IGT Techtree Speedrun Caveman%

[Pds314]

The goal of this challenge is to complete as much as possible of the techtree without upgrading any facilities, in as fast an ingame time as possible.

You goal is to make the techtree look like this without any facility upgrades whatsoever.

1. No exploiting glitches like Kraken or ladder drives.
2. Unless you want it to be counted as a segmented run, disable revert to launch and quicksaves. If you crash, you crash.
3. The speedrun is based on ingame time. I.E. The in-game date at the end of the run.
4. Please note any settings in your run that are not normal difficulty.
5. As this is a caveman speedrun, informational mods are not allowed. Using external calculators is ok though.
6. No cheats menu. No altering physics. Using info you get from the alt-F12 menu like rotation rate or temperature or whatever IS allowed.
7. As the issue of part-testing contracts has been brought up, no abusing a test part you don't have unlocked as a mission part.

Edited April 16, 2020 by Pds314

[dnbattley]

Interesting idea. Are contracts allowed?

[vyznev]

So I played around with this a little bit and did some math. My observations so far are:

• Just rolling around the KSC can get you enough science to unlock all the available science modules and reach orbit. The time this takes is mostly limited by your roller piloting skills, but around 15 minutes seems reasonable.
• Doing a single orbital flight (and hopefully reaching high space) should give you enough science to unlock a couple of useful tier 5 nodes. This will take about an hour of in-game time. (If you wanted to really optimize this, you could launch a second flight for repeat science while the first one is on its way to apoapsis. Not sure if it's worth it, though.)
• After that, if I did the math right, two Mun landings in different biomes should be enough to complete the challenge. To save time, you'll want to launch them in parallel. You don't necessarily need to bring a Kerbal if you've unlocked the OKTO, although the crew reports will get you some extra science, but you probably do want to return the science instead of transmitting it, even though it costs time. However, all you really need to return is an experiment storage unit; stranding a Kerbal on the Mun is perfectly acceptable in this case.
• Doing missions is not really required, although you can easily grab a couple of free exploration missions along the way if you like.

So, basically, the biggest in-game time sink will be the flight to the Mun and back, which will take about three in-game days on a Hohmann transfer trajectory. It's probably worth trying to optimize that by spending some extra delta-v on the transfers.

As for possible alternative strategies, if it was possible to complete the challenge without leaving Kerbin's SOI, that would probably be the winning strategy by far — even if it required squeezing every single drop of science from every biome on Kerbin and every KSC building. But I don't think it is.

Alternatively, a high-speed flyby of Minmus (and another one of the Mun) might be worth considering, although I suspect that transmission losses may reduce the science yield too much. I need to do more math on this. On the positive side, once you're past Minmus, it won't take that much longer to leave Kerbin's SOI and get some interplanetary science too. Just don't forget to bring enough antennas.

Edit: Never mind. I did some more math, and it looks like you can in fact do the challenge just by sciencing the heck out of Kerbin, if you get both on-the-ground and flying science from as many biomes as possible. My numbers are a bit uncertain because I'm not quite sure how many of the KSC building minibiomes are accessible for ground science without upgrades (and also whether or not you can get any "flying low over" science from them; I've seen it happen, but only on a few occasions; it may be a glitch), but even with conservative assumptions it looks doable. The only question is how many flights to distant biomes you'll have to make.

Edited April 11, 2020 by vyznev
did more math

[vyznev]

To add to my previous post, I'm now thinking about doing this challenge with the added restriction of not getting any science from KSC (or from any other launch site minibiomes). It should still be doable with only minor tweaks to my original plan, and would avoid the tedium of crawling around the KSC for scraps of science. My current mission plan would be something like this:

1. Short atmospheric hop with goo canisters, land in ocean (or grasslands?) -> unlock Basic Rocketry, Engineering 101 & Survival
2. Suborbital flight with goo, thermometers and barometers -> unlock Stability & Aviation
3. Fly plane to one or two nearby biomes, get ground & low air science -> unlock Basic Science
4. Orbital flight with materials bays, in parallel with more airplane sciencing of biomes near KSC during orbital coasting phases -> unlock General Rocketry, Advanced Rocketry, Electrics, etc.
5. Launch two Mun landers (each with double goo canisters and materials bays for landed & space science), land in different biomes and return -> challenge completed!

With the added restriction of not using minibiome science, leaving Kerbin is definitely required. There's just not enough science available otherwise.

FWIW, in principle it should be possible to cut the time needed almost in half by only sending one-way probes out to the Mun and having them transmit science back. But the reduced amount of science from transmitted data would require landing something like 7 or more probes in different Munar biomes, which also feels way too tedious (and risky, especially without quicksaves). In fact, I'm kind of tempted to also add "no antennas" to my self-imposed restrictions — if I'm going to return the Munar science anyway, it really won't make much difference.

[Pds314]

On 4/10/2020 at 4:05 AM, dnbattley said:

Interesting idea. Are contracts allowed?

