Wait or Cheat

[Zosma Procyon]

I have a number of transports heading in system from Jool and Eeloo carrying the better part of 50 kerbals, including 6 brand new rescues and their shipwrecks (free money from salvage). Unusually for be given my frequent problems with estimating fuel consumption for down-well travel, they all have more than enough Delta-V to make safe low parking orbits around Kerbin when they get there. But as they were all launched on high efficiency return orbits, they're all going to take in game YEARS to get home. And given that thanks to KerbalAlarmClock I have to stop fast forwarding every few days to transmit science, getting them home could take weeks or months real time (I'm also in school again so don't have much free time). Simply put I'm tired of waiting and want to redeploy those crew on new missions. I'm considering using the Set Orbit cheat to warp them all into Kerbin orbit and just be done with it, but I always feel bad about cheating. What you you do: Wait or cheat?

[BigFatStupidHead]

In a single player game, it's only a cheat if you feel cheated. As you say, all the planning is done, the calculations were correct, and everyone is going to come home okay. Your time is valuable and scarce, so do you get more out of waiting for those vessels to return, or by zapping them home and launching more missions?

 

If it were me, I'd bring them home.

[Tyko]

Why can't you FF time in game? You mentioned something about KAC and transmitting science, but I don't follow you. Do you have labs running on the ships? Is that why you have to transmit science?

[GoatRider]

I have the same issue- you have to stop and transmit science when the lab fills up with finished science to transmit, and re-load it. I have a station that went from Minmus to Duna, and I'm going to send it on to Dres, and then if I can off to Jool. But that's going to take a very long time, so the kerbals have to keep themselves busy in the lab. Better than playing cards for 2 years.

I didn't realize KAC could do alarms for when you need to transmit science- that's great, I'm going to use that.

[Gargamel]

6 hours ago, Zosma Procyon said:

I have to stop fast forwarding every few days to transmit science,

No you don't.   At this point in the game, you should be pretty close to maxed out in the tech tree, so science returns are just a money/rep maker at this point.   You could easily estimate how much you would return, and cheat that in.   While this would still technically be cheating, I think it's way more realistic than cheating an orbit.      I'm in the exact same boat btw. 

[Superfluous J]

38 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

No you don't.

This.

Sorry to quote and just say "this" but at least I only quoted the relevant part and not the whole post.

But seriously. You don't HAVE to do anything.

[Fraston]

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

I'm in the exact same boat

And your avatar is in a boat too! 

But really, I think the orbit cheat is fine.

[pincushionman]

I would sacrifice at least some of the lab science and remove those alarms. Fast forward to the fun stuff.

[Snark]

7 hours ago, pincushionman said:

I would sacrifice at least some of the lab science and remove those alarms. Fast forward to the fun stuff.

^ This.  If you're actually sending kerbals out to explore the outer solar system, then you should have science coming out of your ears just from doing regular ol' science measurements with the various instruments.  You seriously don't need the big crewed science lab for that, at all.

(The lab's main utility is for players who for whatever reason don't go out into the solar system to explore-- it provides a way to make progress on the tech tree without having to do far-flung exploration.  So if you're already exploring the solar system, you seriously don't need it.)

[Tyko]

Just write a quick MM config to enable labs to store more science points. The config below should work and you can put in whatever maximum you want. May want to test it on a copy of your save just to be on the safe side.

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleScienceConverter]]:FINAL
{
	@MODULE[ModuleScienceConverter]
	{
		@scienceCap = 500 //How much science can we store before having to transmit?	
	}
}

 

Edited January 18, 2019 by Tyko

[GoatRider]

Can you make it transmit faster? Because I think it takes about a minute to transmit 500, more science is going to take even longer.

[Tyko]

14 hours ago, GoatRider said:

Can you make it transmit faster? Because I think it takes about a minute to transmit 500, more science is going to take even longer.

Probably with the right config. I haven't tried. My issue, and the one I think the OP was having, was having to frequently stop time warp when labs fill up. Increasing the capacity reduces how often you have to stop time warp. 

[Duck McFuddle]

There are a few mods for faster time warp, which would let you easily zoom home without the guilt of cheating.

So, instead of wait or cheat, how about mod?

Edited January 18, 2019 by Duck McFuddle

[Gargamel]

3 hours ago, Duck McFuddle said:

There are a few mods for faster time warp, which would let you easily zoom home without the guilt of cheating.

So, instead of wait or cheat, how about mod?

How does a better timewarp prevent the need to drop out of warp every 14 days or so to transmit science?

[Superfluous J]

48 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

How does a better timewarp prevent the need to drop out of warp every 14 days or so to transmit science?

Now I want a mod that auto-transmits science from labs that are full but on rails.

No wait, I don't want that because I don't use labs. but if they were actually necessary to get science, then it'd be nice.

[Gargamel]

1 minute ago, 5thHorseman said:

Now I want a mod that auto-transmits science from labs that are full but on rails.

I've been wanting one for a while.  The way I RP my game is the same as the OP....

[Duck McFuddle]

17 hours ago, Gargamel said:

How does a better timewarp prevent the need to drop out of warp every 14 days or so to transmit science?

