Science is pretty much stupid. Just get rid of it.

[Vl3d]

19 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

The more I play, the more I find that I don't like about 0.2. 

The more I play, the more I realize that I really like the game because it reminds me of Starcraft 2.
The more I play, the more KSP 2 feels like a big game that's just starting to spread its wings.
The more I play, the more ideas for new missions and new vehicles.
It's all about volume - play fast, dream big, go everywhere, build everything.

Build, build, build!

3 minutes ago, Mickel said:

Screw up landing and lose samples.  Doesn't make sense to be able to go back to the station to retrieve a copy.  Surely you'd have to go back to the source.

It's not a copy, it's a sample. You can split samples indefinitely.

Edited December 27, 2023 by Vl3d

[PDCWolf]

39 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

Except if you're a noob. This way you get introduced to the parts, one at the time. 

I still think soil samples should not be copy-able. 

Yeah, and I'm not a noob, I've been here for 10 years, it'd be great to have anything in the game for me, or to at least have the devs come out and say "sorry, nothing for you, this is only for people who missed the bus".

[Superfluous J]

25 minutes ago, Mickel said:

Makes zero sense to be able to copy physical samples.  Bring back samples to your Kerbin orbiting station.  Transfer to shuttle to return to Kerbin.  Screw up landing and lose samples.  Doesn't make sense to be able to go back to the station to retrieve a copy.  Surely you'd have to go back to the source.

Didn't think of that, because I always quickload never make mistakes.

That is a very good reason to not just copy everything everywhere.

23 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

It's not a copy, it's a sample. You can split samples indefinitely.

And one grain of sand from the Mun is surely as good as 40kg of rocks.

[Vl3d]

3 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

And one grain of sand from the Mun is surely as good as 40kg of rocks.

You must really like docking.

[Strawberry]

I haven't had the chance to play around with science nearly at all due to personal reasons, so I can't speak much to a lot of the specific criticisms in this thread and take what I say with the appropriate grain of salt.  My general thoughts on the matter from what I have seen so far is I think on a fundamental level what they have is good, I do wish however that they add some more science experiments to flesh out the craft design limitations (ie stuff like a science part that makes a lot of heat and something like ksp1's breaking ground seismometer). That being said, I think claiming that as a whole (I am not referring to very specific design choices that effect like 2% of science modes gameplay) stock ksp1's science delivered better in realism/purpose is just rose tinted glasses. 

Keep in mind, in ksp1, you could run seismometers and barometers in space and this generated meaningful amounts of science consistently because ???.  While both ksp's science systems are particularly realistic (nor would I argue they should be), I do think that in general from what I have seen ksp2 does a better job at "hey you actually have to monitor the thing that scientists care about." . Thermometers and funky goo canisters, while silly, don't really tell you what scientists actually care about, going hey go do a survey of a planets liquids (you actually have to be in the liquid) does . One thing I think ksp2 could do better in this regard is with it's descriptions, I'm fine with the silly names because it's ksp, but I do think the atmosphere survey parts should've mentioned the use of a spectrometer for example as that's a really important science part. From what I have seen, ksp2's science reports are also better at telling you "here's what's actually going on physically here (ie here's the surface composition), though this is based off of the very little i have seen of it. I will fully admit all of this is subjective however.

I do think that ksp2's science system is way way better with giving the player purpose however. The science experiments are much more unique compared to ksp1 having 66% of the parts working everywhere and only minor variation with those parts (ie sometimes you need to micromanage with a scientist!). While I think ksp2's experiments could and should be more purposeful with some of the later ones, it is leagues better then ksp1. Not to mention, you actually have to leave the kerbin system to finish the tech tree which is nice. The only big thing you could argue that ksp1 does better when it comes to purpose is you're not directly interacting with the parts in specific as much. But I dont think the purpose of ksp is to go through uis, it's to fly rockets, and I think all gameplay should ultimately serve that goal. Differing cups of tea and all that, but I think it's a good design choice to assume kerbins work out the finer details of flipping the on switch of a science part, while we do the overall management. 

