Kerbals in Spaaaaace!

[Jimorian]

What I really need is a list of science I haven't done yet. I assume there will be a list on the wiki relatively soon that shows all of them, but it'd be nice to have an in-game checklist to help keep track.

It's probably not too much of an issue in this version, since there appears to be a surplus of ways to get more than enough science to unlock all the things. Scott Manley reported that some people have uncovered the entire tree within 4 flights, and he thought he had figured out a way to do it in 3.

But definitely a nice way for new players to build up a working knowledge of all the parts and what they can do, while experienced players can zip through this challenge fairly quickly and essentially end up back in sandbox mode in no time. Some of the let's players working this mode will probably have to throttle back their efficiency to get enough episodes to show, heheh.

I bet when they start adding in budgets, crew training, mission goals, etc., this will start to be challenging enough where picking just the right ways to get your science will add a nice bit of tension to each flight.

[AgentPaper]

It's probably not too much of an issue in this version, since there appears to be a surplus of ways to get more than enough science to unlock all the things. Scott Manley reported that some people have uncovered the entire tree within 4 flights, and he thought he had figured out a way to do it in 3.

This has definitely not been my experience. After 5 flights, I've managed to unlock about the same number of techs, and am now out of ideas on what to do. I may just not be inventive enough to figure out all the things I can currently do, but 3-4 flights seems insane for how much research you need. Mind linking to a guide for that?

[Jimorian]

I haven't been able to find a Reddit thread about it, but the sub-Reddit is getting huge amounts of new threads right now, so it's probably buried. But as one example of ways to "spam" science I saw in a video:

Spoiler

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You can do an EVA over each Kerbin biome while in orbit, and each one gives a unique report with its own science points.

I'm guessing the "final" flight is a huge rocket with tons of goo pods that just does a series of planetary fly-bys around the solar system before coming back to Kerbin for recovery.

But in general, it appears that it pays to think of every possible different condition you can perform an experiment in. In just a sub-orbital flight, you'd have 1) on the pad 2) under acceleration 3) high atmosphere 4) in space 5) re-entry heat 6) floating under parachute(?) 7) landed.

[factotum]

This has definitely not been my experience. After 5 flights, I've managed to unlock about the same number of techs, and am now out of ideas on what to do.

Have you actually been getting crew reports, soil samples, and so on? I did three flights before I even realised any of that was a *thing*, so the only science I got on my first missions was from recovering the capsule! Next objective is to put a Goo into orbit and see how much science that gets me, then I'll probably attempt a Munshot. You can apparently also get science by, for instance, gathering soil samples from different places on Kerbin, so I'll probably make my Goo mission a polar orbit and see if I can get some samples from the poles on the way down...

[EDIT] OK, I did those (the Munshot was only planned as a flyby, but when I'd made my trans-Munar injection burn I realised I wouldn't have enough fuel to land anyway!). I got 119 science from the Mun one--two EVA reports, two Goo reports, a crew report from when I was at Munar periapsis, and 12 just for doing the flyby. I had 5 things researched before, should be 7 after this!

[Hawriel]

Version .22 is out as of yesterday, or the day before.

The first version of career mode is in the game. It has a rudimentary tech tree and more science equipment. Antennas have a function.

In order to unlock new parts you must spend science. You earn science points by making science by using the experiments and observing them at different stages of flight. You can also recover space craft for science.

[factotum]

Er, yes, we've been discussing it for the past page or so?

[Jimorian]

Scott Manley tries to max out science as quickly as possible.

Mission 1: 372 Science
Mission 2: 6000+ Science

He had 8 top tier techs still unlocked after spending the science.

He has enough inefficiency with mission #2 and he even cut that short a bit because he was tired that he feels it's possible to unlock everything after just 2 missions.

[Storm Bringer]

bloody show off.....

i'm struggling to get enough science together. my medicore rocktry skills were previously propped up by the KW rocketry pack and it's excellent range of parts, which has now been taken form me.

[Jimorian]

bloody show off.....

i'm struggling to get enough science together. my medicore rocktry skills were previously propped up by the KW rocketry pack and it's excellent range of parts, which has now been taken form me.

One of the things to remember about Kerbin is that you can get unique science from each biome (shore, water, highlands, grasslands, desert, icecap, and one other I'm forgetting), plus you can do the same science a few times, though with diminishing returns.

