Fundamental Design Flaws in Career

[Sauron]

First, just let me say that all this comes from a place of love--KSP is a really, really good game. However, from what I've seen since .21, there seem to be a lot of pretty serious game design issues with career. Now, this is not (necessarily) a crisis--KSP is still an alpha--the Devs' apparent unwillingness to change even very simple things up (and a general lack of development time/resources to make said changes) these problems are more concerning. In other words, things need to be done right the first time through or they'll fall by the wayside. I would also add that the general development philosophy for career is dead on. The devs are (IMO) correct in focusing on new types of gameplay rather than, say, more planets insofar as that expands the game a whole lot more in the long run. But again, the devil is in the details. These problems rankle even more than usual since the mod community is generally doing a better job of things.

So to go into it:

Illogical Tech Tree Progression and Value: Putting parts in the tech tree roughly in the order that they were introduced to the game is incredibly lazy. To do career mode correctly minimal playtesting of actual gameplay needs to happen. The most egregious example of this would be starting with small tanks and service module engines. Larger tanks are not an upgrade. Rather, smaller tanks provide more flexibility since you can control the size of your stages more easily. You should start with a long 1.25m tank. not a quarter-sized one. Putting landing gear and wings in a separate node is another. And docking ports come too late. Being stuck with 1.25m parts is the perfect motivation for people to practice docking.

Bad Part Balance: Namely SAS. RCS and control surfaces are utterly worthless in stock except for the very last phases of docking. Also, reaction wheels, far and away the best control method are available much too early. And it's been 2 updates without a fix for the inline Rockomax 48. And the poodle is still useless compared to a 909 cluster after how many updates? This stuff has to be done iteratively or it'll never happen. And right now it's not being done. Electricity is currently a barely-resource that becomes very trivial, and with no reason to transmit faster, the later antennae are actually downgrades since they use more power. This is another example of a worrying lack of thought on the implementation of what is otherwise a good idea. And the science lab is only minimally useful at present.

1 and Only 1 Type of Optimal Mission: Currently, one mission profile is rewarded above and beyond any other because of the transmission penalty: manned landing returning a capsule. This is stupid. There should be some mechanical aspects that encourage more than one mission type (especially with probes). It's silly to force people to do repeated landings-and-returns every time they unlock more science equipment. Currently there is no conceivable reason to use probes and no reason to try early 1-way unmanned missions. Furthermore, the progression of the tree is such that direct ascent missions to the Mun (and maybe Minmus) are almost nonnegotiable. Players should at least have a meaningful choice here. And it's a great opportunity to reward new players for mastering docking since that's the biggest challenge for most of us.

Science Part Bloat: This is a result of the above issue. All-in-one missions are forced down our throats, and as a result landers are built to carry every possible piece of equipment imaginable. Rather than creating an opportunity to encourage multiple play styles there's one 'best' way that's fairly strongly enforced.

Lack of Appropriate (and interesting) Early Challenges: Look, getting into orbit is not so hard that you should spoon feed people with soil samples on Kerbin. Instead of doing that why not reward suborbital and orbital flights? BTSM's atmosphere scanner and gravioli detector rework nails this approach FWW for planes and rockets respectively. If a player really can't get into orbit after doing the tutorials and applying some basic common sense they shouldn't be playing. KSP has to be accessible to people of all ages and skills, but there is a limit here. At a certain point it becomes too easy to the point of trivializing peoples' achievements. I got to orbit on my first try after doing the tutorials, and I imagine many of you did as well (and if not, it was probably for want of DV or because you didn't have enough information on TWR rather than from a fundamental technique issue). For what it's worth, I would have enjoyed KSP a lot more as a new player if there were more memorable challenges than just docking. The other stuff isn't especially difficult with sufficient brute-force/blindly fiddling with maneuver nodes.

Arbitrary Science (and Probably Contracts): Science parts don't really do much to distinguish themselves from each other in how they play. It's excessively clicky. Also, stuff like goo should really be a once per planet deal rather than something repeated for every biome. And I'm not encouraged by the stated plans for contracts. Build a ship with an arbitrary part and put it on a planet? That adds nothing whatsoever to the challenge or depth of game-play. I'll just tack on a hubmax (or whatever) and make a slightly larger and much uglier lander. Where is the challenge here exactly? Hopefully SQUAD does something a bit more complex than this (I still have hope) but I'm not so sure how they would.

