100% data transmit without mods

[Geschosskopf]

3 hours ago, Snark said:

Yes and no.  The lab can only hold 500 "data" at one time, but it can store as many science results as you like.  So there's no such thing as "filling up a lab"-- you can stash all your science results in it, and process enough of them to fill it up to the 500 data limit, and then every once in a while top it off as the data gets drained.

Again, yes and no.  Science labs decay exponentially over time if you leave them alone, so they don't "finish" a "batch."  Best not to think of them as finishing, or as batches.  It's a continuous process that runs at a somewhat constant rate, as long as you have a supply of science.

But 500 "data" is composed of a single Minmus surface sample.  You can't even fit a temperature reading in there at the same time.  IIRC, a Minmus surface sample, when returned is worth about 50 points.  If you put this in the lab, after about a year, you will get an extra 200 points or so.  But in the course of a year, if you've continued flying missions while the lab cooks, by the time you get that 200 points, it will only be worth about 1/2 a tech tree node or less.  Even if you keep topping it off with "fresh" data, you're still not going to get much more than that over the year.

There is no way this can compete with just plucking fresh science from the bush.  For instance, fairly early in the game you can easily make a lander out of a 1-seat pod, an OKTO probe core, 1 scientist, every experiment you own, and about 3500m/s of dV.  With this, you can hit all 9 Minmus biomes in 1 trip, which will snag you 4000-5000 science in about 30 days.  IOW, 20x the return in 1/10 the time, with a relatively small, simple rocket.  And with your new tech, doing much the same on Mun next is well within your power should you choose, although by now you've probably got all or most of the tech you really care about.  And all this before you get much at all out fo the lab.

So yeah, the only thing the lab has going for it these days is that it will never give you the dreaded "You're not coming inside with THAT THING in your pocket!" message.  But the utility of this has also gone way down.  Back when labs were the only things that could reset Goo and Materials, it made some sense to build your 1st few landers with multiple units, so you could either make sure you got every point from a single biome or do justice to several biomes per trip.  And if you'd already built your lander that way, when you felt up to lugging a lab around, you just kept the same lander and stored the multiple copies in the lab while you were docked there rearming the Goos anyway.  But now that any rookie scientist can reset Goo and Materials, so you don't have to keep returning to the lab between biomes, you've got no real justificaton to build landers with multiple Goo/Materials to begin with (the points you leave behind, like the points the lab farms, aren't enough to matter), and thus no real opportunity to have multiple copies to store.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

But 500 "data" is composed of a single Minmus surface sample.  You can't even fit a temperature reading in there at the same time.  IIRC, a Minmus surface sample, when returned is worth about 50 points.  If you put this in the lab, after about a year, you will get an extra 200 points or so.  But in the course of a year, if you've continued flying missions while the lab cooks, by the time you get that 200 points, it will only be worth about 1/2 a tech tree node or less.  Even if you keep topping it off with "fresh" data, you're still not going to get much more than that over the year.

Wait, what?  There's some disconnect somewhere-- unless my memory is playing tricks on me, the numbers I've observed are nowhere near what you just said.  First, I don't recall a single science result ever overflowing the lab-- the biggest number I recall seeing is something like 200ish for one science result (don't remember what it was).  Second, 200 points in a year?  That's only 0.5 points per day, and I recall getting something like ten times that-- I vaguely recall topping at around 6 points per day with two level-3 scientists, and something less than that (but way more than 0.5) with two level-2 scientists.

A topped-up science lab staffed with reasonable-level scientists will generate thousands of science points in a year.  It's one of the reasons I don't use 'em; they're just too powerful.

It's possible I could be misremembering, since it's been a while since I used a lab (and not in 1.0.5).  But I definitely remember the lab as being "overpowered", not "pathetic".  Am I totally blowing smoke, here?

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

There is no way this can compete with just plucking fresh science from the bush.  For instance, fairly early in the game you can easily make a lander out of a 1-seat pod, an OKTO probe core, 1 scientist, every experiment you own, and about 3500m/s of dV.  With this, you can hit all 9 Minmus biomes in 1 trip, which will snag you 4000-5000 science in about 30 days.  IOW, 20x the return in 1/10 the time, with a relatively small, simple rocket.  And with your new tech, doing much the same on Mun next is well within your power should you choose, although by now you've probably got all or most of the tech you really care about.  And all this before you get much at all out fo the lab.

And here's where I continue to agree with you.  Even with the lab being overpowered as it is:  it still can't compete with strip-mining Mun + Minmus of science, which you can do quickly and efficiently.

I love the idea of having a "science lab" in the game, and really want to have an excuse to use it.  I'm sad that I don't.  It manages (for me, at least) to be both over- and under-powered at the same time.

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

Wait, what?  There's some disconnect somewhere-- unless my memory is playing tricks on me, the numbers I've observed are nowhere near what you just said.  First, I don't recall a single science result ever overflowing the lab-- the biggest number I recall seeing is something like 200ish for one science result (don't remember what it was).  Second, 200 points in a year?  That's only 0.5 points per day, and I recall getting something like ten times that-- I vaguely recall topping at around 6 points per day with two level-3 scientists, and something less than that (but way more than 0.5) with two level-2 scientists.

I haven't heard the lab has changed any since 1.0.  I haven't used one for science (as opposed to decoration) since 1.0.2.  At that time, wanting to test out the new science-farming feature, I designed a major, multi-ship expedition around the lab with the intent of dumping whole lander-loads of science into it from each biome.  But I soon realized this was a complete waste of time, energy, and money, especially as scientists could now reset Goo themselves.  I still have my screenshots recording what happened, despite governmental efforts to deny the existence of this massive boondoggle.  Here's what happened.

The lab was on the ground on Minmus, where supposedly it works better than in space.  I brought a lander to it containing 1 of everything type of expimental result except crew and EVA reports already transmitted.  I put a single surface sample in the lab which occupied 412 of its 500 data slots, and nothing else I had would fit in the remaining space.  The lab started out producing 0.6 science per day so over the course of a 428-day KSP year would have produced a maximum of 257 science points---rather less if the production rate falls off over time.  And then more years to work through all the data in the lander I already had available.  There was no way I was going to wait on that, so I evacuated the crew, took all the day straight on home, and nuked the lab site from orbit just to be sure

[Snark]

37 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

The lab was on the ground on Minmus, where supposedly it works better than in space.  I brought a lander to it containing 1 of everything type of expimental result except crew and EVA reports already transmitted.  I put a single surface sample in the lab which occupied 412 of its 500 data slots, and nothing else I had would fit in the remaining space.  The lab started out producing 0.6 science per day so over the course of a 428-day KSP year would have produced a maximum of 257 science points---rather less if the production rate falls off over time.  And then more years to work through all the data in the lander I already had available.  There was no way I was going to wait on that, so I evacuated the crew, took all the day straight on home, and nuked the lab site from orbit just to be sure

Maybe the scientists were lower-level?  Makes a big difference between level 0 and level 2, for example.  In any case, even if you were getting 4 science per day instead of 0.6, it still wouldn't be worth it, I agree.

Incidentally, the bit about "science lab works better on the ground":  I believe that the thing that changes based on ground-or-orbit is, "how many science data do you get for each science result."  The rate at which science data gets gradually converted into science points depends only on how much data there is, and what level the scientists are; doesn't matter where the lab is.

So if you're in a situation where you have more science results than you can shake a stick at, and therefore have oodles of data to spare and it's time that's the short supply, then there's not a lot of point in landing the lab.