Nebbie

Looks like I'll have to rework my stock shuttle soon. I've been planning to fly it again for a while now, but the SRBs were a big reason not to.

Quite an improvement, I must say, both in form and function (those doorwings were not great, especially when trying to get access to a probe core I'd put in one for a station for checking biomes). Pretty much just landing legs need to be redone now as far as the main exterior stuff on rockets to look right.

I really don't like preserving the curved geometry with a sharp top edge of the old one (see top row). It should be redone so that that part is flat like on the real thing.

Cool as godrays are, I have the same opinion of them here as I do when they're used in artwork: They're easily overdone and when they are, they overshadow everything else and render half the visual stuff irrelevant, if not break its realism outright. Good riddance, basically.

It looks better, but it's still really bulky and doesn't solve the problem of being terrible for fore/aft translation. A variant to remove the shroud and just have the bare thruster would be much appreciated.

Well that's...a revamp, and will make faithful shuttle replicas look a little nicer (two of these gives about the right delta V and all, albeit a tad too little thrust). I guess the theme is the small, radial engines are getting revamped? I really hope we see something more to this update in terms of revamps or features.

I actually like gray with orange stripe...but again, I think the proper thing for Squad to do is have a base texture variant and then separately switchable primary and secondary colors, so that we could just choose which colors it is outright.

It is indeed odd. I find it very strange the Poodle has no variant choices, while some engines have three, others have two, and this one just has color... That said, I really like both color variants and would love to have something less orange and obtrusive. I really want things to all have color choices in a consistent manner so we can style rockets as we choose, but it seems like Squad doesn't yet want to go that far. I sure hope part brand is completely forgotten, it was a lore flavor sort of thing that I never cared about and I hated the way it made rockets not visually look together. In fact, I still have issues because of the 3.75m tanks having no orange options, when I really like to make ascent stages orange. Overall, I can see them revisiting this slightly to maybe put a little slanted cap at the top or something, but I think it's fine as-is. I think the concerns about the asthetics are a bit out of proportion considering the old version of it, while somewhat more fitting with other parts, looked just plain bad; seems like it might be nostalgia more than objective reasoning to me. Regardless of the whys of disliking the new asthetics, I must say that stats matter more here because the current state of the engine makes it a complete dud worse than the Thud, being an engine clearly (and moreso with the revamp) designed for vacuum use, yet having stats that make it bad in atmosphere and utterly terrible in vacuum.

I wouldn't count on it with this update. So far, only thing we know about it is that it has a new Twitch... I would definitely hope for them to rebalance and retexture most of the engines as a first priority, cause the Twitch isn't the only one in need of an update. If they do add some kind of clouds, it'd make 1.7 pretty amazing, though.

I would like to note that I really like the redesign, I just hope they redo stats while they're dealing with looks, cause with the current stats, I would never even consider the Twitch, which is a shame when it looks that good.

I'd definitely like EVA packs to be an unlock, but first we would need some kind of tether feature. There's just no tethering system in KSP, which is one of the huge differences between real EVAs and KSP EVAs.

Welcome to stock's utterly pants-on-head retarded drag modeling.

The Thud isn't a jet engine, and is super draggy. It's terrible for use in VTOL jets.

I think it's still within reason to see the Spark and Twitch as related with the new models, I would just really like it if the stats reflected this, as currently the Spark absolutely crushes the Twitch. I think the Twitch should be slightly worse, but not this much worse, and I hope the devs take this opportunity of changing the Twitch to make its stats a bit closer.

Yep, compare with the Dumpling. About the same size, but the Dumpling holds about half the fuel! The dry mass is correct, however. I would really like a higher-thrust ion (maybe 1.25m diameter), and for the current one to be unlocked earlier.

Very, and it would make some sense. Yeah, I was apparently the first to notice. I didn't feel like making a big fuss speculating on new DLC anywhere and just poke the devs that they let slip a likely codename early. I was hoping they'd just announce whatever it is, but instead, they were apparently working on a new Twitch model.

Well there aren't any monsters, so...

I think everything should have a primary color/texture and secondary accent color selector, rather than these prebaked variants we have now. It's getting very awkward meshing up "orange" variants, because some stuff just is white with an orange stripe, while other stuff is outright gray. It's also really difficult to get black/white stuff looking like it belongs, because sometimes "black and white" means "white"...

The point is that the Twitch isn't properly balanced because it has extremely marginal and irrelevant upsides over the Spark and large downsides. It would be optimally-balanced with downsides approximately equal to its upsides, which would be the case if it had only a very slightly smaller vacuum Isp. Furthermore, I have made it clear that I am completely discounting the idea of not using reaction wheels, that's what I mean with "all" options on the table. However, I think even if reaction wheels were nerfed into oblivion, Sparks on cubic octagonal struts would probably still be so much better that the extra degrees of gimbaling don't make up for the disparity in Isp.

When talking game balance, I don't think it's correct to include ideas of players tossing out parts as "cheaty". The same logic would hold for the old Wolfhound at 420 Isp, and it was still corrected down to be more in line with the other engines. Balancing is about making it so that, when all options are on the table, players have interesting decisions to make, like a slightly more efficient vacuum engine, but less control, or a slightly less efficient one, but with more control. Currently, reaction wheels remove that decision, and you have to artificially avoid them to negate that. That's not good balance. Of course, maybe the devs should nerf reaction wheels. But still, I don't think radial-mounted engines need such egregious penalties for such minor benefits even if reaction wheels get toned down.

True, but it just isn't worth it with how crazy reaction wheels are and with the Spark's gimbal already being sufficient. Radial-mount is the way to go with landers in theory, but I can never justify the fuel costs from the terrible Isp of them all.

Size does matter, by quite a bit, in engine bells for vacuum. There's a reason the Falcon 9's upper stage has a huge bell compared to the 9 atmospheric engines. Also, the bells of these two engines in KSP are the same shape and only differ by size, yet the much larger one is somehow much less Isp; this is nonsensical.

I think 380 Isp is within the realm of reason, and it kind of needs something to be chosen over the Poodle; I can see a reduction to 370 or even 360 Isp as reasonable, but it doesn't solve the bigger issue that the Rhino is only worth it for thrust, but thrust isn't a huge deal in vacuum. The Rhino logically should be the highest Isp vacuum engine with its gargantuan bell.

That would make spaceplanes a lot more complicated because you couldn't share fuel between the LV-N and jet engines.

Your old craft will just have the old Twitch, that's how it always works with part revamps. This really bugs me quite a bit, it's why I never bother with the Twitch, and I hope they fix it for 1.7 now that it's looking nice and pretty. I think it should have 315 vacuum Isp, so it's only slightly worse than the Spark. Any hint of what's next for revamps? I was hoping to see Mainsail and Twin Boar get touched, although on reflection, I'd probably most watch the Twitch's stats fixed (so I can start using them for Mun/Minmus landers instead of the aggravation of Terriers potentially hitting the surface), with second place going to the Rhino not being a waste of time (it's great on TWR, but 340 Isp just doesn't cut it with the Wolfhound staring me in the face).