Completely inconsistent scan results

[nhnifong]

I'm seeing wildly inconsistent scan results on various bodies.

On Minimus

* Long range scanner reporting peak levels between 30% and 40%

* medium and surface scanners reporting 4.5% percent at the same place.

* harvester takes about 40 days to capture 1000 ore.

On Bop

* Long range scanner reporting peak levels below 10%

* Medium range scanner reports 0.5% at the same location.

* harvester takes only *0.5 seconds* to harvest 1000 ore.

What the hell? How do bugs like this go undetected?

Is there anything that can be done to fix it with mods?

[Glaran K'erman]

Whats mods are you using? Any resource ones?

[Snark]

I notice that you mention "long range scanner" and "medium range scanner", but I don't see you mention "surface scanner" or "biome lock".

Have you used the surface scanner? There's a feature that you can't get accurate information from the orbital scanners for any given biome until you "unlock" that biome by taking a surface scan there. (This is by design.) The usual progression looks like this:

1. Put a satellite with the medium-range scanner (the big clamshell thing) into a polar orbit so that you can see the orbital map. This gives a general overview of what the resource density is, but it is only an average for each biome, and won't tell you what the concentration is at any given spot. If this is what you're working from, you'll get a rude surprise when you land, because the actual concentration will likely be quite different. (At this stage, using the hi-res scanner is useless.)

2. Use that map to identify which biomes have high average concentration. For any biomes that interest you, land a little lander that has the surface scanner on it, and click the "run analysis" button. This will "unlock" that biome, and now the orbital map will give actual concentrations that you can use for planning where to land your miner.

3. Ignore the hi-res scanner, it's pretty much useless. Yes, it will give you a hi-res piece of information for any given location (after you've unlocked the biome), but there's no way to save that information or do anything useful with it-- for example, it doesn't update the orbital map, or anything useful like that. Unless it gets redesigned, it's pointless.

The other thing to be aware of is that resource mining depends on engineer skill level. Put a high-level engineer on the ship, and it'll mine ore fairly quickly. Don't have an engineer (or try to mine unmanned), and it will mine very very slowly.

[AaronLS]

Also I think areas near the poles tend to be more inaccurate due to pinching effects.

[FancyMouse]

I think op is talking about 1k ore in half a second... that should be by no means desired behavior regardless of concentration/engineer. Better check if stock installation reproes, then post on the right support forum.

[nhnifong]

Some further information.

I was only extracting ore at that ridiculous rate *while it lasted* on Pol I noticed that I depleted an area of about 2500 ore and then could only extract at a very low rate comparable to what I saw on minimus. Maybe I didn't notice the fast rate on minimus.

I did sometimes use the surface scanner, but I wasn't sure what it did, and didn't look at the orbital map after using it. The levels it reported usually agreed with the scanner that looks like a spinning hexagon (The one I've been calling medium)

None of these ships were manned.

[Snark]

I was only extracting ore at that ridiculous rate *while it lasted* on Pol I noticed that I depleted an area of about 2500 ore and then could only extract at a very low rate comparable to what I saw on minimus. Maybe I didn't notice the fast rate on minimus.

Okay, that makes no sense-- it's not possible to "deplete" an area of resources in KSP, they're infinite. Is it possible that you accidentally timewarped or something?

(Also, just a side note, it's "Minmus" and not "Minimus")

None of these ships were manned.

Yeah, that will be a problem. Mining is super slow if you don't have an engineer on board. Put an engineer on those craft. The higher the engineer's level, the faster it will mine.

Anyway, I think this answers your questions:

- if the problem is "mining is too slow": put an engineer on board

- if the problem is "mining rate is inconsistent with what the map says, so I can't find a good place to mine": use a surface scanner to scan the biome

[nhnifong]

I think it must be one of my mods. I repeated the experiment in several areas on Pol and each place I landed allowed me to extract about 1k to 2k ore almost immediately, and then it dropped down to the near-zero level. Almost like it was designed to do that.

I too thought that vanilla KSP does not deplete areas...

Only, I don't think I have installed any mods to change how resources behave, but you never know.

[Claw]

I've seen the "instant ore fill" posted a couple times, but I'm not sure I've seen any reproduction steps (which I may have missed). Those are pretty critical for any bug, otherwise we end up spinning around in circles.

If you have good reproduction steps, save files, craft files, or anything, that helps out a lot.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92230-%21%21%21-PLEASE-READ-BEFORE-POSTING-%21%21%21-Stock-Support-Bug-Reporting-Guide

Cheers,

~Claw