Edited December 27, 2023 by Strawberry

[cocoscacao]

6 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Yeah, and I'm not a noob, I've been here for 10 years, it'd be great to have anything in the game for me

Okay, fair. But what do you expect? Science was shallow and repetitive in KSP 1. Having a dedicated collect button is a blessing. It saves me from automating the process that I had to automate anyway to focus on the important stuff going on (or just enjoying the scenery).

I ain't saying it's perfect, but it is on the the right path.

Anyway, criticizing stuff is easy. What would be your proposal of the alternative, and how would that affect gameplay overall?

[PDCWolf]

3 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Okay, fair. But what do you expect? Science was shallow and repetitive in KSP 1. Having a dedicated collect button is a blessing. It saves me from automating the process that I had to automate anyway to focus on the important stuff going on (or just enjoying the scenery).

I ain't saying it's perfect, but it is on the the right path.

Anyway, criticizing stuff is easy. What would be your proposal of the alternative, and how would that affect gameplay overall?

I've said this before. I expect that if I'm paying almost 10 times what I paid for the original, that things won't be steps back, simplifications, "streamlines" and such. I expected the opposite: involvement, deeper simulation, expanded systems, and tools to support those.

Having a dedicated collect button is a blessing exactly because they kept the same flawed system, and actually went through the job of making it so inconsequential and "streamlined" (to avoid saying what it really is) that you can take the whole mechanic and shove it into a blinking light without anybody missing it.

Giving alternatives is not my job, nor a requirement of my lowly position as a buy-in tester for their overpriced alpha game. On the other hand, 10 years of giving alternatives have clearly been moot, you can search the forum, science has been discussed and offered alternatives for since the feature came out for the original game.

 

[cocoscacao]

@PDCWolf thanks for having the conversation... 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

13 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I had a ship that couldn't make it back to land on Kerbin, but got into orbit. I sent up another ship, and the Kerbal who got out of the original ship and EVA'd over to the new ship, he took the science with him.

Which is nice because that's what I wanted, but what if I was just transferring him to send him somewhere else, and I had actually wanted the science to stay in the original ship?

I have a similar experience. 

Weird because I could find no way to 'manage science' - no way to be sure what was happening with the samples - and it appears to be that ships and Kerbals can clone samples so that they all get a full copy. 

... This was a maddening few minutes, however. 

I apparently got samples from the Mun even before I set down on it. The Kerbal collected more and got back on the craft.  Now, I can justify that in my mind because I saw the collection animated on the Kerbal and I assume ScienceJr picked up something when I pressed the blue button during the landing. 

Okay. 

But when I docked - I couldn't get Kerbal Manager to move my Kerbal from the lander to the transfer cockpit.  Had to EVA him to get where I wanted him.  - again with no way to transfer science. 

So I dragged the whole freaking mass back to Kerbin just to be sure. I need go back and look at the saves and see if my Science survived ScienceJr exploding in the atmosphere. 

(No Fuel Bug happened along with the No Kerbal Transfer thing - there was a lot of game breaking going on and I was tired) 

9 hours ago, Strawberry said:

you could run seismometers and barometers in space

IIRC - you could run it, but you got a quirky 'no data' text and zero science. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Having a dedicated collect button is a blessing. It saves me from automating the process that I had to automate anyway to focus on the important stuff going on (or just enjoying the scenery

Until @Superfluous J(or someone else upthread) mentioned tying all science to an action group, it never occurred to me that someone would do that.  They appear to have copied the folks who did that with the blue button.

Eye opening for me. 

I found the actual 'doing science' (clicking various experiments and having Kerbals get out to reset experiments) immersive and added to the depth of play.  So much so that just landing something somewhere seemed pointless unless it had science on board.

  I have KSP memories of being mad at myself for landing a can somewhere only to realize that back when I built the craft I forgot to add a science thing. 

Like forgetting to put on any / the right kind of solar panel, battery or antenna - there was a cost, if in nothing more than my time, to making mistakes like that.  The slow unlocking of science parts gave a reason to repeat a previous mission. 

