheat" (fast forward to get science points), when you organize interplanetary missions you get more science points during the trip with your existing(s) MPL(s) than whatever your mission can bring to you.

As a corollary, return missions, which were (and should) be the main way to get science points, are now ineffective. It is much more efficient, and generally easier, to send an MPL in a one way trip. You can always claim that you can send another mission to get back your kerbals but you don't do it because they work for science more or less forever. That's a bit sad, because I really think there should be a very strong incentive to get Kerbals back.

However, I like the idea of continous science points stream from MPL.

I can see two way to improve this issue:

- Add time cost. Kerbal salary, KSC maintenance. Maybe only for higher difficulty levels. That would change the game dramatically. That would imply new feature, like a stock alarm (to help player managing parallel missions).

- Much easier approach: MPL should require support. One support mission, which should bring equipment and new scientists taking over the previous ones, every years (or whatever number of days).

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Well something needs to be an overpowered source of Science, or we wouldn't get anything done!

Before the new MPL we could get things done. Science points were actually pretty well balanced.

The new MPL is nice in principle, it gives a purpose to space stations, it just has to be balanced properly.

[magnemoe]

MPL is definitely overpowered. There has already been some discussion on this topic here.

The problem is that even if you don't "cheat" (fast forward to get science points), when you organize interplanetary missions you get more science points during the trip with your existing(s) MPL(s) than whatever your mission can bring to you.

As a corollary, return missions, which were (and should) be the main way to get science points, are now ineffective. It is much more efficient, and generally easier, to send an MPL in a one way trip. You can always claim that you can send another mission to get back your kerbals but you don't do it because they work for science more or less forever. That's a bit sad, because I really think there should be a very strong incentive to get Kerbals back.

However, I like the idea of continous science points stream from MPL.

I can see two way to improve this issue:

- Add time cost. Kerbal salary, KSC maintenance. Maybe only for higher difficulty levels. That would change the game dramatically. That would imply new feature, like a stock alarm (to help player managing parallel missions).

- Much easier approach: MPL should require support. One support mission, which should bring equipment and new scientists taking over the previous ones, every years (or whatever number of days).

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Before the new MPL we could get things done. Science points were actually pretty well balanced.

The new MPL is nice in principle, it gives a purpose to space stations, it just has to be balanced properly.

Going outward you need to gather science to process, I tended to grab some in Kerbin orbit then science around and on Minmus if possible, I prefer to send interplanetary ships to Minmus to fuel up then drop Pe to LKO for gravity boost Still I run low even on fast trips. This is with 3 star scienctist who fill the science lab in 50-60 days interplanetary.

main problem is that then you have 3 star scientist you don't need the science. I earn 1500 science/ month just by visiting and refueling the labs Mun, Minmus, Ike, underway to Gilly and Pol.

7 Million funds so don't really need to convert science to funds. Might want to make some RTG power plants however

[mikegarrison]

As someone who has played at least a dozen career games, I like the new lab. It's less grindy than the old way of just sending lander after lander to different biomes on Mun and Minmus.

[architeuthis]

- Add time cost. Kerbal salary, KSC maintenance. Maybe only for higher difficulty levels. That would change the game dramatically. That would imply new feature, like a stock alarm (to help player managing parallel missions).

- Much easier approach: MPL should require support. One support mission, which should bring equipment and new scientists taking over the previous ones, every years (or whatever number of days).

Perhaps MPL science production could consume Ore?

[basic.syntax]

I nerfed my game at the start, custom difficulty of 40% science returns. This makes MPL more useful and encourages distant exploration.

This is the main thread discussing MPL.

[Alshain]

It isn't overpowered in my opinion. It works just fine. By the time you can get any decent amount of science out of it, you are at the end of the tech tree so with the right admin strategies it is about funding rather than science. You can get some science just from within the Kerbin SOI (0.6/day), but you have to at least take your scientists to Duna (or elsewhere) to really start raking it in (2.3 science per day @ 4 stars each) and by the time I got back from Duna and Ike I had enough science to unlock everything but maybe 5 nodes.

So again, it isn't overpowered at all. Can it be misused? Yeah, but that is your choice. if you want to sit on time warp for a year you can research the whole tree, but if you want to have fun with the game just don't do that.

Edited May 31, 2015 by Alshain

[Beowolf]

It works pretty well when mixed with a life support mod, and keeping multiple interplanetary missions running simultaneously with help from Kerbal Alarm Clock. It may be OP when playing stock, but with two years experience I've only played stock for 15 minutes, so my opinion isn't worth much there.

[Grumman]

Before the new MPL we could get things done. Science points were actually pretty well balanced.

The new MPL is nice in principle, it gives a purpose to space stations, it just has to be balanced properly.

Before the MPL contracts gave out more science, as did the funds-to-science policy.

Science is the most important resource in the game. If you don't have it, you might as well be playing the old 0.18 demo. Being stingy about it - hitting things with the nerfhammer every time somebody finds a way to generate science that doesn't suck - just makes the game tedious.

[T-Bouw]

So again, it isn't overpowered at all. Can it be misused? Yeah, but that is your choice. if you want to sit on time warp for a year you can research the whole tree, but if you want to have fun with the game just don't do that.

I agree. Just because you can misuse the lab, doesn't mean that you should.

Like in Fallout, you can kill every NPC in the game, but you don't have much of a game afterwards...

I'dd rather have a game empower me than limit me.

[KSK]

As a corollary, return missions, which were (and should) be the main way to get science points, are now ineffective. It is much more efficient, and generally easier, to send an MPL in a one way trip. You can always claim that you can send another mission to get back your kerbals but you don't do it because they work for science more or less forever. That's a bit sad, because I really think there should be a very strong incentive to get Kerbals back.

My incentive is that I don't want to send my kerbals on a one way trip. I don't care about how much science they could generate - there are other ways of doing that. It's a sandbox game (yes even Career mode) there doesn't need to be - and nor should there be - built in incentives for every player behaviour.

Edited June 1, 2015 by KSK

[Old Foxboy]

Basically, KSP should feature a monthly cost in the higher difficulty levels. This means, you have to run a strategy that provides you with a monthly income, and setting up a lab and selling the science through a strategy would be a good way to maintain the equilibrium.

[LittleBlueGaming]

Using the MPL, it's possible to research the entire tech tree just in the KSC biomes. It would take a while though.

[Rune]

Funny, I actually play to minimize the time count, only rarely have I ever progressed in a save much past the first month... I get now why I don't find the use to the mobile lab. The way I'm maxing out the tree is the good 'ol fashioned one: stip-mine Minmus of science for the first half of the tree, and complete it with the Munar biomes.

Rune. I just celebrated the first window to Moho by sending a nuke-powered probe there... by the time it gets there, I'll have the tree done, so it's mostly for show.