Science points for duration of mission

[Birrakk]

A quick suggestion:

A small trickle of science points are gained for every minute or hour that a craft is up in space. This would make satellites and other long-term (or permanent) probes serve a purpose in the game.

Unfortunately, under the game's current programming, a satellite/probe can only serve a useful purpose (read: generate science points) for a very short amount of time, based solely on its orbit. I suppose a heavily eccentric orbit can have a satellite/probe pass through Low Orbit, High Orbit, and maybe even low enough to qualify as a biome (on bodies with no atmosphere). But after they've traversed those areas once, the craft no longer serves a purpose, as all of the science projects have been performed (once you hit the wall of diminishing returns).

Short of installing a mod that lets a satellite map the surface of a body, or act as a communications relay, satellites/probes don't really server much of a purpose once they've completed half an orbit. I'd love to see a pay-off for leaving them in orbit long-term.

Of course, there would need to be a limit as to how many satellites, orbiting the same body, would be allowed to rack up science points. Maybe one at a Low Equatorial Orbit, one at Polar Orbit, and possibly one at Synchronous Orbit. So any satellites past those three wouldn't generate any science points in a passive manor.

I think this would encourage players to progress on a more normal (or realistic) space program evolution; by sending up satellites and probes (before sending Kerbals), that generate them a little trickle of science points. This small trickle of science points could prove useful to new players, while later on in the game, this small trickle wouldn't really mean much to them.

[Lexar]

A quick suggestion:

A small trickle of science points are gained for every minute or hour that a craft is up in space. This would make satellites and other long-term (or permanent) probes serve a purpose in the game.

Unfortunately, under the game's current programming, a satellite/probe can only serve a useful purpose (read: generate science points) for a very short amount of time, based solely on its orbit. I suppose a heavily eccentric orbit can have a satellite/probe pass through Low Orbit, High Orbit, and maybe even low enough to qualify as a biome (on bodies with no atmosphere). But after they've traversed those areas once, the craft no longer serves a purpose, as all of the science projects have been performed (once you hit the wall of diminishing returns).

Short of installing a mod that lets a satellite map the surface of a body, or act as a communications relay, satellites/probes don't really server much of a purpose once they've completed half an orbit. I'd love to see a pay-off for leaving them in orbit long-term.

Of course, there would need to be a limit as to how many satellites, orbiting the same body, would be allowed to rack up science points. Maybe one at a Low Equatorial Orbit, one at Polar Orbit, and possibly one at Synchronous Orbit. So any satellites past those three wouldn't generate any science points in a passive manor.

I think this would encourage players to progress on a more normal (or realistic) space program evolution; by sending up satellites and probes (before sending Kerbals), that generate them a little trickle of science points. This small trickle of science points could prove useful to new players, while later on in the game, this small trickle wouldn't really mean much to them.

Or...

Launch satellite before I go to class at 7 hit time acceleration. Come back at 4 that night and have the entire tree unlocked. BRILLIANT!

[StarManta]

There must be a mechanic to limit what Lexar is suggesting. I would suggest something simple: After a certain amount of time, the science part "maxes out" on its science potential, and its results must be transmitted or returned to Kerbin for recovery. You can choose to transmit sooner for a proportional amount of Science.

How I imagine such a system working:

1. Launch satellite into orbit.

2. Click "Start long-term experiment" on the science part

3. Go somewhere else, timewarp for a while, do some other missions, whatever

4. The part throws up a message "the science part on craft XYZ is ready to transmit results". If Kerbal Alarm Clock is ever integrated into the core game, it should use a window like that. You could optionally forego this message entirely, but still allow KAC to set an alarm for it in future versions. The player just has to come back to the satellite of his own volition in that case.

5. Upon returning to the satellite, you will now see "Review Results" just like if you'd observed the part before. You can now transmit your science. Naturally, this bit of science is much larger and takes more time/power to transmit, but gets you MUCH more Science in return.

BONUS:

Now, let's imagine that this part requires a large, continuous supply of electricity, and Kerbals to be present. Suddenly there's a purpose for space stations! Since these long-term experiments are much more trouble, it's only sensible to want to return them for recovery (as opposed to repeating them 5 more times to be able to broadcast the results), so you'll want to build a space station with habitation modules and tons of solar panels, and docking ports, and just dock the long-term science part to it for the duration of the experiment. MUCH cheaper to launch repeated science missions then!

Edited October 22, 2013 by StarManta

[Birrakk]

Or...

Launch satellite before I go to class at 7 hit time acceleration. Come back at 4 that night and have the entire tree unlocked. BRILLIANT!

Or, even better!!! Open the persistent.sfs file and manually give myself more science points!!!! VOILA!!!

You're basically talking about cheating. This is a single player game. We don't need to police anyone. If they want to cheat, they can cheat. But we don't need to limit the game because of them. No point punishing everyone else because of it either. Plus, some of the challenge involves seeing how quickly you can reach certain milestones in the game. If all you do is launch a single satellite for the first 300 years of your space program, well... then that's kind of a sad space program.

My original suggestion would make satellites, probes, and space stations (and even bases) actually serve a purpose, rather than just be "for pretties". If you're afraid that that would entice you into cheating, then perhaps a single player game isn't for you.

I also thought StarManta's idea of having to manually transmit the data home every now and then would be a good fix as well. A launched satellite is only capable of holding so much data in its buffer. Then the player would occasionally have to "fly" the satellite and manually execute a "transmit home" function. I think that sounds like a good compromise.

[martinws]

Satellites could serve a purpose forwarding transmissions if there is no line of sight between antennas.

E.g. No line of sight between Duna lander and KSC: Duna surface sample is then transmitted through Duna lander->Duna orbit sat->Kerbin orbit sat->KSC

[allmappedout]

Just because you consider it cheating or not is irrelevant. It has to be balanced to be a good game mechanic. If you could unlock the entire tech tree by doing one thing over and over again, then it tunnels the players into doing that. A Good game mechanic gives you multiple paths of reaching the same goal, with benefits and risks associated with each path.

This does not do that. Although I agree with the theory that satellites should be useful, in the current game mechanic, it just won't work. As i've mentioned on other threads, the science mechanic will have to be changed to incorporate something like that, by looking at having more disciplines of science, potential for specific conditions for unlocking (scenario or experiment based), as well as more interlinking and a restructure of the tree. Also I believe that probes become useful in the sense that they should relay transmission between ground probes out of LOS of Kerbin, but again this is something that can come in later.

[winn75]

Time base rewards can seem a bit irrelevant to a game in wich time means nothing as you can time warp. The player should never be rewarded by being passive.

However, orbit completion or surface scanning would be nice way to get science (for instance: surface scanning could unlock the biome map to help the player to know where to land).

I also agree to say that science should take some time to be collected. For now science gameplays seem like : go somewhere, click on all the science device (or actiongroup them), send/bring them back. Its pretty quick. Maybe some science based well thought mini-games inside the game should do the trick by adding choice and reflexion to the player about how to make efficient science.

[ThesaurusRex]

...mini games?

YES. MINIGAMES! FOR SCIENCE!

Oh my, that sounds wonderful.