So, what are those?

[Daniel Prates]

My first trip to the Mun right after installing 'breaking ground' landed right beside two new .... "things", which clearly aren't the scatter I remember, so I am guessing they are the new surface features. Very exciting! 

The first is a small volcano kinda of thing, the second seems to be a rock that a Kerbal could pick up with his hand. Pictures taken with the "kurs docking cam" camera:

 

 

So my questions, before I mount a further trip to investigate that, are: 

1 - All surface features can be scanned with the scanning arm? Or some are intended for the scanning arm, and other to be interacted by a kerbal? 

2 - For that matter, is  my understanding correct that a kerbal can pick up rocks?

3 - Is there a list somewhere of all features? 

4 - The two things shown above, what can I specifically do with them? 

 

 

[KerbalKore]

1: the big ones can be scanned, the small ones can be picked up.

2: see above

3:

 

4: the crater you can scan, and the smallish rock a kerbal can "pick up" for science. the bigger the arm, more science you get. the OP-E is best, CRSY is worst, SPRT is in between

[Daniel Prates]

Oh! I thought the bigger scanning arms only had the advantage of reaching farther! 

Edited June 21, 2019 by Daniel Prates

[Snark]

Moving to Breaking Ground Discussion.

[Daniel Prates]

Hmmm....

I indeed managed to scan both things with an scanning arm. So far so good. The crater I was sure about, but the rock I wasn't sure if it was a mere scatter of if it was the fabled moon rock. Turns out it was:

 

The problem is... I took one of my little guys next to it - the very same rock - and there is no interaction possible! Wasn't I supposed to be able to 'pick up' something? The image shows there is no interaction possible:

 

 

@KerbalKore  is the size the problem, perhaps? If it was smaller would I have been able to pick it up? How to you interact with them, do buttons show up in the kerbal's UI or you click on the actual rock?

Edited June 22, 2019 by Daniel Prates

[Geschosskopf]

25 minutes ago, Daniel Prates said:

The problem is... I took one of my little guys next to it - the very same rock - and there is no interaction possible! Wasn't I supposed to be able to 'pick up' something? The image shows there is no interaction possible:

You basically have to be standing on top of the rock to get the option to pick it up.  I don't think size really matters when it comes to picking up Mun Stone.  Mun Stone seems to be flagged as "pickup-able".

Be advised, however, that picking up the rock and scanning with the arm are exactly the same experiment, "Analysis of Mun Stone".  This has 2 disappointing effects:

1. In general, you can only have 1 or the other (a picked-up rock or an arm scan of the same rock) in the same ship at the same time.  It's the same as how the game won't let you carry 2 temperature readings from the same location in the same ship.
2. Because picking up rocks and scanning them are the same experiment, they drawn on the same pool of available Science! points.  And returning a picked-up rock gets all the science possible for that experiment.  IOW, if you go to Mun very early, before you have an arm, and bring a Mun Stone home, there will be no Mun Stone points left to scan with a subsequent trip using the arm.  And that's for the entire Mun.  Mun Stone is the same everywhere, it's not per-biome.  Thus, once you get the Science from 1 Mun Stone, you've totally eliminated getting any more Science from all the others.

Also note that the arms work like other instruments, in that if you keep the data instead of transmitting it, the data is in the arm itself, not in the ship.  So if you want to bring that data home, you have to send a Kerbal out to remove the data from the arm and put it in the part of the ship that will return home.

[Daniel Prates]

Interesting @Geschosskopf. Thanks.

Too bad though, huh? The new surface features is one of the best new things in KSP for years now, but having them generate a mere sci report PER BODY is unworthy of the feature. At the very least I would imagine that one per biome would make it more interesting. If the idea was to avoid them yealding too much science, I wouldn't mind each one resulting less reward. The reason for them was to give us something else to do, more than anything - the arm making rovers interesting, and the picking up of pieces instigating crewed missions.

The rock being brought home and the arm report being the same thing is pretty lame too, for the same reasons stated above. EDIT: just to be clear, I think the new features are AWESOME. But their sci result could be made way more interesting.

Edited June 22, 2019 by Daniel Prates

[Geschosskopf]

6 hours ago, Daniel Prates said:

Interesting @Geschosskopf. Thanks.

Too bad though, huh? The new surface features is one of the best new things in KSP for years now, but having them generate a mere sci report PER BODY is unworthy of the feature. At the very least I would imagine that one per biome would make it more interesting. If the idea was to avoid them yealding too much science, I wouldn't mind each one resulting less reward. The reason for them was to give us something else to do, more than anything - the arm making rovers interesting, and the picking up of pieces instigating crewed missions.

The rock being brought home and the arm report being the same thing is pretty lame too, for the same reasons stated above. EDIT: just to be clear, I think the new features are AWESOME. But their sci result could be made way more interesting.

I and most others completely agree.  I myself would have set the features up to be per-biome, as you'd think the rocks would differ per-biome.  I don't know if I'd lower the reward for each scan or return on a per-biome basis, though.  If you did that, then you'd run up against the systemic issues of having only 1 report per ship per experiment per location, and also the transmission data loss thing compared to returning the data (although with the best arm, there is no transmission loss).'

So bottom line, 1 report and 1 pool of Science! points per feature per biome is fine with me, and keeping things otherwise the same is fine with me.  That at least forces you to visit multiple biomes to get them all.  And the majority of surface features can't be picked up anyway, so mostly there's no conflict between that and scanning them with the arm.  And I can totally understand that returning an actual rock is better than anything even the best arm can transmit.  However, you should still at least get some money and prestige for bringing home additional rocks even after the Science! is all gone,  You can sell these rocks to other nations that can't go there themselves, and that makes your nation more important.

[Daniel Prates]

@Geschosskopf, just to give this topic some closure: I went back there, to the rock I had already scanned with the big arm (hence, no science to do there). Since all science experiments in KSP can be done over and over again, even if they do not result in more science, I tried to see what 'rock picking' is all about.

Turns out i got right next to it and no 'pick up' option appeared. However it was indeed blocking my path (unlike scatter), so I imagined, "do I have to be RIGHT ON TOP of it, like, really aligned with the rock's CoM or something"? 

You can climb the rocks (with the F key, just like stairs or a hatch). I climbed right on top of it, and voilá, the button appeared. 

I tried moving up and down, and the button would appear and dissapear as I got closer or farther to the center of the rock. So yeah, "grabbing" the rock is not the thing, getting right on top of it is. 

To my surprise, when I picked it up, it disappeared! Well, it makes all sense - you grab something, now you have it. But a big thing like that ...  taking a 'chip' out of it would make more sense. 

Anyways, that is one less mistery in my book. Thanks for the help!

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, Daniel Prates said:

so I imagined, "do I have to be RIGHT ON TOP of it, like, really aligned with the rock's CoM or something"? 

Yup,  Standing on top is the best and surest way to get the "pick up" option.  Didn't I say that somewhere along the way?

 

2 hours ago, Daniel Prates said:

To my surprise, when I picked it up, it disappeared! Well, it makes all sense - you grab something, now you have it. But a big thing like that ...  taking a 'chip' out of it would make more sense. 

Yeah, Kerbal pockets seem to be bigger on the inside than the outside.  Shame the same doesn't apply to their backpacks

It is a bit of a bummer that the Kerbal doesn't pull out a geologist's hammer and knock off a chunk of more believably pocketable size.  But it is what it is.