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OSL-25 "Starlab" and OSCM-01 "Mini-Lab" constantly retracting equipment makes it difficult to use


jclovis3

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Reported Version: v0.2.0 (latest) | Mods: none | Can replicate without mods? Yes 
OS: Windows 10 Home 22H2 | CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D | GPU: MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X PCI Express 4.0 | RAM128 GB DDR5-6000

 

With the OSL-25 "Starlab" collecting biome specific science in low orbit, you pass over each biome rather quickly and with some, those biomes have very small areas. Shores on Kerbin or Shallows on Eve are just two examples. The Starlab retracts all probes and booms every time it pauses and time warp doesn't speed this animation up either. When you finally do get to continue your scan as you pass by the same type of biome you started it on, you have to wait for these parts to extend before the timer can continue and often, you exit the biome before it can make any more progress. It took me over three hours to scan just the shallows biome on Eve because of this nonsense.

In contrast, KSP1 allowed us to extend science parts and leave them out to perform their functions whenever we were ready to. The only reason to retract said parts is for atmospheric reentry, or when they present a hazard to docking or maneuvering close to other vessels. Mechanically, this doesn't make sense to keep moving them back and forth for every use as this should increase the wear and tear on these pieces and ideally, even cost EC to move them in and out. I actually wouldn't mind if we had to spend EC to extend, retract things like landing legs or solar panels either as they do use motors to enact motion and engage/disengage locks.

It may just be a bug that the Starlab even collects biome specific science at all since it needs 6 minutes to perform this. If this is intended, please add to the part status in the parts manager an indication of the biome it is working on when it is paused, or allow it to run scans on each biome without restarting on others.

Other options are to decrease the time it takes to perform a scan, or make the parts extend/retract faster, but I'd much rather just make us have to extend/retract them manually or only leave them extended during pauses in science but let them retract after the collection is complete.

Edit: The same problem with the OSCM-01 "Mini-Lab", which is the unmanned equivalent.

Edited by jclovis3
Added OSCM-01 "Mini-Lab".
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Encountered the same and wanted to just echo this entirely.

Seems to either be a bug that Starlab collects biome specific at low orbit or that the research timer should progress during the extension+retraction. (Though even then, gathering from a location such as Kerbal Shores would be quite tedious)

Edited by Augie
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Making it even more annoying is that the UI animation goes at a constant speed. So if you're going around at 4x time warp trying to make it go faster, you actually are losing more surface area to  the animation.

 

This is also related to this bug/known issue: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/221681-non-biome-specific-experiments-are-behaving-as-though-they-were-biome-specific-making-it-near-impossible-to-collect-science/

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