I've also heard that the devs made it easy for parts mods to hook into the tech tree so that they can become part of the career mode, so hopefully your favorite mods get updated soon.

[nooblade]

I remember there's also a badlands biome. I think I've only encountered it from a space EVA. Haven't messed with planes yet.

I really like the science so far. It's a challenge system built into the game. Not shabby either. A masochistic part of me wants to have to pay for each little rocket part too and keep a budget somehow.

It's a little silly what little it takes to get the first upgrade. However I'd rather do a quick EVA launchpad sample for cheap science and use separators to go to Minmus (easier to land/leave than the Mun) than build a self-destructing rocket like Scott Manley did. Also you can bring some goo canisters, nifty.

[factotum]

I'm probably not going to unlock the rest of the tech tree because it just feels like a lot of grind to get to the point you could be by just playing sandbox mode. It was interesting to play around with for a while, but I really want career mode to get finished and fleshed out to re-interest me properly in the game, I think.

As for Scott Manley's second video, I just don't like the idea of sending someone on a six year and change mission in a one-person capsule! Yes, there are no food, waste or oxygen limits in the game right now, but it pricks my suspension of disbelief something fierce to do such a thing. A simple trip to Duna and back (which is, what, around 100 days if you time everything to perfection?) is stretching it, IMHO.

[Artanis]

Scott Manley tries to max out science as quickly as possible.

Mission 1: 372 Science
Mission 2: 6000+ Science

He had 8 top tier techs still unlocked after spending the science.

He has enough inefficiency with mission #2 and he even cut that short a bit because he was tired that he feels it's possible to unlock everything after just 2 missions.

Scott Manley doesn't count. He's the guy who saw the "Get to Eve and back with 10 parts" challenge and decided to do it with just five AND throw in a stop at Minmus along the way

[AgentPaper]

Was struggling to unlock the first 5-6 techs before, but now I just finished a mission to Mun and Minimus (only planned Mun, but had a lot of extra fuel so why not), and now I've suddenly got 710 Science to play around with.

I think the big thing between the people who are finding it easy and the ones who struggle to get even a bit, is a difference in expectations. When I first started doing missions, I was expecting more long, mostly passive experiments, like putting a lab into space and then staying there for a long time and slowly building up science.

However, it seems that the way the game expects you to play, is to constantly push the limits of what you can do with what you have, and keep doing new things. Once I decided to stop durdling around and just went for it, things became a lot easier, and more fun.

That said, I think it would be cool if you could get science for more stuff than just visiting new places. Those should definitely be a major focus, but I'd like it if you could build up science by doing stuff like carrying large payloads into space, setting up stations, and other long-term projects. That way, the player can decide to be crazy and daring and shoot for the mun on their second mission, or they could decide to take things slow and build up their parts and expertise before taking on more challenging stuff.

[Jimorian]

I've been looking at the unlock cost in Credits of all the individual parts on top of the Science cost, and I'm thinking that it would be pretty pointless if the way to make money matched gaining science, so there's probably a plan to reward players monetarily in a different way. That way you have to do one kind of mission to get science, and another kind to get money.

I'm also wondering if there will be a way to convert extra science into money once the tech tree has been exhausted, but with still a lot of science out there to be explored.

[AgentPaper]

Yeah, money will be interesting. I'd expect that you get Government grants that basically function like quests, ie "Get into space" or "Land on the Mun" that give you fixed amounts for specific goals. Sort of like Science, but more meant to signify big landmarks. These would also help serve as a sort of "tutorial", giving you a structured path to follow if you so wish.

The other way of money, would be to get paid by private companies to do certain things, such as putting up satellites.

Or maybe they could contract you to design rockets for them. For example, they might say, "make us a rocket that can lift X weight into Y orbit." You design a rocket as normal, and then fly it to the goal to prove that it's possible. Then, you get paid based on how cheap the rocket is.

[Gnoman]

Did this release screw with the physics? I've nearly duplicated (had to use the non-vectored engine, but that didn't seem to hurt maneuvering much) one of my most reliable old orbital launch designs, but I can't seem to get it into orbit (or very far past the atmosphere, for that matter).

Relatedly, my parachute is failing constantly. Even with just the capsule, it seems to be 50/50 if it will stay attached.

I've never had these issues before.

[AgentPaper]

Was the game accelerated when the parachute deployed? Both initially and at 500 meters? I've noticed that mine detach whenever I'm sped up, but if I slow down for those two points, it works just fine.