A General Unwillingness to Make Iterative Changes to Game Balance: Yes, I realize that SQUAD has other stuff to work on, but actually polishing the gameplay isn't something that can be done in one fell swoop once the game is 'feature complete.' A bit more polish and careful thought on small-scale game-play issues is probably in order between releases. Right now there's a lot of thought being but into large scale gameplay 'philosophy.' This is essential, and I support it (yes, even the ditching resources), but I'm worried that it's coming at the expense of other things that aren't getting done.

In the meantime I'm going to go off and play my career save now that my complaining is wrapped up

[Tripzter]

I think that the reason for the tech tree is you do 2 missions and unlock half the tech tree therefore the order tends to be irrelevent. Sure that doesnt mean it should be left if it can be fixed however IMO its a low priority vs other stuff that should be done.

[Sauron]

The tech tree (and science) is currently the entirety of career. And it will remain a large part even with budget/contracts, etc. It should really offer a coherent, high quality gameplay experience to veteran players (it doesn't--as you've pointed out) and the same to new players with the added bit that it also has to be a useful teaching tool (it definitely isn't). As it stands the entire game mode doesn't work because it's 'beatable' so quickly for veteran players (at which point more effort ought to go into sandbox features) and irritating/illogical for new players or veteran players who don't aggressively science-hunt or who avoid outrageous designs. Basically, career should be a viable game mode worthy of significant dev attention.

But what would you suggest in terms of priorities? (But please let's head off answering 'resources' to avoid a spectacular thread derail--I'd really rather this thread stay constructive )

[Rakaydos]

I dont see the problem with kerbin soil samples- if you can reach orbit easilly, great, you quickly reach far enough in the tech tree that the KErbin tech multiplier is useless to you.

But if you're trying a fancy "hard mode" of career, such as Spaceplanes Only, you need soil samples to unlock the basic tech needed to complete the challange. (good luck getting into orbit without wings.)

[Sauron]

Fair point, I guess. But a new player who may get into orbit easily enough but who struggles to get to the mun without a few more nodes is going to be compelled to do grindy stuff on kerbin. That's not good.

[frizzank]

Also it is important to look at KSP from a new player standpoint an not just the experienced ones.

My friend got KSP recently and started playing. He said he got stuck trying to get into orbit in career mod (Sometimes this is hard for new players). I told him he could do sub orbital hops to different parts of kerbin and return soil samples and crew reports for science points to get more parts.

Doing this really helped him learn how to build better rockets and reach orbit easier.

I do agree with the all in one mission being the only mission you do. Contracts may help this. Also if parts were more expensive it may make choosing which ones to take a more important game choice.

[RocketPilot573]

I actually kinda agree with the OP's entire post, there are no challenge in career, and no rewards for doing things (or you just unlock half the tech tree by doing soil samples of Kerbin). Nothing needs to be completely redone, but I think the game need a few tweaks at least. For one this, getting the same amount of science from EVERY biome is way, WAY overpowered, you can get like of 1000 science from each biome on Minmus. And I would like to see the current tech tree revised, the last tier or two is fine, but the first half makes no sense at all. I can live having manned missions first, but unlocking the first few tiers without leaving the ground is just silly (wasn't this a space game). Furthermore, the Science lab is in a completely different section of the tree than the rest of the space station parts.

I guess we can wait and see what .24 will bring, hopefully contracts will help somewhat, and of course we are still in the early stages of career development, so maybe this will change.

[Sauron]

I definitely agree that cost will (hopefully) help things. Contracts I'm less certain about. But there is room to screw up with cost. If it's too easy to afford all-in-one missions (would be another unnecessary concession, IMO) then cost will be meaningless to veterans.

But shouldn't the game be rewarding the flying rather than the landing, for example, front-loading crew reports or enabling biome sensitive upper-atmosphere reports, would do a lot to reward players who can't quite make orbit without rewarding their failure as it were. It would also encourage X-15 style high-altitude flights early on. I know that if I were a new player starting in .23 I'd sour on being rewarded for doing nothing very quickly. Whereas the satisfaction of getting a larger reward for real (if slightly trickier) progress towards orbit would be much more satisfying.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Sauron

[SkyRender]

Some form of auto-science would be a huge boon, I believe. If nothing else, crew reports should be automatically generated and split out into separate science data so a new crew report could be filed. It really makes no sense not to do it that way; why would the crew NOT do a report on their situation? Really, the crew report should be an ongoing tally that adds science to a crew report "pot" for a given flight. Though I suppose that would cause a few interesting complications when craft with multiple command pods split apart, the end result would be the same: whatever science data from those reports got recovered first would flag the appropriate "crew report in situation" flags, and the identical reports from the other recovered command pods would not count for anything. Just like how it works now, in other words, but with less need for the player to tell the crew to do their job.