Otherwise just landing a ship in yet another crater? 

 

 

 

... 

Like others, I should probably hold my ire in check until we get to the next milestone release.  KSP2 Science! likely blends into the whole game experience they're building around Colonies and Resource Management. 

Still - a year ago, a revamped science experience in KSP2 was my most anticipated feature... And frankly, for me, it's a meh. 

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, cocoscacao said:

@PDCWolf thanks for having the conversation... 

I'm sure this is sarcasm, and on the contrary I'm not sure what conversation do you want, specially when all criticism is met with a click on the ignore button. 

All alternatives for the science system have been talked about to hell and back for the past literal decade, this is not even hyperbole. We knew it was a flawed system back in KSP1 and all KSP2 has done is put it in a shelf behind a blinking light. It's problems are plenty, and widely known. My alternative to science is exactly what op mentioned: get rid of it. Maybe it can be replaced by a system that actually offers some replayability (something no one has seemingly thought about). In fact, here's a list of questions people should be really asking themselves.

1. What replayability does the current system offer? With the bodies and discoverables being the same every single time, there's no different paths for anything and science fails to add variety.
2. The tech tree doesn't solve the above problem either, why would you take a different path when the choices are so condensed, scarce and obvious? There's no "different build" to try unless you add more of the same artificial limitations people have been complaining about like money. This is evidenced by something as basic as the solid rocket problem mentioned earlier.
3. What does the science system add to the game at all? Some people say "direction", but it's even worse than that, it adds tight guardrails and turns a game about space and engineering into another linear (thanks to the severe nonexistence of options and variety) "walking" simulator, but with the caveat that you've gotta learn physics for it first. Sure, the game forces you to go to the Mun, then Duna and what not, but there's still no point in going there, and you know exactly what you're getting when you get back, because there's nothing else that can possible happen. Plus, the tech tree is so obvious I'm sure we'll all go those places with more or less the exact same parts.
4. The concept itself was flawed on the first game, so flawed in fact people now are happy to pay $50 to have it hidden as a single button to do everything? Shouldn't it be the other way? Is that what people were expecting for 10 months? I can barely do more than laugh at that.

23 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Until @Superfluous J(or someone else upthread) mentioned tying all science to an action group, it never occurred to me that someone would do that.  They appear to have copied the folks who did that with the blue button.

And even then, you'd still have the variety of either carrying a scientist to reset the instruments, bring them back with their single reading, or packing spares if you still insisted on not carrying a scientist. All of that is lost now, streamlined into a skinnerbox.

Edited December 27, 2023 by PDCWolf

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

6 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

op mentioned: get rid of it

I'm not actually advocating to get rid of the one thing I hoped would be done well.

PDC knows this - apologies for being pedantic, but this is the interwebs; some readers might have missed this very important point. 

[fragtzack]

20 hours ago, regex said:

 I get to focus on flying and seeing the sights, not trying to right click every little thing on my craft because I forgot to set up an action group and then going to collect it while heading towards the ground, it's miles better than "right-click receive reward".

Sandbox mode

[asmi]

17 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Yeah, and I'm not a noob, I've been here for 10 years, it'd be great to have anything in the game for me, or to at least have the devs come out and say "sorry, nothing for you, this is only for people who missed the bus".

That's always been like that - stock experience is for notice players, veterans have to rely on mods to give them whatever challenge they desire. Because if you flip things around, there will be no veterans as the game will be way too complex for beginners and they will never become veterans. Take a look at the Orbiter - it's so complex that you need to spend a significant number of hours reading docs and guides before you will be able to do anything meaningful. In KSP 1 (it was v 0.17 when I bought the game) it took me about an hour or so to get to the Mun, in Orbiter even after hours upon hours of reading guides about MFDs it still took upward of 20 hrs to achieve an equivalent goal. Very few people have persistence like that, and you can see results in the number of people playing respective games.

Edited December 27, 2023 by asmi

[regex]

1 hour ago, fragtzack said:

Sandbox mode

It exists, what of it?

