Better Science Readouts

[spacebrick3]

Many, many times when reading a science report from a part or Kerbal, all you will get is "You observe the X", or "You've recorded your observations about the situation". These science readouts are irritating, as they give no information on the subject matter and become repetitive. I don't feel that it would be that hard to simply add new ones for those situations, and it would make some readouts more fun to get. What do you think?

[Chakat Firepaw]

That sort of thing would take quite a bit of work, so I'd suggest making it a mod and crowd sourcing the science entries.

Now, I wouldn't mind Squad occasionally 'mining' the mod to get content to replace the existing "you observe..." placeholder science reports.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Chakat Firepaw said:

That sort of thing would take quite a bit of work, so I'd suggest making it a mod and crowd sourcing the science entries.

Now, I wouldn't mind Squad occasionally 'mining' the mod to get content to replace the existing "you observe..." placeholder science reports.

+1 to this.  It's incredibly draining when you realize just how many different science reports you need, if you want full coverage.  It's not just a question of "I need to do 100 things" and then grind through them-- that just takes patience.  It's also that every one of them has to be new and different or there's no point.  Each one has to be something clever... and relevant... and not too stupid-sounding... and occasionally humorous... and in keeping with the "Kerbal way" of describing things.

I say this as the author of a couple of mods that add biomes:

...I went into the project all enthusiastic and virtuous, thinking "I'm going to cover every description for every situation for every science instrument for every biome!"  It was a rude awakening.  The first few were okay, but when you're on the Nth description and it has to be new and different from all the others, it's a lot harder than you might think.

(The Eve case was particularly so, because not only was I adding new biomes, but I also wanted to add distinctive science-result text to more of the original stock biomes on Eve.  So there was a lot to do, because stock Eve comes with very little in the way of custom messages already set up.  It's pretty generic.)

I fairly quickly abandoned the ambition of providing total coverage, and finally just settled for adding a very high coverage rate to the few biomes I was adding, and a partial improvement on Eve biomes without trying to cover everything.

Really glad to hear that DuoDex is leading the crowdsourced thing-- I suspect that's the best way to go.  If it's too soul-destroying for one brain, throw a lot of brains at it.

[KerikBalm]

I just modded a new planet... with 10 biomes... I thought about giving it custom flavor text for the science... but I abandoned that idea... because... effort.

First try and give me flavor text for all the science for my planet that is #1) not repetitive and #2) not innaccurate or scientifically ridiculous

If you can do that for 1 planet with 10 biomes, maybe then your suggestion is worthwhile for the kerbol system (7 planets 9 moons)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l2tpz7rx0leyac7/MicromusWIP.zip?dl=0

Its got a lot more going on than say... gilly, dres, or bop, should be easy!

Remember:

Crew reports (space high/ low flying high/low, surface)

EVA reports (space high/ low flying high/low, surface, for 10 biomes)

Surface samples (10 biomes)

grav detector (space high/ low, surface, for 10 biomes)

barometer (flying high/low, surface, for 10 biomes + space high/ low)

seismometer (surface, for 10 biomes )

temperature (flying high/low, surface, for 10 biomes + space high/ low)

atmospheric sensor (flying high/low, surface, for 10 biomes)

goo (flying high/low, surface, for 10 biomes + space high/ low)

mat bays (flying high/low, surface, for 10 biomes + space high/ low)

Its quite a task.... for 1 planet... stock has 7 planets and 9 moons... so... yea

 

 

 

[Snark]

...Micromus geography sure looks an awful lot like another red planet I've seen somewhere...