Oops... I missed that. Rereading the post, I realized that the science was the problem... I don't understand though. Why would Kerbal Alarm Clock make you have to stop every few days? Why can't you just dump all the science upon Kerbin arrival? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious... 

[Superfluous J]

Not to mention cheating wouldn't solve anything. If you hack the orbit to put them in LKO you still have the data in the lab to process.

[GoatRider]

3 hours ago, Duck McFuddle said:

Oops... I missed that. Rereading the post, I realized that the science was the problem... I don't understand though. Why would Kerbal Alarm Clock make you have to stop every few days? Why can't you just dump all the science upon Kerbin arrival? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious... 

Science labs accumulate results that can only be stored up to 500. When it's full, the science needs to be transmitted to KerbNet so the scientists can keep working. Kerbal Alarm Clock can set an alarm when this happens. This is a nice feature of KAC that I just learned about above.

Edited January 19, 2019 by GoatRider

[Duck McFuddle]

29 minutes ago, GoatRider said:

Science labs accumulate results that can only be stored up to 500. When it's full, the science needs to be transmitted to KerbNet so the scientists can keep working. Kerbal Alarm Clock can set an alarm when this happens. This is a nice feature of KAC that I just learned about above.

Of course... Why do I always forget these little things?

[eddiew]

On 1/18/2019 at 3:29 AM, Tyko said:

Just write a quick MM config to enable labs to store more science points. The config below should work and you can put in whatever maximum you want. May want to test it on a copy of your save just to be on the safe side.

I do this in all my games   My labs store 5k data and 1k science.

Beware the power required to transmit. I usually have to cheat with 50x timewarp to get it sent. (Which is why they don't store 10k science.)

[Superfluous J]

On 1/19/2019 at 4:14 PM, Duck McFuddle said:

Of course... Why do I always forget these little things?

Because after doing it a few times you blow away the entire tech tree and never need to think about it again.

[Tyko]

I was showing just the part the full config i use. I actually go the other way with my setup and force checking more often. but then I never use time warp to collect science. Using Labs is an integral part of my game and I have it IMHO, balanced. Here's how it works

• I use life support (USI-LS) so maintaining a lab takes quite a bit of planning and effort
• I downgraded the data -> science conversion ratio from 1:5 to 1:1   -    If an experiment is worth 8 science normally I only get 8 extra science using a lab, not the 40 extra science stock labs return. This means that at max I can double my science for a given experiment
• I reduced max storage from 500 to 250, but I increased the rate conversion happens a bit. - these two changes result in me having to check in every few weeks to maintain my lab.
• I will only process an experiment through 1 lab. Never will i gather a bunch of copies of the same experiment and take it to a bunch of labs.
• I reduced science transmission rates on any experiment with a material component  - goo, material bays, EVA surface samples - to zero. The only way to get value for those is to return them to Kerbin or process them in a lab
• Finally my overall science rate is set to 30%

What does this all mean? I have to send up science labs on stations or mother ships including planning life support and keeping an eye on how long crews are away from home and, for all that work, I only end up with about a total of 60% (counting each experiment twice) of Stock science.

Using this setup labs aren't OP, they're a necessity and it gives me a great excuse to build bigger structures, plan crew exchange missions and special sample return missions.

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleScienceConverter]]:FINAL
{
	@MODULE[ModuleScienceConverter]
	{
		@scientistBonus = 0.15
		@researchTime = 6
		@scienceMultiplier = 1
		@scienceCap = 250
	}
}

 

[FreeThinker]

The 500 science limit gradually becomes really silly after you maxed out all stock science tech nodes.  CTT unlocks tech nodes requiring 10000 science and KSPIE even has multiple 25000 sci  tech nodes   But increasing to a fixed arbitrarily high number is also unbalanced early on. Therefore instead I suggest someone create a simple mod which increases this limit dynamically based on the number of unlocked science tech nodes. That way, the higher in the tech tree you get, the more data you can store and therefore the amount of time micromanaging will be limited.

Edited January 28, 2019 by FreeThinker

[Tyko]

On 1/28/2019 at 4:31 AM, FreeThinker said:

The 500 science limit gradually becomes really silly after you maxed out all stock science tech nodes.  CTT unlocks tech nodes requiring 10000 science and KSPIE even has multiple 25000 sci  tech nodes   But increasing to a fixed arbitrarily high number is also unbalanced early on. Therefore instead I suggest someone create a simple mod which increases this limit dynamically based on the number of unlocked science tech nodes. That way, the higher in the tech tree you get, the more data you can store and therefore the amount of time micromanaging will be limited.

hmmm..I just can't imagine using Labs without Life Support. LS is the balancing factor that keeps labs from being OP. If you can just park a scientist in a lab and fast forward 10 years (which is how Stock works) then it's really unbalanced. If I'm using LS, then checking in monthly or so is kind of a necessity anyway.

I'm not invalidating your statement, which is a workable idea. Just pointing out that using labs in a Stock game and time warping is so unbalanced anyway that it's of limited value to try to balance around it. The old joke about "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind   

Edited January 29, 2019 by Tyko