Will there be new biomes in .24?

[johnnyhandsome]

Anyone know? Duna and Ike maybe?

[KerbMav]

It was not previously announced nor was it in the FAQ - 99.999% no.

[sewerbird]

There's been no peep about such a thing, and it isn't included in the fairly extensive listing in the recent forum news story FAQ. I'd be very surprised if any planets got the biome treatment.

[Ralathon]

Anyone know? Duna and Ike maybe?

Not as far as I'm aware. But the Custom Biomes mod adds biomes to all bodies in KSP. So you could use that as stopgap.

[Sky_walker]

There's been no peep about such a thing, and it isn't included in the fairly extensive listing in the recent forum news story FAQ. I'd be very surprised if any planets got the biome treatment.

It was not previously announced nor was it in the FAQ - 99.999% no.

We know that there's at least one "surprise" that was mentioned in dev notes but never got it into the news stories or FAQ, so I wouldn't be so definitive about saying "no" to that.

My answer is: wait and see.

[Superfluous J]

There are two options:

1) There are no new biomes

2) There are new biomes and they are keeping it a secret for some reason.

In both cases, there is no way to know and they won't tell you. The best you could hope for is a definitive "no."

But I assume you're asking because you want the answer to be "yes" so the best you could hope for is exactly what you don't want to hear.

[CaptRobau]

As others have said: probably not. It might be something for 0.25 though as this was said about the next update:

As usual, the next release will be out whenever it’s ready. For the most part, though, we plan on continuing to improve on the recently added Career Features, add the still-pending bits to make Career gameplay more complete, and we’re also working on a few other things, which we’ll talk about later.

The still-pending bits could be inferred to be things such as additional biomes. Personally if they are going to expand biomes, I think they should just do it all in one go and not do planet by planet. At the moment the partial implementation of biome-specific science just unbalances the entire science part of the game. The science lab is really only useful when there's biomes available, resulting in dozens of people sending science labs to Duna even though its practically useless there. And until all biomes are implemented you can't really balance the various science values (unless you want to completely redo them every time you add another biomes).

[vexx32]

Unless it's been announced as happening, there's no reason to suspect it's going to be in the release, I'm afraid :/

[KerbMav]

...partial implementation of biome-specific science just unbalances...until all biomes...

Yep.

/10char

[johnnyhandsome]

I has a sad now. But there's a mod for custom biomes, yay!

Let's go launch some stuff!

[magnemoe]

As others have said: probably not. It might be something for 0.25 though as this was said about the next update:

The still-pending bits could be inferred to be things such as additional biomes. Personally if they are going to expand biomes, I think they should just do it all in one go and not do planet by planet. At the moment the partial implementation of biome-specific science just unbalances the entire science part of the game. The science lab is really only useful when there's biomes available, resulting in dozens of people sending science labs to Duna even though its practically useless there. And until all biomes are implemented you can't really balance the various science values (unless you want to completely redo them every time you add another biomes).

Yes, however just adding biomes for Duna would make it an more interesting target and make more complex missions more relevant.

[johnnyhandsome]

On further thought, it would sense for biomes to be in .25, after contracts are implemented, because then contracts for biomes could be A THING.

[KerbMav]

I has a sad now. But there's a mod for custom biomes, yay!

Let's go launch some stuff!

That's the spirit!

[Sky_walker]

On further thought, it would sense for biomes to be in .25, after contracts are implemented, because then contracts for biomes could be A THING.

0.24.5

There's no need to wait all the way till 0.24, and IMHO it's pretty certain that either 0.24.5 will happen, or 0.25 will be released much, much quicker than 0.24 was. I honestly doubt we'd have to wait another 3+ months for a fixes in contracts.

Usually each huge release should have a follow-up patch fixing some things in it that came out with large public testing it - and that's a good chance to also add some new contracts in as well as new biomes... though my hope is that 0.24 will have AT LEAST Duna in.

[Sandworm]

0.24.5

There's no need to wait all the way till 0.24, and IMHO it's pretty certain that either 0.24.5 will happen, or 0.25 will be released much, much quicker than 0.24 was. I honestly doubt we'd have to wait another 3+ months for a fixes in contracts.

Yah, that's what they said last time and the time before that. Regardless of statements to the contrary, Squad seems committed to a multi-month work cycle. Between all the experimental, associated animations, polish and steam sales, I doubt they are capable of releasing anything without a two+ month lead time. This is a business methods problem. They have their system and we cannot change their minds.

I don't see why new biomes could possibly take more than a few hours to implement. The code is there, but I expect that something external is stopping it from being used. For instance, perhaps they don't want to add biomes to Duna because they expect that its surface will, one day, be altered much as Mun's was. That could also be why the Duna easter eggs remain underground. An assumption about feature A is blocking development of feature B. Throw up enough of those blocks and you cannot get anything done.

Edited July 16, 2014 by Sandworm

[malkuth]

Well one of the contracts is explore planet region or something. IE send probe to such and such body. I would not be surprised if they updated some of the biomes. Might not be as large as Mun or Kerbin. But to make those contracts work a little better they would need more then the few that exist right now.

Could be wrong though.

