Balancing Science

[rolld]

The "grindy" Science was addressed already, but I have a feeling that this is highly uneven throughout the career and turns into the opposite in the mid-game.

My impression with the Career mode was that early in the game, I had to launch multiple boring sub-orbital flights to nearly all biomes of Kerbin to farm enough science to get into the orbit (BACC Solid Booster and TT-38K Radial Decoupler are a must). Back then, I was in constant shortage of science. I had to plan my advancement through the tech three very carefully to avoid buying secondary parts instead of the really important ones. Then I researched the Mystery Goo Containment Unit and the SC-9001, and that is when the career became a piece of cake.

Armed with these two devices, I was able to bring massive amounts of tech from each mission. I crated an unmanned vessel with level 4 parts which is capable of going to Mun and Minmus and return. After several launches to different biomes at Mun (which were also necessary to test landing and return maneuvers, fuel required for them etc.) I am largely at tech level 6, even before I brought a single Kerbal to the Mun.

Now, in my opinion, to fully unlock the tech tree, the player should have explored all or most of the solar system. Generally, in a sandbox game, the career mode is to prevent that the player has instant access to all of the "toys", so that he has some additional goals to achieve. But I fear that after my Kerbals have visited Mun and Minmus, the tech tree will be finished.

Tl;dr: Science is hard at the beginning, but becomes too easy once you reach orbit.

To improve this, it is probably necessary to fine-tune the costs of the techs and the amounts of science a mission yields. I, personally, would embrace getting more science from the mission itself at the cost of science from each biome. This would encourage the player to visit more celestial bodies, while detailed research of the biomes would be left for the case they run out of science at some point.

I would also like to have Stayputnik or another unmanned module available right from the start. Rockets tend to crash more often at the beginning of the career. I don't like losing personnel, and when Reputation will be introduced, I don't want to get a penalty early in the game because I was unable to test my early rockets before putting a kerbonaut into them.

What might also improve the situation is making spaceplane parts, thermometers and barometers to be available much earlier. At the moment, a spaceplane is, in terms of science, a pure vanity project, because by the time you research the required parts, Kerbin will be mostly explored by necessity. Why not letting the player to do so with an airplane? This would give them the possibility to get data from multiple biomes in one flight, eliminating the need for multiple sub-orbital flights before going to space.

[Strikerklm96]

Yeah, I agree with pretty much all that, except that the Stayputnik should be introduced earlier. (I personally don't like unmanned things.)

The game should be designed so you have to do something in a difficult fashion the first time you do it(like going to a planet without nuclear engines). That way doing something again will actually be interesting, because you can make it much better.

I also think the tech tree should be more spread out(less parts per node) and directed. So unmanned modules are on a branch, engines are on another, structural pieces another, ect.

It also often ends up that I get tons of parts that I will literally never actually need to accomplish a mission.

And as for "grindy science", it doesn't help that rovers don't work because they flip over 99% of the time and or take forever to get anywhere, so you end up having to send seperate missions, rather than something that can visit all of them, and actually get some use out of the Science Lab(that thing is useless).bIt would be nice if there was a way to have the rover automated, so you could leave, do a little time warp, and he would be at the destination.

You should definitely have to visit 85% or more of the solar system to get the whole tech tree unlocked.

[Captain Sierra]

I have to disagree on the 85% figure, as some people just aren't comfortable with leaving Kerbin (don't ask me why). Now, Science, if you know how to milk it, is really easy the whole way though, rather than just towards the end. I went to the Mun on T2 parts and came back with almost 1500 science after my second biome-hopping lander went.

But long story short, yes. Science is way too easy, the parts progression doesn't make too much sense, and there seems to be no real reason to have to leave the kerbin system at all (I think you should have to do at least one interplanetary flight, even if it's just a non-return probe mission to finish out the tech tree).

[JimmyAgent007]

What about unlocking a tier by accomplishing a specific objective. ie. tier 2 or 3 unlocks when you make a stable orbit of kerbin, 4 when you land on the mun and so on. I would like to see more branches with fewer parts per node and the science bits being introduced earlier. I dont like unmanned being early at all but that argument has been done to death and i dont want to get into it.

[Strikerklm96]

as some people just aren't comfortable with leaving Kerbin (don't ask me why).

I don't think we should be trying to cater to those kinds of players. And requiring players to utilize/visit the majority of content doesn't seem too crazy I hope.

[rolld]

I think that a better way would be to set a large bounty in Science for some milestones (first successful orbit, first Mun landing, first interplanetary probe). That way, you have the choice: Want to reach out as far as possible? You will be rewarded richly. Don't want to leave Kerbin, like Captain Sierra told some people do? No problem either, focus on thorough exploration, and you will get your Science after all. OF course, the bounties will require an increase in tech tree expenses necessary to keep balance.

However, since the devs announced that they are going to introduce Reputation along with Science, and that these currencies will be mutually convertible, this will probably be implemented via Reputation.

[Jouni]

The first time I played the game (0.22 career mode), tech progress was fairly reasonable. After a few Mun and Minmus landings, I started sending probes to Duna, Eve, and Moho. With some flybys, a probe orbiting Eve, two failed Duna landings, and one succesful landing, I unlocked enough parts to try a manned Duna mission. From that mission, I got enough science to unlock the rest of the tech tree.

In my first 0.23 career mode game, I quickly got to Mun, grew bored of the grinding required to visit multiple biomes, and switched to sandbox. Later I tried the career mode again, deciding that going to Mun is just a waste of time. My third or fourth mission went to Minmus instead, hopped through a few biomes, and came back with ridiculous amounts of science. After that, my part list started resembling a sandbox game, so I returned to the real sandbox.

So as far as I see it, the progress works quite fine for beginners, but is broken for more experienced players. On bodies with multiple biomes, getting science is either way too easy or requires too much grinding. Maybe visiting multiple biomes could give diminishing returns to encourage sending probes to other planets early in the game.