Science mode ... which percentage of science reward?

[Nich]

Main problem is the Jump from LKO to Mun landing is HUGE dv wise.  But the jump from Mun to Minimus is actually a step backwards dv wise.  Once you have landed on the Mun next target is Minimus although if you send your mun lander to Minimus you can farm every biome. 

I like to play with a 1 mission per body rule.   I am allowed to surface hop or even set up orbital stations but it all has to be in 1 go and come back before i start the next mission.

[Jacke]

1 hour ago, Nich said:

Main problem is the Jump from LKO to Mun landing is HUGE dv wise.  But the jump from Mun to Minimus is actually a step backwards dv wise.  Once you have landed on the Mun next target is Minimus although if you send your mun lander to Minimus you can farm every biome.

Once you have life support requirements for manned spacecraft and power requirements for all spacecraft, Minmus becomes harder than Mun.  Even with fast trajectories (like the free-return trajectory Apollo used for the Moon), a Mun landing-return mission will take at least 18+ hours, while a Minmus landing-return will be at least 50+ hours, requiring about 3 times as much life support and power.  With the earliest batteries, solar panels, and life support components, that will increase the mass of the spacecraft significantly.  And since it's usually better to go with fast trajectories to reduce that mass, the delta-V of a Minmus landing-return mission will be higher than that for Mun.

[FL-T400]

Another option for balanced science is historical progression tech tree; if you have a few other mods you can unlock most stock parts with 7000 science, but then wind up putting probes far and wide to unlock those last few parts.

[Kyrt Malthorn]

I routinely play with science at 40 percent returns.  This I find is the lowest I get away with without forcing lots of science on Kerbin.  I do build really simple rovers to collect the KSC science eventually.  Alternatively I sometimes do 30 percent and give myself some starting science (20 skips using flea hoppers the first couple missions and 40 makes suborbital science reachable on first mission).  I've considered using as low as 20 percent - at which point using the MPL gives you as much science as stock 100 percent - but take note that experiments from Kerbin rarely count for enough science points to even register in the MPL and get converted to 0 data.  These kind of losses make 30 percent the lowest I'll go.

 

I have this love-hate for the MPL.  I love it in that it gives new reasons to send bulky stuff far away places - I hate it making things too easy.  I'm in the boat with the slow progressors, to the point I'm tired of science mining the moons of Kerbin and I'm setting my sights on Duna, and I've barely unlocked gigantors and twinboars.  I think unlocked the MPL node mainly for the ladders.  For this playthrough I'm using USI-Life Support / permadeath mode and a trip to Duna is daunting enough.  I love it.

[mikegarrison]

IMO, the more career games you play, the more it seems like a grind to gather science. Landing on new biomes is fun ... the first time. But when you've been to the Mun hundreds of times already, then it's just not fun to have to land there three times in order to get enough science to unlock that part in the next node that you really want. The MPL is not perfect, but IMO it's much better than biome grinding.

Part of the problem is the lack of a really well-balanced life support system. In order to really get the most out of the lab you have to stay there for a long time. But if all you have to do is just timewarp, you might as well get all the free science as soon as you land the lab. However, if you have to manage your life support, maybe make repairs to things that go bad, etc., then that balances the lab. Infinite timewarping is not free anymore. But every life support mod I have tried is either too complicated or too simple.

And since I long ago visited every planet and moon in the system, these days what makes me play KSP again is because I want to try out some new mod or changes to the latest version. Not because I want to grind science in every biome.

I think the underlying history of the game being developed as a sandbox is obvious. Science and career seem just tacked on. The whole idea that you learn how to build new rocket parts by checking the temperature in a crater on the Mun is ridiculous. You should learn how to build new rocket parts by building older rocket parts. Rocket engineering should be something that comes with experience and/or that you pay cash to generate. Biome science should be something that you get cash for, not something that gives you rocket part design points.

What the game is really missing is a campaign mode with a good plotline.

Edited January 18, 2017 by mikegarrison

[crsing]

Well, last career I played with 30% science rewards (not using MPL)  and I found it not that challenging. Quite easy in fact.

I want something that would incentivize me to explore something more than Duna.

I entered this forum to see if there are people that played on 10% sci rewards and think that it is far too hard to try it because I currently assume that 20% is not that different from 30% but 10% would actually be next to impossible.

[W. Kerman]

I think because they're is so much science floating around, we just need something else to do with it.

(Not just converting them into funds.)

[MinimalMinmus]

The problem is that, to me, science is rather hard to get in the early game, but I am currently sciencing [snip] Kerbin's moons with little difficulty.

[MaxwellsDemon]

I'm playing my current campaign at 60%.

The real "governor" on things, though, is using Kerbal Construction Time.  With it, not only does it take time to build craft, it also takes time to research new technologies.  So you might have a ton of Science points built up but you can only get the new techs so quickly, and I made a decision not to use any KCT "upgrade" points to speed up research excepgt when I've actually upgraded the R&D facility, since it seems logical that an upgraded/enlarged facility can research techs faster.

Edited April 21, 2017 by MaxwellsDemon

[crsing]

Well...

I tried playing on 10% science rewards and I have to say that it's.. hard as hell.

The problem is that you can't get the early technology required to land on mun/minmus.

You need at least ~160 science to do it and if you don't have the willpower to science [snip] every biome of Kerbin you're done.

Tried using the administration building to yield science for every 6.8k space bucks but it seems that it's not enough(because you must have contracts worth at least ~30k bucks in order to get that 1 science point if you have lvl 1 administration building) .

I think that about 15% science rewards would have been the sweet spot.

[Foxster]

I like to set my own science play-through challenges. 

Like others, I don't use the lab. What's the point? You can just warp through the generation of data and max the tech tree. OK if it's your first play-through or you want to move on quickly for some reason. Otherwise you are just wasting fun-time. 

One particular science play-through I thoroughly enjoyed was that I ignored every body except Kerbin, the Sun and Eeloo. Making the leap from LKO to sun orbit and back can be fairly challenging but when your next destination is Eeloo then things get interesting.