Probes, do they really matter in Career?

[celem]

I use probes in my launchers. The last central tank of my asparagus launcher tends to still hold some 2-3% fuel after circularizing at Kerbin. It's capped with a probe core and seperator so I gently unhook and de-orbit it, rather than leave it cluttering lko. Out of good practice in anticipation of future career updates it parachutes down to the surface and can be recovered at the tracking station.

Otherwise I will sometimes send an early-career probe to a spot I cant get kerbals back from, or as folks have said, drop one on eve's land and one in the ocean for cheap !science!.

[1of6Billion]

Yup. Netted 3k points on a mission that landed a probe on 4/5 of Jool's moons and return Bill to KSC.

[czokletmuss]

Ironically, a lot of arguments used in this discussion are precisely the reasons why we haven't been further than to the Moon IRL.

[Seret]

I go hard on probes in career. As people have mentioned the main advantage is you don't have to design for a return mission, and they're light. That makes it easy to go anywhere in the system you want, even with small rockets. I really wasn't in too much of a rush to unlock the big parts. I still don't have orange tanks or mainsails. They just aren't needed.

I'm only now setting up a big mission to send Kerbals to the Mun to go get the science for samples/EVA. I've only done one Mun lander prior to this, but I've caned science from dropping probes onto the various biomes.

[Kerbart]

Been playing the Career mode for a few weeks now, and with a fair bit of the Tech Tree unlocked, I've been curious about whether or not probes are worth making. They have limitations such as no EVA reports, or Soil Samples, and well, basically anything that a Kerbal does. The only thing they got going for them is that they are lighter than command pods

Weight is huge factor, especially since the mainsails are all the way at the end of the tree. Materials & Goo take at least three round trips before they've exhausted a biome (maybe more but at that point returns are seriously diminishing) so it makes sense to build one large science station with four labs and four canisters and send it back and forth. That way your manned capsules do not get overly complicated by having to carry around more weight than they need to.

[OptiSTR]

Probes are great for noobs like me, when I keep on running out of fuel all the time.

So the best solution for me would be a one way trip with a probe.

There are several good points to using probes:

1. No need to calculate enough dV to be able to fly back to Kerbin

2. 500+ Science easily made from 1 trip

3. Probes are reusable, so that you can suck science out of them many times after you reached your destination

[czokletmuss]

And their biggest advantage? You can easily send them to Jool relatively early in the game. And you can earn hundreds of science points thanks to this with fly-bys:

And when you include data from high Solar orbit, you can easily get 500-700 points in one probe mission. Don't forget to aerocapture it in the Jool's atmosphere at the end of the mission for extra science

[VirtualCLD]

And their biggest advantage? You can easily send them to Jool relatively early in the game. And you can earn hundreds of science points thanks to this with fly-bys:

And when you include data from high Solar orbit, you can easily get 500-700 points in one probe mission. Don't forget to aerocapture it in the Jool's atmosphere at the end of the mission for extra science

I'm not sure I understand the advantage of a one way trip. How do you get so many science points from probes when you only get 20%-40% return when transmitting the data (except crew reports which are 100%)? I have been playing career mode with every mission as a return mission since I don't want to waste science.

[PhaserArray]

The only thing I do not like with probes have no Crew Report (What about the AI and/or the people at Mission Control), EVA Report (Okay, I guess) and Surface Report (Well I guess this one would need robotic arms and shovels). But probes are better than Kerbal murder/stranding and they can wirelessly get you some sweet sweet KSKAINSE!

[czokletmuss]

I'm not sure I understand the advantage of a one way trip. How do you get so many science points from probes when you only get 20%-40% return when transmitting the data (except crew reports which are 100%)? I have been playing career mode with every mission as a return mission since I don't want to waste science.

You just spam the experiments. True, the 0.23 will change this but for now it's the best source of science points. Even with low-tier tech you can send a probe to low solar orbit and get tens of points with little effort.

[Seret]

I'm not sure I understand the advantage of a one way trip. How do you get so many science points from probes when you only get 20%-40% return when transmitting the data

Just transmit several times. For now, even at 20% per transmission you only have to transmit six times to get about 75% of the science available for that place. Do it ten times and you've got 90%, with no need to fly the return part of the mission.

That's going to change in 0.23 though, transmission is never going to be as good as a return. So running all your missions as returns isn't a bad thing.

[magnemoe]

Just transmit several times. For now, even at 20% per transmission you only have to transmit six times to get about 75% of the science available for that place. Do it ten times and you've got 90%, with no need to fly the return part of the mission.

That's going to change in 0.23 though, transmission is never going to be as good as a return. So running all your missions as returns isn't a bad thing.

Still 0.23 will let you get a lots of the science by transmitting still making it cost effective.

Splashing some instruments down on Eve is far easier than doing an sample return.

[Madrias]

Probes are nice if you play in such a way that you don't like killing the little green guys. Also nice for those random one-way trips where you're just shooting a probe to the far ends of the galaxy for fun. Yeah, you lose EVA and Crew Reports and Surface Sample, but you gain it back in that you don't feel obligated to bring it back home.

[toomuchbrew]

Indeed, currently there is no real benefit of sending a probe instead of a Kerbal. But I guess in the future things will be a lot different. Once economics enter the game it would surprise me if loosing/stranding a Kerbal would have a significant negative effect on your annual funding.

Imagine the life insurance payouts for losing Kerbals... Maybe if you are maliciously killing them, your space program shuts down.. game over. Come on, show some Kerbal love.

[Superfluous J]

I'm not sure I understand the advantage of a one way trip. How do you get so many science points from probes when you only get 20%-40% return when transmitting the data (except crew reports which are 100%)? I have been playing career mode with every mission as a return mission since I don't want to waste science.

Others have pointed out the "Spam Science" idea and the future problems with it. I'd like to point out that when you transmit 100 science points at 20% loss, you don't lose those other 80 points. They're still there, waiting for your eventual return mission.

So if you can get, say, 20 points from each of 3 places (high orbit, low orbit, landed) on all 5 moons (plus during atmospheric flight low and high on Laythe) you could get 20*3*5 (+2*20) or 340 science, for less fuel than a trip to Mun and back. And it's likely more than that. Add in goo reports and any other science you've unlocked and the returns skyrocket.

[jwenting]

And send in several missions, each sending back a portion of that science left over after the previous one...