[*Aqua*]

The game is in alpha phase. We don't know everything what Squad will add to it. Balancing (and this seems to be the main critism here) is usually done as one of the last points in the development process because everytime they add something new something old has to be rebalanced. Over and over again. This is just wasting time and work.

[AndrewBCrisp]

Responding to just this item:

Also, stuff like goo should really be a once per planet deal rather than something repeated for every biome.

I think it's time for a refresher on the Scientific Method. Let's review:

1. Observation of a phenomenon in nature.

2. Formation of Hypothesis to explain the observation.

3. Making Predictions based on the hypothesis.

4. Perform an Experiment to test the prediction.

5. Refine the hypothesis based on the results of the experiment.

Lather, rinse, and repeat until the hypothesis can no longer be refined.

Biomes in the game are not arbitrary, but rather demonstrate different local conditions. There's a lot that can change even on a given planet. Types of rock, temperature differences, differences in gravity and air pressure (if atmosphere is present), magnetic fields (if they get implemented in the game). Since we don't know what exactly influences the Mystery Goo, to say "Because the Mystery Goo reacts so-and-so to an airless environment with sedimentary rocks, it will react the very same way to an airless environment with igneous rocks" or, to say "Because Mystery Goo reacts so-and-so to grass, it will react the very same way to water" are huge assumptions. Will these predictions really hold up? The only way to know is to test them by performing multiple experiments.

To me, this is a good way to teach scientific method to players. Not the best way, possibly, but a good way nonetheless.

[Sauron]

The game is in alpha phase. We don't know everything what Squad will add to it. Balancing (and this seems to be the main critism here) is usually done as one of the last points in the development process because everytime they add something new something old has to be rebalanced. Over and over again. This is just wasting time and work.

Not really. Game balance is an iterative process in that all changes build on previous fixes which may themselves create new and unforeseen issues. Over and over again. It's not something that can be done (well) in one fell swoop like you seem to think. If you do you'll wind up with a badly balanced end product or a truly overwhelming workload that was preceded by a poor draft. Now, it is an alpha, so rapid turnaround isn't necesary, but there has to be a willingness to make changes otherwise inertia will keep badly designed elements.

Snip

What scientific method is that exactly? You're scoring points. Not doing science. I'm just proposing a distinction between certain experiments that should be biome sensitive (accelerometer, surface samples) to reward multiple visits to a planet and experiments that should be planet-specific to reward the first visit to a planet more heavily (goo, barometer). This creates a richer gameplay experience and reduces grindiness if you don't want to repeatedly visit a place right away.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Sauron

[Rakaydos]

Contracts are the solution to the "one type of mission" problem. If your contract is "test RCS in Eeloo SoI", you dont need to bring a lander or heavy science along, you can just send a probe to pick up some easy money and reputation.

Heck, keep a probe in Jool orbit waiting for "Test RCS/reaction wheel/solar panel at XXX" and do multiple contracts with the same platform.

[Fr8monkey]

Still don't know why probes are buried half way down the tech tree way after manned flight...

[Sauron]

But what does that add? It's just a trivial way of getting 'stuff' without any interesting gameplay. And strictly speaking an RCS test would still be even better with the other science equipment and a full return mission along with it.

Well, right now probes don't do anything better than manned pods (or anything well at all, really), so it doesn't matter where they are, does it?

[Vanamonde]

I disagree with many of your points, Sauron.

Putting parts in the tech tree roughly in the order that they were introduced to the game is incredibly lazy.

I don't know where this idea came from, but the tech tree does not recapitulate the game's part development history.

RCS and control surfaces are utterly worthless in stock except for the very last phases of docking.

Control surfaces are useful in aircraft at all times, launch-to-orbit for larger rockets, and during flights at Eve, Duna, and Laythe. RCS can be used to make fine course corrections even for large ships if you burn early, and can provide the main and only propulsion for small probes. For example, from a mothership in Jool orbit, I have landed RCS probes on several of the moons.

Currently there is no conceivable reason to use probes and no reason to try early 1-way unmanned missions.

