About the Tech tree

[Naten]

Wait!

0.22= 2+2=4

Its the next update,soooo...

4-1=3

HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED!

Outside of the jokes, I think it would be great, and maybe career mode in 0.22.

Wait one second, though.

This would be a major update, right?

The last major update was 0.18. 1*8=8, and 22+8=30. 30/10=3!

HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED!

[Richy teh space man]

The tech tree sounds interesting, I like the idea of earning science points through flying and experimentation.

Would setting up research bases near some of the in game easter eggs do anything extra or would they just remain as eye candy in the game?

[Death Engineering]

I'm hoping to see something like the Rollercoaster Tycoon's method of R&D: you can "weight" certain concepts but what comes out of the R&D is random. For example, you could put all your research resources into "Propulsion" and you might get a Skipper or you might get a BACC SRB. It would make for better replayability if the things that came up to develop weren't static.

[HeadHunter67]

This would suck the fun from the game. Nobody like to be forced to anything that is one of the things about the game you are only limited by you design.

I agree - I never understood people who suggest forced failure as something "fun" to add to a game. And I see it in so many other games. It's almost like sjwt was saying "wouldn't it be great if, no matter what you do, your launches kept failing until a certain point in the game? This isn't an MMO - your first mission is not "kill 10 Kerbals".

[lazarus1024]

I agree - I never understood people who suggest forced failure as something "fun" to add to a game. And I see it in so many other games. It's almost like sjwt was saying "wouldn't it be great if, no matter what you do, your launches kept failing until a certain point in the game? This isn't an MMO - your first mission is not "kill 10 Kerbals".

HEY GUYS! I JUST LEVELED 23 TIMES!!! Oh...wait...I see what you did there.

[HarvesteR]

So, I've been thinking long and hard here about how we're going to do the 'earning science' bit. It's a good idea, but putting it in practice poses a few challenges.

How do we rate the science value of your missions? What even defines a mission in the first place? These things are actually pretty hazy in terms of how the game deals with them, so coming up with a nice, solid way of doing science is a deceptively tough task.

I do believe I've worked out a good solution now:

The game won't award you any science automatically. That would be artificial and generally meaningless, but worse still, it would require us to make arbitrary decisions about the science value of this or that action. That's a bad road to go down. Instead, we can let you 'do science' as part of your missions, and get your science points for yourself. Here's how:

We already have a few science sensor parts, which apart from a context menu readout, are largely decorative. We can put those to some use now, along with a couple other scientific parts we're going to add.

The idea is that science parts work as one-shot experiments. That is, they're activated by action group or as part of the staging sequence, and once deployed, they to their thing. This is essentially deploying the experiment to gather data. This data isn't science yet though, because you need to get it to your resident experts over at R&D to crunch the numbers and make some sense out of it.

To do that, you can recover the experiments (or whatever is left of them). That will convert the data you gathered into scientific knowledge, provided you don't already have it. This is done by us storing where each experiment was run and what it was, and using that 'source' as a key to a multiplier value, which starts at 100% and gets progressively lower the more data on the same subject you gather. The more you spam the same type of experiment in the same place, the less science you'll get for the data it generates.

Now, if we've learned anything this far, it's that recovery is by no means guaranteed. So here's where the antennas and comm dishes finally get a purpose. Once available, you can use comms equipment to transmit science data back down and gain science immediately. Of course, you can't expect to get as much knowledge for the same experiment data if you beam it back as if you had recovered it hands-on. How efficient the data-for-science rate is depends largely on the quality of the antenna being used, as does its power requirements.

The possibilities for what the science-gathering parts can be then are pretty huge. They could be anything from experiment canisters filled with some mystery goo, a camera array, a mass spectrometer, anything really. Functionally it all works the same way, and better yet, it works with the game rather than over it.

That's about it in a very tightly packed nutshell. I'm pretty happy with this idea now, it should fit any style of playing. You could focus on running as many different experiments as possible in Kerbin's lower atmosphere, or rush into discovering the different properties of Mystery Gooâ„¢ across the farthest reaches of the solar system, and hopefully any point in between as well.

Disclaimer: Mystery Gooâ„¢ is not really a planned feature (yet).

Cheers

[regex]

snip...

This sounds like a fantastic game mechanic that supports the sandbox sort of play we already have. Definitely looking forward to playing this.

Disclaimer: Mystery Gooâ„¢ is not really a planned feature (yet).

It should be.

[Richy teh space man]

This sounds interesting, since it'll add something to do while exploring.

[Geschosskopf]

I think this is a good system. Bravo! I hope this means that mapping satellites are one of the future types of science instruments .

Question: Suppose I both beam back the data and recover the same mission. Would that make up the difference between the 2? I'm thinking I might want to do this if I don't trust my ability to recover the mission, or if I send the mission on some long, round-about trip and want some return on the investment before the probe gets home maybe years in the future.

[HeadHunter67]

We already have a few science sensor parts, which apart from a context menu readout, are largely decorative. We can put those to some use now, along with a couple other scientific parts we're going to add.

