For Science! knowledge base

[Sans]

This knowledge base is open to contribution/suggestion 

 

This thread is a knowledge repository of everything that come out about and at the time of For Science! update.
Many informations are scattered across posts, sneakpeek, discord messages, YouTube videos, etc... This is very confusing for people that just come around infrequently.

For better understanding, I invite you to go check everything said in KSP2 Announcement, KSP2 Dev Updates, KERB and and Youtube's Dev Chat

For Science! update

"For Science!" is the next update (0.2) of Kerbal Space Program 2 and the first milestone update of the published roadmap. It will be released the 19th December 2023 and will features science gathering and tech tree progression. A lot of bugs are also indeed fixed for the release. 

Exploration Mode

It is the Science game mode equivalent from KSP 1. No Vessel coins, only science points to gather and spend in the R&D building to acquire new technologies.
Future milestones update will allow for colonies settlement, ressource gathering and utilization. Game save are therefore meant to be compatible with future updates.

Science parts and gathering.

There are 9 science parts for For Science! update. Most of them are situational and will require you to be in a specific state to work. There is the magnetometer, an atmospheric survey device, an underwater chamber, a "lab" with a greenhouse, two goo-based device, a robotic arm, a science jr XS bay and a cute camera.

Science gathering is very different from Kerbal Space Program 1. During "Science and Tech Tree - KSP 2 Dev Chats", we learned that the science experiments are split between Samples and Data. Data can be transmitted, while samples have to be returned to the KSC (we don't know if colonies will be able to give science from samples). Experiments now have Data Size, and a duration. Even if not said, this approach is heavily similar to the Kerbalism KSP 1 mod. We don't know if the duration of the experiment is based on the animation, or if science parts will take longer to collect the science points.

Biomes

Biomes are making their way back into the game as a way to create distinct zone of interest, in which you can find science point or simply chill about.

Mission Control

The Mission control give you missions with science rewards. Not a lot have been discussed about it, but we believe missions are meant to push you further and further into Kerbol exploration.

R&D & Tech Tree

Research & Development building will permit you to spend your science points in acquiring new technologies. Exactly like KSP 1, however the Tech Tree is very different.

As explained by Tom "FRRRIIIDDDAAAAAYYY" Vinita, the goal of the tech tree has been to drive newcomers and average players to discover new gameplay facets through technologies. A tiering system has been opted. Each tier has its own supposed destination target, and we can safely assume that these destinations have a balanced science reward for people to progress through the Tech Tree.

There is only 4 tiers by now but the last dev chat let us suppose there will be tier 5 & 6 in the future (certainly for interstellar travel, as tier 4 supposed target is Eeloo, the last planet of Kerbol)

Here's are high resolution screenshots of the tech tree:

Anomalies/Discoverables

These are what we called "easter eggs" on KSP 1. There are around 20 in-game (as of 0.1.5) and a dozen will be added. These locations will give you specific science points

Colonies

Colonies is the next milestone update and should come up relatively quickly (less than 10 months), following Nate's statement in Matt's interview at Space creator day. Colonies can be constructed after unlocking the corresponding technology. It'll be located at Tier 4.

Due to the different variants of colonies we've seen in screenshots, tom vinita's quote: "we have plans for Tier 6", the knowledge that colonies will have more advanced parts unlockable over time, and following some game datamining, many suppose that colonies size and capabilities will be split into different technologies, in different tiers. Nothing is confirmed tho.

A supposed early/mid tier 4 colony:

A supposed Tier 5/6 colony:

Additional informations

This section is a collection of features or informations that are not major.

Terrain Rendering improvements

According to Dakota (Community Manager) there has been some new terrain rendering improvements:

Buoyancy and Boat Dock

We should expect better buoyancy in For Science! release.  And a new boat dock have been added to the KSC

Re-entry with Charring effects

Already spoked about in a Dev Chat and in FS! announcement, Re-entry is coming in KSP 2. Moreover, heat shield now have charring effects, you'll see your heat shield becoming darker and darker, the longer you are burning in the atmosphere. We don't know if the charring shader is based on the amount of ablator.

Tier leveling

 Tier leveling is the proposed idea of obtaining gain of performance/efficiency on certain parts if you unlock a tech tier. Official response from the team:

Quote

The team wants a simple WYSIWYG relationship between parts and 'power' available to each player. Upgrades in 'power' should come in the form of new parts that you can tell at a glance are an upgrade or at least something new.

Being able to quickly look at a vessel and identify parts and surmise capabilities is something we really value. This gets lost in incremental upgrades that do not strongly update visuals.

This also ensures that in a game that has a lot of different variables to keep track of that make for inconsistent situations, a given engine or fuel tank will behave consistently when it comes to its stats and functions.

There's also an element to this which is the fact that doing a bunch of missions and saving up a ton of science points to unlock new technologies feels way better if your reward are new parts, compared to just static upgrades.

Difficulty Settings

You'll be able to choose in the difficulty settings:

- The starting science points (0 by default)

- Science Rewards percentage

- Mission rewards percentage

Wobbly rocket & Bugs fixes

Announced during the Space Creator Day, For Science! will implement an autostrut-like short-term mitigation to the wobbly rockets issues. Please note that this is a short-term mitigation and is likely to be deleted in favor of a long-term solution over the course of the Interstellar release (as the actual solution will need improvements in order for Interstellar size vehicle to be fully simulated).

You can learn more about autostrut in KSP2 and other bug fixes in the latest KERB:

Edited December 2, 2023 by Sans
edited

[Dakota]

6 hours ago, Sans said:

Coming in the For Science!, you will be able to clip the camera at Kerbal head view, reproducing an IVA view in the cockpit.

you're able to do this with the capture camera in the live version right now, actually.

[Strawberry]

Correction, the "camera" is actually an autonomous sampler which is presumably unlocked under the autonomous sampling node. The animation for this part seen in the For Science video teaser makes this a bit more clear. 

[The Aziz]

16 hours ago, Sans said:

A supposed early/mid tier 4 colony:

It's been a while since there was any official word on colonies but last time I heard it, the basic colony will be made out of inflatable modules. The one you presented already has a VAB which needs to be constructed on site - it's definitely a higher tier colony.

[Sans]

8 hours ago, Strawberry said:

Correction, the "camera" is actually an autonomous sampler which is presumably unlocked under the autonomous sampling node. The animation for this part seen in the For Science video teaser makes this a bit more clear. 

 

11 hours ago, Dakota said:

you're able to do this with the capture camera in the live version right now, actually.

thx I've removed that part

[Bej Kerman]

13 hours ago, Dakota said:

you're able to do this with the capture camera in the live version right now, actually.

I think the team should have avoided doing this in the  clip and giving people the idea that 0.2 would add IVAs.