Kerbin's biomes <!>

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm going science-hunting on Kerbin and built a jet to get to something beyond the KSC area.  I launched, turned around and overflew a bit of tundra.  KSC is basically on the equator, how did I find tundra a few km north of it???  It's also only a little patch.  The ground looked flat, I wasn't looking at something on a mountaintop.

[nosirrbro]

I think that I've seen this too, just some bug with part of the biomes.

Also, just a note, KSC is exactly on the equator.

[FullMetalMachinist]

Yep, this is a known bug (exploit?).  

It's also worth noting that each KSC building is it's own biome. Many people use rovers early in career games to drive around KSC gobbling up all the science from each building's biome. And it's not just being on the ground near each building, but there is also another biome when your rover is touching each building that gives another set of science results.  Not just the buildings either, the flag pole is one, I think the level 2 tracking station radar domes are one, and there's probably a few others that I can't remember. 

If you want to spend the time doing it, that's a great way to get lots of science early on. Personally, I don't have the free time to dedicate to that. I'd rather do a quick land-and-return mission to the Mun.

[mdkendall]

My understanding is that internal to the game a planet's biomes are represented by an image map. Different colours represent different biomes. The game decides which biome you are in my looking up your position on the map and seeing what colour that pixel is. At the boundaries between biomes, where one colour gives way to another, there can sometimes be a small fringe of an intermediate colour on the map. That is why there appears, in certain areas, to be a small fringe of tundra biome between the KSC and grasslands biomes. It happens elsewhere too.

Use this knowledge wisely. It's handy for science.

[Loren Pechtel]

6 minutes ago, mdkendall said:

My understanding is that internal to the game a planet's biomes are represented by an image map. Different colours represent different biomes. The game decides which biome you are in my looking up your position on the map and seeing what colour that pixel is. At the boundaries between biomes, where one colour gives way to another, there can sometimes be a small fringe of an intermediate colour on the map. That is why there appears, in certain areas, to be a small fringe of tundra biome between the KSC and grasslands biomes. It happens elsewhere too.

Use this knowledge wisely. It's handy for science.

 

8 minutes ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

Yep, this is a known bug (exploit?).  

It's also worth noting that each KSC building is it's own biome. Many people use rovers early in career games to drive around KSC gobbling up all the science from each building's biome. And it's not just being on the ground near each building, but there is also another biome when your rover is touching each building that gives another set of science results.  Not just the buildings either, the flag pole is one, I think the level 2 tracking station radar domes are one, and there's probably a few others that I can't remember. 

If you want to spend the time doing it, that's a great way to get lots of science early on. Personally, I don't have the free time to dedicate to that. I'd rather do a quick land-and-return mission to the Mun.

 

7 minutes ago, mdkendall said:

My understanding is that internal to the game a planet's biomes are represented by an image map. Different colours represent different biomes. The game decides which biome you are in my looking up your position on the map and seeing what colour that pixel is. At the boundaries between biomes, where one colour gives way to another, there can sometimes be a small fringe of an intermediate colour on the map. That is why there appears, in certain areas, to be a small fringe of tundra biome between the KSC and grasslands biomes. It happens elsewhere too.

Use this knowledge wisely. It's handy for science.

I definitely have used the rover to gather science bit.  It's much easier to land on the moons when you have mechjeb to do the docking.  I don't know about the internals about biomes, but calling up the Scansat data at high zoom I find there's a little blob of tundra between the shore and grassland within a few miles of KSC.  There's also another blob somewhere even closer (I drove over it) that I'm not seeing on the map.  The bit of tundra is so small that trying to fly a jet to it isn't feasible but it's so close that driving it there is.  The battery-powered rover I used for the last round of KSC science gathering.

And I didn't even need to go there--I drove over a patch slowly enough that I could stop when I was about 1/3 of the way to it.

[Archgeek]

I'm pretty sure the KSC science bonanza is there as a tertiary resource.  Primary science income comes from your base progression (orbital/surface planetary science, explore contracts), secondary science fills the gaps while major missons are on route with kerbin/mun/minmus biome-hopping and and the trickle you get from various lesser contracts), the KSC science, meanwhile, is extraordinarily well-suited to handle those vexing "almost but not quite" moments, when you're just shy of unlocking a tech you want for your next step.  After all, why send a new ship to the mun without that new engine when you can scrape a bit of crud off the water tower to unlock it first?

[Fearless Son]

What @Archgeek said.  While the various buildings around KSC are different biomes and can thus get you a lot of collective science, the science multiplier for Kerbin itself is pretty low and you quickly exhaust the combinations there once unlocking a new scientific instrument.  This certainly makes it great for the early game, but once you get further down the tech tree the science requirements for each new node get too expensive for it to be really effective, except for getting just that last little bit of science that you need.  

On the other hand, it is easy science, a great way to test out newly unlocked instrumentation, and it helps get you enough science to unlock some of the lower nodes you might have skipped in favor of higher priority nodes deeper in the tree.  

[bewing]

"Tundra" in KSP also includes beach grass. You will find spots of it all over Kerbin, mixed in with the "shores" biome. It's not a bug or exploit. There are two patches of it at a heading of about 300 degrees from the beginning of the runway, starting at about 700 meters out. There are also other patches across the bay, north of KSC.

