Its all raw data in the end after all.

[soldieroffilth]

With the recent science updates made over the past few months there seems to be a wealth mods coming up that have new science modules and some that even revert the science back to the old science spamming technique that was available when career mode first came out. From my observation the problem is not the that the science could be spammed, if there is data available a science module should be able to get 100% of that data on the first go, after all that is what they are intended to do. The thermometer gets temperature readings and fairly accurate ones at that, but what about infrared readings, or radiation readings as well. The purpose of sending the probes out is to collect the data they are designed to collect. However the hangup with probes in real life, is a loss of data during transmission that may require multiple transmissions of that data in order to get it. So my question is would it be more challenging of a gameplay experience to make science time sensitive instead of "fly here, click module, transmit, done".

Here is what I mean, lets say you have a probe that is scheduled to do a fly-by of mun, given a low speed of data transmission, high speed and descending rate of velocity, you know that of 200 total science you are going to collect, your probe is only going to be able to transmit so much of the avaliable data over a given amount of time, and none once it is on the dark side of the Mun. So your thermometer collects all 32 points of science that it can collect from around the Mun and begins the slow process of transmitting that science back home. However, your radiation detector is picking up fluctations in the levels of radiation and is there for going to take time to collect the data before it can begin the slow process of transmitting the data back home. Of course, data tramission speeds are dependent both upon antenna size and power available. What this could create is a slow but steady stream of science rather than just large lumpsums of science.

Any thoughts?

[Kinglet]

This would also keep antennas from instantly eating huge amounts of electricity.

[Monger]

Remember that the rules of a game should

a) be transparent and obvious to all players

offer a series of interesting choices (freely quoted after Will Wright)

So what is the choice here? Will anyone hesitate of transmitting science just because it requires more time? No. Nobody uses the bigger antennas currently, because they consume more electricity to send faster, but for what purpose? Slowing down science just introduces resource grinding. It forces the player to do nothing for some time, until he or she got enough science points for the next step. What is interesting about doing nothing?

On the other hand, designing a space probe explicitly for deep space exploration is a very interesting game choice. How could we achieve that? For example if:

* each transmission requires a fixed amount of energy. But unlike now all energy needs to be present when starting the transmission, i.e. for big transmissions you need big batteries, not only one solar panel

* each transmission has a multiplier that depends on the distance to the recipient, and whether it is sending from within the atmosphere or not

* batteries were considerably heavier

This would mean that small space probes might conduct simple experiments from far away, like measuring the temperature. But if you want experimental results from Duna or Eve, you need quite heavy landers.

The biggest problem is: how do you make this game mechanic apparent to the player? You could add a value to the VAB, indicating the maximum energy consumption and energy storage.

Edited January 7, 2014 by Monger

[soldieroffilth]

Remember that the rules of a game should

a) be transparent and obvious to all players

offer a series of interesting choices (freely quoted after Will Wright)

So what is the choice here? Will anyone hesitate of transmitting science just because it requires more time? No. Nobody uses the bigger antennas currently, because they consume more electricity to send faster, but for what purpose? Slowing down science just introduces resource grinding. It forces the player to do nothing for some time, until he or she got enough science points for the next step. What is interesting about doing nothing?

On the other hand, designing a space probe explicitly for deep space exploration is a very interesting game choice. How could we achieve that? For example if:

* each transmission requires a fixed amount of energy. But unlike now all energy needs to be present when starting the transmission, i.e. for big transmissions you need big batteries, not only one solar panel

* each transmission has a multiplier that depends on the distance to the recipient, and whether it is sending from within the atmosphere or not

* batteries were considerably heavier

This would mean that small space probes might conduct simple experiments from far away, like measuring the temperature. But if you want experimental results from Duna or Eve, you need quite heavy landers.

The biggest problem is: how do you make this game mechanic apparent to the player? You could add a value to the VAB, indicating the maximum energy consumption and energy storage.

I disagree on the grinding, all you have to do to avoid that is to allow the probe to generate science even if it is not being actively flown. This allows the player to put up more probes in the same area doing different jobs at the same time, or the same time of probe somewhere else. This means multiple sources of slowly generating science at all times. Inexperienced players can design small single job probes in large quantities and players like Mr. Scott Manly will find themselves designing larger more sophisticated probes with multiple antennas to transmit data.

As far as energy is concerned, its really quite simple, science modules need energy to collect data, antennas need power to transmit. The batteries can be there to allow the conitinued transmission of science and to allow for control when a power source is not available. This works out especially well early in the game and in terms of part cost because the player is asking themselves, especially when the budget is finally implemented, "Do I build a probe that has a set battery life for really cheap, or do I spend a little extra money on the solar panels" In terms of cost, the batteries are the way to go, but do not guarnetee that you will have the battery life to collect all the science you want. In terms of life span, an RTG or solar array is what you want, but the low power output means slower rates of science unless you stack them to provide more power.