Because people keep saying this, I decided to test the idea. I played a campaign almost entirely with probes and cleared the tech tree despite the fact that all probes I sent farther than Kerbin's moons transmitted their data and were not recovered. The problem is not in the way that the game is designed, but in the erroneous preconception many players have that collecting anything less than 100% of the available science at a destination is a waste of time. There is more than enough potential science in the game to clear the tech tree, and you don't need to collect every bit of it to do so.

This is a result of the above issue. All-in-one missions are forced down our throats, and as a result landers are built to carry every possible piece of equipment imaginable.

If you are going to send a mission, though, it makes sense to carry as much useful payload as possible. This is, after all, what real space agencies do. No launch wastefully carries only one experiment. This is a matter of efficiency rather than game design.

getting into orbit is not so hard that you should spoon feed people with soil samples on Kerbin.

Goddard and the others spent decades launching rockets before anybody got close to achieving orbit. In KSP, the main science to be had from these flights is from soil samples because, unlike real-world rocket history, there isn't any radiation or other sorts of research to be done. It could just as easily be simulated by some other means, but soil samples is the one the Squad guys went with. It works as well as any other simulated area of research.

Also, stuff like goo should really be a once per planet deal rather than something repeated for every biome.

How are the Kerbals going to know that until they perform the experiments?

A General Unwillingness to Make Iterative Changes to Game Balance

There's not a lot of point in continually making fine adjustments to something that is going to receive major adjustments later, and much of the game is still in a preliminary state.

[Bnethor]

I'm a new player and while I can't really comment on much of this stuff, but I'll ask a few things at the same time. Don't larger tanks have a better fuel to drag ratio, so using them would save fuel while getting out of atmo? The Kerbin soil samples have been a nice extra when I've practiced geosynced orbits or aiming for a landing, that way there has at least been some reward for that stuff which has been welcome. Also when I've done some first mun flybys with a kerbal in a pod it's similarly a good way to finish the mission to aim for a new biome to land at. In the end the gained science is lowish and may help to get some research lines open to make it easier for some people to get further. There are some people who are saying the career mode is too easy, but that would be fairly simple to fix with difficulty levels that adjust the gained science - apparently there are already mods for adjusting the gains. P.S. Reaction wheels rock!

[AndrewBCrisp]

I've been thinking about the Capsules before Probes philosophy and I think it boils down to the fact that Kerbals may not have developed rockets for warfare like we did.

Keep in mind that humans developed rockets and space programs during a period of extended, low-level warfare. We wanted weapons first, and considered exploring other planets later. For this, it makes sense to have rockets that don't need a human being at the control, as your goal is to make something go BOOM. Humans tend not to want to be present when something goes BOOM. When we sent animals and later humans into orbit, again, the goal was more "look what our nation can do with our Preferred Ideology" (also: "look how big a payload we can put into space. Now imagine the size of bomb we can launch") than real exploration.

Squad's insistence of not including weapons in the game suggests to me that Kerbals did not develop spaceflight with the need for blasting or scaring some other guy into submission. This is not to say they are pacifist, simply that their warlike days are probably far behind them. If their goal truly is curiosity about space and other worlds, it may make sense for them to want to go and see for themselves, leaving probes for those tasks that are too dangerous for Kerbals (like going to the planets for the Very First Time). Hence, they would have an incentive to develop capsules before they developed probe cores.

Edit: Sauron, we may get science points from doing experiments, but getting science points is not the only point of experiments.

Long before the current Science system was developed, people were using KSP to perform experiments of various kinds. Why? Because they were curious about the various planets, and because it was fun.

It still is, just in new ways now. The addition of flavor text to science reports has, for me at least, added a new level of enjoyment. Maybe I don't get many science points from dropping a Goo canister in the desert, and another one in the mountains, but I get different results. I'm curious about how the Goo responds in different environments, and I suspect a great many players are curious as well.

That may not be the way you want to play, and that's fine. To paraphrase Kipling: "There are nine and twenty ways of playing KSP, and every single one of them is right!"

Edited March 1, 2014 by AndrewBCrisp
Responding to Sauron

[*Aqua*]

@Sauron

Yes, game balancing is an iterative process. But there is no reason for an iteration each time there is an update.

Let's assume Squad now takes a break from adding new things and instead rebalances whatever needs to be rebalanced. Let's assume this takes about the usual update cycle time. After that they add the contracts system and again has to rebalance some stuff. Because of the added features Squad has to rebalance more stuff. Each update the work increases and therefore development slows. I'm not saying they should stop rebalancing but it's unwise to do it often.

