Science....need some!

[Broke dead dogg]

I only bought the game last week and have been playing in science mode but I'm having trouble earning science points.

I've done the mystery goo, and the science bay, plus crew reports and Eva reports but now I'm not earning any as the results are just duplicate. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[Reactordrone]

You need to head to different biomes. Science from the surface of Kerbin tends to be low value but you can land in different locations to recover crew reports, EVA reports and data from scientific instruments after a mission but you're going to have to start hitting biomes from the Mun and Minmus. Once in low orbit you can rack up a reasonable amount of science doing EVA reports over different biomes (polar orbits are very good for this).

It's a good idea to prioritise acquisition of more science instruments in the tech tree. 

[Broke dead dogg]

1 hour ago, Reactordrone said:

You need to head to different biomes. Science from the surface of Kerbin tends to be low value but you can land in different locations to recover crew reports, EVA reports and data from scientific instruments after a mission but you're going to have to start hitting biomes from the Mun and Minmus. Once in low orbit you can rack up a reasonable amount of science doing EVA reports over different biomes (polar orbits are very good for this).

It's a good idea to prioritise acquisition of more science instruments in the tech tree. 

That's all well and good, but how am I supposed to get to these biomes, if I can't unlock the tech needed?

[Snark]

38 minutes ago, Broke dead dogg said:

That's all well and good, but how am I supposed to get to these biomes, if I can't unlock the tech needed?

Yes, it's a challenge.   

What tech do you have currently unlocked?  Would help when giving specific advice (don't want to say "go do X" if X would involve tech that you don't have yet.)  A screenshot of your tech tree would help.

As @Reactordrone says, when picking science nodes, go for the science instruments first-- for example, you start with goo, and you get the materials bay almost immediately, but after that you should try to get the thermometer as soon as possible, and the barometer after that.

Make sure that you've squeezed out every last ounce of science from each biome you've visited, for each instrument.  Have you done "upper atmosphere"?  "flying"?  "landed"?  "splashed down"?  "low space"?  "high space"?  The crew report, EVA report, and temperature reading are per-biome while flying.  So, have you done "crew report landed at X" and "crew report while flying over X" for each biome you can get to?  For each biome you can get to, have you done "EVA report landed at X", "EVA report flying over X" (just standing on the ground and jumping can get you this), "EVA report from space low over X"?

How many different Kerbin biomes have you visited?  Shores, Grassland, Water, Highland, Mountains are all within pretty easy reach of KSC, even with very basic rockets that can't get to orbit.  Have you hit them all?

If you've unlocked the lowest tier of airplane parts, you can build a "poor man's rover" (use airplane gear, Mk1 cockpit, Juno engine) and putter around KSC.  Each building counts as a different "biome" where you can pick up science.

If you can manage to get to the Mun, even just a flyby, you can pick up quite a bit of science-- the Mun is worth a lot more science points than Kerbin.  However, I won't try to give advice on that until I've seen what tech you have-- not sure if the Mun is within your reach yet.

Another question is how your piloting is going.  There's a world of difference between efficient and inefficient piloting.  If you're new to KSP, it's possible that you're piloting your ships to space really inefficiently (without knowing it)-- if that's the case, it may be that revising your piloting would allow you to go a lot farther with the rockets you're already building, which in turn would put more stuff within reach for gathering science.  Here's a simple question you can answer that will help us gauge whether you're on the right track here, or not:  When you're launching a ship to orbit, what's your speed and your angle from the vertical when you're at 10 km?  It ought to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-400 m/s, and at about 45 degrees.  If it's much steeper or shallower than 45 degrees when you're at 10 km, that's a warning sign that your piloting may need some tweaking, in which case we can talk more about that. 

 

[Broke dead dogg]

Wow! Thanks snark, that's alot of info to get through, didn't realise you could do reports on the ground, I'll try the rover idea for defo, only need about 7 science to unlock the thermometer. Will share my tech tree when I get home but for now I'm on the 4th level with 4 options open

[capi3101]

Since you're in science mode, I'm a little hesitant to share this with you, but I'd use the advice @Streetwind gives here followed by the advice given by @Geschosskopf here. The advice is for career mode, but can easily be applied to science mode. Between the two you can have the tech tree cleaned out in relatively short order.

[Streetwind]

Slight disclaimer: early science gain has been reduced a bit since I made that post. You'll probably need an additional flight somewhere in there now before you can unlock the mentioned tech nodes. Additionally, the science income was augmented through contracts, which are not available in Science mode, so you need to make up for that with additional manual science collection as well. (Do milestone rewards show up in Science mode nowadays? I've never tried.)

Still, the basic advice remains the same: be aware of the concept of "situations", and make sure you've done each experiment in all situations that are currently available to you. A situation is a combination of flight altitude and biome, in the way that Snark already explained.

Also, as you may notice, there's a fairly high skill ceiling in both flying and building spacecraft. People have gone to the Mun with nothing but Flea boosters! All that tech you unlock? It doesn't really make impossible things possible, it just makes hard things easier And as a newcomer, your growth in skill of efficient rocketbuilding will determine the speed at which you progress through the game. So take a good, critical look at your designs, think hard about how to improve them, and hit up the ingame KSPedia to learn about some of the physics behind what is happening. You may not be able to see it just yet, but it will become more and more clear to you as the game progresses: being able to apply your knowledge of physics makes a large difference!

Edited September 2, 2016 by Streetwind

[Aegolius13]

There are also a lot of itty bitty special biomes around the KSC.  You can build a little car with electric wheels or a jet engine once you have the tech.  Or if you're very low in the tech tree, you can walk a kerbal around and take EVA reports and surface samples.

But it's putzy and low yield.  As soon as you can get to the moons, even for just. an orbit or flyby, you can get science at a much higher rate.

[DD_bwest]

a mission i always plan for my second launch consists of 4 material bays plus a goo can.

use the mat bays for the ksc, lower and higher atmosphere, and low space.

 and the goo can for when your in low space (cause launch 1 should have grabbed the goo cans for both lower and higher atmosphere)

eva and pull all the data and do an eva report. hop back in your pod to seperate it from everything and head back. oh and grab any crew reports and eva reports along the way ontop of those.

ill do this sub orbital cause the 3rd launch will go for orbit with an ap above 300km to get high orbit data.  itll have 1 mat bay n goo can for high orbit,  but also a minimum of 2 thermometer so that you can grab high and low atmosphere on the launch up then pull the data so you can grab them for in orbit.  plus ill eva above each biome you get from a low inclination orbit.