Standardized lifters

[Adelaar]

I also use standardized lifters, which helps me shave off costs because I can track down the cheapest designs. I am also an incredible nerd and always keep an overview with me which displays my current set of lifting bodies, so that I can choose the most (cost-)effective lifter for a specific payload... This also means that I have a wide arrangement of sub-assemblies at my disposal. It shaves off a whole lot of time, and gives me something to do when my aircraft are flying somewhere on auto-pilot: working in photoshop.

 

All bathe in my nerdyness!!!

[TrooperCooper]

 

Nerdyness? Standardized lifters? Oh yes, I do that, too. Here is the most up to date overview from my current RO/RSS/RP-0 career.

 

I love building lifters. And that is not a reason against subassemblies but for it. At least for me. Fiddeling and tweaking them... upgrading and replacing with the newest technology is a key element of my playstyle.

 

Edited May 23, 2016 by TrooperCooper

[KerikBalm]

On 5/6/2016 at 4:12 PM, Red Iron Crown said:

1. Used to, don't really anymore.

2. It made things simpler not having to test the lifter every time. But I like making rockets, so I stopped.

3. It economizes player time.

Points 2 and 3... except I use them maybe half the time... and for point two, I also like making spaceplanes, and spaceplanes require more tweaking.

I use rockets when I don't want to wait so long to get to orbit... which is... maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of the time.

Of that... about half the time I do a custom rocket.

Sometimes, the payload just won't really go with any standard lifter... ya know?

I just can't resist SSTOs... payload fraction in KSP is too high..

 

 

[Bigbootie]

I usually overbuild a lifter that is capable of carrying an enormous transfer stage and payload and then fly it for everything until I get bored with it. 

I do this because I don't usually want to spend time docking things together or refueling so it lets me put everything up at once even if I have a few different phases for a mission. 

Stupidly overpowered lifters with tons of struts and parts. Yay! At times, I've ended up flying my "standard lifters" almost all the way to my target planets before dumping them and leaving my transfer stage in orbit nearly full.

 

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

I have a standard design for up to 25 tons to LKO. After that, anything goes.

[RocketSquid]

I use standard lifters very rarely, I use formulaic lifters all the time. What's the difference? A standard lifter is the same every time. A formulaic lifter is like that, except you don't have an actual blueprint for it and are instead working off of what you remember from building the last one. I find it much more useful. For example, I might find that with the new payload the rocket has just a smidgen too little dV to make orbit. No problem! "Hmm, I seem to remember this design having another fuel tank. Add one right beneath that fairing." And later when the kerbal government asks why the lifter was a few thousand funds over budget, I just say "I don't know, I built the same lifter as I always do". This is why every lifter I build that isn't the first of its kind (designated by number of stacks and number of engines) has "modified" in the name.

[herbal space program]

When I was playing career, I most certainly kept using the same booster stacks again and again for missions that were in similar ranges of tonnage and dV from LKO. It was already enough of a grind without having to assemble essentially the same rocket over and over. Since then, it's been a mixed bag. Sometimes it seems like it's less work to just slap something together for the job than it is to go find something in all my save files and sometimes it doesn't.

[OhioBob]

I use to use standardized boosters, but I've gone away from that.  Now I usually custom build for each payload.  However, I use a standardized design method.  This means I can build them quickly and they all end up performing similarly.

 

Edited May 25, 2016 by OhioBob

[nosirrbro]

Especially with my recent save in 64K I like having standardized lifters and then modular standardized mid stages, you can make them very reliable and it cuts back on the time it takes to build, which is often a rather limited resource.

I also strive for realism so that's an added bonus

[nosirrbro]

22 hours ago, TrooperCooper said:

 

Nerdyness? Standardized lifters? Oh yes, I do that, too. Here is the most up to date overview from my current RO/RSS/RP-0 career.

 

I love building lifters. And that is not a reason against subassemblies but for it. At least for me. Fiddeling and tweaking them... upgrading and replacing with the newest technology is a key element of my playstyle.

 

May I ask you how it is that you were able to get all these to scale? Did you just adjust their sizes individually or do you have some method using KVV to do that?

[TrooperCooper]

4 minutes ago, nosirrbro said:

May I ask you how it is that you were able to get all these to scale? Did you just adjust their sizes individually or do you have some method using KVV to do that?

 

KVV scales them with its screenshots. You just have to resize accordignly.

 

[Andem]

15 minutes ago, TrooperCooper said:

 

KVV scales them with its screenshots. You just have to resize accordignly.

 

Huh? How? I don't understand, Do you mean that the image size is scaled appropriately? If so, that's awesome!

[TrooperCooper]

5 minutes ago, Andem said:

Huh? How? I don't understand, Do you mean that the image size is scaled appropriately? If so, that's awesome!

Sorry, my poor english...

You have to resize them manually. I use an excel sheet for that. Just pull the data out of the engineer window in the VAB. Your largest vessel gives you the pixels per meter, depending on how large you want it to appear. Then you resize the other units you want to compare based on their height. Just multiply that with the "pixels per meter" from your biggest unit.

 

[dlrk]

I use 2-3 standardized lifters, but tweak them depending on the mission. Sometimes use a slightly longer or shorter tank, that sort of think

[RocketBlam]

I customize for every mission. building the lifter is half the fun.

Besides, whenever I try to use standardized lifters, they're just not quite a fit for what I want to lift.

Edited May 25, 2016 by RocketBlam

[magnemoe]

Think standardized rockets was more useful back before 0.9 then you had to use asparagus and lots of struts.
Currently I just look at the payload weight and then put an fairing on it and then an lifter below to get an reasonable design, 
Add some SRB if TWR is to low. 

I use standardized rockets for stuff like rescuing kerbals and recovering modules. but here the upper stage is the real challenge. 

now for planes standard models make a lot of sense. as they are harder to build   

[Malich]

I have a few standardised lifters set up for larger payloads, usually over 100 tons stepping up in payloads of 25 tons with a goal of hitting a 100x100 orbit and I'll pick the closest ones to whatever I want to loft.

What I am getting into currently is standardised, modular, interplanetary craft. A series of modular driver, command and payload units that can be used to shift stuff to my fledgling colonies. I have drive units in 1.25, 2.5 and 3.75m scales each with nuclear drives, reactors for power and docking ports on the front designed to mate with similarly scaled command modules to act as crew transports. The bonus to this is I can stick a cargo pod between the drive and the CM with a few hundred tons of whatever I need with the additional fuel to maintain the DV of the drive unit.

Currently I have a standardized 3.75m station which I am planning to use as the basis for most of my 2nd generation colonies which I just fly to location, detach the Drive and CM pods which re-connect to fly off home, leaving me with a perfectly positioned, fully working colony station.

Standardisation it THE way to go!