[Sauron]

Sporadic replies:

-I don't object to capsule-first or probe-first or some combination. Either works fine IMO, and I don't think it matters. What does need to happen is for each option to have unique advantages and disadvantages that also open up new gameplay options.

-@Vanamonde on RCS and control surfaces: I have never found the need to use RCS for fine course corrections. Not to say I haven't done it, but that's because RCS came in excessively large quantities before tweakables. RCS landers are not particularly better than bipropelant except on the extreme low end of the size scale. In other words, reaction wheels should not be the be-all-and-end-all of control (not helped by trivially easy to get electricity). Which they uncontroversially are (except in planes, obviously ). I can build an ion lander for minmus too but it's pretty clearly not the best solution.

-@Vanamonde on useful payload: hopefully cost fixes this, but weight and cost penalties are the main factor limiting what we do or don't send to space. Currently it's too easy to build all-in-one things because weight penalties are trivial with enough brute force, and there's no financial limits to discourage brute force.

-@Vanamonde on probes: Yes, but we're talking about optimal ways rather than possible ways. There is one very clear optimal way of doing things, and that's not good. Probes and manned missions should feel different with their own unique quirks and gameplay features. Each should be an equally valid way to approach the game with no clear 'better' approach and each having something that actually sets them apart

-@Vanamonde on tech tree order: that's not my main issue. Lack of good game design logic (small tanks and service module engines before launcher tanks is the strongest example) is. It's very clear that not enough thought was put into how the tech tree plays, especially for new players.

-On Iterative changes in general: I can't stress this enough: if changes are slow to be made the bad stuff tends to stick around (we still have that old SAS wheel without changed stats after 2 versions ). You can't do one game balance pass at the end and get a good product. Also, the stuff before the end product will suffer as a result. This does take some extra work, but that's part of what it takes to do game design right. I'm not suggesting large changes every release cycle. Small changes each cycle (to the 48s, the old ASAS) are trivial time-wise and there's no excuse not to make them. Larger changes aren't going to happen every release (and I don't expect them to) but they do need to happen or too much winds up being built around bad mechanics, and can't be untangled from those bad mechanics because there are too many connected bits. Better planning and more systematic play-testing for gameplay is another solution, but the community is a tad unpredictable in what goes over well or not

-A general note: my goal is primarily to ask the hard questions and to have them asked right back at me (fair's fair). There seems to be a non-trivial amount of community irritation with career mode, and the goal here is to figure out what is and isn't working.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Sauron

[vetrox]

Theres alot of things in the OP that I dont really agree with and I'm not even going to bother getting involved in the probes vs manned which comes first argument.

One problem I have noticed is probably with the actual players themselves than with the career. The need to harvest every biome for all its science instead of sending ships out of kerbin SOI is more harmfull IMO than the lack of "stuff to do". I've only played career mode a couple of times but I didnt feel the need to squeeze every point of science out of every biome before moving onto the next. I was under the impression that once you had landed on a body and done some science and left, that it wasnt worth coming back so after I unlocked skippers i went straight to duna (which was one of the more fun missions I have done in ksp.

If anything, you should be forced to only be able to do the same experiment once or twice to force players to explore the system. Admittedly all it boils down too is building a craft with sufficient dv to go to x and back but players are farming up the entire tech tree within kerbin SOI and then wonder what to do because they have completed the career. You should be forced to goto other planets before completing the whole tech tree. Again this may be fixed with the advent of moneys

I do think that there need to be other "gameplay" elements (such as the sort of contracts you get in Take on: Mars) as lets face it, space travel (if we remove the IRL problems we face such as parts failure and expendable human life) is pretty mundane. You fly somewhere, land, right click "do science" and go home. When was the last time a player spent more than 10 minutes in career mode exploring the surface of a body? The long term laythe colony thread/story has given me and alot of others some insperation but I hope that eventually that sort of exploration should be required to advance in career (e.g you need to map out a section of continent after which you can name said continent and see its various properties, should resources be implemented)

-@Vanamonde on useful payload: hopefully cost fixes this, but weight and cost penalties are the main factor limiting what we do or don't send to space. Currently it's too easy to build all-in-one things because weight penalties are trivial with enough brute force, and there's no financial limits to discourage brute force.

