Science over time.

[r4pt0r]

Why not add science over time to the Science lab? What are those Kerbals doing when they aren't processing lab data?

To balance it, Give Science over time a cap, 100 per biome (kerbin orbit, minmus flats,ect...)for example, And give the lab space for 20 "Science equipment" resource. Every Science equipment resource is used up like fuel 4 per day, 1-to-1 for science points.

You could restock your science equipment by launching restocking pods or something. With the numbers in my example, It would take 5 launches to get all the "science-lab in orbit around _____" points.*

*Change those numbers to whatever stat you want.

then either make the restocking pods heavy as hell, or actually limit players to 1 pod per craft, or just let them exploit it and launch 5 pods with the science bay to get it all at once.

Or, to do it less complicatedly, ignore my post lol.

[JimmyAgent007]

@No one. Good point. But the separate companies can be developing prototypes. Some they give you for testing. Something of a joint research venture. NASA does the space work, JPL makes the cool stuff. But it doesnt mean NASA doesnt do it own research to help JPL along. In Kerbal, they may find something on the side of the road, but they may need to re-purpose it for space travel. Nothing wrong with realism as long as its not tedious.

@r4pt0r I did mention in later posts about using the lab, rotating out crew, limits on equipment per biome. Maybe we could add 'lab equipment' as part of the rotation.

Edited August 22, 2014 by JimmyAgent007

[No one]

But in this case the realism IS tedious.

Why are you preventing players from just warping for research anyway? Timewarp exists specifically to prevent tedious waiting, you're just inserting tedious waiting and preventing the player from warping through it. Provided the main limiter (Money, science, whatever) was something other than time, it would be impossible to exploit because warping through research would be completely standard and expected. It would also be far more balanced to limit it based on something other than time, because anything which can be accomplished by warping can be accomplished by waiting, it just takes longer, and it would be much better to have a system which rewards the player for doing stuff rather than passing time.

[JimmyAgent007]

@No one, my original idea was just to keep people from abusing time warp. Starting a new game and just sitting around collecting science or hitting a bunch of high science areas and getting the whole tech tree in one mission. Or in the case you mentioned, some super long mission doesnt net you the whole tree. The idea would be that it would be balanced so that the player completes some missions for money, then by the time they are done you have some new parts to play with. If you did find the waiting tedious then you adjust the difficulty slider to suit your play speed.

[tater]

That's why there should be a disconnect between "science" and engineering. You could warp all you want, but until you start breaking rockets, you don't really know about building rockets.

[Ricardo79]

I mentioned an idea for science over time here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/111448-More-Interesting-contracts

Basicly it is can created with some manual intervention... And not an overpowered way.

Think of it as a container... and an ongoing laboratory work/experiments

As long as you have crew in the lab, and as long as you (either have materials to experimen on and) KerraBits space to store data it should "generate" science points.

After you unload the datastore and land it to kerbin you get the science (which was generated while you were piloting another ship somewhere else) Basicly it is science over time but not overpowered as for example better "parts" / Laboratory upgrades can boost rate science generating or can store more data (excess science lost...) so if you make a very long trip and not switching back periodicaly to "collect science data" not more than the actual container can hold is what you can get.

limited nice and easy. requires a small amount of manual work and still "effortless" generation of science over time.

[Pthigrivi]

Hmm.. couldn't you just put one of those in orbit and then time warp to infinite science and then land and unlock the entire tech tree? Im not fundamentally against time-based mechanics but they have to be finite.

[tater]

Meaningful science over time should not be "points," but gathering useful data about bodies you study. Resources is sort of adding this via scanning, right?

The "collect science from orbit around X" contracts need to be expunged, or replaced with a requirement to place certain instruments in orbit, which can then generate small science per unit time. Time warp can be used to achieve it, so what? These contracts are now worth 1-2 science, then thousands of funds, and you can decline contracts til you see them again, and do them nearly infinitely within a single day if you are concerned about "abuse." Put pods around kerbin, mun, and minmus. Only accept those science contracts til you get all 3. Go to tracking, send science, return to mission control, repeat. A boring exploit, and only uses up the time you are in orbit clicking the crew report and waiting for the data to send. Far better to have science over time that limits the science to 1 point every X days (X can be arbitrarily large for balance).

USEFUL science would be better. Add cameras, or assume that all probe bodies and pods have cameras already (higher level have better cameras). Know how you can only zoom in so far in map view? Start with the most zoomed in view equal to the best you have in external view from any craft that has been in that world's SoI that has sent science (using the altitude it sent science from). As a probe/pod does "science over time," the zoom level improves based upon the orbital altitude of the craft (and the camera/probe quality). So a flyby of even the most primitive probe that returns data actually helps your program in future missions.

A more complex method would perhaps weight the available map-zoom to the amount of time spent, camera quality, area actually imaged, etc (so that a single impactor probe doesn't unlock perfect map-zoom). Might be as simple as a cap on map zoom until you have a high quality camera in a polar orbit our something).

[Ricardo79]

I am sorry I am not english, so maybe I did write something wrong along with a bad grammar....

I DO meant to get it limited

Think of it as a container... and an ongoing laboratory work/experiments

Maybe a "50u" container. filling up about a week or such (kerbin time). Once filled excess overboarded (as mechanics) so no more gains Till You as a player switch to that vessel and "take scinece data" to store it into your ships cabin as ALL other Science has it already.

You get as many science when you land it to a base (I mean recover on Kerbin right now) as you hold inside your cabin or other storage as a science report . Just like taking back temperature data.

AS for the "points" I see point gaining when make a temperature scan or a crew report... That's why I wrote that.

But yeah I like your idea of planting a special equipment like a camera or such... in that way on EVA you have to reach it right click "change spacetape" in order to film more.... the get "tape" is movable and when you recover the ship at Kerbin you get an amount of science... Or somehing like that. scansat make something similar with different parts creates different maps and the better the more science when "analyze data" but that is depleted then one map "one" amount of science, a better map = "bigger" amount of science and that's all no "reset" possibilities (on the science part).

I think for the stock game that many parameters are a bit much (to program it) but I admire them (The more complex the better to play it)

What I wrote is in mechanics would be similar. Make experiments in science labs so scientist won't just sit there and process data when ordered, but they make ongoing scientific experiments such as observing space ants social, cultural and sexual behaviour "and record it" gathering more recorded material means more science "point" but for exclude the possibilities of "overpower it" ALL data-medium for recording should have a limited ammount of storage space. so the recordings could be ongoing while you have to do manualy 600 more space maneuvers... if you forgot to manualy change the data-medium, you lost science, but you can fastforward "a week" and change medium fastforward a week and change medium....and so on and then unlock the entire tree.

But serriously is it not way too more of an effort compared to bring up debug menu (alt+F12) and complete a set of science heavy contracts? So if someone wants to ruin it's gameexperience why not let them?

But with a reasonable "low" settings on a parts max storage capacity and a slow rate It could add more. I think.

I hope