Kerbnet questions.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

So I was going anomaly hunting on Kerbin and starting using Kerbnet seriously for the first time.

I have some questions I can't seem to find answers to. For starters the anomaly detection percentage chance; what exactly does that mean? When does it proc? Once per orbit? Every time I hit refresh? Once per anomaly?

Also the Rovemate, seriously what's up with this thing? Says scans are enhanced while landed, but they are so "enhanced" it's far too zoomed out even on the narrowest setting, and on the highest FOV the entire planet is like a little speck, what gives? Is this supposed to be useful while roving lol...cause it isn't. It also claims a 100% anomaly detection chance but I've literally parked it right next to one and there is no ? on the map even though my orbital satellite spotted the ? with like a 15% chance.

If I sound a touch annoyed; I am. This shouldn't be so complicated, I know exactly where the temple in the desert is from memory yet I still can't see a ? there no matter how many times I orbit over it and spam refresh. Am I doing something wrong here or is the whole Kerbnet thing half-baked and unfinished?

EDIT: So I sort of figured out one of my problems, the FOV on the Rovemate isn't as bad as I thought, just misleading the way it displays. Also while doing some testing I noticed that the ? for the KSC monolith is like way over by the crawlerway...is this normal? Is this why it's so hard to find the actual anomaly on the ground? Because the ?'s are way off?

Edited October 21, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[bewing]

The ?'s are meant to be approximate, yes. They can be up to 2km off.

The percentage chance is per day. Each Kerbin day  (at 0:00:00), the list of "seeable" anomalies updates.

 

Edited October 22, 2017 by bewing

[Rocket In My Pocket]

3 hours ago, bewing said:

The ?'s are meant to be approximate, yes. They can be up to 2km off.

The percentage chance is per day. Each Kerbin day  (at 0:00:00), the list of "seeable" anomalies updates.

 

Thanks!

Answers my questions completely.

You're the best @bewing

Edited October 22, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[OHara]

ScanSat marks the anomaly locations precisely, except for those that are part of a group of structures.  The mark for a group of structures is at the center the group.  ScanSat uses data from the game, so I would expect KerbNet intends to show anomalies precisely as well.

The few times I have used KerbNet, it showed the '?' within 50m of what I would consider the center of the anomaly, except all of KSC was one anomaly centered on the crawlerway.

Beware the KerbNet bugs with large field-of-view.  The '?' is projected wrongly, so as you approach an anomaly, the '?' on KerbNet approaches you, until you and the '?' meet at the anomaly.

For what you are starting to do, the mod ScanSat seems worth installing.  Instead of watching for anomalies that may or may not appear, with a roll-of-the dice once each day, you put a scan-satellite into an orbit that eventually sweeps the planet.

Edited October 23, 2017 by OHara

[Rocket In My Pocket]

6 hours ago, OHara said:

ScanSat marks the anomaly locations precisely, except for those that are part of a group of structures.  The mark for a group of structures is at the center the group.  ScanSat uses data from the game, so I would expect KerbNet intends to show anomalies precisely as well.

The few times I have used KerbNet, it showed the '?' within 50m of what I would consider the center of the anomaly, except all of KSC was one anomaly centered on the crawlerway.

Beware the KerbNet bugs with large field-of-view.  The '?' is projected wrongly, so as you approach an anomaly, the '?' on KerbNet approaches you, until you and the '?' meet at the anomaly.

For what you are starting to do, the mod ScanSat seems worth installing.  Instead of watching for anomalies that may or may not appear, with a roll-of-the dice once each day, you put a scan-satellite into an orbit that eventually sweeps the planet.

Appreciate the mod suggestion, but I try to steer clear of gameplay changing mods.

I think I'll continue to struggle with stock Kerbnet for the time being.

Thank you again though.

[OHara]

On 10/23/2017 at 4:34 AM, Rocket In My Pocket said:

stock Kerbnet

I suggest that you post here to tell people what works and what doesn't, and what you liked about it.

Few people post about KerbNet here, so this thread is likely to come up if new players search for information.  I suspect that no-one has used KerbNet to accomplish anything, or there would be more mention of the bugs:

Spoiler

Terrain and biomes are projected onto the sphere at mean sea level (or the zero-altitude reference sphere) and the KerbNet screen shows its specified angular field of view from the craft onto that sphere. So on the ground on terrain at 4000 meters MSL a 90° scanner sees a map 8-km wide (bug 12997).  
Anomalies have a position in 3D space, typically 20-ish meters below the terrain, and KerbNet screen shows those as they would appear in the specified angular field of view.  So an anomaly on terrain at 4000 meters MSL, seen from a craft flying 100 meters above the terrain, is within a 90° view only when we are within 100 meters of the anomaly.  This is confusing when seen over the 8km wide map view (bug 14103).

The Kerbnet window sometimes steals keyboard focus, causing trouble when flying aircraft with the keyboard.