If you harvest all the kerbin biomes with every science activity, it comes to over 500 experimental results, and over 1700 points of science. It's not that hard to do, either. It just takes several hours at the beginning of the game and a lot of clicking. I do it at the beginnings of all my games. It gets you far enough in the tech tree to make it a lot easier to get a drill to Minmus, for example.

 

 

[Loren Pechtel]

14 minutes ago, bewing said:

"Tundra" in KSP also includes beach grass. You will find spots of it all over Kerbin, mixed in with the "shores" biome. It's not a bug or exploit. There are two patches of it at a heading of about 300 degrees from the beginning of the runway, starting at about 700 meters out. There are also other patches across the bay, north of KSC.

If you harvest all the kerbin biomes with every science activity, it comes to over 500 experimental results, and over 1700 points of science. It's not that hard to do, either. It just takes several hours at the beginning of the game and a lot of clicking. I do it at the beginnings of all my games. It gets you far enough in the tech tree to make it a lot easier to get a drill to Minmus, for example.

 

 

Aha, that makes sense--the patches I found make sense for beach grass.

As for the number of clicks, there are some science mods that pretty much get rid of the clicking.  I play games for the things that make you think, not for mindless clicking.  This evening I'm sending out my first lander--and it will have everything but the gravioli detector.

1 hour ago, Fearless Son said:

What @Archgeek said.  While the various buildings around KSC are different biomes and can thus get you a lot of collective science, the science multiplier for Kerbin itself is pretty low and you quickly exhaust the combinations there once unlocking a new scientific instrument.  This certainly makes it great for the early game, but once you get further down the tech tree the science requirements for each new node get too expensive for it to be really effective, except for getting just that last little bit of science that you need.  

On the other hand, it is easy science, a great way to test out newly unlocked instrumentation, and it helps get you enough science to unlock some of the lower nodes you might have skipped in favor of higher priority nodes deeper in the tree.  

Yeah--you have to do a lot of unlocking to get all the science instruments to gather the science to do the unlocking.

[Notwal]

If you can be really careful about it, (meaning don't go overboard) just do a little quicksave file editing. However, this kind of ruins the fun of getting SSCIIIIEEEEEENCCEEE!!!!!! < (it only works if you say it out loud)

[FullMetalMachinist]

1 hour ago, Notwal said:

If you can be really careful about it, (meaning don't go overboard) just do a little quicksave file editing. However, this kind of ruins the fun of getting SSCIIIIEEEEEENCCEEE!!!!!! < (it only works if you say it out loud)

Are you suggesting editing the save file just to add some science points? If so, and if you're that desperate, there is a much easier way. Just hold Alt-F12 for a few seconds and cheat yourself some points. 

[Notwal]

1 minute ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

Are you suggesting editing the save file just to add some science points? If so, and if you're that desperate, there is a much easier way. Just hold Alt-F12 for a few seconds and cheat yourself some points. 

Honestly, if you think we're that stupid, please go post somewhere else.

[FullMetalMachinist]

1 minute ago, Notwal said:

Honestly, if you think we're that stupid, please go post somewhere else.

Well, there's no need to get prickly. I didn't imply that anyone is stupid. I was just trying to be helpful.

Editing the save file can be tricky if you're not careful. And if the end goal was some extra science points, there's a better/easier way to do it. 

[Xavven]

3 hours ago, Notwal said:

Honestly, if you think we're that stupid, please go post somewhere else.

This isn't an alt-f4 trick... that really is the debug menu. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Debug_Toolbar

[FullMetalMachinist]

4 hours ago, Xavven said:

This isn't an alt-f4 trick... that really is the debug menu. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Debug_Toolbar

Is that why he got disproportionately upset, he thought I was a troll trying to break his game? Huh. I was really curious about his reaction. That honestly never crossed my mind. Geez, you try and help a guy out...

And indeed Alt-F12 is the debug menu, but like I said earlier, you have to hold it for a few seconds to get the "give myself funds/rep/science" options. 

Edited March 9, 2016 by FullMetalMachinist

[Snark]

On 3/9/2016 at 4:36 PM, Notwal said:

Honestly, if you think we're that stupid, please go post somewhere else.

FYI, @Notwal, if you're fairly new here-- the KSP forums are pretty remarkable as internet forums go.  They're well-populated with incredibly friendly and helpful people.

I know that an awful lot of the internet (and gaming forums in particular) are populated by toxic jerks, so I can understand if you might have leaped to that conclusion.  However, KSP is different, and there's very little of the general jackassery that you get in a lot of other places.

So you can generally rely on advice you get in here as being given in good faith by someone who's honestly trying to be helpful.  (Especially if it's from someone like @FullMetalMachinist who has a fairly high ratio of "likes" to total posts, which you can see right under their avatar portrait over on the left side.  It means that they post a lot, and that fellow forum readers think highly of that person's posts.)

Edited March 10, 2016 by Snark

[The Optimist]

4 minutes ago, Snark said:

.  (Especially if it's from someone like @FullMetalMachinist who has a fairly high ratio of "likes" to total posts, which you can see right under their avatar portrait over on the left side.  It means that they post a lot, and that fellow forum readers think highly of that person's posts.)

That makes me kinda sad

[FullMetalMachinist]

1 hour ago, The Optimist said:

That makes me kinda sad

It's ok, it takes a lot more than that to hurt my feelings. 

I was really more confused by his response than anything else. No hard feelings @Notwal!

Now, I think this thread has strayed far enough from it's intent. Carry on, nothing to see here.