[Flowz0r]

Think of it this way:

A science part takes a single reading, which gets you most of the information you need. Then you send another part just to double-check and maybe correct for errors that might have happened with the first run, allowing you to do some a precise reading. By the 4th or 5th measurment, you can be pretty sure you got everything right and gain nothing else from sending more probes to make the same measurments.

[soldieroffilth]

Think of it this way:

A science part takes a single reading, which gets you most of the information you need. Then you send another part just to double-check and maybe correct for errors that might have happened with the first run, allowing you to do some a precise reading. By the 4th or 5th measurment, you can be pretty sure you got everything right and gain nothing else from sending more probes to make the same measurments.

That is true, but as it stands right now in KSP that is not even the case as most of the science left in those 4th and 5th tries is single digits anyways and most people will ignore them, by making the science a slowly generated resources which can ge gathered in the background, a player can put multiple probes up collecting the same data, not only double checking and triple checking what the other probes are reading but also speeding up the flow of science.

[Levelord]

I disagree on the grinding, all you have to do to avoid that is to allow the probe to generate science even if it is not being actively flown.

That's impossible because the space craft is placed on rails for a reason once you are not flying it. Due to the limitation of the Unity engine, it would mean having to take the craft out of rails and enable physics and other sort of calculations on the craft. Which will most likely murder PCs around the world.

[soldieroffilth]

That's impossible because the space craft is placed on rails for a reason once you are not flying it. Due to the limitation of the Unity engine, it would mean having to take the craft out of rails and enable physics and other sort of calculations on the craft. Which will most likely murder PCs around the world.

I disagree, this game in and of its self was once thought to be impossible and yet here it exists. I am sure the developers could find a way to make it happen. After all someone pulled a multiplayer mod out of their ass when it was said that could not be done and from my experience operates fairly smoothly for something in the alpha stage.

[Jon Tash]

I'm pretty sure that the science lab from the KSP Interstellar mod generate science when not actively flown, you just need to activate it one time and move on and make other things while the science lab is in orbit of Moho for example.

[soldieroffilth]

Before anyone steps in with an arguement about realism, it is a known fact that what is real does not make a good game, I have experienced this first hand from my time in the military.

[numerobis]

That's impossible because the space craft is placed on rails for a reason once you are not flying it. Due to the limitation of the Unity engine, it would mean having to take the craft out of rails and enable physics and other sort of calculations on the craft. Which will most likely murder PCs around the world.

I think it's a bad idea in terms of fun, but technically it's trivial -- whenever you need a readout of how much science you have, you calculate how much has accrued and you print that number on the screen. Same as printing out the location of the on-rails spacecraft.

[Monger]

I disagree on the grinding, all you have to do to avoid that is to allow the probe to generate science even if it is not being actively flown.

So then again: what is the point? If you can avoid this issue, why implement it in the first place? What exactly does a real-time communication transfer add to the game?

The only gameplay-relevant consequence of this would be: am I patient and well-organized enough so that I can wait for my science to get transferred, or do I want to make it faster?

Is it really wise to actively annoy players to give them incentive to reduce this annoyance?

Edited January 7, 2014 by Monger

[soldieroffilth]

I think it's a bad idea in terms of fun, but technically it's trivial -- whenever you need a readout of how much science you have, you calculate how much has accrued and you print that number on the screen. Same as printing out the location of the on-rails spacecraft.

Technically it would be difficult but as one person already stated, the interstellar mod has already done something similar to this. As fun is concerned, I think it would enhance the fun, as it would allow you to do more things within the game all at once. So you go out and put two probes in solar orbit, they are taking radiation readys and slowly sending that data back, you still had to fly them out there, but now that they are out there and doing there unmanned job like they are supposed to, you can go on and do other things. The only way I can really agree with actively doing science as opposed to passively generating science with probes that had to be actively put into place, is if by doing science that required me to be flying the vessel I could conduct research that would affect my decision making process on whether or not I send a probe, a rover, or a manned mission to that location the next time around. As it stands science does little more than advance the tech tree.

[soldieroffilth]

So then again: what is the point? If you can avoid this issue, why implement it in the first place? What exactly does a real-time communication transfer add to the game?

The only gameplay-relevant consequence of this would be: am I patient and well-organized enough so that I can wait for my science to get transferred, or do I want to make it faster?

Is it really wise to actively annoy players to give them incentive to reduce this annoyance?

