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A practical use for all of this science.


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So, right now we have four scientific parts, a part for measuring gravity, one for temperature, one for acceleration, and one for atmospheric pressure. The gravity one may be useful if you want to do the hardcore math for TWR values, but the greater majority of players (okay, this is just an assumption here) don't do a whole lot of math. The temperature one is also completely useless, as heat doesn't radiate properly, and sticking one on an engine doesn't give you the heat of the engine, it gives you the heat of the atmosphere, which as stated earlier, isn't modeled very accurately. Next we have one the accelerometer, which aside from one experiment I did with ion engines, serves no real purpose as Kerbals don't die if they take high G's (unless it is something absurdly high that I am not aware of). Lastly, there is the barometer, and had we not been given the ability to see the ISP of the rocket just by right clicking it, may have had some real practicality, but alas not.

Due to the (hopefully .22) upcoming resources, what if we had all of these scientific parts help us determine what resources can be on which bodies? The logic behind this being that in reality, certain materials can only exist under certain conditions, and therefore things like methane can't be found on Mercury due to the lack of both low temperature and atmosphere, but it is found abundantly in Titan, as Titan has a thick atmosphere, and is very cold.

In the mission control building (that's the unclickable one, in case anyone didn't know), there would be a reference sheet of ranges and the correlating resources. For example, what is refined into liquid fuel, may only be found on bodies with atmospheres >0.1 atm and <0.75 atm. (NOTE: That range was just pulled out of thin air (no pun intended), it has no IRL science basis to it).

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As I don't mine resources, I currently don't care where methane or kethane is.

I've watched the atmosphere pressure rise on a sensor on my first probe to Duna, to try and get an idea of the height and density of the atmosphere (or if there even was one) before sending a larger vessel which might aerobrake or have parachutes attached. It'd be nice to see this kind of mechanic being developed further. If you look at the soviet missions to Venus, they had no idea of the parameters of the atmosphere back then, and had to perform several trial-and-error descents before they succeeded. It's inspiring and fits well with the KSP approach I think :)

Edited by innovine
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As I don't mine resources, I currently don't care where methane or kethane is.

I've watched the atmosphere pressure rise on a sensor on my first probe to Duna, to try and get an idea of the height and density of the atmosphere (or if there even was one) before sending a larger vessel which might aerobrake or have parachutes attached. It'd be nice to see this kind of mechanic being developed further. If you look at the soviet missions to Venus, they had no idea of the parameters of the atmosphere back then, and had to perform several trial-and-error descents before they succeeded. It's inspiring and fits well with the KSP approach I think :)

The problem is with that part, is that it will say you are in a vacuum, even though you are within the atmosphere, so it gives you more of an estimate than a good precise measurement.

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The problem is with that part, is that it will say you are in a vacuum, even though you are within the atmosphere, so it gives you more of an estimate than a good precise measurement.

Yes, there is no doubt it could be improved. But sending sounding probes to determine atmosphere properties could be a very good way to give meaning to the science items, once reentry heat shields start becoming important.

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Yes, there is no doubt it could be improved. But sending sounding probes to determine atmosphere properties could be a very good way to give meaning to the science items, once reentry heat shields start becoming important.

True, once re-entry has practical effects, sacrificing some probes to make sure your Kerbals are safe will be important.

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True, once re-entry has practical effects, sacrificing some probes to make sure your Kerbals are safe will be important.

Sacrefice? Dont evryone build their probes with return capability? No? Only me? Aww....

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A while back, I posted a tome on how resources could be tied in with sample collection / analysis and return. Based on certain WIP's by SQUAD, I'd say they've already have some of what we're discussing here already in mind.

Holy crap, I looked at the Reddit thread you linked (although, I would rather prefer being able to use empty fuel tanks for resources, instead of a designated storage container, but whatever). My idea doesn't seem to be anywhere in that thread though, except where certain materials are found only in atmospheres/land/oceans (which admittedly, is more or less a variation on what I proposed).

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Holy crap, I looked at the Reddit thread you linked (although, I would rather prefer being able to use empty fuel tanks for resources, instead of a designated storage container, but whatever). My idea doesn't seem to be anywhere in that thread though, except where certain materials are found only in atmospheres/land/oceans (which admittedly, is more or less a variation on what I proposed).

Very encouraging to see that Squad does have plans to implement a resource system into the game! I do hope that they read these threads closely as there are some excellent ideas in here!

Long-long term, wouldn't it be cool to see Squad collaborate to integrate a grand strategy game in the genre of Civilization, Supreme Ruler or Victoria into their space game? Imagine being able to control a societies development from pre-aircraft through to galactic civilization but with the more realistic space travel physics in KSP!

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  • 1 year later...

I think more science colletcion in vacuum might be good. As it gets very borring to post the same temperature 20 times for a contract science data from space around xxx. Oh I bored because of only my thermometer works lets try to send back the 100th crew report to complete it, no that not count science or at least don't give us science. Okey hey try material bay inspection nr 10. or goo container 10th.

I mean something must be out there so lets make a particle counter or photonometer, multispectral analisys, (I don't know its english word but somehow in space there is a "gravity" bigger stuff have more of this moving towards kinda energy, so another part we should create... ) or all of them :D maybe better integrations into nosecones. Today a "multimeter all in one" is not a scifi thing.

Is it science related to photomagnifiing things in space? Then We should have a part "hubble" as a science instrument or at least a video camera with zoom function to inspect something...

It is a good game (almost the best on replayability) but it lacks a lot of should be vanila functions yet which could make it is the best game on replayability.

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