Also make sure you don't have any mods installed from before the patch.

Other than that, I'm not sure. Would be interesting if true.

[factotum]

Which version does your orbital rocket design date from? I have a feeling they did change the physics slightly a version or two ago--don't think they made any changes to that side of things in 0.22, though.

[Gnoman]

Hmm. I WAS using time accelleration much of the time. I'll have to try that.



I was able to achieve orbit consistently with very close to this design in the last version.

[factotum]

"Very close" does not mean "identical". I've had similar issues--tried to build something that worked in an earlier version, but swapping out the engine for a different one (due to not having the other one unlocked) and thinking it would be fine. It wasn't.

[Storm Bringer]

just made my first manned Munar fly-by, ever, and my first Munar encounter without using MechJeb (like I said, I'm a mediocre awful rocket pilot, and I preferred to use unmanned probes in sandbox, to save on killing random kerbs when I screw up).

Never planned to, just realised that my "high orbit" mission had about one and a half t-800 tanks left over after hitting a stable 75 km LKO , so I just played with the manuver planner to see if I could wing a munar pass.

and, I was able to pull off a free-return, sub-munar shot, that got with a within a thousand Km while grabbing as much data as I could (with a craft with only limited power for comms, so most had to be taken back) before shooting back down to Kerbin.

a quick burn at apoapsis took me onto a direct impact re-entry. It was a bit hairy when I realised I was hitting the 30K line at something like 3,500 M/s, but a combination of aero-breaking, three parachutes deployed early, and frantic burning of my 50Kn landing engine got me down to a nearly perfect touchdown, which happened, by chance, to be on a nice flat piece of ground.

counting info sent back, I reckon I got close to 150 science form a fairly simple mission.

I am well chuffed with myself.

[nooblade]

I tend to use F5 for quicksave and hold F9 to reload a quicksave when landings or maneuvers go badly myself. Maybe someday I'll try to play through without quickload.

Personally, I don't like landing on the Mun at all. Well, the only one I like is Minmus. When I stopped playing KSP before 0.22, it was right about when I should've tried landing a Kerbal on Duna.

Also, I just tested a neat idea I had for a quick mission for early science. If you can do interplanetary stuff, then it's easy.

Spoiler

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I left Kerbin's sphere of influence (high orbit over the sun) and reentered maybe a week later. I managed with a couple goo canisters, a materials science lab, some solar panels and antenna etc, the first LV-T30 liquid rocket, 3 x FLT-400, and some solid fuel. So maybe this could be a second mission. Stupidly I didn't bring extra batteries for it myself.

The trick is to leave Kerbin in a way that doesn't make your orbits too different. Probably there is a better way to do it but I burned to go radially in, toward the sun more or less directly. I wanted to use a gravity assist from the Mun, but worked without one.



Managed a reenter by burning radial out and a little retrograde to get back to Kerbin, as indicated by the navball. There were a few other useful tricks like dodging the Mun and doing an aero-capture (lots of velocity to kill). There's plenty of time for adjustment (radial burn so useful) after reentering Kerbin's sphere of influence and any burn I wanted to do took maybe a second.



Not bad I guess? Again, I didn't transmit more back because I forgot batteries.

[factotum]

Nice one!

I don't generally have too much of a problem landing on the Mun these days since I learned the trick of it--namely, always thrust exactly down the retrograde marker on the way down. That will naturally tend to kill your horizontal velocity, and the gravity of the body you're landing on will do the rest. It does help to have a lander that has a reasonably wide base so you're less likely to tip over if you *do* have any residual sideways velocity, though!

[nooblade]

Well, probably I should've unlocked docking ports instead of nuclear engines so I could do an Apollo-style transfer craft and lander craft. Although I would have to bring home both to get all the science. Perhaps that would help with the fuel problems I typically have.

[razark]

Although I would have to bring home both to get all the science.

If you have solar panels, you could spam transmit the science from the lander.

We really need a way to transfer science/samples from one craft to another.

[Artanis]

Nice one!

I don't generally have too much of a problem landing on the Mun these days since I learned the trick of it--namely, always thrust exactly down the retrograde marker on the way down. That will naturally tend to kill your horizontal velocity, and the gravity of the body you're landing on will do the rest. It does help to have a lander that has a reasonably wide base so you're less likely to tip over if you *do* have any residual sideways velocity, though!

