Surface scanning module not working? (Always shows 0%)

[Blorgop]

I landed a wheeled rover on the surface of the Mun, and I have a Surface Scanning Module attached to the front of it. I landed in an area that my orbital scanner showed as being the richest area on the Mun, but I've been driving this thing around for an hour and it always shows "Ore [Surf]: 0%". I never saw any "Run Analysis" button appear. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong? I'm running KSP 1.3.1, Windows 10, if that makes any difference.

My location:

Screenshot of the rover (I know, it looks kind of silly):

 

[bewing]

The ore concentrations are specifically tied to the biomes. Each biome will have an average concentration, and if that concentration is not zero, it will have small random variations around that average.

Additionally, the orbital scanner smooths out the image of the ore concentrations.

Are you intimately familiar with the Mun's biomes? Look at that image, and tell me which biome is associated with that red area. Is your rover actually in that biome? No? Then you will not get the high ore concentration. You will get the ore concentration from the biome you are actually in. Which is zero.

 

[Kryxal]

From that screenshot, I'd say the red indicates Canyons and bled over far too much area...

[Blorgop]

Thanks. I think what was confusing me was the fact that the "Run Analysis" button never showed up (which the wiki said there would be). I guess it doesn't appear if the ore concentration is 0%.

[Geschosskopf]

14 hours ago, Blorgop said:

I landed a wheeled rover on the surface of the Mun, and I have a Surface Scanning Module attached to the front of it. I landed in an area that my orbital scanner showed as being the richest area on the Mun, but I've been driving this thing around for an hour and it always shows "Ore [Surf]: 0%". I never saw any "Run Analysis" button appear. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong? I'm running KSP 1.3.1, Windows 10, if that makes any difference.

Just so you understand, the "heat map" produced by the Orbital Scanner is, the words of its creator, "deliberately misleading".  In fact, it's so misleading I recommend using SCANsat instead of the stock scanning system.  But anyway, to help you understand what you're seeing, the stock system works like this:

• The object of the game is to learn which biomes have the best ore that's reasonably easily accessible.  Ore is hardwired so that biomes with the highest concentrations are the least accessible, such as poles and mountains, when you actually need it near the equator on flat terrain.  Thus, you usually have to settle for the biomes with the 3rd or 4th highest concentrations overall, because that's what you usually have on flat ground near the equator.
• Ore concentrations are tied to specific biomes, with some biomes having zero, some having a little, and some having a lot.  Discontiguous regions of the same biome have the same average ore concentration all over the planet.  In addition, within a single biome, the amount of ore varies from place to place with changes in terrain elevation, so that the highest and lowest spots within a given biome can have a few percent more or less ore than the biome's overall average.
• The Surface Scanner will tell you the exact amount of ore at the spot it's at (assuming there's any there at all).  By driving around a little, you can determine whether the ore increases as you go up or down hill.  Thus, you can learn whether you want to be on the highest or lowest points in this  biome.
• The Orbital Scanner's heat map, OTOH, is EXTREMELY low resolution spread over VERY large areas of surface.  These large areas usually cover portions of many different biomes, especially on Mun where there are more than a dozen different biomes in total.  Within these large areas, the color of the map is determined by averaging the ore values of all the biomes in the area, weighted by their percentage surface area of the big area.
• Because of this averaging, the surface scanner NEVER tells you the highest ore value on either the planet or the area of a "hot spot" on the heat map.  Instead, "hot spots" are much more likely to be large areas of mediocrity.  Meanwhile, small biomes of high ore surrounded by large areas of suckiness don't even appear as "hot spots" because all the suckage swamps the few bits of primo, so you have no idea they're even there.

In sum, the stock system requires you to do a huge amount of frustrating prospecting in areas you'll never really use simply to determine which biomes are actually useful, so you can then find areas of that same biome in a more convenient location.  And all this is further hindered by the lack of a biome map without using cheats.  Plus, of course, all prospecting based on the low-res heat map are doomed anyway, because this will likely lead you only to mediocre areas.

Far better is to use SCANsat.  Set it up so you have to scan the whole planet from polar orbit, same as mapping it.  Then you'll have both a biome map and an overlay of their average resource concentrations.  This won't show the fine-scale ore changes with elevation, but at least you know which biomes are good enough and where to find them.  Then you can drop rovers in those areas to determine which specific area is best to build a base on.

 

 

 

[Plusck]

6 hours ago, Blorgop said:

Thanks. I think what was confusing me was the fact that the "Run Analysis" button never showed up (which the wiki said there would be). I guess it doesn't appear if the ore concentration is 0%.

I'm pretty sure you must have already pushed the "run analysis" button in that biome, to get that "0%" to show up rather than "0% [average]". The Mun's midlands biome covers a vast amount of the territory circling the body near the equator. It is likely it was the first biome you ever scanned.

It's a bit unfortunate for your career save there because it probably means the Midlands have no ore anywhere. You'll need to check the various large craters individually (each is its own biome).

