Know of a mod to make science more science-y and less task-y?

[Franklin]

I'm looking for a mod to make science interesting beyond just chasing 100%s. Like, I wanna waddle Jeb around the desert with a diagnostics wand and look for interesting signals and weird soil compositions sort of deal. Like, actual science & exploration.

Know of any mods that come close?

[jordanjay29]

ScanSat, for one. Orbital mapping of planetary bodies.

Also, check out the Munar Surface Experiment package mod.

I'd also suggest Station Science and/or Orbital Material Science for you. You can check out the Science section of the Mods Library for more stuff like this.

I definitely agree with you. I really wish KSP would allow long-term, progressive science like with what NASA does. Send a probe to a distant planet, have it orbit, and then collect science. It takes a while to get a clear picture of what the probe's instruments detect, and science is a process of many repetitions of the same experiment to find an answer (if one exists). It would be fun if the game would model this for the player, or at least make it a bit more fun to discover new things.

[Franklin]

Thanks plenty, those all look really neat. Yeah, the "we'll never tie science gain to time" niggle from back when Science was first introduced was a sore spot. It basically rules out scanning surfaces with satellites for trickle-in science gain and such. It should be up to the player to decide if they want to warp through it to gain it all at once to 100% scan a planet. Hopefully they revisit this down the road.

Being able to trickle-in science with ground wandering with diagnostic tools would be great, too.

[lajoswinkler]

DMagic Orbital Science is cool. I share your critique. It's more about grinding nowdays. I hope it will change.

[S1gmoid]

Actually, I started playing in Career mode, and am thinking about moving to Sandbox, as Career feels unrewarding and generally badly designed as a game. The "test this part" contracts are especially broken and thorougly un-fun. I'll give Fine Print and Orbital Science a chance though, before that.

That said, I still think that not tying Science to time is a good idea generally. But I'd prefer science resulting from making progress as a space program as opposed to clicking on everything repeatedly - I think Fine Print solves part of that.

[Hannu]

Some kind of exploration would be fun. But it demands procedurally and randomly generated targets so that they are not same in every save. And as far as I know, SQUAD have some principle against that.

[Franklin]

Not necessarily, but yeah it would require either Squad to flesh out the planets more (they're all dead and barren right now) or create randomized points of interest on said planets to explore, which I can't imagine would be too hard. I question how fun that would be after the first go around, though, unless there was actually things at these PoIs to make them interesting. Otherwise it's just an on-paper fetch quest.

[Unabled]

It seems like Fine print has about the closest thing to this with a few of its' contract additions like the rover exploration waypoints. Not a bad solution.

I agree with you on the science over time, although I personally would like to see science points done away with or at least done away with for unlocking parts.

Now that they are bringing in upgradeable buildings, maybe they could link unlocking parts to the building tiers.

I think that the scientific exploration and discovery of the planets and moons should be brought up front and center, I mean that is a part of what makes space so fascinating right? The drive to explore it!

Making the surfaces have more unique features would be a good step in the right direction, but there would still need to be a bit more.

Personally, I think the scientists on Kerbin should be driving your landing spots/goals a bit more. You could still pick the ones you want to take up, but the scientists have their own interests they would like you to fulfill.