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

[KerbMav]

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

Bringing us back to the question: Do you want to only sit in time warp while playing and not do anything else?

The difficulty I see is in finding a balance between the MPL contributing to unlocking the techtree and not making missions meaningless.

Also the MPL was meant as an alternative to science grinding, using both systems will give you more science points in the end.

Maybe the science gain in normal difficulty mode is to high now that we have the lab to get science points too.

[LittleBlueGaming]

Bringing us back to the question: Do you want to only sit in time warp while playing and not do anything else?

The difficulty I see is in finding a balance between the MPL contributing to unlocking the techtree and not making missions meaningless.

Also the MPL was meant as an alternative to science grinding, using both systems will give you more science points in the end.

Maybe the science gain in normal difficulty mode is to high now that we have the lab to get science points too.

No, I personally don't want to. What it does do, is make me want more tech nodes. LOTS more tech nodes. That way, when my probes finally get to Eve and Duna, I'll have a use for the science, other than completion-ism.

Edit: I'm sure it's very useful in harder difficulties.

[seaces]

I think that there should be first the general rebelance of science system and tech tree and after that revision of science parts. The way I see it currently the system does not incentive player to go further form Kerbin because you can unlock parts by doing Mun/Minmus so that there is no big need to go far to unlock more, incentive =0. I would like that by exploring Mun/Minmus you unlock enough parts just to go to some other closest planet to be able to progress and unlock other parts to go further. Currently after you are done with Kerbin system the game become like sandbox even if you are in career mode and only difference is that you have to manage little the budget but that really is not that difficult. There is no reason to go to other planet and carry all experiment and do the right clicking since it doesn't matter anymore how much you have science.

After such rebalance then we can discuss which parts are overpowered or under powered.

[RoverDude]

The MPL is designed as a viable alternative to experiment collection and return. So if someone wants to just set up stations and labs and get their science that way, they can. Or they can go full Pokemon on Mun/Minmus biomes and unlock the tree without ever leaving the Kerbin SOI. Or they can do a mix of all of these (in my career, I do a mix - I drop in labs as contracts ask for them, but also do my exploration missions, and find it to have a nice feel regarding progression).

It's also very handy when you use alternate tech trees that add a lot more nodes (i.e. CTT), and opens up Science as a potentially unlimited currency, which opens options. I fully expect there are going to be varying opinions (no different than the varying opinions on ISRU), and that's ok.

[basic.syntax]

No, I personally don't want to. What it does do, is make me want more tech nodes. LOTS more tech nodes. That way, when my probes finally get to Eve and Duna, I'll have a use for the science, ...

I wouldn't object to entirely new parts coming into the Stock experience, to provide some new tech, but I wouldn't spread current parts into more tech nodes. Just look at the reverse side of the equation, and try a global science nerf (new career game, advanced setup option.) Biomes aren't "paying off" as well for me, the MPL's are useful. I think the global science multiplier is what needs adjusting downward, not the MPL.

[KerbMav]

And I do not want to fly every experiment as soon as it becomes available in the tech tree to every biome on Minmus/Mun in x repeated missions to get parts making trips to Duna and beyond viable.

[KerikBalm]

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

Ditto, I've unlocked all but 3 nodes (I don't need a large ore tank+ narrowband scanner/ 2.5m probe core/ mk2 probe core), and I'm at... day 60 I think? maybe approaching 70?

I've dispatched probes to Duna and Eve (which will include surface landers, and then the orbiters will land at the respective moons... ike and gilly).

But I didn't stop doing stuff in the kerbin system as those missions were underway.

They were launched well outside of the launch window, so they should arrive when the launch window is open, and my first manned missions there will be massive and include ISRU, orbital fuel depots, surface bases, etc...

At least it will be plausible given that the probes will have returned data before the manned mission is launched.

[haltux]

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.

Career mode is by definition all about incentives. You have three currencies and the game is about earning these currencies in order to go deeper in the game. Finding strategies to get these points efficiently is the whole point of the game, otherwise there is really no reason to play career mode and not sandbox mode.

If there exists easy and boring strategies which are more efficient than complex and interesting strategies, then it is a problem which has to be solved. That is true for any other kind of career / character based video games.

[KSK]

Career mode is by definition all about incentives. You have three currencies and the game is about earning these currencies in order to go deeper in the game. Finding strategies to get these points efficiently is the whole point of the game, otherwise there is really no reason to play career mode and not sandbox mode.

If there exists easy and boring strategies which are more efficient than complex and interesting strategies, then it is a problem which has to be solved. That is true for any other kind of career / character based video games.

I'd say that the point of the game is to have fun playing it however you wish. Efficiency to the exclusion of all else is a very overrated way of playing any game in my opinion.

There's no problem with a game that offers easy and boring strategies alongside complex and interesting strategies, if anything it makes the game better. It lets the players that want to boil KSP down to a set of cookie-cutter strategies do so if they wish, whilst providing plenty of options for players that want to take a different path.

[Diablo 2 was a great example of this. Plenty of cookie cutter builds for those that wanted them, lots of (objectively inferior) variant builds for those that wanted something a bit different. Diablo 3 caters much more to the cookie-cutter crowd and (in my opinion) is a poorer game for it.]

Besides, between the difficulty settings and the various debugging tools available, KSP has a whole spectrum of options to make the game as easy or as challenging as you like. The MPL is just another one of those options.

If players can't resist pressing what they perceive to be the 'I win' button, that's their problem. It's not a problem with the game.

[Warzouz]

I agree that the MPL is an alternative to science grinding. I think it's quite well balanced, even though I don't use it, except for RP.