The default orientation of the map points the orbital velocity up, which means that the map for ground-based scanners has East pointed up, because of the rotation of the planet.  Flying westbound on Kerbin, at airspeed near the 175-m/s rotational speed of the planet, means the orbital speed fluctuates near zero with wildly varying direction, so the Kerbnet map rotates wildly.  (Orienting so that up on the KerbNet map is the direction of the craft's velocity relative to the (extended) surface -- like surface mode in the navball or KER's horizontal velocity -- would be better, even for KerbNet on a satellite.)  There is  setting in the menu accessible from the start screen to have the maps oriented with North up.

KerbNet requires a live connection to KSC in order to display.  We might imagine that raw telemetry data is sent to KSC for processing to generate the terrain/biome/anomaly maps which are sent back to the craft.  However, KSC does not store any record of what was seen.  Why did we communicate with KSC if they forgot what we sent?

 

Edited October 26, 2017 by OHara

[Rocket In My Pocket]

13 minutes ago, OHara said:

I suggest that you post here to tell people what works and what doesn't, and what you liked about it.

Well so far my only tip is to set up a dedicated Kerbnet satellite in a polar orbit, far enough out that you can see the entirety of Kerbin at max FOV. (400k AP/PE for the OKTO2 btw.) Then time warp and spam refresh, set waypoints on any ? that appear. (Zoom in the FOV if possible to narrow down the waypoint location.) Then send a rover with a Rovemate in a plane to go investigate the area and narrow down the location. Fortunately most of the Easter Eggs are pretty large so you should see them visually as you fly about if nothing else.

Some ideas I've had but not tested yet:

-Multiple Kerbnet sats for repeated proccing of the anomaly detection chance?

-Multiple probe cores on one sat. (Would each core get it's own proc chance?)

-A Rovemate on the Kerbnet sat. (Even with limited FOV, the 100% detection chance could be useful, assuming it still works when not landed?)

Some annoyances:

-Kerbnet doesn't remove the ? of Easter Eggs I've visited, causing me to have to constantly check the map to verify if I've already been there.

-The auto refresh feature is terrible, doesn't scale while time-warping, and isn't fast enough even on the red setting forcing me to spam-click refresh manually like I'm playing a Mario Party mini game.

Thanks for the info in the spoiler btw, I'm wrapping up the Kerbin easter eggs and moving on to the Mun soon, so we'll see if that's any easier or harder.

[OHara]

3 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

-Multiple Kerbnet sats for repeated proccing of the anomaly detection chance?

-Multiple probe cores on one sat. (Would each core get it's own proc chance?)

Only if you include multiple types of probes.

I remember you said you were avoiding game-play-changing modifications, but if anyone else wants to play by different rules, a more direct way to increase the detection rate is with a Module-Manager patch: 

Spoiler

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleKerbNetAccess]]
{
    @MODULE[ModuleKerbNetAccess]
    {
        %AnomalyDetection = 1.0
    }
}

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

12 minutes ago, OHara said:

Only if you include multiple types of probes.

I remember you said you were avoiding game-play-changing modifications, but if anyone else wants to play by different rules, a more direct way to increase the detection rate is with a Module-Manager patch: 

  Reveal hidden contents

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleKerbNetAccess]]
{
    @MODULE[ModuleKerbNetAccess]
    {
        %AnomalyDetection = 1.0
    }
}

 

Great info, thanks!

[FancyMouse]

19 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Well so far my only tip is to set up a dedicated Kerbnet satellite in a polar orbit, far enough out that you can see the entirety of Kerbin at max FOV. (400k AP/PE for the OKTO2 btw.) Then time warp and spam refresh, set waypoints on any ? that appear. (Zoom in the FOV if possible to narrow down the waypoint location.) Then send a rover with a Rovemate in a plane to go investigate the area and narrow down the location. Fortunately most of the Easter Eggs are pretty large so you should see them visually as you fly about if nothing else.

Some ideas I've had but not tested yet:

-Multiple Kerbnet sats for repeated proccing of the anomaly detection chance?

-Multiple probe cores on one sat. (Would each core get it's own proc chance?)

-A Rovemate on the Kerbnet sat. (Even with limited FOV, the 100% detection chance could be useful, assuming it still works when not landed?)

Some annoyances:

-Kerbnet doesn't remove the ? of Easter Eggs I've visited, causing me to have to constantly check the map to verify if I've already been there.

-The auto refresh feature is terrible, doesn't scale while time-warping, and isn't fast enough even on the red setting forcing me to spam-click refresh manually like I'm playing a Mario Party mini game.

Thanks for the info in the spoiler btw, I'm wrapping up the Kerbin easter eggs and moving on to the Mun soon, so we'll see if that's any easier or harder.

From my experience, I like putting a RoveMate into orbit, and show entire Kerbin at max FoV. I confirm it works. This way I know I'm not missing any anomalies, so I just need to cover all the surface areas.