[ModZero]

At the moment the partial implementation of biome-specific science just unbalances the entire science part of the game.

Do note that they mentioned rebalancing the tech tree. Not that that proves anything, of course.

[johnnyhandsome]

Just a note that the Custom Biome mod works very nicely and seamlessly with ScanSat.

But what to do, explore more in 23.5 or wait for .24 and updated mods ?! *brain burst*

[LameLefty]

I don't see why new biomes could possibly take more than a few hours to implement. The code is there, but I expect that something external is stopping it from being used. For instance, perhaps they don't want to add biomes to Duna because they expect that its surface will, one day, be altered much as Mun's was. That could also be why the Duna easter eggs remain underground. An assumption about feature A is blocking development of feature B. Throw up enough of those blocks and you cannot get anything done.

I agree with this with regard to Duna, more or less. But at least ONE of the easter eggs there remains above ground, so that's something.

Now that said, I think part of the holdup in adding more biomes is simply figuring out the long-game balance. I mean, lots of experienced players rush through the Tech Tree as fast as possible and quickly reach the "now what?" phase of game play. As many people have figured out by now, it takes a grind, but you can complete the entire Tech Tree without leaving the Kerbin SOI. I think Squad has been thinking about this kind of thing quite a bit, and now that the game-mechanisms for contracts, funds and rep are built, they will continue on towards their next internal milestone and see how the community reacts and how modders build onto their system. I predict that sometime around .26 or 0.27, we'll see a "stretching out" of the tech tree - more and smaller nodes, requiring more Science!â„¢ to unlock, giving people a disincentive to grind out missions in the Kerbin SOI. I think more of the science parts will be moved lower in the tree but will produce a lot less Scienceâ„¢ on or near Kerbin, but will be correspondingly more beneficial the further away you are. That will give people incentive to launch earlier flyby missions to Duna and Eve (like the early U.S. Mariner missions in real life), and so on.

But whatever happens, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

[Caelib]

During the development of KSP, they are building SYSTEMS into the game ... when they do that, they only implement a fragment of that functionality to get the system working, etc. Once all of the systems have been implemented (referred to as "Scope Completion"), they will likely be expanded quite a bit.

As stated in blog posts by Squad, it doesn't make any sense from a development perspective to create a bunch of content that has to be updated and tested with every release. For example, had Squad created hundreds of more parts in the previous releases, this update would have taken even longer to create because it would have doubled the effort to balance and test the part costs.

[Crashy_McSplodey]

For Squad, I do not htink there is any need to implement new biomes from a gameplay perspective.Adding biomes to planets would increase the amount of science points available per planet, meaning that players could plow through the tech tree quicker.Adding biomes would (imo) require new contents to also be added to give this increase in resources any purpose, or alternatively, they would need to alter the mechanics / distribution / cost of the tech tree as it stands.

[Karriz]

For Squad, I do not htink there is any need to implement new biomes from a gameplay perspective.Adding biomes to planets would increase the amount of science points available per planet, meaning that players could plow through the tech tree quicker.Adding biomes would (imo) require new contents to also be added to give this increase in resources any purpose, or alternatively, they would need to alter the mechanics / distribution / cost of the tech tree as it stands.

The game will most likely go trough many rebalances in the future anyways, especially now that we have contracts which also generate some science.

Adding biomes would also open up many new possibilities for the contracts system, because you could have different contracts for each biome.

[Sky_walker]

For Squad, I do not htink there is any need to implement new biomes from a gameplay perspective.Adding biomes to planets would increase the amount of science points available per planet, meaning that players could plow through the tech tree quicker.Adding biomes would (imo) require new contents to also be added to give this increase in resources any purpose, or alternatively, they would need to alter the mechanics / distribution / cost of the tech tree as it stands.

Research tree is going to be rebalanced in 0.24

I though someone already said that in this topic.

[Godot]

For Squad, I do not htink there is any need to implement new biomes from a gameplay perspective.Adding biomes to planets would increase the amount of science points available per planet, meaning that players could plow through the tech tree quicker.Adding biomes would (imo) require new contents to also be added to give this increase in resources any purpose, or alternatively, they would need to alter the mechanics / distribution / cost of the tech tree as it stands.

I strongly disagree ... especially for major planets like Duna or Eve.

It just means that the game has to be rebalanced which, as Karriz mentioned, will have to be done either way no matter if we include new Biomes to planets or not.

New Biomes make other planets much more interesting than they are now.

At the moment, for example, you just land a probe or manned lander at Duna, research the area at the landing site and let it return (or transmit the results).

There is not a single gameplay incentive to do anything more (like research a larger area or send more probes/spaceships than one), as Duna is just a single big Biome.

If you do anything more (like use rovers in order to look at a larger region), you just do it for RPG purposes which absolutely brings you no advantages (in form of new scientific discoveries) in the game.

So, I think, new Biomes will benefit a lot, if we get new Biomes

[LameLefty]

Research tree is going to be rebalanced in 0.24

I though someone already said that in this topic.

Harvester's last comments mentioned this, I think. But yeah, more nodes (and paths!) through the tech tree and tweaking the science cost per node could make it essentially impossible to grind through the Tech Tree in a few days (or less!) like a lot of folks do now.