Other Kerbals On EVA Can't Collect Science From An Uncrewed Craft

[The Space Peacock]

Reported Version: v0.2.0 (latest) | Mods: none | Can replicate without mods? Yes 
OS: Windows 10 | CPU: Intel Core I7 10th Gen | GPU: NVIDIA GeForce MX350 | RAM: 8GB

 

Background:
For those uninitiated:

• Science Data/Samples are automatically combined when vessels dock, or a kerbal boards a vessel
• Science Data/Samples are automatically copied to both entities when vessels undock, or a kerbal dissembarks from a vessel

Issue:
There is currently no way to transfer science data from crafts that contain no docking ports/crew space  to another vessel. This is an oversight that makes it impossible to perform certain strategies of science collection, such as collecting science from multiple biomes with a probe core-controlled craft and then sending a crewed mission to go collect it. 

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Create rover with a probe core, battery, science experiment and a command seat
2. Launch
3. EVA Kerbal
4. Change to rover
5. Complete experiment
6. Change to Kerbal
7. Have Kerbal try to retrieve science without getting into the command chair

Video Evidence:

Spoiler

Suggestion:
Automatically share science between a kerbal and a robotic probe once they get within a certain (close) range from one another, or show a "Collect Science" button in the action menu for a Kerbal on EVA near a probe.

 

Included Attachments:
no_science_transfer.json

Edited January 26 by The Space Peacock

[labalov]

That's a good catch. Another method could be that a Kerbal could interact with an unmanned command pod to collect the science from there.

[jclovis3]

In KSP1, there were containers for science, which could be within a probe, pod, or just a container by itself. Kerbals themselves could hold science data. Because of those features, it is confusing in KSP2 to understand just where your science is and how to move it around, particularly the samples which should not be duplicated between vessels. Perhaps this issue is related to the repeated offerings to collect new science that you already collected. The KSC should be a container and you should not be offered to duplicate the same science just because your vessel departed the KSC.

There are a lot of features in KSP1 that I already miss. Being able to right click on a particular fuel tank to see how much is in it for one. The resource manager can be daunting when you have a lot of tanks you're not interested in. I really hope they come up with the features to contain science data in specific parts and add on intractability with parts, which I assume we will need when they become repairable with engineering skills like in the original.

[The Space Peacock]

On 12/23/2023 at 11:40 PM, jclovis3 said:

Because of those features, it is confusing in KSP2 to understand just where your science is and how to move it around,

i quite like the way ksp2 does science storage, having science be stored 'everywhere' in the vessel rather than in a part and automatically copy itself between any docking/undocking vessels is pretty handy and straightforward. the only real issue with it is that worthless experiments often clutter up the UI, which could easily be remidied by just allowing the player to remove those from storage and to stop asking them to perform experiments when they've already been cashed in

[CiberX15]

Reported Version: v0.2.0 (latest) | Mods: none | Can replicate without mods? Yes 
OS: Windows 10 | CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz 4.00 GHz | GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 | RAM: 32 GB

I did a flight past duna with a probe core. No parachutes, no means of returning it to kerbin. Honestly didn't think it would survive. But it did. In fact not only did it survive, it ended up with enough fuel to make it all the way back to Kerbin orbit, which I decided to do since it had a little over 300 science worth of samples that I couldn't transmit. 

So once it was in orbit I flew a "rescue" mission up to the ship, eva'd a kerbal and got right up to the core only to realize, there is no interface for transferring science from the probe to the kerbal. So that science is perpetually locked inside the core with no means of being retrieved, since it can't be landed and it can't be transmitted, and it can't be manually transferred to another craft.

I'd expect there to be a "collect science" button, either on the probe core or on the experiments themselves that would allow me to manually collect the samples on EVA, so they can be brought back in another craft.

Included Attachments:

[The Space Peacock]

@CiberX15 merged your report