Suggestion award players for finding Easter Eggs

[Peder]

Dear Ksp players

I would like to suggest that when a player find what is common known as an Easter Egg in the game and plant a flag nearby, then the player should get rewarded with some cash and science.

I also like to suggest that the reward for the find should be different so that finding something in example ksp spaceport should only give a little reward, while finding something on other planets far far away should pay more money and science.

example, finding a monolit near the space center should give 5000 credits and 2science.
And finding something on example duna should give 50.000 and 20-50 science..
And finding some of the VERY difficult to find ( like magic boulder/asteroide ) should pay even more.
( well it is just an example ).

Anyway what do you guys think about the idea, vote or leave a comment

Edited April 5, 2016 by Peder

[KerikBalm]

They already do get rewarded... you don't even have to plant the flag. That started in 1.05...

[Skybird0]

Really?

6 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

They already do get rewarded... you don't even have to plant the flag. That started in 1.05...

 

[KerikBalm]

fly near an easter egg (the ones at KSC don't count) and you get a worlds first reward. So far I confirm it works for mun arches, the face on duna, and the rover cam on duna. I've heard it also works for the pyramids on kerbin, even the island airfield... I'm note sure about KSC 2... probably... probably the mun and polar saucers too, etc.

Its easy to test, go into a new career, and fly over to the island airfield.

[Wjolcz]

I'd rather if you could directly interact with them. Touch the monolith and zoom! You're now somewhere else in the solar system! 

Of course it shouldn't work with every monolith you encounter.

[Pthigrivi]

I do like that these are becoming part of the gameplay. I'm wondering though if at some point, maybe as part of a biome mapper, there wouldn't be some way to find them without looking them up online. They shouldn't be easy to see, but if you zoomed in and looked carefully in map mode you could spot a little blip on a biome overlay. 

Edited April 6, 2016 by Pthigrivi

[pandaman]

I agree with @Pthigrivi here, some stock way of being able to search for them should be included.  They should show up on one of the scanner tools or something.

[Monsterlunch]

Each Easter egg should have its own science biome perhaps with an increased science factor.

That would actually give me a reason to search for these places and go there, maybe even set up a base in their vicinity. Then we could not only do stuff like this:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4078/4925407844_f02bf781e3_z.jpg

but actually gain something from it!

 

[swjr-swis]

On 4/5/2016 at 7:57 PM, KerikBalm said:

So far I confirm it works for mun arches

Is it still working in 1.1pre? Just a few days ago on a test launch I landed my craft practically 'through' a munar arch, just because it popped up really close to my chosen landing spot. I don't remember any world first for the arch, even though I was checking for the other world firsts (in this case, orbit/walk on/get science from/escape Mun).

[James Kerman]

12 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I do like that these are becoming part of the gameplay. I'm wondering though if at some point, maybe as part of a biome mapper, there wouldn't be some way to find them without looking them up online. They shouldn't be easy to see, but if you zoomed in and looked carefully in map mode you could spot a little blip on a biome overlay. 

The Scansat mod does that with the biome scanner.

[katateochi]

I think anomaly specific biomes would be quite nice, but I also feel that the reward is just in finding them.  The problem with even adding specific biomes around them is that the game starts defining what they are and (depending on the messages you get about them) telling you more about them, rather than leaving them as something for you to invent your own reasons and backstory for.  Left as a completely undefined mystery they become talking points, in fact finding the Mun arch was the reason I first came to this forum.  If they become hot-spots for science or funds then they just become a farming route which I think would rather detract from them.

[Pthigrivi]

Yeah, its been a while but I've used scansat before and know it does biome mapping, which is huge. This for me falls into a territory of what could be a really valuable mission planning resource in general, even if easter eggs didn't show up. If for no other reason than to encourage players to send a probe first and gather a real visual idea of what was available so they could carefully plan a landing site for a crewed mission biome mapping would be a really great addition for stock. 

[swjr-swis]

I'd be happy just being able to see mentioned somewhere which easter eggs I found during a save - that'd be reward enough for me.

As a slight aside: I don't like how they removed the non-contract achievements off the completed contracts list in the R&D center (a change made with 1.0.5, I think - the ProgressTracking records of things like altitude/distance/speed/depth). I understand that they are not contracts per sé anymore, but the one-time notification is all we get now, and there is no in-game way to see those achievements anymore after deleting the notifications.

