An Idea on Science

[TheRag]

You like the current science system? Me neither. What I am proposing is a new revamped way to do science. The current system rewards for quick hops and short stays on or in space. You land on X planet click a few buttons then leave never to return for science mission unless you didn't clear the planet.

Frankly, NASA would shaking their heads at that system. Science doesn't magically disappear from a spot, and if it did, we'd be screwed.

What I am proposing is this.

Instead of instant-easy-bake science, have science over the long term, dripping in from the infinite source of the solar system. Very much like the MPL lab, but across the board with a changes and reorders. In this system people are encourage to return to planets without using some meta reasons.

Here's how it works. Science instruments are "activated" they drain power but drip in constant science which is automatically deposited into the science bank, provided if they have an antenna giving unmanned missions and antennas much more relevance. A goo canister won't give 35 science on the Mun instantly, but it will constantly give a rate of science.

A sun probe, would much more viable, as science instruments would drip in science rather than vacuum all the science in one orbit.

These science rates will use the same multipliers from the current science system.

Science is infinite as in the real world, we will never understand the mysteries of the mystery goo on Kerbin or on Jool. You could in theory clear the tech tree by just time warping a MG on the launchpad, albeit it would probably take hundreds of real life days to do it.

The main idea of this system is that it encourages extended sessions on planetary bodies, getting rid of the whack a mole science spamming and the assumption that people love having constant income of science. It also encourages repetitiveness the core basis of proving anything.

It would definetly help provide more reasons to build bases without having to download large ram hungry mods, however it can justify those ram hungry mods as the base has a scientific purpose beyond just a MPL lab.

Any Thoughts?

[*Aqua*]

5 hours ago, TheRag said:

You could in theory clear the tech tree by just time warping a MG on the launchpad, albeit it would probably take hundreds of real life days to do it.

100s of rl days using timewarp? O_O

Forget it!

[HebaruSan]

14 hours ago, TheRag said:

Frankly, NASA would shaking their heads at that system. Science doesn't magically disappear from a spot, and if it did, we'd be screwed.

I'm not so sure. We recently learned that there's lots of perchlorate salt on the surface of Mars. NASA is not going to re-run that same measurement over and over. Rather, people are talking about looking for water in places the rovers haven't been, what the next rover will look for, etc.

14 hours ago, TheRag said:

Instead of instant-easy-bake science, have science over the long term, dripping in from the infinite source of the solar system. Very much like the MPL lab, but across the board with a changes and reorders. In this system people are encourage to return to planets without using some meta reasons.

Here's how it works. Science instruments are "activated" they drain power but drip in constant science which is automatically deposited into the science bank, provided if they have an antenna giving unmanned missions and antennas much more relevance. A goo canister won't give 35 science on the Mun instantly, but it will constantly give a rate of science.

This would eliminate the incentive to return science to Kerbin, effectively cutting the delta V of most missions by as much as half. Now instead of launching, intercepting, capturing, landing, collecting samples, taking off, and returning safely, you would stop after landing, leave the craft there, and go launch a new copy of the same lander to land in the next biome. (More realistically, you would probably launch a fleet of 15 one after the other before the first one landed.) Without return trips, the re-entry heating mechanics would become pretty much irrelevant, and we'd miss out on the somewhat unique orbital mechanics of those return trips.

14 hours ago, TheRag said:

A sun probe, would much more viable, as science instruments would drip in science rather than vacuum all the science in one orbit.

Here you have a point; IRL, the sun is a complex dynamic body with many facets like solar wind, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, etc. Real solar observatories exist to monitor these things and build up data about what the sun has done and is doing. It's not a constant rate of discovery, though; we learn things when the sun does something new or unexpected, or when we have a new question to ask of the old data. I think it's fair to say that KSP would be a richer experience if it had some kind of dynamic aspect to its sun and instruments for monitoring it. Maybe you put a solar observatory in orbit, and some weeks later you get a popup saying there was a CME and data about it is now ready to be transmitted.

14 hours ago, TheRag said:

Science is infinite as in the real world, we will never understand the mysteries of the mystery goo on Kerbin or on Jool. You could in theory clear the tech tree by just time warping a MG on the launchpad, albeit it would probably take hundreds of real life days to do it.

See my first remark; there are indeed unlimited mysteries to explore, but in most cases you have to keep moving around and trying new things to find and investigate them.

14 hours ago, TheRag said:

The main idea of this system is that it encourages extended sessions on planetary bodies, getting rid of the whack a mole science spamming and the assumption that people love having constant income of science. It also encourages repetitiveness the core basis of proving anything.

 

Wouldn't the whack-a-mole factor be just as strong if not stronger? I have to leave a lander at its first landing site to slowly soak up science, but there are still those other biomes that also need landers to sit in them for long periods. So rather than moving that first lander around, I scatter 5 or 10 of them across the surface. I'm still doing the same landings, but the suborbital hops are replaced by completely new launches.

How long would you estimate it would take to unlock, say, the first 5 nodes of the tech tree in this system? I'm wondering what the player would do while they wait for enough science to come in, once they've spent their initial budget of funds.

[wasml]

There was a mod about a year ago - unfortunately seem to have died - called RealScience that had a similar idea. One idea I saw (don't remember where) is that a well planned out experiments/samples, like a nicely spaced seismometer array, would bring in a larger trickle of science that a badly configured one. The question would be how to specify the configs for the plugin to use.

Edited January 18, 2016 by wasml