Yes. Contracts are allowed. How else would you be getting money and such? Contracts don't give you science though and you can only really get 2 contracts at once because of the no upgrades  restriction.

On 4/10/2020 at 7:42 PM, vyznev said:

So I played around with this a little bit and did some math. My observations so far are:

• Just rolling around the KSC can get you enough science to unlock all the available science modules and reach orbit. The time this takes is mostly limited by your roller piloting skills, but around 15 minutes seems reasonable.
• Doing a single orbital flight (and hopefully reaching high space) should give you enough science to unlock a couple of useful tier 5 nodes. This will take about an hour of in-game time. (If you wanted to really optimize this, you could launch a second flight for repeat science while the first one is on its way to apoapsis. Not sure if it's worth it, though.)
• After that, if I did the math right, two Mun landings in different biomes should be enough to complete the challenge. To save time, you'll want to launch them in parallel. You don't necessarily need to bring a Kerbal if you've unlocked the OKTO, although the crew reports will get you some extra science, but you probably do want to return the science instead of transmitting it, even though it costs time. However, all you really need to return is an experiment storage unit; stranding a Kerbal on the Mun is perfectly acceptable in this case.
• Doing missions is not really required, although you can easily grab a couple of free exploration missions along the way if you like.

So, basically, the biggest in-game time sink will be the flight to the Mun and back, which will take about three in-game days on a Hohmann transfer trajectory. It's probably worth trying to optimize that by spending some extra delta-v on the transfers.

As for possible alternative strategies, if it was possible to complete the challenge without leaving Kerbin's SOI, that would probably be the winning strategy by far — even if it required squeezing every single drop of science from every biome on Kerbin and every KSC building. But I don't think it is.

Alternatively, a high-speed flyby of Minmus (and another one of the Mun) might be worth considering, although I suspect that transmission losses may reduce the science yield too much. I need to do more math on this. On the positive side, once you're past Minmus, it won't take that much longer to leave Kerbin's SOI and get some interplanetary science too. Just don't forget to bring enough antennas.

Edit: Never mind. I did some more math, and it looks like you can in fact do the challenge just by sciencing the heck out of Kerbin, if you get both on-the-ground and flying science from as many biomes as possible. My numbers are a bit uncertain because I'm not quite sure how many of the KSC building minibiomes are accessible for ground science without upgrades (and also whether or not you can get any "flying low over" science from them; I've seen it happen, but only on a few occasions; it may be a glitch), but even with conservative assumptions it looks doable. The only question is how many flights to distant biomes you'll have to make.

Flights to distant biomes on the low tech, low mass, low partcount restrictions imposed by caveman might take quite some ingame time though. So IDK if that's actually faster than going to the Mun or LKO.

[vyznev]

2 hours ago, Pds314 said:

Yes. Contracts are allowed. How else would you be getting money and such? Contracts don't give you science though and you can only really get 2 contracts at once because of the no upgrades  restriction.

I did some test runs (with the "no science from minibiomes" restriction), and I don't think money is a real issue, especially since you won't be spending any on building upgrades. I didn't really pay much attention to it, but even launching (and blowing up) several extra flights and only remembering to grab a couple of early contracts, I was nowhere near close to running out.

(And contracts do give science rewards. Not much, but even a little science is better than nothing.)

2 hours ago, Pds314 said:

Flights to distant biomes on the low tech, low mass, low partcount restrictions imposed by caveman might take quite some ingame time though. So IDK if that's actually faster than going to the Mun or LKO.

Mun and back is something like a three-day round trip, so avoiding it definitely pays off even if you have to fly a subsonic plane to both poles and the badlands. Going to high space above Kerbin is worth doing, though — that only takes a little over half an hour, and if you really want to micro-optimize it, there are two ~10 min coasting phases that you can spend sciencing Kerbin's surface at the same time.

The part count and mass limits are hard on Mun missions, though. I've pretty much concluded that my original plan with two crewed Mun landers is just not doable in caveman mode. Instead, I'm thinking of going with two probe landers with a single Science Jr. and goo can each, plus a single fly-by / orbit mission (which might as well be crewed). And maybe launch a couple of extra landers, just in case I crash one or land in the wrong biome.

Still having some issues with lander stability. On the plus side, apparently my return stage is capable of horizontal takeoff.

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by vyznev

[dnbattley]

18 minutes ago, vyznev said:

(And contracts do give science rewards. Not much, but even a little science is better than nothing.)

Yes to science bonus, but more directly helpfully is the fact that they can access higher level tech earlier than is otherwise possible, and though the caveman rules naturally limit the number of such contracts that can be taken, there is an element of RNGesus involved that might result in an unequal playing field...

[vyznev]

34 minutes ago, dnbattley said:

Yes to science bonus, but more directly helpfully is the fact that they can access higher level tech earlier than is otherwise possible, and though the caveman rules naturally limit the number of such contracts that can be taken, there is an element of RNGesus involved that might result in an unequal playing field...

Good point, I hadn't even thought about that. Maybe add a rule against taking part testing contracts for parts that you haven't unlocked yet?