Best Antenna

[Rematog]

For the three antenna in stock (Comm 16, Comm DTS and Comm 88) other than cost/weight, what are the advantages of the three. From the Parts Wiki, The smallest uses the least power, but goes slower, the more expensive (and heavier) ones go faster and use more power/unit of data.

The math on the Comm 16 doesn't add up? For the other two, the posted Electricity/sec and Mit/sec numbers compute to the Electricy/Mit. but for the Comm 16, I get 31.25 Electricity/Mit with a speed of 0.8 Mit/sec and 25 Electricity/sec? Is the transmission speed supposed to be 5 Mit/Sec for the Comm 16 (with a power use of 6.25 Electricity/Sec and speed of 0.8), or Net transmision speed supposed to be 5 Mit/Sec with useage of 25 Electricity/sec, so 5 Electricity/Mit?

Is there some kind of range factor? I've used the Comm 16 from Ike and it worked.

Why would I use the Comm DTS or Comm 88 rather than the cheaper Comm 16, aside from Looks. Even if the correct power useage for the Comm 16 is 31.25 Electricity/Mit, this shouldn't be an issue unless you have no power source except batteries (forgot your solar cells). I've always needed power for SAS anyway, so....always had a few solar cells to charge the batteries.

Edited March 24, 2015 by Rematog

[Bacterius]

As I recall there were a few forum posts on older versions of the game (when the antennas were introduced) stating that the starting antenna is actually optimal and that the later ones should be used only for looks, which was, yeah, kinda dumb in my opinion. But they may have rebalanced them in recent versions?

[cantab]

The numbers shown are known to be screwy. In practice the big dish transmits faster but uses more energy than the square dish, which transmits faster but uses more energy than the whip.

For small spacecraft the worst is the square dish. Both the whip and the big dish are physicsless, meaning their nominal mass and drag are disregarded, but the square dish is not and so will reduce your delta-V and may imbalance a probe.

Faster transmission is rarely useful. Since you can spam experiments and let the transmissions queue up, even in a flyby or a descent to safe landing the whip will be fine, so it's only impactors that actually benefit from having the big dish.

[Rematog]

Thanks Cantab, rep-added both you and Bacterius for it.