Apparently you refused to read the rest of my post where I explained that the more probes you put into that area, the faster your science goes up. In all seriousness as it stands right now, it is significantly more annoying to have to fly multiple missions doing the same experiments for diminishing returns. If a player is going to be required to put multiple probes out doing the same job, then at the very least the game should reward them for doing so by increasing their resources gathering rate until it is depleted, not diminishing it until there is only a handful to go after.

[Flowz0r]

Apparently you refused to read the rest of my post where I explained that the more probes you put into that area, the faster your science goes up. In all seriousness as it stands right now, it is significantly more annoying to have to fly multiple missions doing the same experiments for diminishing returns. If a player is going to be required to put multiple probes out doing the same job, then at the very least the game should reward them for doing so by increasing their resources gathering rate until it is depleted, not diminishing it until there is only a handful to go after.

You're in no way required to get every last bit of science out of every planet/moon, though.

Sure, if you're a completionist who isn't satisfied until he has completely exhausted every last possibility of the game, you're gonna have to deal with it. But what is completionism if not doing tons of unrewarding and pointless stuff?

[Luckless]

Personally I would prefer having science experiments run over time. It would give a reason to actually maintain missions and offer more 'program management' to the game.

Maybe a middle ground for game play is that your first 'one shot' science as it functions now will take 75% of the total value on its initial use. Anything more would then be acquired as part of on-going tests that you park at location and it can slowly tick away over time with diminishing returns for the rest of it.

[Flowz0r]

Personally I would prefer having science experiments run over time. It would give a reason to actually maintain missions and offer more 'program management' to the game.

Maybe a middle ground for game play is that your first 'one shot' science as it functions now will take 75% of the total value on its initial use. Anything more would then be acquired as part of on-going tests that you park at location and it can slowly tick away over time with diminishing returns for the rest of it.

Harvester has stated on several occasions that he doesn't like the idea of having things take a large amount of time, because people can just timewarp until what they were doing is done, completely defeating the purpose.

[Luckless]

Harvester has stated on several occasions that he doesn't like the idea of having things take a large amount of time, because people can just timewarp until what they were doing is done, completely defeating the purpose.

Personally I view this logic as flawed and rather invalid.

People can just edit the game files to give them whatever they want, and completely defeat the purpose of playing the game! So why should anyone even bother playing the game, or continue developing it for that matter.

It would give reason to establish missions and keep them somewhere. Once you put them there you can run off and play with something else while it does its thing, and then you can come back to it later to 'harvest' the collected data.

[Flowz0r]

Personally I view this logic as flawed and rather invalid.

People can just edit the game files to give them whatever they want, and completely defeat the purpose of playing the game! So why should anyone even bother playing the game, or continue developing it for that matter.

It would give reason to establish missions and keep them somewhere. Once you put them there you can run off and play with something else while it does its thing, and then you can come back to it later to 'harvest' the collected data.

Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with the notion either, I'm just here to crush your hopes and dreams.

[soldieroffilth]

You're in no way required to get every last bit of science out of every planet/moon, though.

Sure, if you're a completionist who isn't satisfied until he has completely exhausted every last possibility of the game, you're gonna have to deal with it. But what is completionism if not doing tons of unrewarding and pointless stuff?

All obstacles are an annoyance when getting to a reward, but it is not the reward that counts but rather how the reward is achieved, do you reward the player for their hard work and patience with diminishing returns or do you reward the player with increased capabilities until the reward is expended. A completionist is someone who will go so far as to mark every anamoly with a flag and set up manned stations on every planet things like this arbitrary achievements. When you are talking about a resource in a game like science points in KSP a player needs to be able to expend all available sources of that resource around them there by motivating them to send probes to the more difficult places to gather more science points. This could even stress more strategic thinking in the consumption of those resources as it changes the mentality from "Oh ill just go here and grab all of these science points" to "I am generating 2 science per minute with a grand total of 200 which means that in roughtly 1 hour, time acceleration dependent of course, I will be able to get those new engines that I was looking".

One of the reasons I suggest passivey generated science is because once the budget is implemented for career mode, it is not going to be financially advantageous to send probes out to go and gather 5 science. At least if you can gather that science passively and totally, then you know that you have expended that resource for that area, meaning you really do have to go to laythe and set up a probe there and in doing so your not wasting time and money on things like pocket change science. Passively generated science, gives an advantage in terms of nearby celestial bodies like Mun and Minmus, but when you start speaking in terms of sending probes to Jool, the time it takes to get there almost overwhelms the advent of the reward. So why not make it so that if you only want to do one trip to Jool to gather negative gravioli data, you can do that, but if you want to send 5 probes to assist in gathering that data, you can do that too, either way you are going to expend that resource totally one way or another.