There should be a way to see achieved records in-game, in the same way/place as discovered easter eggs and other non-contract world-firsts.

[Pthigrivi]

4 minutes ago, katateochi said:

I think anomaly specific biomes would be quite nice, but I also feel that the reward is just in finding them.  The problem with even adding specific biomes around them is that the game starts defining what they are and (depending on the messages you get about them) telling you more about them, rather than leaving them as something for you to invent your own reasons and backstory for.  Left as a completely undefined mystery they become talking points, in fact finding the Mun arch was the reason I first came to this forum.  If they become hot-spots for science or funds then they just become a farming route which I think would rather detract from them.

Well, two things: a) I agree there's a certain mystique about them which is nice, and there's something to be said for leaving some things to the imagination and also driving players to go online and communicate about what they've found. At the same time the actual scale of the sites is so incredibly small compared to the world they exist in that many players might play for years and not find one beyond the island airfield. In this way unless you've gone online and seen pictures and looked them up on the wiki and found a way to guide yourself to some coordinates, all of which kind of removes you from the direct immersion in the game, the anomalies are basically statistically irrelevant. I think its fair to say if they were a more integral part of the game people would visit them more often, and would be just as likely if not more to go online and talk about them. 

Which brings me to b) Farming in this sense doesn't actually sound like a bad or distracting thing at all to me. The great thing about them having a real in-game value is that they become part of actual gameplay, and not just "oh neat" scenery. There becomes a specific reason and incentive to carefully pick a landing site and do precision landings rather than just plop down anywhere. To me the current easter eggs are neat and fun but I'd love to see that system expanded and given a new layer in which some become more common and serious, like active geological formations or signs of life. Being able to map them, even if it was just a little red speck on an overlay, would stir players to say "Oh whats that?" and create new opportunities for exploration without having to close or minimize the game and open up a browser. To me it does nothing to spoil the surprise of what they find when they get there, it only gives them a vehicle to explore and increases the odds that it happens on its own.

Here's just a goofy real life example, check out this map:

If you look closely up at northern Quebec you'll see a small, round, green circle in a lake. I saw this map years ago and thought, wtf is that?? So I did some research and found out this exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manicouagan_Reservoir. Its a meteor impact crater that forms the fifth largest reservoir in the world, and powers half of quebec and New England. About a year later some friends of mine loaded up some canoes and had one of the best camping trips of my life. Have you ever seen a shatter cone the size of a house? They're dope. 
 

[KerikBalm]

6 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

Is it still working in 1.1pre? Just a few days ago on a test launch I landed my craft practically 'through' a munar arch, just because it popped up really close to my chosen landing spot. I don't remember any world first for the arch, even though I was checking for the other world firsts (in this case, orbit/walk on/get science from/escape Mun).

Was it sandbox? did you perhaps already find that mun arch? you should get a little notification in career like a worlds first contract.

-Though I'm still on 1.05, I know it works on 1.05

Edited April 7, 2016 by KerikBalm

[Mr. Scruffy]

About detection of the anamolies:

What if one led to the other? Like start with the monolith close to the KSC. Get close enough to discover, that it is ´full of stars´, or, in this case, a picture of what might well be some location on the mun, featuring a strange geological formation (an arch), with the sun and kerbin in close alignment behind it (indicating it being at the equator). When you go there, and step in front of it with a kerbal, it triggers some sort of holo-emitters on its inside, displaying the clue to the next anomaly. Go there, search its vicinity closely, and you find the clue to the next one, say that odd signal on duna, along with a device you need to decode/detect it, for the next clue after that. And so forth, until, at the end, you arrive at kerbal walhalla, where all the dead kerbals go.

No text (or very very little of it), no explainations (or aliens), still goose-bump mystery, yet meaningful and connected and pretty hard to complete, so that even if you look for a walkthrough for it on the webs, it still remains a challange that will require the normal player to employ some late-game techs and serious amounts of skill.

Like say, once you find Kerbal Heaven (or the Kolymp - or whatever you want to call it), you can pick up and thus revive the deceased kerbonauts, but it only opens for kerbals, so a probe will find nothing there. But the game only gives you a very vague clue that this is so, if any at all. In any case: In order to make ´use´ of it, you need to send a vessel capable of carrying at least two kerbals (unless you want to sacrifice one for another). Also, it would require you to bring some sort of equipment that you can only get at one of the other sites, so that just knowing the location will not do. Maybe some sites could be skipable (like the monolith close to the KSC - you could just go straight to the arch, if you know where to find it, or stumble across it, by accident), but some should be mandatory (working like keys, pretty much), if you want to complete this ´quest´. This could be tied into the contract system, too, at least to get you started ("We found this monolith close to the KSC, X km in the direction of Y - go there to investigate!").

