Science Question: When/How do diminished returns kick in with radio transmissions?

[KospY]

One of the solution to fix that issue will be to separate transmit point and recovery point instead of only decreasing one value ? No ? Also that will be a lot less confusing

[Creat]

Yea I agree that would probably be the solution (or at least better). Or even more detailed: transmitting should only be able to get a portion of the total science-pool for a certain experiment (at a certain location), but both should still get a certain reduction for repeating things (diminished returns).

[jelamb]

As someone who is horrible at managing all those experiments while in flight, and actually pretty bad at the game in general, it would be nice if there were some science experiments that you could just slap to a probe, or a manned station and have continuesly generate science without the diminishing returns. Now I am not saying it should be a good income, it just needs to be a stable one. like say putting said probe on a low orbit around Kerbin yielding a very slow 0.1 science per ingame day, and putting one just outside the orbit of Jool generating considderably more per day.(but still a slow rate compared to actuall missions) Just something slow and steady, that still rewards more difficult missions. Because I am certain that otherwise I'll get horribly stuck in the tech tree.(what can I say I need my techs)

Gameplay-wise this would create an instant, obvious exploit. Just put one of them down, time-warp at max, go eat lunch, come back, get all the research. Time warp availability requires that no science generation can be passive. If there was a career mode option to disable the ability to time warp, then some passive options like satellites taking gravimetric readings of a planet would work very well.

[inkieminstrel]

I'm relieved that transmitting doesn't decrease the total amount of science you can get. Otherwise you'd never want to send a probe before a manned mission, which would be broken. I like that the devs took the time to get that right.

For fixing the problem with spamming transmissions, it seems sufficient to just disallow transmitting the same data twice on the same mission. Yes, you could still spam probes to get the same total science, but doing so is boring and time consuming. In the real world, for many experiments, recovering the equipment isn't all that useful (what would we gain from the Voyager probes returning home?). The bonus science for returned experiments is purely a gameplay mechanism to reward harder missions.

To that end, this is something we can all just implement ourselves. Don't transmit the same data twice on a single missions. Solved.

[Wheffle]

I mostly like this suggestion.

I'm excited to see what changes the devs make. I am really enjoying career mode as it is, so I'm really looking forward to the fine tuning.

[Merinsan]

So, is the consensus such that there is so much science to be had for a given observation - say, mystery goo in low Kerbin orbit - and while recovery vs. transmission will 'deplete' the available science at different rates, doing either method repeatedly will eventually get all of it?

I'm just terrified that at some point I'll hit 'peak science' and close off the higher echelons of the tech tree.

I'm certain there is enough science in the Kerbin, Duna and Eve systems to max out the tech tree. I've only been to these 3 places and I only have 2 nodes left, which will require 850 science I think. I didn't do any gravity readings in the Duna system, and have a lot to do in the Kerbin system (around Minmus and Mun) Those alone would get me over the top. And I didn't get all the science for other experiments from Eve/Duna (I was worried focused on returning samples).

At this point I have all the tech I ever used in sandbox, so I can go anywhere in the system.

Anyway, this is a little off topic. There is plenty of information around about where to find science.