I found that putting the legs on the ends of some struts that stuck out really helped in this regard. Admittedly it was in the old version when I did this, but the basic concept should still remain valid: find a way to stick the legs way the hell out to the sides

[factotum]

I prefer to use fuel tanks rather than struts--the lander I currently use has four of the smaller FLT tanks arranged in a triangle with landing legs at the "points" (at least, as pointy as anything can be that's made up of circles, but you know what I mean)--that's pretty darned stable, and it easily has enough fuel to land on the Mun and get back into orbit *twice*.

[AgentPaper]

Well, after my mission to the Mun and Minimus, I decided to get a bit more ambitious and try for an inter-planetary mission. I installed Mechjeb, mostly just so I could get accurate Delta-V statistics without needing to do a ton of math. It went smoothly at first, but unfortunately, I under-estimated the amount of delta-V I would need by a bit, and ended up on Duna without enough fuel to get home!

Fortunately, all the science I had done along the way allowed me to unlock the first Probe part, along with some other choice pieces of equipment, which I used to build an improved rescue craft to fly over, pick up poor Jeb, and fly him home. Luckily I remembered to get new surface samples and EVA reports on the way back, since the ones I took on the way in were, of course, still sitting on the original craft. I don't remember exactly how much science I managed to get, but was over a thousand.

Not to be kept down, I proceeded to plan an even more ambitious journey, this time to Jool, including an Aero-capture (unfortunately not low enough to be considered "in atmosphere" somehow), and two more landings (Pol and Bop). This one went off without a hitch, even leaving me enough fuel after the final Kerbin aero-capture to get back into a stable orbit and plan a landing at KSC, right on the track from the VAB to the launchpad, just in time to watch the sun go down.

This ended up being an extremely profitable mission, giving me a total of 9,125 science. The surface samples from Bop and Pol were worth 360 science each! I now have the entire tree unlocked. Obviously, the next step is to get some mods that add all sorts of extra stuff to unlock, and continue with the SCIENCE! I'm thinking a round trip to Eve-Gilly would be a good next step, or maybe setting up a permanent base somewhere.

[Jimorian]

I've been making a run through of the science, not doing anything spectacular, just what would probably be an average mission at that stage of development. I've also been taking notes, and so far (up to Tier 8, the top tier), it takes this many science points to unlock each Tier (counting the start as Tier 1)

Spoiler: In case anybody wants to discover this on their own

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Tier 1: 0 (0 Cumulative)
Tier 2: 5 (5 Cumulative)
Tier 3: 53 (58 Cumulative)
Tier 4: 180 (238 Cumulative)
Tier 5: 720 (958 Cumulative)
Tier 6: 1280 (2238 Cumulative)
Tier 7: 3000 (5238 Cumulative)
Tier 8: 5500 (10738 Cumulative)

One thing I'm trying to work out is how much Science is really to be discovered with a particular observation, given how the points decay after each iteration. The only ones I've figured out so far are transmitting data for the Goo pod and the Science Jr. canister.

Using a quick and dirty spreadsheet, it looks like for the Science Jr. Canister, if you start with 100 units, there are actually 140 total potential points to gather. 20 iterations at 20% transmission efficiency will get you 133 of that.

With the Goo pod, 100 units has a potential of 180. at 40% efficiency, 10 iterations will get 164 of that.

Now that I know how to work that out, I'll see if I can give solid numbers for other types of observations.

[Edit] Just worked out the thermometer. 100 units has a potential of 125, and at 60% transmission, 5 iterations will get 120 of that. This also has to be at least in "near" space above an object to work.

To give an example of how each of these pays out, being Near Ike will give a base value of 175 for the Science Canister, 70 for the Goo pod, and 56 for the thermometer.

[Edit2]I've made so many notes during my own experiments with this system that I think I'm going to make a video tutorial/guide for it. But definitely aimed at the "average" player in that it won't be about maxing out points in a single uber-mission, but a nice steady progression with basic rocket models that are easy to fly. Just as an example, with just putting a bare capsule on the launch pad for the first mission, it's possible to get 30 science points.

[Choyrt]

So, my wife and I had date night last night, and we are usually poor so we get to see maybe two movies a year in theater. We have had our eye on Gravity for some time because of the director.

Am I the only person who, while watching this amazing film, kept visualizing Kerbals in place of Clooney and Bullock?