[PLUGIN+PARTS][0.23] SCANsat terrain mapping

[damny]

I think the only things we 'miss' is some non-essential polish, like

My list is pretty similar, but I consider things like tech tree integration basic features, so they would have to be done before release.

Looking at the above achievements, and the difficulty to find anything serious to complain about, I'd like to suggest the next release will no longer be a 'Beta'.

Releases so far have been alpha builds, as SCANsat is not feature complete yet. But since this is a pretty small project, the first beta build might well be the last one and the release candidate build all in one.

[OrtwinS]

There is another essential feature you miss: SCANsat has no logo!

All the cool-guy plugins have logo's!

[damny]

There is another essential feature you miss: SCANsat has no logo!

All the cool-guy plugins have logo's!

Unicode cheat sheet to the rescue!

This is now the SCANsat logo:

✈⟴S.C.A.N.

[KhaosCorp]

I've noticed that the kethane mod doesn't work when the MapSat mod is added. It might be my machine/in game mod collection. Does anybody else have the same problem?

Ive got Kethane and SCANsat running...some on the same satellite even, everything is working just fine. Anything is debug or dump log?

[BananaDealer]

Ive got Kethane and SCANsat running...some on the same satellite even, everything is working just fine. Anything is debug or dump log?

Yep.

Hey, maybe you can talk to the Kethane guys for cross-compatibility like showing Kethane deposits on the SCANsat maps...

And I like the new "unofficial" logo... But maybe have the plane inside the square? or even maybe a satellite thing...

Something like this

Though it does bring Kethane to mind...

[damny]

Well, if this: ⟴ is a square, your font can't display the official SCANsat logo.

[BananaDealer]

Well, if this: ⟴ is a square, your font can't display the official SCANsat logo.

O...Oh... I'm sad now...

[Dweller_Benthos]

Well, if this: ⟴ is a square, your font can't display the official SCANsat logo.

What font should it be? I get the square..... :-(

[Geschosskopf]

Hey, maybe you can talk to the Kethane guys for cross-compatibility like showing Kethane deposits on the SCANsat maps...

Your picture shows pretty much an exact relationship between SCANsat's beam width and the Kethane grid. It looks like SCANsat is about 2-3 hexes wide.

Kethane needs to learn 3 lessons from SCANsat:

1. Allow background scanning while you're in the VAB or flying other ships. This also lets you have multiple ships scanning the same planet at once, and can have ships scanning multiple different planets at once, without having to watch the paint dry on any of them. WONDERFUL!

2. Fix the Kethane scanners so they don't go blind at warps higher than 100x (they drop to 10% coverage at just 1000x warp).

3. Make the Kethane beam the same width as the SCANsat beam. Actually, I'd prefer both to be conical like ISA was, so you could get more timely scanning (in terms of BOTH gametime and realtime) from higher orbits. At present, both SCANsat and Kethane scan in the least gametime from the lowest possible altitude, which maximizes the amount of realtime required because this is too low to warp at high speed.

[damny]

Oh fine, it looks like I can't really get away with keeping the logo as text...

[OrtwinS]

2 questions about the logo (we are going waaaaay off the 'real' development track here )

1) Why a plane...?

2) S.C.A.N. an acronym? What does it mean?

Sequential Celestial Analysis Node?

SCientific ANalisys (sattelite)?

Scientific Cartographic Analisys Network? (I like that one)

This website sure gives some freaky results: http://www.allacronyms.com/SCAN (check the second result...)

Edited November 3, 2013 by OrtwinS
removed freakyness

[damny]

1) Why a plane...?

Because there is a unicode character that looks like a plane but not one that looks like a Kerbal rocket.

2) S.C.A.N. an acronym? What does it mean?

Have you not read the part descriptions?

[Hodo]

Your picture shows pretty much an exact relationship between SCANsat's beam width and the Kethane grid. It looks like SCANsat is about 2-3 hexes wide.

Kethane needs to learn 3 lessons from SCANsat:

1. Allow background scanning while you're in the VAB or flying other ships. This also lets you have multiple ships scanning the same planet at once, and can have ships scanning multiple different planets at once, without having to watch the paint dry on any of them. WONDERFUL!

2. Fix the Kethane scanners so they don't go blind at warps higher than 100x (they drop to 10% coverage at just 1000x warp).

3. Make the Kethane beam the same width as the SCANsat beam. Actually, I'd prefer both to be conical like ISA was, so you could get more timely scanning (in terms of BOTH gametime and realtime) from higher orbits. At present, both SCANsat and Kethane scan in the least gametime from the lowest possible altitude, which maximizes the amount of realtime required because this is too low to warp at high speed.

I agree with number 1, but 2 and 3 aren't that big of a deal. When ever I am scanning a planet for Kethane, I set for 50x and go watch a movie, or spend time with my girlfriend or do something productive. Comeback in an hour or two and bam! it's done.

[KhaosCorp]

You can use current Kethane scanners and get 100% per pass resolution on MAX time warp....so not sure what your talking about 'they go blind'.

It really seems to me that the way Kethane scanners work is part of the overall mods balancing...its not supposed to be as easy as a toposcan is. This is kinda how it is rl too. They spend years colecting and analyzing data from satellites, and then use that to coordinate ground teams to collect more data, this can commonly go on for up to 5 years before people actually start setting up drill or excavators....

Considering you can make a 100% kethane map of kerbin in about 3 years of mission time id say its well balanced as is....not to mention you dont really need a full kethane map...60%ish is usually enough to suck a planet dry.

It would be nice if kethane ran multiple sat like SCAN does....but other than that I think Majiir did a great job with the scanning system as is.