[soldieroffilth]

Personally I would prefer having science experiments run over time. It would give a reason to actually maintain missions and offer more 'program management' to the game.

Maybe a middle ground for game play is that your first 'one shot' science as it functions now will take 75% of the total value on its initial use. Anything more would then be acquired as part of on-going tests that you park at location and it can slowly tick away over time with diminishing returns for the rest of it.

This is an even better idea, as it gives some of the reward right off the bat and then requires the unit to stay in place in order to finish the experiment, this is perfect because getting to the location to do the experiment is only a part of the process. Although I dont agree with diminishing returns, if your not going to give the player something then you may as well not include it in the game.

[metl]

Personally I view this logic as flawed and rather invalid.

People can just edit the game files to give them whatever they want, and completely defeat the purpose of playing the game! So why should anyone even bother playing the game, or continue developing it for that matter.

It would give reason to establish missions and keep them somewhere. Once you put them there you can run off and play with something else while it does its thing, and then you can come back to it later to 'harvest' the collected data.

Editing game files it totally different to most people over a built-in meant to be used mechanic like time-warping. Harvester is dead on with this. Making it take time would only hinder the realists or extremists. As career mode is fleshed out, I'm sure contracts and reputation will add plenty to establish continual missions.

[Monger]

Apparently you refused to read the rest of my post where I explained that the more probes you put into that area, the faster your science goes up.

Once again: what makes this an interesting choice? It doesn't challenge you in any way, it just adds tedious, repetitive work.

In all seriousness as it stands right now, it is significantly more annoying to have to fly multiple missions doing the same experiments for diminishing returns.

True. But then you should fix the problem at it's root (i.e. the still broken science system) instead of covering the side effects with workarounds.

I think we can agree that for career mode every mission should create new challenges. You should never be forced to invest time for exactly the same thing again. The way science points are currently split was a terrible game design decision, and I'm pretty sure that SQUAD will refactor it once again pretty soon.

[soldieroffilth]

My suggestion is to change the Instrument Based Experiments, or IBE's, so that they yield science at all times during their activation so long as an antenna is present to transmit the data, and the power requirements are met. This could be easily done with a series of true/false statements that check to see if 1)power is present, 2) the module is active, and 3) the antenna is active. If all are true then they passively generate science whether the craft is being actively flown or not.

To avoid stacking for quicker science rates, each probe can only generate 1 point of science for each IBE type on the craft. This is because with two or more IBE's of the same type on the same craft they are only double checking their results. However in order to generate more science in the same biome another probe with the same or similar equipment would have to be active and transmitting as well. As a probe moves through each biome the IBE's generate science in regard to how much science is available in that biome, if all the science in that biome has been done, they will generate no more science.

If going to , say Duna, you will generate science from being in the solar biome, Duna high orbit biome, Duna low orbit biome, Duna atmosphere biome, and ultimately the surface of Duna, and how much of the science cap you pull from depends entriely upon how much time you stay in each biome. This works especially well for rovers and can extend their mission life span as they will need to move from biome to biome in order to get science from those biomes. It could even be setup so that you get science for day and night side conditions of each biome on a planets surface.

Now arguably this might be abused at this point in time of the KSP development by using time acceleration, but once the budget and reputation mechanics are implemented a player wouldn't really be able to do so as using time acceleration at any point in time during career mode as doing so might upset other time sensitive operations and contracts where a player needs to be doing something other than time warping to increase science gain. Abuse of time acceleration can be also be avoided by adding deprecation values to equipment, whether it is micrometeorite impacts or prolonged exposure to radiation, equipment will eventually begin to fail and sensors will fall out of calibration. Adding this value can ensure that even if a player does decide to time accelerate to increase their science gain rate, that rate will fall as time goes on until it reaches the point where it is no longer useful.

Depreciation of the IBE's results is expressed this way through time instead of limiting how much science can be achieved, after all if a probe is sending nothing but raw data, that data can be resent over and over until the full set of data is attained, which is more or less the basis of the suggestion, but the hang up is that no probe is going to spend enough time in a biome to collect all of the data unless specifically commanded, or flown, to that biome and set up so that it stays there.

This would also increase the mission life span of all probes, Voyager 2 conducted several experiments to several planetary systems during its life span and continues to collect data, however because our own tech tree has expanded and given us more options for research we have found that we are still sending probes to locations that Voyager 2 has been to, and not just to get newer types of data but to also get a better look at what Voyager 2 was only able to give a glimpse of.

Edited January 7, 2014 by soldieroffilth