Some suggestions on career mode and SCIENCE!

[ThirdHorseman]

So I've run through the Career Mode in .22 and .23 and I have a few suggestions to Squad that might make things a bit better:

1) The entire Tech Tree should be visible at all times, with nodes that have not yet been researched being greyed out and unusable, but the information still accessible. When planning out how to unlock certain items in the tree it is frustrating not knowing where they will appear and what their dependencies are, or where certain items are in the tree. How am I supposed to know that the Structural Pylon is in Advanced Aerodynamics, and not Advanced Construction? There is really no reason to keep the nodes hidden.

2) Beg, borrow, or buy one of the scanning mods and incorporate it into stock KSP, primarily for the biome scanning. It is frustrating not knowing how many biomes are on a body, let alone where they are. Are we supposed to just drop landers willy-nilly all over the planet just to find where the biomes are? This is frustrating, and very much a grind. Instead, the first step in SCIENCE! should be to get a probe into orbit to scan for biomes. Once we have a biome map we can send out Kerbals and start gathering SCIENCE! Users shouldn't be required to use an outside information source, like kerbalmaps.com or the Wiki, to get information about in-game stuff.

3) There should be more information on the various scientific equipment, how they are used and where they can be used. For instance, I didn't realize that only the Material Bay and Goo need to be reset after gathering data, the other sensors don't. I didn't realize that while EVA Reports can be done for each biome while in near space, Crew Reports cannot. Things like Celestial body multipliers, altitudes for various atmosphere/near space/high space/low orbit/high orbit zones for various planets/moons, etc should be in the game, and not buried on a wiki. I'm not saying all this information should be handed out freely...you should get a probe into Duna orbit, do a scan, and then find out what it's multiplier is or where it's low orbit/high orbit zones are.

4) I think the tech tree needs a bit of reorganization. It doesn't make sense that a simple structural cube is in Composites at the end of the tree and costs thousands of SCIENCE! points, while things like RCS and probe cores are at the beginning. I know I'm sure you have your reasons, but I think a lot of the structural stuff should be available early on, it just makes more sense that way.

Thanks for a fun game! Changes like this will make more information available in the game, where it belongs, and keep people from having to continually scan outside sources.

[Atoning Unifex]

1) Partially maybe. I don't think we should be able to see the whole tree, but maybe just the next node in a particular branch - this would represent the fact that we can have an idea of what our scientists could invent next but without having a magic ability to see the entire future of our research.

2) I agree we need to be able to see more about what areas of planets we can aim for. I also think that we should have a list of potential areas of experimantation listed in the research archives in advance of randomly checking our instruments in various places - Science is done based on gathering data for a specific reason, not just blindly grabbing data, therefore we should know what science we want in advance.

3) This also fits in with what I said for 2 - if we had pre-listed scientific goals then we could know where it's appropriate to use equipment. Better descriptions would also be helpful! Although perhaps the beauty of learning how each item works is part of the fun?

4) Yeah I think a lot of people would agree here!