Scansat-like resource prospecting.

[Sea_Kerman]

I hope that whatever resource prospecting mechanics will be implemented in the future will be more alike Scansat, with different scanners for different things, and fun “minigames” with the orbital dynamics, and less like the stock KSP1 instant scan.

[dr.phees]

That instant scan was a proper disappointment in KSP 1. Especially with ScanSat out, which simply does it right. I hope KSP 2 will at some point do it right, too...

[EvelynThe Dragon]

Totally agreed. The stock KSP1 resource scanner is ridiculous. I want things to do, and setting up probes with various scanners then putting them in a proper orbit to scan is part of what I want. Exploration should be a part of getting ready to build colonies. That exploratory data being used to harvest resources, etc. is something I want as part of making colonies interesting and interactive.

[thewhitemetroid]

Scansat was one of my favorite mods in KSP 1. Unfortunately I can't help but think that based on what I have experienced in KSP 2, we will never see something like that from the development team. It's hard for me to comprehend, given the state the game is in plus the time and resources available to the team, that they have the ability to allocate resources to something like this without it being another liquid poor implementation just like instant scan, but I'm totally open to being wrong about that.

[pandaman]

I never used  Scansat, as I wanted  to keep mod count to a minimum, but I too felt that the 'instascan' approach was not a great implementation.

Yes, I think a more realistic approach should be the default stock method.

[dr.phees]

10 hours ago, thewhitemetroid said:

but I'm totally open to being wrong about that.

I feel the same, but let's hope hard

[The Aziz]

10 hours ago, thewhitemetroid said:

based on what I have experienced in KSP 2

What you experienced was less than two months of early product by no means complete. I can't call that an indication of future progress.

I don't get the "Squad did it with minimal effort only for a feature to exist, therefore a new team will do the same" mindset. IG already said they aim for iterative development so even if beta version of resource scanning is point and click, nobody said it's going to look like that forever.

We've seen a resource scanner though. 

[Starhawk]

I definitely want proper scanning as well.  Somewhat realistic orbital surveying is great gameplay.

Persistent maps that are built up over multiple passes are very satisfying.

I don't mind abstraction around a lot of things, but this is one area that I hope gets more realism than stock KSP1.

Scansat is a great mod and provides much better and more interesting gameplay for me than the KSP1 kerbnet.

Happy landings!

[thewhitemetroid]

2 hours ago, The Aziz said:

What you experienced was less than two months of early product by no means complete. I can't call that an indication of future progress.

I get it, and I'm not ready to jump on the negative bandwagon here. We shall see what shakes loose in the future.

[dr.phees]

10 hours ago, Starhawk said:

I definitely want proper scanning as well.  Somewhat realistic orbital surveying is great gameplay.

There were a couple of lovely suggestions back in the KSP 1 days. My favourite:

Make bodies that have not been visited low res. And I mean  really low res, like a very roughly textured, visibly pixelized, coloured blob. You can send probes there and do stuff, but only when you send proper scanners or even small cameras there, will you get a progressively better view, scansat style.

If you send manned vehicles, you will get better visuals, but only as long as there are Kerbals there, it will get worse again when they leave.

Then you will want to get elevation data as well, then biome scans, resource scans, possibly temperature scans, you name it.

This will give you proper space exploration vibes. And finally a very good reason to visit all bodies, even several times.

[Edit: ScanSat has a nice export function for the maps. That would also be very cool to have in KSP 2. I would even imagine one computer generated info-graphics poster pdf per body or the whole system, which will be updated when new data is available, including biome names, a small temperature map etc. A bit like this, but with more focus on the scanned map data:

Spoiler

Man, that would be a cool feature.]

I think the dev team did not do a very important thing: Go through the old forum entries for good ideas. There is real gold in there and somehow all the good things have not been seen...

Edited April 20, 2023 by dr.phees