Transmitting Data - a high power activity. . .

[Johno]

Seriously?

I just built a Mun probe. I knew that transmitting data requires a lot of power. I've just researched battery packs, so no problem - I put SEVEN on the probe.

Just GETTING to the Mun takes all but 200 units. I think, no problem, that should be plenty.

DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT.

Drains the batteries in a matter of seconds.

*sigh*

Revert . . .

[Bobnova]

More solar panels is the answer. My answer, anyway.

[phyrex999]

Yep, add solar panels. You can transmit once or twice, recharge, repeat.

[SkyRender]

Batteries are a stopgap at best. You need a sustainable power source to really do much of anything in space.

[Brotoro]

KSC needs a much larger receiver dish so the spacecraft don't need to use outrageous power to transmit.

[SirJodelstein]

Solar panels & Rtgs are so overrated...

Sorry, couln't resist

[DonLorenzo]

Is that a... recharging station?

[SunJumper]

No, I think it's a probe proper...

[KerbMav]

It's an electron torpedo!!

[magnemoe]

You pretty much need solar panels, batteries helps for doing some crew and eva reports, for anything else you need cells.

Now some of the later sensors use a lot of power.

One tips is that if you warp the transmission time stay the same but the charging speed increases so you recharges the batteries.

[KerbMav]

Reading Harvesters post in the daily we wont be transmitting as much anymore anyway.

[OrtwinS]

Reading Harvesters post in the daily we wont be transmitting as much anymore anyway.

I disagree.

We will still be able to harvest a significant amount of Science with unmanned one-way probes.

Especially in the early tech-tree it will pay off easily to send probes to other planets, and transmit the science. Even at reducing efficiencies the gains will be enormous for the first few rounds. (compared to Kerbin SOI only research)

The idea is to not be able to get ALL science with a single one-way probe (the way it is now). But sending cheap probes to get that first bonus is still worth the effort.

I have a career game in which I haven't left Kerbin SOI, and I've got 2/3rd of the tech tree while only having visited the Mun trice (1 unmanned, 2 manned to 2 biomes, there is SO MUCH MORE I can still mine out of the Mun), and I sent one manned mission to Minmus (and completely forgot to do ANY experiment in space near and high above Minmus).

All thanks to penalty-free transmissions. Glad it will change

(I secretly hope .23 will just be Science update and performance boost (which they said was about finished). So they can release within a month. And then start another 3 month cycle)

[Smidge204]

I noticed a bug regarding data transmission and time acceleration.

If you time accelerate, the rate at which your PV panels output is increased accordingly. That is, 10x time acceleration will recharge your batteries 10x faster (real time) as you'd expect.

However, the speed of transmission is not affected by time acceleration, and therefore neither is energy consumption. That means you can hit "transmit" then time accelerate, and the power gain from your time-accelerated PV panel output will outstrip the non-time-accelerated rate the transmission uses energy. As long as the time accel itself doesn't cause any problems (missing a maneuver, crashing, etc) you're home free!

=Smidge=

[KerbMav]

Yeah, but my suggestion for longterm experiments got squashed because of allegedly being exploitable by timewarp.

[AmpsterMan]

One of the issues right now is that the later antennae are just as good transmitting over long distance as the small one is yet they use more energy/mit transmitted. Therefore, if you just use a small antena you should have enough juice to transmit some science.

Either way, it isn't practical to do much else until you get solar panels. At that point, the game dynamics change because you have effectively infinite transmissions.

[Rulare]

You pretty much need solar panels, batteries helps for doing some crew and eva reports, for anything else you need cells.

Now some of the later sensors use a lot of power.

One tips is that if you warp the transmission time stay the same but the charging speed increases so you recharges the batteries.

But this is obviously a bug so don't design a craft around it or you'll have to just redo it when they fix that.

[mux]

Before your kerbals invents solar panels you can use some engines to convert fuel to electricity.

Solar panels & Rtgs are so overrated...

Sorry, couln't resist

Those batteries can be nested in same space and time making it look like one battery, very heavy with ultra-high capacity. Never tested how many...

[SirJodelstein]

Those batteries can be nested in same space and time making it look like one battery, very heavy with ultra-high capacity. Never tested how many...

I know, but it looks much more awesome if the interplanetary drive stage's volume consists of 90% batteries :-)

[lazarus1024]

One of the issues right now is that the later antennae are just as good transmitting over long distance as the small one is yet they use more energy/mit transmitted. Therefore, if you just use a small antena you should have enough juice to transmit some science.

Either way, it isn't practical to do much else until you get solar panels. At that point, the game dynamics change because you have effectively infinite transmissions.

One of my hopes is that later on antenna type will have some impact in how lossiness of the science transmission.

It makes a bit of sense, with a higher gain (higher bandwidth) antenna you can transmit more information in the same period of time.

That or SOME kind of mechanic to make it really worth while to be using one of the bigger antennas other than cosmetic.

[Rulare]

Before your kerbals invents solar panels you can use some engines to convert fuel to electricity.

Those batteries can be nested in same space and time making it look like one battery, very heavy with ultra-high capacity. Never tested how many...

When you start clipping resource storage you're getting into "just mod the part already" territory. Less lag.

Edited October 31, 2013 by Rulare