Alarms and Science Suggestions

[chip4312]

Hi

I just recently got addicted to the game, so apologies if these features already exist or plan to exist - I've scanned around a bit but can't find anything that suggests they do.

I've been thinking about the repeatability aspect of the science and I've read the debates about transmitting, returning, and diminishing returns and I'd like to weigh in if I may. Perhaps repeated "farming" of transmitted - or returned - results might not be so mundane if it had a particular goal. I was thinking about the biomes maps of all the bodies that are on the wiki pages (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/File:Minmusbiome.png), with highlighted regions for different biomes. What about if you could build up overlay maps of various planets and moons biomes by sampling data of different kinds? Like repeated results in the same area exposes more and more of the surrounding biome map with diminishing returns, which encourages both repeated results AND moving the location of sampling/landing around the planet. For example, you could land on the leading edge of Mun and take 1 of each transmittable samples and expose 5% of the biome map, centered on your readings. You can then either take another set of readings from the same location to expose a further 1% or move to the edge of the expose area and retake readings to expose another 5%, something like that. Later down the line, you could diversify the types of map overlay you expose by the different recordings - say, an atmospheric set of readings (where sensors will read in atmosphere) gives you a 10% exposed area instead of 5%, but it's only 50% quality so there may be errors in where the biome boundaries are defined, that kind of thing.

Second suggestion - a proximity alarm. Some kind of alarm that notifies you when a ship is going to pass into a new sphere of influence, or is due to pass within a threshold distance of another body (or even ship). This means you can have ships setup for intercepts with new planets that take a very long time to actually intercept, and then carry on with something else while that continues to get closer.

[Sirrobert]

Your alarm is currently done by a mod, Kerbal Alarm Clock. Check it out, it has what you suggest, and more.

As for the maps, sounds awesome. I'd love to have some actually biome maps in game, and having to manaully unlock them with science would be even better