Dealing with >500 data from experiment in MPL

[AlphaMensae]

17 hours ago, katateochi said:

There is a problem (awkwardness) to this approach.  I had a multi lab station and the concept works fine, BUT when it comes to re-stocking the labs with data, you have to disconnect all but the lab you want to transfer data to. Otherwise it will fill one lab up and then say you can't put any more data into the lab, even though there are other empty labs present. (that was the case in 1.0.4, not tired that again in 1.0.5)

 

I didn't know it was odd to bring the labs to other planets.   My "next gen" IP ships have two labs (my Jool ship will probably have four) and I ran into that problem while pre-loading some data into one of the ships (still in Kerbin orbit) from Mun test flights.  Solved it by transferring the lab crew elsewhere so the lab was inactive, was able load data into the empty lab.  This is still in 1.04. 

[RoverDude]

The data cap is there to prevent over-stuffing (we wanted to encourage people to visit their bases and stations once in a while).  Looks like you found an edge case, will take a peek

[r_rolo1]

22 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

The data cap is there to prevent over-stuffing (we wanted to encourage people to visit their bases and stations once in a while).  Looks like you found an edge case, will take a peek

Hum, I think I can see 2 or 3 better ways of making poeple to visit their stations , Roverdude  While effective, the data cap seems a little ... crude

[RoverDude]

Feel free to share those ideas on the suggestion forum then. 

The logic was that there is simply limited storage space in the MPL - and it's a tweakable value (like several others) that allow for tradeoffs, etc. when using the partmodule.

Edited January 12, 2016 by RoverDude

[r_rolo1]

Fair enough. It has some logic behind and it works in terms of doing the planned propose. But TBH I think that other parts of the game ( say , the contracts subsystem ) could deliver the same function without incurring in issues like the one the OP describes. Say, since this update we have contracts that require that you are in control of a certain ship , so why not have a contract that for some lump change asks you to take control of X station and do something there ( some science, for a example )?

Just a sugestion ...

[Renegrade]

56 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

The logic was that there is simply limited storage space in the MPL - and it's a tweakable value (like several others) that allow for tradeoffs, etc. when using the partmodule.

It definitely accomplishes the limited storage space goal very well, but uh, it kinda underlines the weakness in the existing stock mechanisms for dealing with/sorting/moving tons of science reports. :/

I remember paging through something like 88 reports in orbit of Minmus at one point..

[Foxster]

6 hours ago, RoverDude said:

The data cap is there to prevent over-stuffing (we wanted to encourage people to visit their bases and stations once in a while).  Looks like you found an edge case, will take a peek

But if the cap is there on the total science stored too then you have to visit once in a while to transmit the science, no? 

So, couldn't we stuff all the data we like in then visit occasionally to transmit the science as it is generated? That way we could also remove the experiment results and return them to Kerbin without having to wait for room to process all the data from them.

[RoverDude]

I'll leave it at this - a lot of design considerations were taken into account, and a lot of levers were built in to support the new design mechanic of the MPL.  The various caps are pretty core to that.  The Eeloo data size was something not caught by QA (or experimentals), so I'll take a peek at how best to handle that.

[Foxster]

5 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

I'll leave it at this - a lot of design considerations were taken into account, and a lot of levers were built in to support the new design mechanic of the MPL.  The various caps are pretty core to that.  The Eeloo data size was something not caught by QA (or experimentals), so I'll take a peek at how best to handle that.

Fairy Nuff.

Maybe just allow single experiments that produce >500 data when data is currently zero to break the cap; giving, say, 516/500 data?

[KerikBalm]

or... somewhat opening to exploityness...

If current data stored < 500

then allow processing of the next experiment.

the exploity part comes in if you could stick stuff in up to ... say 499 data, and then hit it with an eeloo mat bay (btw, how much does a surface sample go for, since someone else said this was a problem on laythe)... to get 1015 science in the lab...

Most of the time, it would be good though... 470 data in my lab and I have an experiment worth 40? looks like I'll need to process 10 data first...