So here's where the antennas and comm dishes finally get a purpose. Once available, you can use comms equipment to transmit science data back down and gain science immediately. Of course, you can't expect to get as much knowledge for the same experiment data if you beam it back as if you had recovered it hands-on. How efficient the data-for-science rate is depends largely on the quality of the antenna being used, as does its power requirements.

Amazing! It's great that science and communication equipment will finally have a use that's not purely decorative! I look forward to this, and hopefully to new science equipment as well.

One last thing I'd like to ask for, Felipe - in addition to just science components is there any chance we could get science modules for orbital stations and planetary bases? These could allow players to Do Science in orbit or on other worlds, as well as improving research, and providing a reliable place to which to deliver data gathered by other scientific craft and expeditions. I really would like to have some legitimate scientific use for an orbital lab.

[lazarus1024]

So, I've been thinking long and hard here about how we're going to do the 'earning science' bit. It's a good idea, but putting it in practice poses a few challenges.

How do we rate the science value of your missions? What even defines a mission in the first place? These things are actually pretty hazy in terms of how the game deals with them, so coming up with a nice, solid way of doing science is a deceptively tough task.

I do believe I've worked out a good solution now:

The game won't award you any science automatically. That would be artificial and generally meaningless, but worse still, it would require us to make arbitrary decisions about the science value of this or that action. That's a bad road to go down. Instead, we can let you 'do science' as part of your missions, and get your science points for yourself. Here's how:

We already have a few science sensor parts, which apart from a context menu readout, are largely decorative. We can put those to some use now, along with a couple other scientific parts we're going to add.

The idea is that science parts work as one-shot experiments. That is, they're activated by action group or as part of the staging sequence, and once deployed, they to their thing. This is essentially deploying the experiment to gather data. This data isn't science yet though, because you need to get it to your resident experts over at R&D to crunch the numbers and make some sense out of it.

To do that, you can recover the experiments (or whatever is left of them). That will convert the data you gathered into scientific knowledge, provided you don't already have it. This is done by us storing where each experiment was run and what it was, and using that 'source' as a key to a multiplier value, which starts at 100% and gets progressively lower the more data on the same subject you gather. The more you spam the same type of experiment in the same place, the less science you'll get for the data it generates.

Now, if we've learned anything this far, it's that recovery is by no means guaranteed. So here's where the antennas and comm dishes finally get a purpose. Once available, you can use comms equipment to transmit science data back down and gain science immediately. Of course, you can't expect to get as much knowledge for the same experiment data if you beam it back as if you had recovered it hands-on. How efficient the data-for-science rate is depends largely on the quality of the antenna being used, as does its power requirements.

The possibilities for what the science-gathering parts can be then are pretty huge. They could be anything from experiment canisters filled with some mystery goo, a camera array, a mass spectrometer, anything really. Functionally it all works the same way, and better yet, it works with the game rather than over it.

That's about it in a very tightly packed nutshell. I'm pretty happy with this idea now, it should fit any style of playing. You could focus on running as many different experiments as possible in Kerbin's lower atmosphere, or rush into discovering the different properties of Mystery Gooâ„¢ across the farthest reaches of the solar system, and hopefully any point in between as well.

Disclaimer: Mystery Gooâ„¢ is not really a planned feature (yet).

Cheers

But that's...that's...F-ing brilliant!

I love it!

Can we please have a soil sampler/rock collector in there as one of the new parts? I assume that would only work landed on something. Any chance of radar or something for scanning planets (both for science and maybe later to build pretty maps)?

I really love this, both how it'll work, the recovery aspect and the com dishes having a real, cool use!

[Beeman]

What Harvester just said sounds exactly like what we need for science and even communications in KSP. Very good indeed.

Hopefully we'll have small(things you can drop on the ground), medium(stuff you need to pack onto rovers) and large(actual structures that do science) science parts and things. I also hope to see a couple more communications parts that maybe get better with research as well.

Now I'm even more excited for career mode >.>

[The Jedi Master]

-epic snip-

I like the idea! Question: would flying the probe intact back to Kerbin count as recovery? It's what the Soviets did.

[lazarus1024]

It sounds like it.

My guess is so long as you land it on kerbin and hit "recover" from the space center, you are golden. I would be curious if manned missions get a bit more science out of their instruments when recovering compared to unmanned probes?

[jcraft]

This is looking truly good, but I wonder how will it play with things like orbital stations or planetary bases, as the proposed system seems to reward player for doing lot of small experiments in many different places, which of course is not corresponding well with functions of spacestation/planetary base.

And one more thing. How exactly we going to unlock new technologies? For example - to unlock nuclear engine it would be required from player to:

Option 1. Only hit certain science rating

Option 2. Do something actually related to developing this new type of engine in addition to hitting required science level

The second option would be of course much more preferable to see in game, as we don't want to see player unlocking new engines by studying Mun rocks, yes?

Edited August 15, 2013 by jcraft

[Xellith]

I came here to possibly post something... but it seems harvester read my mind!