The good news is that from the image, you appear to have ore in the Highlands (purple splodges) and in the canyons (red). Hard to tell exactly what the blue areas mean, but they could be from the "Midland Craters" biome which covers a series of mid-sized craters (the central parts of the two craters on either side of the east end of the canyon there are part of the "Midland Craters" biome).

[Blorgop]

19 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Because of this averaging, the surface scanner NEVER tells you the highest ore value on either the planet or the area of a "hot spot" on the heat map.  Instead, "hot spots" are much more likely to be large areas of mediocrity.  Meanwhile, small biomes of high ore surrounded by large areas of suckiness don't even appear as "hot spots" because all the suckage swamps the few bits of primo, so you have no idea they're even there.

Great info! Yes, this does make the orbital scanner pretty misleading. I drove my rover over large swaths of the red area above and landed separate craft in 3 distinct places and came up empty handed every time. Having driven the rover around some more I finally found some ore (about 8%) in the Highlands along one of the craters -- not a convenient landing site.

20 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Ore is hardwired so that biomes with the highest concentrations are the least accessible, such as poles and mountains, when you actually need it near the equator on flat terrain.

This seems to confirm my experience at least with respect to this particular region. All the nice, convenient landing sites are dry. Might have to build a craft that can land sideways..

18 hours ago, Plusck said:

I'm pretty sure you must have already pushed the "run analysis" button in that biome, to get that "0%" to show up rather than "0% [average]". The Mun's midlands biome covers a vast amount of the territory circling the body near the equator. It is likely it was the first biome you ever scanned.

I have no memory of ever doing this (as far as I know, I landed a scanner-equipped rover on the surface for the first time), but this is also a save that I resurrected from years ago, so it's possible that back then I put a scanner on a craft that landed in the Midlands and since returned to Kerbin (and ended up setting myself up for confusion years later).

I drove around some more, and after crossing the boundary into the Highlands, the "Run Analysis" button did finally appear.

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, Blorgop said:

Great info! Yes, this does make the orbital scanner pretty misleading.

The idea of the stock system is to force you to do several missions with different sensors to find a good spot.  I guess this is to balance the fact that you end up with free fuel, although the cost of moving the equipment needed for finding, mining, and refining it usually FAR exceeds value of the fuel you create.  Still, the system wants to make you work hard for it.

 

1 hour ago, Blorgop said:

I drove my rover over large swaths of the red area above and landed separate craft in 3 distinct places and came up empty handed every time. Having driven the rover around some more I finally found some ore (about 8%) in the Highlands along one of the craters -- not a convenient landing site.

8% is pretty good for ore in a convenient place.  Normally, you have to settle for about 4-6%.  This is because the system seems to max out about 15% only a few planets actually go that high--most top out about 10% at most, and that's usually in a bad place.

You really need a biome map to prospect with the stock system.  IIRC, the in-game cheat-menu biome map isn't labeled, so use something like this (from TheDuck700 on Reddit):

Spoiler

With this, you can see that there are patches of Highlands on or near the equator.  There are also several of the big, named craters, a scattering of Midlands Craters, and some Midlands, but most of the equatorial region (and the surface in general) is Lowlands.  In general, the big, named craters have some of the worst terrain imaginable but the small ones, like Midlands Craters, are often reasonably flat on the bottom.  You already know the Midlands and Highlands, so you should probably look at Lowlands, too, as well as the Midlands Craters.

In general, though, Mun sucks as a place to get fuel.  Its gravity and jagged terrain make prospecting a real pain with the stock system until you can put an NBS in polar orbit (and that's something of a pain as it doesn't make a permanent map for you).  Then, if you ever find a reasonably good place to build a base, gravity eats much of the fuel you make there.  I only mine Mun with a self-refueling biome-hopper whose job is simply to pillage science from all the biomes.

If you're going to set up a fuel thing in the Kerbin system, Minmus is BY FAR the best place.  Low gravity, higher ore, and good amounts of ore on the equatorial flat areas.  However, I don't recommend doing any fuel thing in the Kerbin system at all, UNLESS you never plan to leave Kerbin.  It's a huge expense, a vast consumer of time, and doesn't start paying for itself until you've used the Hell out of it.  Making fuel is only really worthwhile at other planets, and then only if you're planning on visiting them in a big way, maybe even permanently occupying them.  With a 1-and-done flag-plant mission, it's a lot less trouble just to take all the fuel you need to begin with.

[peteletroll]

Try a Mun satellite with a narrow band scanner on it. You'll see things much more clearly!

[Plusck]

7 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

...so use something like this (from TheDuck700 on Reddit):

  Reveal hidden contents

With this, you can see that there are patches of Highlands on or near the equator.  There are also several of the big, named craters, a scattering of Midlands Craters, and ...

That is a slightly more useful map than the one I usually use, it seems more accurate despite the slightly smaller size.

Unfortunately though, the map creator mixed up the legends for Midlands and Lowlands. It is the Midlands biome that covers most of the ground underneath an equatorial orbit.
The big giveaway of course is that the "lowlands" on that map run straight into the highlands without a break.

This is the map I usually end up consulting:

Spoiler