More difficult, more varied, more better science.

[Frostiken]

If I had one complaint about science, it's that it doesn't push the concept nearly as far as it should. While what we have could stand in as a placeholder, I believe that there's more here that could and should be explored, and our current system is fairly simplistic and only serves to have touched on the tip of the iceberg about what is possible.

I think the first problem is that science is far too easy to min/max. The system we have in place is too loose and it doesn't have enough restrictions and controls. You can spam transmissions in about thirty seconds (power permitting), you can perform experiments while hurtling through space in a second, you can do them over and over again. There's also the problem of 'motherlode' science. Anyone who made the first trip to the Mun knows what I'm talking about. You get a sample, a crew report, a mystery goo observation, an EVA, and a lab report... return home, and you get like 500 easy science points and unlock like 33% of the tree right away.

And worst of all, the science aspect just doesn't push the concept far enough.

Here's what I'd like to see.

1) More science instruments. The first problem here is that probes kind of suck for exploring. Whereas through just four robotic rovers on Mars we've discovered reams of data, in KSP, your rover explorer is effectively useless unless you drag a giant goo tank with. We need to saturate the game with scientific apparatuses. A camera. A laser spectrometer. Radiation monitors. Emission monitors. Magnetic anomaly detectors. A drill. A scoop. Wind monitors. And so on and so forth. We should have tons of things we can sample the worlds with.

2A) More scientific labs. Scientific labs are large units that specialize in experiments, and take advantage of data gathered from scientific apparatuses. Labs come in various flavors. For example, you would have a cryogenics lab, a materials science lab, an engineering lab, the mystery goo lab, and so on. For purposes of early experimentation, you could access a 'minilab', designed to run very basic experiments (similar to the current science module we have now) As well as labs, you would also have 'microlabs' designed for rovers. More on this in 2B.

2B) Lab functionality: Labs would function by devoting kerbals to the task to run experiments. You would either use EVA or internal transfers to move a Kerbal from his habitat to his lab station. If there's no Kerbal, experiments can't be run. For the microlabs, you would dedicated probe core CPU runtimes to the task. CPU load would cause lag in probe response and degrade other functions while experiments are in progress.

2C) Labs consume a resource called 'science junk'. Some experiments would demand special resources (blutonium from resourcing, ore samples from a specific planet). They would also drain power, of course.

3) Experiments. Experiments would be what is used to generate science points. Instead of simply 'observing goo', for example, you could pick from some experiments to perform. Like the current readings, where you're at would determine the experiments available to you. What experiments you've done, what data you've shared, all would determine what you can do. For example, the materials lab could choose from an experiment measuring micrometeorite spalling in zero G, or you could chose a faster experiment on the properties of moonrocks... but it would require having a moonrock. Let's say you had no resources and needed science. Well you can still perform basic experiments. You would need extra time and some 'science junk', but you could poke at mystery goo, shock it with electricity, or what-have-you. Or if you had a probe, you could use the antenna on it to beam data from the dosimeters measuring stellar radiation to a specific station. That station would then have that data and be able to generate experiments with it.

4) Experiments would take time. Some could take minutes, some could take hours.

5) The experiment you run, how stupid the scientist working on it is, the quality of your transmission all would affect the outcome of the experiment, which would generate science points of a certain category. As an example, fuel technologies could be unlocked with yellow and red science points, which would generated mostly by cryogenic lab experiments. Structural units could be unlocked by blue science points, which are generated by the materials science lab.

This all combined would provide a very good reason to both build a space station as a hub for scientific progress, and keep it supplied as well as stocked with kerbal scientists. This would also seriously limit how much science you could do with one craft, requiring either bases set up on the surface or many inefficient ships together. The basic idea here is to serve as a disincentive these ships that do fifty experiments at once, and to encourage decentralized science hubs. Obtaining a sample from the surface of Duna to do experiments on could be highly rewarding if you brought it back to Kerbin... or you could set up a science lab on Duna itself and perform different experiments that may reward you faster.

Maybe too complicated? Sure, maybe. But if anything we can have a middle ground... the current method of launching a one-man capsule and shooting endless reams of data from two experiment modules that take seven seconds to run is just too extreme in the opposite direction.

Edited October 17, 2013 by Frostiken

[Shoie13]

You realize KSP is in Alpha and the game will change drastically as new content is added and old content is changed, right? It's the first release of the science segment. They will update it more in the future.

New players to the game won't be going to the mun on the first trip, or probably not even their sixth flight. So they won't be getting 500 science points immediately. Obviously it's going to be easy for experienced players who've been playing the game for a while.