I´d really love the game to have such a ´storyline´. So here´s a related question: Are there any mods that do this? Should there be special mod-support for stuff like this, so that people can more or less easily design their own storylines and maybe distribute them as some sort of scenario? I think a ´scenario-editor´ allowing you to place anomalies along with some content for them (pictures, key-devices, trigger conditions etc.) would be totally rad and we´d end up with a bunch of costum made space operas (2001/10 style) set within the game-frame in no time.

Edited April 7, 2016 by Mr. Scruffy

[swjr-swis]

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Was it sandbox? did you perhaps already find that mun arch? you should get a little notification in career like a worlds first contract.

No, my testing of 1.1pre is all in a career game, since that is the game mode I use almost exclusively, and I want to test everything that comes along with it. I had not been to the Mun at all yet in that save.

I checked the ProgressTracking entries in the savefile; no mention of an anomaly or arch or anything sounding like it in the Mun section.

I guess I need to try this again and check.

[monstah]

3 hours ago, Mr. Scruffy said:

About detection of the anamolies:

What if one led to the other? Like start with the monolith close to the KSC. Get close enough to discover, that it is ´full of stars´, or, in this case, a picture of what might well be some location on the mun, featuring a strange geological formation (an arch), with the sun and kerbin in close alignment behind it (indicating it being at the equator). When you go there, and step in front of it with a kerbal, it triggers some sort of holo-emitters on its inside, displaying the clue to the next anomaly. Go there, search its vicinity closely, and you find the clue to the next one, say that odd signal on duna, along with a device you need to decode/detect it, for the next clue after that. And so forth, until, at the end, you arrive at kerbal walhalla, where all the dead kerbals go.

No text (or very very little of it), no explainations (or aliens), still goose-bump mystery, yet meaningful and connected and pretty hard to complete, so that even if you look for a walkthrough for it on the webs, it still remains a challange that will require the normal player to employ some late-game techs and serious amounts of skill.

Like say, once you find Kerbal Heaven (or the Kolymp - or whatever you want to call it), you can pick up and thus revive the deceased kerbonauts, but it only opens for kerbals, so a probe will find nothing there. But the game only gives you a very vague clue that this is so, if any at all. In any case: In order to make ´use´ of it, you need to send a vessel capable of carrying at least two kerbals (unless you want to sacrifice one for another). Also, it would require you to bring some sort of equipment that you can only get at one of the other sites, so that just knowing the location will not do. Maybe some sites could be skipable (like the monolith close to the KSC - you could just go straight to the arch, if you know where to find it, or stumble across it, by accident), but some should be mandatory (working like keys, pretty much), if you want to complete this ´quest´. This could be tied into the contract system, too, at least to get you started ("We found this monolith close to the KSC, X km in the direction of Y - go there to investigate!").

I´d really love the game to have such a ´storyline´. So here´s a related question: Are there any mods that do this? Should there be special mod-support for stuff like this, so that people can more or less easily design their own storylines and maybe distribute them as some sort of scenario? I think a ´scenario-editor´ allowing you to place anomalies along with some content for them (pictures, key-devices, trigger conditions etc.) would be totally rad and we´d end up with a bunch of costum made space operas (2001/10 style) set within the game-frame in no time.

I was thinking the same, but with written messages instead. You know, you get some when you get near them, just like science reports? They could be indicative of other easter eggs ("It seems this monolyth is emitting a radio signal. Scientists tell us it's receiving point must be close to the Mun's equator, on the visible side.")

[Mister Dilsby]

On 4/5/2016 at 6:01 PM, Veeltch said:

I'd rather if you could directly interact with them. Touch the monolith and zoom! You're now somewhere else in the solar system! 

Or in someone else's solar system.

[max_creative]

That would be interesting. If you can build a plane and fly to the island airport you would get a nice starting reward. Also the ksc monolith. That would be interesting because it's near the runway so someone who plants a flag near the runway would get money and rep.

[KerikBalm]

Curiosity Rover cam rewarD

Edited April 7, 2016 by KerikBalm