E: Oh, is this one of those dumb, vapid "gO pLaY SaNdBoX moDe" arguments? How about no. I enjoy progression gameplay, I just don't think it has to involve brain-dead "immersion" mechanics or unnecessary detail.

Edited December 27, 2023 by regex

[cocoscacao]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

tying all science to an action group, it never occurred to me that someone would do that

Two action groups in my case. One for "fire and forget" experiments, other for "reset-able" instruments.

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

I'm sure this is sarcasm, and on the contrary I'm not sure what conversation do you want, specially when all criticism is met with a click on the ignore button. 

It is. I'm not trying to ignore your criticism, I'm trying to understand it better. You didn't give me a lot to work with in the first reply.

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

What does the science system add to the game at all?

What indeed? It is an artificial limitation to introduce you to available options, and it follows natural progression in design complexity.

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

The concept itself was flawed on the first game, so flawed in fact people now are happy to pay $50 to have it hidden as a single button to do everything?

Not to beat the dead horse here again, when you pay for EA, you pay for the state of the game in which it is at that time. In my case (day 0), it was unoptimized bug-fest. Still no regrets... however:

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

The concept itself was flawed on the first game

Not flawed, but unimaginative. But it does the job of being a tutorial of sort. So I lied a bit when I said that limitation is artificial. It's very real. It teaches you how to design stuff to reach places. Sure, everyone will probably go through similar paths, but that's a tutorial. Handholding. Reaching K's moons is trivial with an entire tree at your disposal. Once you burn through the tree (in both games) what's left? I gave my 50$ to support that particular gameplay problem.

Can't comment yet to other science implementation propositions, since I need to dig 'em out first.

[Pthigrivi]

I'd sort of avoided this thread cause its title is a bit clickbaity but then I saw it was Joe and Im sure he was just venting a bit (it happens to the best of us). Reading through all this I think obviously many different players have their own preferences in how they'd like to play and obviously no one is having fun wrong. I've been taking my time here over the last few days digging in so I haven't gotten to the later experiments to test out their dynamics, but so far a lot of the changes are good. Like others I think the science button is an improvement over right-clicking half a dozen small parts but I also think there's room to improve the result-management UI. Once I get through a full playthrough I'll write more fully on my thoughts and recommendations here. 

I think the thrust of Joe's lament that started this thread is not necessarily some of these nitty-gritty details but the overall sense that science lacks 'purpose'. He'd like to see a KSPedia that gets infilled over time with sciencey information. Now, I love Just Jim's work and the flavor text is great, but I think we actually need a bit more than that. I've written about this in the past but the best way to make science feel like science is for it to produce information thats useful and valuable to the player. Real science carries with it a bit of mysticism, a sense that just knowing new things about the world we live in is a noble and fulfilling  enterprise. I don't think a game can do that exactly because that means unveiling actual new information for humanity as a whole. The other thing real science does however is provide useful information, in spaceflight-terms data that allows us to improve the way we design and build probes and the way we deploy them. Thats why we send orbiter probes to scan planetary surfaces looking for ideal places to land, why we do atmospheric analysis to help probes better survive on those bodies. Studying the geology and mineralogy on other worlds teaches us about their history, yes, but will also be crucial to deciding where to set up colonies, how to process and produce fuel and building materials in the future. I think this is the area that KSP2 is currently lacking--producing useful science. And that kind of science is very achievable within the context of a game. Take a game like Starfeild--not a particularly accurate game from a science standpoint, but even in that game scanning does feel like scanning. You're learning about what resources are available and where. You're learning if the environment is hot or cold or caustic. When you scan flora and fauna you're finding out what their temperament is, what resources they produce, whether they can be farmed. All of that information is directly usable by the player. Right now science in KSP2 isn't doing that. 

