Overhaul for Science system

[Xiion]

The other night, as my Minmus landers were collecting their science, I was left with a hollow feeling: Doing science is in KSP is a very superficial task for the player. Other than the direct game mechanic benefits, doing science has no impact on the player. And the more I thought about this, the more I see it as a missed opportunity. It could be done better.

Don't get me wrong, as a game mechanic, I think the current science system is very good and necessary to the game. It slowly introduces new parts for the player while providing an obvious goal/success metric. So I propose this change in two parts. First, overhaul the current system to make room for something new, and second, let us do some [I]actual[/I] science.

So first things first. Lets look at the current system. We make rockets, put experiments on them, collect the science numbers, and they let us 'buy' new parts. But obtaining new parts, really that's more of an engineering thing. So lets start with that:
Lets change "Science Points" to "Engineering Points"
While we're at it, let's tweak how we get these Engineering Points (Since we want to make science to be its own thing). So getting points from "science" experiments is out. That's OK, we still have a number of viable alternatives for getting these points: Ship Recovery and Contracts. Lets make it so that when you recover a vessel, you get a much greater amount of engineering points, based on how much of the vessel has returned, where it went (similar in concept to the world first achievements), and maybe a bonus for new parts used (With diminishing returns to encourage the player to progress and prevent abuse). And contracts, especially those part testing contracts, should be a larger source of Engineering points.
Think of it like this: the players pushing the boundaries of current technology spurs the development of new and better parts to further progress. These changes should be relatively easy to implement as it would be mostly renaming labels and tweaking values, as most of the coding infrastructure already exists for this. And gameplay wise, this wouldn't change too much; part progression would largely remain unchanged, the tech tree wouldn't need to change, etc.

So now we've taken all our old "science" things and freed them from the shackles of gameplay, and now we can do something to really make them shine. So here's my proposal:
Let the player do science. Actual science.
So imagine we are starting a new career mode. We click on the science center, and instead of a bland list of "you did this experiment here", we are greeted with a mini encylopedia about the various planets, moons, and other things in the Kerbol system. We can click on the various entries, and it brings up a blurb about that topic, some data facts, maybe a picture or two, or a map with known (or suspected) biomes. But for the most part, the description is very vague, and filled with questions or other statements of uncertainty. Lots of questions, and maybe even some suggestions at how to answer them, giving the player a hint as to how to answer them.
So then the player builds a rocket and sends a probe to the Mun with some experiments, runs them and transmits the data back. And when they look back at the encyclopedia, its changed. The findings of these experiments are added to the original entry, answering some questions, and asking more. The player has now actively contributed to Kerbin's knowledge of the world.
This research doesn't have to be limited to the planets and moons either. Perhaps there are unexplained phenomenon happening on Kerbol. Or whats beyond the Kerbol system? What about the distant stars? What can we learn from them? Do they have exo-planets around them? Let the player point a telescope at them and see what they are doing. Add their entries to the encyclopedia.
And this can have direct game play effects as well. Maybe some of the smaller planets and moons aren't initially visible: they haven't been discovered yet. But our encyclopedia hints at their existence. So you build a telescope to discover them. Or you take a surface sample on the Mun that turns out to be way different from what general scans of the mun have hypothesized: you've discovered a new biome. Or revealed the presence of mineable ores on the surface.

Ok, that's cool and all, but lets make it magical: Make the science the player does parallel 'real world' science. How do we know what Mars is made of? We use spectography and other experiments. So why shouldn't my kerbal scientists do the same thing to determine what Duna is made of? There are numerous different experiments that we use in the real world to figure out what we know about our world: Telescopes (of each of the various spectrums), Spectography, Magnetometers, Cameras, LIDAR, soil samplers, space dust collector, seismic detectors, cosmic ray detectors, and many others. Each of these tells us something different about our world. We should be using those same experiments to figure out what kerbin is made of. The results we get in game don't have to be 'hard' science, a fictitious blurb for a fictitious planet would suffice, but the results should correlate with what is being done. This also gives the science experiments some value, connecting [I]what[/I] were doing in game to [I]why[/I] it's valuable (beyond a numeric score), something I find the current game lacks.

Why do all this? Because I think it is in the spirit of the game. Many of us started playing this game with little or no knowledge of rocket engineering or astrophysics, but through playing, we learned about those topics. The game taught us what worked and what didn't. And through that interaction, I'm sure some people were inspired to learn more. This change could help extend that inspiration to the rest of the space sciences. You perform an experiment in KSP, and it gives you a bit of text about what you learned from it, and then you go out and learn that NASA or the ESA is doing a similar experiment, and you know why! Or at least know what questions they are hoping to answer, or what the results could teach us. And that kind of connection is exciting!

I've more ideas on the "how this could be implemented", but for brevity I will leave it here. What say you daring kerbonaut explorers?

[KrazyKrl]

I don't think we need "Engineering Points" to replace the tech tree. (The game is already 1.0 anyhow, changing a major game system kinda seems wrong.) And it's understandable to get more parts via earned science; due to research (and testing) done in the field. I can accept the abstraction of science points being used for part research, KSP is firstly a game.


[quote name='Xiion']snip[/QUOTE]

TBH what's currently lacking with the science system, is [I]a tie in with contracts[/I]; and the science archives. With the Kerbal system being hand-made and not procedural; lots of work can be done designing the universe to research. Running science experiments per biome should not only reward science points, but [I]fill out the science archives with descriptions[/I], and [I]reward small "world first"-like contract completions[/I]. I know that the devs do not want an "achievement" checklist, but there is nothing I can see against the [I]Science Archives[/I] being a "completion list" of sorts.

The Kerbal solar system itself is another character in this game, and needs quite a bit of fleshing out as a game entity... The game is, of course, a trifecta of characters... Kerbals, The space they inhabit, and the space program to get there. Edited November 20, 2015 by Claw

[pandaman]

I like the basic idea that the OP proposes. Maybe different experiments could help unlock related parts, atmospheric reading could help with unlocking aerodynamic parts for example.

[Kerbart]

I like the concept. I think it needs some more work (I can see how spamming a ship with parts will maximize the engineering points—“Eppies?”—which might not be the intended consequence) but overall it sounds good and it provides a better "story" than science currently does

The science part—I like the concept of “forcing” the player to do actual science. Perhaps take it a step further; you won't have maneuver nodes around a body until you've done measurements with gravioli-meters, parachutes won't work until you've done measurements with barometers, and so on. I doubt it's possible but a randomizer that—within certain limits—sets the parameters for each planet will force you to do actual research before setting out (and designing your ships accordingly. Perhaps Mun has an atmosphere. Perhaps it doesn't)

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I recommend the ScanSat mod, it generates some practical science- plus there is an expanded science pack for it [URL]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/64972-1-0-5-DMagic-Orbital-Science-New-Science-Parts-v1-0-9-1-11-11-2015[/URL] Trying these out is a good way to test part of your proposal.

I agree that having more of a discovery process would add a lot to the game- think of how interesting Pluto is now that we learned a lot more about it in a pretty impressive fashion. Edited November 20, 2015 by Waxing_Kibbous