Edited November 3, 2013 by KhaosCorp

[lincourtl]

You've done amazing work on this damny. Thank you so much! Here are my three observations for what they're worth.

1) Performance seems excellent, even with the overlays. My game does seem to become crashy after running three sats together for a while, but then I only have 2GB of memory and quite a few mods installed.

2) The only real feature I'm missing is the ability to export the data.

3) On edit: Forget what I said earlier about the GUI still bugging back to the old style. I terminated my previous SCAN sats in orbit, launched a new one, and the GUI is the newer style now.

4) I love this mod.

Edited November 4, 2013 by lincourtl

[Geschosskopf]

You can use current Kethane scanners and get 100% per pass resolution on MAX time warp....so not sure what your talking about 'they go blind'.

I have v0.8 Kethane and this ain't how it works. A single large scanner will drop from about 90-95% coverage at 100x warp to about 8-10% coverage at 1000x warp, and it gets worse exponentially at each higher warp level. That's "going blind". The only way to get full coverage with Kethane scanners at any warps over 100x is to either let it run for a stupid long time, like a decade of gametime, or put on as many separate scanners and their powerplants as you can get off the ground with your biggest lifter, so that they tend to shotgun the area, hopefully filling in each others' wholes somewhat. But even then it still takes like a year of gametime, even if only a couple minutes of realtime.

[Camacha]

Great work. The only thing I am wondering about is why slopes need a seperate sensor. I would think having an altitude map automatically means having a slope map too?

[KhaosCorp]

Great work. The only thing I am wondering about is why slopes need a seperate sensor. I would think having an altitude map automatically means having a slope map too?

Read back a bit, the slope scan IS done by the alt scanners, but he left the old part in (with self destruct) to not break craft.

@Ges...thats is how it works...I have done it myself a couple times. You have to use more than one scanner if you want to scan high time warp...its really not that hard.

[BananaDealer]

Oh fine, it looks like I can't really get away with keeping the logo as text...

Slap a little mock-up satellite instead of the plane and this will be so awesome...

Like these:

Or, here's something cool:

[Camacha]

Read back a bit, the slope scan IS done by the alt scanners, but he left the old part in (with self destruct) to not break craft.

My fault, I am currently a bit too busy to read the full 25 pages in detail

[shadow651]

looks sweet; going to try it out when I have the time.

[Majiir]

Kethane needs to learn 3 lessons from SCANsat:

1. Allow background scanning while you're in the VAB or flying other ships. This also lets you have multiple ships scanning the same planet at once, and can have ships scanning multiple different planets at once, without having to watch the paint dry on any of them. WONDERFUL!

2. Fix the Kethane scanners so they don't go blind at warps higher than 100x (they drop to 10% coverage at just 1000x warp).

3. Make the Kethane beam the same width as the SCANsat beam. Actually, I'd prefer both to be conical like ISA was, so you could get more timely scanning (in terms of BOTH gametime and realtime) from higher orbits. At present, both SCANsat and Kethane scan in the least gametime from the lowest possible altitude, which maximizes the amount of realtime required because this is too low to warp at high speed.

1. Just to be clear: this is trivial from an implementation standpoint. However, it wouldn't allow for consuming ElectricCharge, which is my primary objection. Over the last couple months my thinking has been slowly shifting on this, but simply removing the electrical requirement and enabling unfocused scanning is unsatisfying, especially since the larger, heavier scanner would either be hugely disadvantaged (no unfocused warp) or not as differentiated (since it currently consumes more power).
   
2. This is by design. It's unrealistic and needs tweaking, but logarithmic scaling of the timewarp factor achieves a few important gameplay goals. Removing it would also introduce some bugs and technical challenges.
   
3. I will probably be adding some kind of conical feature to Kethane, but it will be something like "you can pick a cell anywhere in this cone" rather than "you've scanned all the cells in this cone" to keep scan rates from spiking.

All of these suggestions are things I've previously given a lot of thought to. SCANsat makes for an interesting testbed for some of these ideas, so I'll definitely be watching it closely. Just remember that Kethane is a different mod revealing a different kind of data, and things like coverage requirements are much different.

With all that said, this is a SCANsat thread, not a Kethane thread. It might be appropriate to create another thread if you want to continue this discussion rather than cluttering up damny's.

[damny]

However, it wouldn't allow for consuming ElectricCharge, which is my primary objection.

This bugs me as well, but being able to watch satellites paint nice tracks on the map is about 95% of the gameplay in this mod, so this is the one thing that absolutely has to work. Something similar applies to time warp. If you're in a position where you can time warp to fill out the map, you've already done the work, so this is no place for arbitrary restrictions or technical limitations to keep you from actually getting a map.

[Majiir]

If you're in a position where you can time warp to fill out the map, you've already done the work

The problem is there are few ways of making it challenging to get into that position. I have a couple projects in the works which would make satellite positioning more challenging than "go polar and timewarp" but without those, an optimal strategy for scanning quickly emerges.

[Geschosskopf]

The problem is there are few ways of making it challenging to get into that position. I have a couple projects in the works which would make satellite positioning more challenging than "go polar and timewarp" but without those, an optimal strategy for scanning quickly emerges.

See, I'm confused here. Why is it a problem to go polar and warp? It's no different from doing any other maneuver. Yank the node gizmos into the correct position, burn, warp until you need to burn again. Why add needless complication?

Scanning and mapping are as exciting as watching paint dry, a tedious but sadly necessary chore you have to do before you can get on with the actual fun stuff of deciding where to land and designing a lander for that particular environment, and figuring out a whole mission around that. Anything that minimizes the tedium of scanning and mapping is most welcome. The reverse would be most unwelcome.