Regarding the space labs, I think it would be interesting if you had certain modules that could only be used for certain technology types (Aero/Command/Electrical/Engine/Fueltanks/Structural/Utility/Wheel). Having more of these modules would allow for greater science data collection in those fields (or reduced chance of experiment failure)

Example; a space lab with 5 Electrical Modules will produce data 5x faster for electrical tech than what would happen normally when an experiment is delivered to the lab (or the chance of experiment failure is reduced by X amount). Or you can have a station with all the modules (8 modules to cover all tech types) which would reduce all experiments of all types by X amount. You get the idea.

Either way you would require getting data to KSC. So unless you had a satellite network set up you would have to wait for KSC to into your antenna's range.

A buddy had an idea for a permanent space port in orbit once you get a certain number of specific parts into space. He finds creating launchers to get something into orbit to be laborious. I kinda agree.

Anyway just some ideas for you and others to discard. Have fun

[HeadHunter67]

The second option would be of course much more preferable to see in game, as we don't want to see player unlocking new engines by studying Mun rocks, yes?

And why not? Not every technological advance is directly oriented to the mission goals. Look at all the technological breakthroughs that have come about as unintended offshoots of unrelated research. For example, the need for water purification for the space program led to breakthroughs in hemodialysis.

So it's entirely possible that an unintended side-effect of sending an expedition to the Mün is that some new technology is discovered that has nothing to do directly with geology, but everything to do with the act of getting there in the first place. The research is just the ends, not the means.

[illectro]

I like the sensor system for collecting some scientific data, but it sounds like there's going to be a single science score which restricts your access to engineering. I'd really prefer to see data collected by probes to be one factor but actually building and flying hardware should generate an orthogonal measure of scientific progress. So as you log time on an engine you gain engineering understanding and can unlock bigger versions of the same.

Or... how about starting with each part pre-nerfed - 10% heavier, lower thrust, lower ISP, etc - then as you log time these penalties get reduced, this leads to a justification for test flying hardware.

[HeadHunter67]

Sounds like a good idea on the surface, but trust me, it turns the game into a grind.

Ask anyone who ever crafted in Star Wars Galaxies what it took to get to the point where they could make anything meaningful.

[illectro]

Sounds like a good idea on the surface, but trust me, it turns the game into a grind.

Ask anyone who ever crafted in Star Wars Galaxies what it took to get to the point where they could make anything meaningful.

I'm not sure your logic is on sound ground here.

[regex]

Sounds like a good idea on the surface, but trust me, it turns the game into a grind.

Ask anyone who ever crafted in Star Wars Galaxies what it took to get to the point where they could make anything meaningful.

I doubt it'll be anything like an MMO grind, especially considering the fact that you'll have access to enough unique parts to start to at least make it to the Mun. Experienced players and newbies alike will have little issues getting their programs up and running. I think we'll see quite a few craft for different purposes using only starter career parts and within budget passed around to help people out.

[HeadHunter67]

I'm not sure your logic is on sound ground here.

What you get is a system that encourages players to fly meaningless missions with substandard tech for the sole sake of improving that tech to the point where play can become meaningful. Hence, a grind.

Instead, missions that lead to developments should be challenging - not based solely off flight time, or number of flights, but of doing something new or better or differently. Yes, we learn as much from our failures as success, but that's already built in to the game.

[illectro]

What you get is a system that encourages players to fly meaningless missions with substandard tech for the sole sake of improving that tech to the point where play can become meaningful. Hence, a grind.

But even flying a suborbital rocket early on should be hugely meaningful. Being too ambitious should be hard.

[regex]

What you get is a system that encourages players to fly meaningless missions with substandard tech for the sole sake of improving that tech to the point where play can become meaningful. Hence, a grind.

Define meaningful and substandard. KSP parts are already pretty well balanced against each other and meaningful play in a sandbox is purely defined by the user. What you consider as "meaningful" (defined missions with concrete objectives, for instance) might be considered a grind by others.

[HeadHunter67]

But even flying a suborbital rocket early on should be hugely meaningful. Being too ambitious should be hard.

I agree - please don't get me wrong, Scott. I've followed your work and you've shown me how each achievement can be meaningful.

I simply think that if we reduce it to "fly x hours on this engine/craft/etc to get science points for a better version", we'll see people launching something, putting it into orbit and going AFK until they get the thing they wanted anyhow. Maybe that's overly skeptical, but all I've got to go on is the history of how similar systems worked out in other games.

I'm confident that we'll have an R&D system that will make each accomplishment along the way significant - but it's just my own personal feeling that the best way to go about this is by getting out there and "doing" things. Or, at the very least, it should be more rewarding than the equivalent of AFK testing.

Define meaningful and substandard. KSP parts are already pretty well balanced against each other and meaningful play in a sandbox is purely defined by the user. What you consider as "meaningful" (defined missions with concrete objectives, for instance) might be considered a grind by others.

The parts, as they are, are balanced - a suggestion to nerf them until players get to a certain point would change that, and I can't see how it would increase the fun.

Yes, some players may want more freeform objectives - that's fine, I'm actually that way myself. I just don't want to see a system that can be abused to reward people for not truly playing but just going through the motions. I fear that basing it off flight time, for instance, can have that risk. If you're not playing for fun, but playing just so you can unlock the fun, that's inarguably a grind. Lots of games have that pitfall.

Edited August 16, 2013 by HeadHunter67