The tech tree can be unlock without quiting Kerbin SOI in few days. My first Duna window is 2 days away and my whole tech tree is already unlocked **. I only gather 50 points is my 2 MPL orbiting Mun and Minmus.

I find science grinding quite fun. It's a gameplay feature : you have to plan where to land, pile up the corect dV, design you landers to manage hops. Exploring poles have some significant impact on your mission design and route planning.

I don't use the MPL except to reset science experiments. I filled them with scientists for RP, but very small amount of science poured out of it.

Minmus can grant you a ton of science with only 3 landings (with 2 hops each). You might have to do it twice because you might not have all the experiments the first time, but it's quick and a very good landing trainer.

The whole point of MPL is if you don't like to do that, you can get science in another way. So there is not only ONE gameplay to get science. That's quite nice from SQUAD.

** I had to plan an emergency return of a Minmus lander to LKO, docked to the space station and wait for a SSTO, passenger plane to get the Kerbal to KSC to get the mission science. That was quite fun, because I set a dirty orbit from Minmus to get to LKO, 2 days before the "perfect" one. I found that quite RP and not possible with MPL.

[Two]

As far as I can tell (from the answers here and personal experience) the problem boils down to two issues:

1. Biome-based science is tedious and breaks the immersion.

2. The alternative - the MPL - is a bad solution for the problem, because it requires nothing but to wait 3-5y to complete the tech tree.

Thinking about it, what I would like to see is something like a more exploration-based science, probably involving contracts. So instead of walking to the KSC water tower to invent new rockets, you need to fulfill contracts to unlock new science parts.

So for example at first you get contracts like "Test the Terrier engine in flight over Kerbin", and doing that adds science points towards unlocking "Advanced Rocketry". Later you receive contracts like "Atmospheric test on Mun polar biome", which then adds points to unlock various mid-level technologies. And for the later techs you would need to process those data samples in a mobile lab, like "Obtain surface samples from Ike, then process them in a MPL in orbit around Minimus." witch will then add points to unlock for example "Field Science" over time.

This would solve several issues in the career mode, especially the tediousness of biome-scanning, and give the MPL a useful meaning, without making it and endless source of science. In addition it would encourage exploration AND returning, would be immersive and give the player a reason to actually venture out into space, beside the usual "because I can!".

[RoverDude]

Ironically, a lot of people really dislike the part contracts. In the end, it's all about options. All of us have differing definitions of what is OP, grindy, broken, fun, tedious, etc. - choice is good.

[Two]

choice is good.

Absolutely. Just that currently the only option for science is to grind it.

[RoverDude]

Not really. Dropping in a MPL or two as part of one of your base contracts and letting science accumulate passively is certainly not a grind

[KerbMav]

It only becomes a grind if you insist on sucking dry Mun and Minmus and to land in each of Kerbin's biomes.

Nothing stops me from sending out probes as soon as solar panels become available and transmit lots from science from all over the system.

Also, if you do not wish to launch a new lab after the first has evaluated every experiment you fed into it, you will have to gather new experiments elsewhere anyway.

[EtherDragon]

I agree with many others that it's about options that allow for different styles of play. Some people really struggle being able to get out of Kerbin's SOI to get science from other places. Let's remember, interplanetary transfers are a concept lots of players have a hard time with! So, options for those that are willing to grind out science in Kerbin's SOI makes the game approachable for them.

Others, like myself, have no problem leaping out to other planets, grabbing the gigantic science rewards that await around places like Eve, Duna, and Jool.

It's good that each style of play can squirrel away a nut every once in a while.

[Joonatan1998]

Yes, it is OP at game-breaker levels, if you use it you could as well be playing sandbox.

The real guestion is if that is a bad thing.

I think it should be nerfed on harder difficulty settings.

It is fine for easy difficulties, but "hard" difficulty shouldn't have an "I win"- button.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Joonatan1998

[Yakuzi]

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.

^THIS^ is the critical problem of KSP career, the MPL is not. We need proper tycoon style management of an actual space program with monthly resource/fund overhead. Currently there are no interesting elements of managing a space program: no budgets, no mission proposals, no higher-ups to get approval from, no salaries, no incentive for solar system infrastructure (though the MPL is a start) etc... just some unrelated game concepts including one-off costs, bits of non-immersive grind contracts and pointless strategies randomly flung together to allow the player to grind their way to money... Atm it's more Kerbal Space Mission than Kerbal Space Program.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Yakuzi

[regex]

I have two MPLs running in my normal difficulty career game and about the only thing I think is OP about them is the fact that I can study the same piece of science over and over in multiple different labs so long as I never turn it in to KSC. Maybe I just don't like timewarping, or I'm really spare with it because missing a transfer window makes me anxious, even if I'm not going to use it... Either way, I don't consider the tech tree as the end all, be all of career mode progression, so completing it isn't my endgame. That, I think, is the big difference in thinking regarding the MPL.

[Alshain]

I have two MPLs running in my normal difficulty career game and about the only thing I think is OP about them is the fact that I can study the same piece of science over and over in multiple different labs so long as I never turn it in to KSC. Maybe I just don't like timewarping, or I'm really spare with it because missing a transfer window makes me anxious, even if I'm not going to use it... Either way, I don't consider the tech tree as the end all, be all of career mode progression, so completing it isn't my endgame. That, I think, is the big difference in thinking regarding the MPL.

Just a correction, you can turn it into KSC. It still functions as MPL data even if returning it would grant 0 science.

[DuoDex]

Please try to be polite and civil when expressing your opinions about KSP's progression.

Thanks!

[sal_vager]

Off-topic posts removed, please keep discussion of gameplay decisions to a suitable thread.

Edited June 1, 2015 by sal_vager