New Science Model: Tangible and Intangible

[SkyRender]

I had a bit of a brainstorm on how science in KSP can be made to be more robust, and came up with this concept: a dual system of tangible and intangible science. It's more of an idea at this point than anything else, but it seems to have some potential.

Data alone isn't really worth that much until you actually do experimentation on it. Samples and reports are really only useful as a starting point in the real world; they need to be analyzed and have a battery of tests run on them. This is where the idea of intangible vs. tangible science comes in. Intangible science is information that would not, strictly speaking, gain any benefit from labwork and could pretty much be analyzed as-is in data form: things like reports, instrumentation readings, and so forth. This data should be transmittable freely back to R&D without any penalty (or returned as well; either way should always get you full returns on the intangible aspect).

Tangible science, on the other hand, is the stuff of laboratories: experimentation on surface and atmospheric samples, detailed observation of materials studies, that sort of thing. This is the sort of science that should NOT be transmittable as data at all, and which should instead have to be either returned to R&D back on Kerbin, or run through a battery of tests while in space via a mobile space lab. Should the latter be done, each experiment type you run on the tangible science should be converted into a transmittable result. The catch? Each tangible item would have a large number of possible tests to be run on it, and each time one is run from a space-based laboratory, the current sample is used up. Returned samples to Kerbin would get the full battery of tests run on them without the need to go grab more, as an added incentive to get it home instead.

This system would have a number of interesting effects. For one thing, it would make science an ever-evolving thing: early on, science would be all but exclusively about returning data to Kerbin. Mid-game, it would be about balancing out transmitted data from probes with the manned missions for samples. And end-game, much of your science would be performed off-Kerbin in orbital and surface laboratories. For another, it could be used to almost completely eliminate the grind factor: each experiment is run once for its science per situation, with no need or benefit to running repeat experiments.

To make things even more interesting, science experiments could yield different results as well from returned tangible science, tangibles experimented on in orbit, and tangibles experimented on from the surface of a body besides Kerbin. This would split up the science rewards into three different categories, with each one presenting the player with new opportunities to find use for old science experiments they've run before. It would also dramatically up the amount of science experiment flavor text, which could only be a plus.

[Dun Kirk]

I think if we wish to transmit surface samples, then they should add a part you have to research which does the analysis, or add it as a feature to say the lander can and tri can.

That said they indent to add IVA? so wether you get to spash mun rocks yourself I don't know.

[Mr_Brain]

Excellent suggestion, I hope they will add this or something similar! It has bothered me how a sensor scan result could not be transmitted without data loss. I think the analyzing results should differ based on where you perform it, for example analyzing in orbit might give you more science, but in high orbit or dusty places the radiation or dust might severely reduce the effectivity of the analyzing equipment, which would mean you would need to perform the experiments several times to make sure the instruments would have functioned correctly.

Live long and prosper!

[Dunbaratu]

I've seen a few suggestions along these lines, all explained a bit differently, but they all seem like really good ideas.

The thing they all have in common is that people keep suggesting some variant of the idea of splitting up science into two different kinds - one kind that transmits well, and one kind that doesn't transmit well. Regardless of the exact means of doing it, this would mean there's a reason to return things to Kerbin when right now, there just isn't. The only thing you lose from transmitting right now is patience as you spam the transmission over and over to get a value that approaches the asymptote of the same value as a return mission would give.

And the logical way to do it is to distinguish how much of the science value is "data only" and how much is "physical". (And some experiments might not be 100% one way or the other - some might be, say, 25% data and 75% physical.)

The value that is data-only should be worth exactly the same regardless of whether it's transmitted or returned (no spamming anymore). A notebook containing the handwriting: "pressure: 0.2 atm" isn't worth any more than a data stream that encodes that 0.2 as bytes.

But the physical experiments would only work if returned.

[KvickFlygarn87]

Great suggestion dude, keep it up!

However, I would not be too sure that Squad is very willing to change the ways of Career mode.

[Nemoricus]

Nothing to add, sadly, besides my approval for this idea!