Now, for sure, much of that is directly related to resources and prospecting and that may be coming down the road. That doesn't mean there isn't an ocean of information players aren't currently getting that experiments could reveal. I've mentioned it a few times but MAPS. Off the bat altimetry and slope maps are really important for selecting landing zones and helping players land on level, clear ground. That could be in the game right now. We also absolutely need biome maps. One thing that seems curiously missing is a way for players to track what data they've already gathered so they can check it off the list and not be distracted by it. Biome maps could not only help players see whats out there and plan but also help them track the places where they've already been. We also desperately need a way to search for and ping discoverables. They look really cool but if we don't have an in-game process for highlighting their locations they don't really contribute much to the experience, sadly.  All of this could be gathered using a solid orbital scanning system that plays directly into polar orbital insertion, perhaps even elliptical orbits in which one instrument gathers a set of broad information from higher up while another gathers more specific information from a lower altitude, etc. Thats exactly the kind of in-engine minigame that relates directly to real-life science that KSP could capture beautifully. (Its also the reason I think omitting LoS is probably a mistake.)

So unlocking parts and producing useful maps are two ways science could be relevant to players, but there are others. For instance trajectory factoring drag could be really important for aerobraking and landing accurately on planets with atmospheres. There's also a simulation mode that might be employed to let players test crewed landers virtually in a place they've already landed a probe. Certainly many of these experiments could help in resource prospecting down the road. We also absolutely need a more fulsome flight planner to help plan for transfer windows and add up complex dV budgets, but I personally wouldn't hide that behind experiments. I'd just make that available out of the gate and include a tutorial after players had done their first Mun or Minmus landing to give them a nudge to go interplanetary. Im sure there are a number of other ways though that experiments could provide valuable information to players outside just ticking down the tech tree. 

[cocoscacao]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

With the bodies and discoverables being the same every single time

This is a common problem when you have an underlying lore to follow. I hope cheat menu for missions will be an option at some point. When I restart the game, I wanna skip through some hoops.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 minute ago, cocoscacao said:

But it does the job of being a tutorial of sort. So I lied a bit when I said that limitation is artificial. It's very real. It teaches you how to design stuff to reach places. Sure, everyone will probably go through similar paths, but that's a tutorial. Handholding. Reaching K's moons is trivial with an entire tree at your disposal. Once you burn through the tree (in both games) what's left? I gave my 50$ to support that particular gameplay problem.

Can't comment yet to other science implementation propositions, since I need to dig 'em out first.

That's the one thing Science! is doing well - enabling a progression system; which to your point does act as an effective tutorial/teaching system... but it also makes it a game.

It's the latter part I feel is getting short shrift; games offer players something to do that's consequential if they do or fail to do a thing.  Doing the thing correctly adds to progression - failure keeps you where you are or puts you back a step.  Sandbox lacks that.  But I do feel its fair to critique the way they've gamified science in Science!.  It should be more gamey!

The thing I've learned through these pages is how differently people define what they want out of the game.  Some like

• the progression system for the challenge it gives them to build a thing to go to the place with a limited tool set. 
• the progression system for the challenge it gives them to build the thing to go to the place with the limited tool set in order to DO a thing once there.

Science! does the first.

4 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

This is a common problem when you have an underlying lore to follow. I hope cheat menu for missions will be an option at some point. When I restart the game, I wanna skip through some hoops.

I forget which game(s) it was - but way back in the day there were games that, on the first playthrough, you had to unlock everything and learn about it, but in subsequent playthroughs either that was already unlocked or you could choose to play with/without that element.

- like in my suggestion of a Kerbilopedia, each discovery would fill-out (unlock) some piece of information about the world(s) and biomes as you did the experiment/ visited the place - but in subsequent runs you could choose/it would already be done.  That kind of thing addresses Superfluous J's thing about not wanting to have to do a thing he already knows how to do so that the game knows that he knows how to do a thing he already knows how to do.

I like and support that idea 

[HebaruSan]

22 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

One thing that seems curiously missing is a way for players to track what data they've already gathered so they can check it off the list and not be distracted by it. Biome maps could not only help players see whats out there and plan but also help them track the places where they've already been.

