Survey Scanners etc.

[THobson]

I am confused about how to use these. I have an M700 Survey Scanner in a polar orbit. I activated it and it gave me a coloured rendering of the surface of the object it is orbiting, but I can only see that colouring when in map mode of that specific vessel. I then put a M4435 Narrow-Band Scanner into a polar orbit and activated it. I expected that it would steadily refine the accuracy of the initial scan, but all it seems to do is to tell me what is exactly underneath it at that instant, this information does not appear to be saved anywhere. Surely with the technology the Kerbals have a bit of RAM to save this information is not too much to ask.

I would expect anything discovered by the M700 to be visible in the map display of any vessel and I would expect that display to be refined by an orbiting M4435. Or am I missing something?

Also the % resource on the GUI of the M4435 does not appear to be particularly useful. As far as I can see the % shown on the left click menu of the unit is more useful as it changes depending on what is below it.

I spent hours on 0.9 with kethane so that might explain my thinking.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edited July 8, 2015 by THobson

[FancyMouse]

What refines is the surface scanner, not the narrow band. I even vaguely remember that surface scanner refines narrow band as well.

And you can view planet heatmap by going to tracking station and clicking one of the icons on the right

[Glaran K'erman]

Backing up on the surface scanner comment, that will definitely refine the concentrations. Also, you can/must move it to each biome to get the readout for that area, and yes it's reusable.

[Streetwind]

What happens if I take a surface scanner to a place that I've never scanned from orbit?

[Sharpy]

I believe the surface scan is needed for the narrow-band scan to work at all.

The surface scanner alone can give you the concentration at its precise spot. You can pack it on a rover, ride over any promising area and flag any good point for mining.

[Streetwind]

Ah. So the surface biome resource scanning requires the orbital scan as a prerequisite.

[FancyMouse]

Surface scanner itself produces point measurement value from right-click menu - that you don't need orbital scan.

Now, whether your biome scan from surface scanner refines the orbital scan result in the future - that I guess so (based on my vague memory of what I saw from .sfs) but I'm highly uncertain. If I ever got my 1.0.2 save I could dig into the .sfs but I can't find them at the moment..

[THobson]

What I need to be able to do is see the coloured distribution in the map mode of any vessel but as it is I can only see it in the map mode of the basic M700 scanner. Even in the Space Station it doesn't show it on the surface, there is just a little bit of information on the right. My surface scanner is on its way but has not arrived yet. Am I missing something?

[Streetwind]

You should be able to see the color map in any map mode (inflight map view or tracking station) whever you have scanned planet in focus. If you have the planet focused and can't see the color map, look at the right side of your screen - there are a few tiny icons there. The bottom one lets you pull up resource info, including a button to toggle the display of the color map on and off.

[THobson]

Got it. Thanks.