Science Labs in 1.1

[Fortunateson1969]

First off, 1.1 is amazing.  Running on my Linux box with a great GPU and finally I don't get hitching and silly lag (big space stations are my best friend and worst nightmare).  That being said, two questions:

1.) If I bring a piece of science (mystery goo from highlands on the mun...let's just pretend) to any MPL and select Process it in the Lab, what happens to that report in 1.1?  In 1.0.5, it would process it, then kick it back out to me for transport to another lab.  Does 1.1 do away with that and "destroy" the report when I process it?  The game seems to be doing that, but am I missing something?

2.) The amount of data you can store in an MPL is hugely increased in 1.1, but is the rate of science also crazy high now?  I thought I was hot excrements when I got my labs running up to 4.5 science/day and now they're at like...20 science/day.  

Bugs?  Features?  I'd like to figure this out so I can either jump to 1.1 or stay on 1.0.5 (with my wobbly, laggy main Kerbin station) until they get fixed.

 

THANKS!

[Stoney3K]

I believe it's a balancing decision. In the 1.0.5 lab mechanic, you could kick that report back around and ship it to a dozen labs so you can farm a crazy amount of science from that single piece of goo. In particular, it was possible to have a station with a lot of labs on there and feed them a single experiment, to mine hundreds of science points per day. There was no limit to that.

Now you can only 'mine' the science from that experiment once (although it may be possible to process it again in another lab if you go back and re-do the experiment), so you lose the data, but in return, the science payoff is greater.

It's just done to make science experiments more challenging instead of mining a lot of science points just by hauling a single goo canister to a dozen labs in the Kerbin system.

[Fortunateson1969]

6 minutes ago, Stoney3K said:

...so you lose the data, but in return, the science payoff is greater.

Okay-that certainly makes sense from a balancing POV.  I guess the terminology in the KSPedia was misleading a bit:
 

Quote

You can process your reports in the lab if there are scientists aboard your vessel.  They will slowly process the data into Science points (using lots of EC), before returning the report to you so you can deliver it to Kerbin.

I guess it's the report of the processed science?  Meaning the science you got from processing, not the report itself.  I guess.

Either way, thanks!  Makes the game more challenging but hey ya know, if I didn't want a challenge I would play something that doesn't involve orbital mechanics and rocket science...

[Kerbart]

8 minutes ago, Stoney3K said:

I believe it's a balancing decision. In the 1.0.5 lab mechanic, you could kick that report back around and ship it to a dozen labs so you can farm a crazy amount of science from that single piece of goo. In particular, it was possible to have a station with a lot of labs on there and feed them a single experiment, to mine hundreds of science points per day. There was no limit to that.

Theoretically no limit, but you'd need scientists to populate all those labs. That's a significant limit on that strategy. Still it's good that a potential loop hole was closed.

[Plusck]

The mechanic has fundamentally changed, yes.

9 hours ago, Fortunateson1969 said:

Okay-that certainly makes sense from a balancing POV.  I guess the terminology in the KSPedia was misleading a bit:
 

I guess it's the report of the processed science?  Meaning the science you got from processing, not the report itself.  I guess.

I would assume you're right.

Personally, I quite like the new system. It makes more sense within the game world, and counters some (most?) of the accusations of over-poweredness of the lab system.

It will also simplify my game: beforehand, I had to segregate reports carefully as they came up on landers so that what was "new" for the lab but "old" for KSC went to the lab, but "all-new" reports were distributed among the various command pods for return to KSC if someone was going home, but not all kept together so that homeward-bound reports were mostly fed to the lab by the time the return pod left... bascally a nightmare of excessive attempts at optimising my game ; )

It also seems that the time spent by the lab to process data is no longer essentially infinite: under the old system a minimal amount of data in the lab would take forever to generatee any points at all, but a full lab would produce tons.

[Streetwind]

10 hours ago, Fortunateson1969 said:

2.) The amount of data you can store in an MPL is hugely increased in 1.1, but is the rate of science also crazy high now?  I thought I was hot excrements when I got my labs running up to 4.5 science/day and now they're at like...20 science/day.  

The rate at which data is converted into science scales with the amount of data present in the lab. The more data there is, the faster it processes (this also means that as the lab slowly empties, it slows down).

Since you can now store more data, and the rate increase is not linear but rather exponential... yeah, if you fill it up all the way, that's a lot of science. But the lab's speedat 500 data now is probably not different from the lab's speed at 500 data in the past.

[Fortunateson1969]

6 hours ago, Streetwind said:

But the lab's speedat 500 data now is probably not different from the lab's speed at 500 data in the past.

Alas...if only that were the case.  Might be a bug.

I might give it a little bit on 1.1.  The improvements to overall performance, rovers, and the GUI are extremely alluring, but I'm running a x64 *nix build and it's shaky enough as is.  I'll let it equalize a bit (I mean, ffs, I am running a Titan X, i7-5960X and I get wonky performance stuff and crashes) and then I'll jump into it. 

I figured the Lab system was more like...a Lab or Institution on Earth being able to purchase Moon Rocks for experiments.  Instead it seems that those dang scientists get a little overzealous with the drill.  Eh-it's fine.  Looks like for every lab I set up I'll have to fly 'round the world and pick up science again.  Looks like my airplane corps just got useful again

Thanks everyone.

[klesh]

This is one part that has confused me since its inclusion in the throw them on space stations for looks, but I have never once actually used it to generate science. I send what I can from probes and return what I can to Kerbin. 

[Fortunateson1969]

1 hour ago, klesh said:

This is one part that has confused me since its inclusion in the throw them on space stations for looks, but I have never once actually used it to generate science. I send what I can from probes and return what I can to Kerbin. 

Not sure if you were looking for an answer to this question (if there even was one) but basically you can feed science reports into it and get more science (over a longer period of time) than you would get by just returning the science experiments to Kerbin.  It takes a bunch of electricity and 1-2 scientists, but that 10 Science mystery goo report from the launch pad can become a lot more Science if you give it to your science teams.  

It also gives scientists something to do.

[Wemb]

1 hour ago, Fortunateson1969 said:

Not sure if you were looking for an answer to this question (if there even was one) but basically you can feed science reports into it and get more science (over a longer period of time) than you would get by just returning the science experiments to Kerbin.  It takes a bunch of electricity and 1-2 scientists, but that 10 Science mystery goo report from the launch pad can become a lot more Science if you give it to your science teams.  

It also gives scientists something to do.

This is true, but I find the time taken to actuall process the data so slow, and for some reason, I object to cranking up the warp to high speed to generate science - therefore, since you can get enough science to max out the tech tree pretty easily with a few trips to Minmus, I've often not bothered. Or, if I have, I've filled up a science lab and then maxed out the tech tree before the lab has been close to finishing processing even a small portion of the on board science.

Some sort of requirement to deal with the science in the lab, or even, perhaps, different flavours of science data points could be used to more strongly encourage a science infrastructure - that lab, in most cases, is largely cosmetic.

Wemb

[John FX]

If we have to do individual experiments for labs then I`ll just make a lander with 20 of each experiment on it for all my now and future science labs then.