Removing ? is easy. You just plant flags for all visited anomaly (don't tell me you don't plant flags!). Then you add waypoints from KerbNet (you always do this regardless of flags) and if it overlaps with a flag, you can delete the waypoint and not plan for going there (again). This issue doesn't turn out to be a big annoyance to me after I use this method.

Auto refreshing is ok. Doing it in orbit is meaningless, because even if you don't use RoveMate, the dice is rethrown each game day, so you don't gain anything by refreshing more frequently. If you're flying low or driving you can't warp anyway.

Some existing easter eggs you don't even need KerbNet - their coordinates are fixed and you could just directly go there. But when you start hunting for the green monolith, which is one per body, and RANDOM per save, that's when you prove whether your method is working or not.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

2 hours ago, FancyMouse said:

From my experience, I like putting a RoveMate into orbit, and show entire Kerbin at max FoV. I confirm it works. This way I know I'm not missing any anomalies, so I just need to cover all the surface areas.

Removing ? is easy. You just plant flags for all visited anomaly (don't tell me you don't plant flags!). Then you add waypoints from KerbNet (you always do this regardless of flags) and if it overlaps with a flag, you can delete the waypoint and not plan for going there (again). This issue doesn't turn out to be a big annoyance to me after I use this method.

Auto refreshing is ok. Doing it in orbit is meaningless, because even if you don't use RoveMate, the dice is rethrown each game day, so you don't gain anything by refreshing more frequently. If you're flying low or driving you can't warp anyway.

Some existing easter eggs you don't even need KerbNet - their coordinates are fixed and you could just directly go there. But when you start hunting for the green monolith, which is one per body, and RANDOM per save, that's when you prove whether your method is working or not.

Yeah I've planted flags but it's still a pita. I mean the game obviously recognizes when I've discovered an Easter Egg with a world first achievement, can't be that hard to remove the ? at the same time or atleast offer me the option/ability to do so myself.

I think you may be misunderstand the auto-refresh thing, I'm time-warping and the 3.5 second auto refresh speed goes by real time, not game time so by the time it updates, I'm half way around my orbit again and I've missed a large swath of land.

Yes, I'm aware I could just look up the Easter Egg locations on the wiki and go find them, I've actually already done that before, long ago. My goal here was to use the KerbNet system to find them as if I was a completely new player with no prior knowledge of them.

Thanks for your input!

[bewing]

So don't timewarp so fast.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

18 hours ago, bewing said:

So don't timewarp so fast.

Me: "Dr. it hurts when I do this!"

Dr.: "...so don't do it?!"

Lol...thanks for the hot tip @bewing.

My point was more so about usability/comfort. No reasonable player wants to stare at a satellite making entire days of orbits in real time on the off chance an anomaly pops up. The refresh rate needs more options, or it should scale with timewarp. As it is, you can either watch continents scroll by slowly for eons or spam the refresh key like your Michael J Fox on a parkinson's fit. (Has it been long enough for this to be funny? God I hope so...) I don't see either option as very user friendly. It's almost like Squad slapped the Kerbnet into the game and didn't really think anyone would ever use it. (This is also self evident from the lack of questions/conversation about Kerbnet around here and on the Steam forums since it's release.) I'm beginning to think they felt like they had to have a stock version of Scansat but didn't have any confidence that their version would be competitive in any way and therefore kind'ave half-arsed it. I mean there isn't even a map or view mode where I can see my accumulated scan data on a planet...which seems like a really obvious feature to miss, making the whole thing come off as very unfinished and rushed to me. I usually make a point of defending Squad and the stock game, but this is one case where I can't say that I'm really impressed by their efforts. Hopefully more additions/fixes/tweaks are coming for Kerbnet in the future and it wasn't just plopped into the game and abandoned.

Edited October 27, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[bewing]

On the other hand, most mods are totally overpowered and are about making the game trivially easy. So for a stock version, a balance must be struck. KerbNet is not a tool for finding all the anomalies on a CB in 6.5 minutes of realtime, once you are in orbit. Basically, you are supposed to look at it once. Mark any anomalies. Go away and fly other stuff for awhile. Come back, mark any new anomalies. Go and visit one or two of them. Go away and fly other stuff for awhile, and repeat.

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

1 hour ago, bewing said:

Basically, you are supposed to look at it once. Mark any anomalies. Go away and fly other stuff for awhile. Come back, mark any new anomalies. Go and visit one or two of them. Go away and fly other stuff for awhile, and repeat.

Well, if that's the intent then they nailed it. That's exactly the approach I've had to adopt for my own sanity lol.

Just wanted to say that I appreciate your thoughts/feedback despite being a little sour about Kerbnet in general at the moment.

Maybe I'll warm up to it after more use.

[GrouchyDevotee]

I see that the Enhanced Edition for PS4 console has included this newfangled "Kerb-Net", if it was there before I never noticed it.

I like the idea of having a mapping system that actually requires the player to wait until a pass has been made to reveal the details, but I'm not positive this is it.

I frankly have no idea what to currently do with it...