Please work on the Science Clicker

[Laie]

TL;DR:

Career mode encourages players to take and store a lot of results. As it is, that also means a lot of clicky-clicky. Please give the interface a workover. Wall of text follows, key points are bold.

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As far as I can tell, the best way to maximize the science point per mission is to perform repeated experiments at every landing site, either by bringing redundant science equiment or a laboratory. In order to return as many results as possible, they have to be taken from the equipment and stored in a suitable module (probably a lab).

In my case, I ended up doing both. With a Lab integrated into the lander, one piece of every instrument would suffice. However, I find running and collecting larger batches of experiments to be much, much more convenient than doing many collection/cleanout cycles (which also means switching between vessel and EVA, the latter requiring me to re-orient the camera each time).

I can run all experiments by action group, that's the easy part. It also triggers like 20 results and I have to click "Keep Data" on each. Then some Kerbal has to go out and collect the results. With my first landers, he had to walk around the ship in order to touch on every experiment [1]; later designs cramped all science equipement into a small area so everything is easily acessible from a single spot.

So I get him into place, and do a context menu -> collect data for every single instrument. In case of materials bay and mystery goo, I get an additional pop-up warning telling me that this will render the experiment inoperable.

Using such a LabLander, I recently touched off all biomes on the Mun during a single mission. At the third or fourth site, I found myself wondering wether I had already taken a soil sample or not, and clicked "Review Data" on the Lab. BAD IDEA. Reviewing 100+ results with the current interface is definitely no fun at all. I ended up just collecting a few more samples for good measure and be done with it.

At least in my case, the mass-production of science has the effect that I hardly look at the results anymore. For all I know, there may have been a lot of funny descriptions of the Goo's behaviour yet at some (early) point in the game I stopped paying attention. It's just another result that needs to be filed; who cares what it says?

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[1] Materials Containers should be set to be collectable from a little further away. Probably the caclulation is done from center of object to center of Kerbal; in case of the materials container, which is the most bulky science part, a Kerbal can touch the container with his helmet and still be out of reach. This might actually qualify as a minor bug.

[Zeroignite]

My vote? Have a button/key that pulls up the "review" menu for all science on the vessel, probably with a sort of table-of-contents listing. I play mostly IVA now, and currently the only way to review experiments is the right-click menu.

[DoToH]

My vote? Have a button/key that pulls up the "review" menu for all science on the vessel, probably with a sort of table-of-contents listing. I play mostly IVA now, and currently the only way to review experiments is the right-click menu.

Maybe this could be done in the research building at KSC, adding a new tab called "ships" to show a list of experiments per ship ( like in science archives) with buttons to transmit/keep/trash in every item, like we have now the "review report" option in the science archives

[LethalDose]

I agree with the OP that I'd like to see an overhaul of the system prior to launch. However, there are other bigger issues to deal with first, and I'll just be happy with this change so long as it goes thru prior to v1.0. My biggest concern is that the devs will just say "nope, it's playable as is, so ship it. We're moving on contracts and not coming back to science."

I don't think that's going to happen, but who knows.

I'm currently fine with kerbals having to EVA to collect and store data, but I would like to see some kind of limit on the amount of data that be stored on a vessel/part. For example, a Mk1 pod could store 50 Mits of data, where a Mk1-2 could store 500. This data volume is already in the game, it would just be a different way to use it.

Maybe this could be done in the research building at KSC, adding a new tab called "ships" to show a list of experiments per ship ( like in science archives) with buttons to transmit/keep/trash in every item, like we have now the "review report" option in the science archives

This would be a great solution. Another option would be a simple summary window the size of of the current experiment window. Add a check box to each experiment and have options for "Transmit all selected data" and "dump all selected data".

[Zeroignite]

What if I don't want to switch scenes over to R&D? :/