This is something that I never really thought about and is probably the reason career mode gameplay is somewhat stagnant for the more experienced players. Its just so easy to put everything on one ship and quite litteraly add moar boosters. I expect when currency is introduced this will change drastically I hope. If you get a chance to play with the rss mod, that is a good insight into how challenging it should eb to get to orbit. Every ton matters (and in career mode there really needs to be that feeling of "do i take another ton of fuel...or another science experiment") when your running a real sized system. Its still just a case of getting a reliable lifter design sorted but theres just something satisfying about making it into orbit every time. On normal sized kerbin the task of getting into orbit is so mundane and DV comes in abundance. I realise this is a comprimise for difficulty and performance puroposes.

Edited March 1, 2014 by vetrox

[milosh]

I don't get why KSP needs a career mode at all, is it so hard to just build something without someone telling you todo so? Orbiter never had a career mode and people are doing missions for more than 10 years now. I'd wish the Devs would focus on more important things like real aerodynamics where I gain something by putting caps on my rockets instead of losing because of the increased mass and drag. And because of the career mode it's kinda pointless to put any science modules on a sandbox station which truly sucks. I'd love do have a persistent world where I have to take care of my Kerbals, where a ship is lost when I don't recover it and where I can do science - but I don't want to limit my drive to build by an arbitrary Techtree which I have to unlock by doing stuff the game wants me todo (grind a hell lot) but I don't.

So in short: what I'd wish for is a career mode where the complete Techtree is unlocked, or at least an option to unlock it completely without doing silly missions. This would also solve alot of issues the OP stated (which I mostly agree with, only that I'll use RCS over reaction wheels simply because it's closer to reality).

[Sauron]

This is something that I never really thought about and is probably the reason career mode gameplay is somewhat stagnant for the more experienced players. Its just so easy to put everything on one ship and quite litteraly add moar boosters. I expect when currency is introduced this will change drastically I hope. If you get a chance to play with the rss mod, that is a good insight into how challenging it should eb to get to orbit. Every ton matters (and in career mode there really needs to be that feeling of "do i take another ton of fuel...or another science experiment") when your running a real sized system. Its still just a case of getting a reliable lifter design sorted but theres just something satisfying about making it into orbit every time. On normal sized kerbin the task of getting into orbit is so mundane and DV comes in abundance. I realise this is a comprimise for difficulty and performance puroposes.

This is a big one that I agree with you on. I'm also keen on reducing the number of biome-sensitive experiments (but not eliminating them) like you suggest to encourage bolder exploration while leaving some motivation for return missions to top up that last little bit of science before a big mission or for new players, the chance to pick up some extra nodes to get them un-stuck from a rut. Heavier experiments wouldn't hurt either (sometimes it's the simple solutions--the materials bay should probably weigh more)

@Milosh: You can edit your save file to have huge amount of science. That way you can do science while having all your parts. FWW, I disagree that SQUAD shoulldn't focus on career. They just need to do a better job of it. Because ultimately a more realistically aerodynamic rocket is still just a rocket. There's only so much gameplay you can get out of that. Whereas a well-executed career mode should provide a good gameplay experience without silly grinding or 2-launch completions with explosive staging witchcraft. Again, my hope is money will add a real challenge.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Sauron

[Rakaydos]

It will be interesting, once contracts are in the game, to see if you can do a 100% contract based tech tree, buying all your tech with reputation and money earned from missions.

[vetrox]

This is a big one that I agree with you on. I'm also keen on reducing the number of biome-sensitive experiments (but not eliminating them) like you suggest to encourage bolder exploration while leaving some motivation for return missions to top up that last little bit of science before a big mission or for new players, the chance to pick up some extra nodes to get them un-stuck from a rut. Heavier experiments wouldn't hurt either (sometimes it's the simple solutions--the materials bay should probably weigh more)

Wow, someone on the internet i agree with!?!?

Theres so many biomes, each with experiments. A good option is to reduce either, the number of biomes or the amount of science per biome whilst simaltaniously reducing the amount of times you can do an experiment in a biome (personally I think twice would be enough)

I also had a thought. We could do with some more interactive experiments. Just as an example (made up on the spot whilst i sit here at work at 7:00am after getting in at 4am last night after alot of booze) packing onto the side of your ship 3 seismic detectors which you have to setup in a triangle of a certain size with each point being 1km apart and then detonating some sort of explosive in the middle for the sensors to detect and then getting an actual reading so we can learn actual physical properties about a planets surface. This would add a whole new layer to things. Think about it, more EVA interaction, a use for rovers, a purpose to exploring the surface, the decision to take a rover with you or just huff it on foot. Again, I refer to Take on:Mars as whn you finish a contract on that you get a little insight to some of mars's properties.

Edited March 1, 2014 by vetrox