I want SCANsat for all sorts of reasons, but I'm wary of a UI that encourages repetition of past challenges. If a player enjoys the core game loop so much that they want to perform several Mun landings with basically the same gameplay challenges, then of course the game should allow and facilitate that. But for people who want to keep progressing through new challenges and experiences, a screen full of "You haven't been here yet (but it's basically the same as where you did go)" feels like the game dragging you backwards and distracting from the next step in the progression.

Science works well as a bonus alongside the main questline, but I'd find a biome checklist tedious. I don't see science point collection as a primary goal that I would focus on.

Edited December 27, 2023 by HebaruSan

[regex]

33 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I've mentioned it a few times but MAPS. Off the bat altimetry and slope maps are really important for selecting landing zones and helping players land on level, clear ground.

I have never found this kind of information actually useful and practical in the game and I think a big reason for that is that it needs to be very high-definition (because at low-definition the eyeball is a much better judge of landing spot) and paired with a waypoint system. Without that it's just another screen of useless data.

Edited December 27, 2023 by regex

[PDCWolf]

37 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

Two action groups in my case. One for "fire and forget" experiments, other for "reset-able" instruments.

It is. I'm not trying to ignore your criticism, I'm trying to understand it better. You didn't give me a lot to work with in the first reply.

What indeed? It is an artificial limitation to introduce you to available options, and it follows natural progression in design complexity.

Not to beat the dead horse here again, when you pay for EA, you pay for the state of the game in which it is at that time. In my case (day 0), it was unoptimized bug-fest. Still no regrets... however:

Not flawed, but unimaginative. But it does the job of being a tutorial of sort. So I lied a bit when I said that limitation is artificial. It's very real. It teaches you how to design stuff to reach places. Sure, everyone will probably go through similar paths, but that's a tutorial. Handholding. Reaching K's moons is trivial with an entire tree at your disposal. Once you burn through the tree (in both games) what's left? I gave my 50$ to support that particular gameplay problem.

Can't comment yet to other science implementation propositions, since I need to dig 'em out first.

It doesn't follow a natural progression at all. We sent probes and animals first before sending humans, we had to learn docking before reaching the mun, we're barely learning about radiation protection and life support before venturing further than our only satellite. Meanwhile in KSP2 you can get a Tylo lander (for the most experienced of the bunch), or at least a mun flyby rocket on your very first mission, Kerballed, without needing docking, and not even going into the basic lack of radiation/life support mechanics.

Nobody pays for an EA for whatever it is at the time, that's a cope, entirely unrealistic, and it's much less true when the devs come from 2 years hyping a full game, a roadmap, and even post 1.0 updates on that same roadmap. Plus they tell you the price will go even higher so you feel a bit more pressured to get in before 1.0.

32 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

This is a common problem when you have an underlying lore to follow. I hope cheat menu for missions will be an option at some point. When I restart the game, I wanna skip through some hoops.

And why would there be any reason to restart the game? It'll be the same game, with so little variety that there's still no wiggle room to actually make choices, at least until they add something else. On that matter, For Science! doesn't give much hope about the rest being varied, different, involved, immersive, or evolved from what we know.

 

[cocoscacao]

10 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

It doesn't follow a natural progression at all

I meant gameplay natural progression. If real agencies could reload a save file instead of burying their staff, space stations wouldn't have toilets. I like the sentiment though. One more reason to include kapybaras as lab rats.

10 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

And why would there be any reason to restart the game

Dunno. I went through the tech three 3 or 4 times in the original before I stopped playing.

Edited December 27, 2023 by cocoscacao

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

47 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

title is a bit clickbaity

There is a Marketing Dude in all of us. 

 

49 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

a solid orbital scanning system that plays directly into polar orbital insertion, perhaps even elliptical orbits in which one instrument gathers a set of broad information from higher up while another gathers more specific information from a lower altitude

Yeah - that's missing, too. 

Goes into my whole theme that much of the the educational promise of KSP2 is being missed 

[Superfluous J]

21 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Nobody pays for an EA for whatever it is at the time

I do. It took getting burned a couple times but I truly do.