Biome Suggestion

[Radav]

When I first started using the science system, I loved it right away, and the main way I play KSP is by gathering science and progressing the tech tree. Not only that, but once I have filled the tree, I keep gathering science, as I feel it gives the game a goal, and I find it fun. When the ore/fuel was added, this was an awesome tool, and one thing that was added in particular caught my eye. It was the survey scanner. Put one into a polar orbit, and you can see all the densities of ore on the body in question. My suggestion is this: make a biome scanner of some sort in the same vein, so that science farmers like myself can locate biomes without resorting to cheats. Maybe also a "current biome" part like the surface scanning module is for ore. Having a reason to put a satellite into orbit long term is very cool to me, and I would love to integrate that idea into the science aspect of the game.

[Tex]

It would be a cool stock addition, but there are two immediate workarounds that pop into my head: Biome maps, and mods.

[AbacusWizard]

If you haven't already, you ought to give the SCANsat mod a try:

...but yeah, I'd really like to see something like this in stock.

[Nich]

agree

[Snark]

Also, note that this:

On 2/28/2016 at 6:19 PM, Radav said:

Maybe also a "current biome" part like the surface scanning module is for ore.

...is actually part of the stock game.  The surface scanning module tells you what biome you're over.  Even if you're in orbit.  (You have to be down on the surface to use it for ore, but just "what biome am I over" works from high up.)

[bewing]

Of course, the gravioli detector also tells you the biome you're over. I often pretend that my first kerbonauts to a new celestial body put a gravioli detector on autoscan mode (they always have one on the ship) to map all the biomes they pass over -- and then I pretend the "show biomes in map" cheat is the map they made.