The Cheap and Cheerful Rocket Payload Challenge 1.0.5

[Nefrums]

I doubled everything on my rocket, and got rid of the last inline decoupler.  That got the cost down to  595,47 funds/t

 

 

craft file

[Nich]

So has @Nefrums pretty much proven that nose cones and decouplers should be kept to a minimum? I have not been able to get his rockets to orbit so I can't really tweak it to try to improve

[Nefrums]

 

17 minutes ago, Nich said:

So has @Nefrums pretty much proven that nose cones and decouplers should be kept to a minimum? I have not been able to get his rockets to orbit so I can't really tweak it to try to improve

They do not need to get to proper orbit in this challenge only 80-0 

craft file is in the first post.   Fight profile is simple.   turn a few degrees right of the pad, then follow point prograde.  If AP is about 30 km at the end of the first stage the initial turn was about right.    Fire up the poddes at 4-5 km.

   

Edited April 18, 2016 by Nefrums

[numerobis]

@Nefrums: oh good, you have a working craft file for that!

One note: you can attach poodles to cube struts radially; that lets you combine two columns of poodles, which saves you a fuel line, and lets you use a larger (cheaper) tank. You lose a bit of drag that way, but it's a lot of money savings (and a bit of mass).

@Nich: Tack on a radial kOS and you should get to orbit using the most recent script I loaded.

I was on a long flight with no internet yesterday, so I improved my math, and tonight I squeezed another 1.5 m/s out. I'm debugging what should be a slightly larger improvement now, overall I expect another 5 m/s or so (but that math is a bit more complicated). There's another 2-3 tricks left in my bag. And I find implementing them more fun than trying to place struts just so

[numerobis]

I'm up to 58 m/s leftover, from "a bit over 32 m/s" -- this amounts to 2.25t of extra fuel on the top stage. In other words, I could save 362 funds in fuel (about 0.3%) and gain 2.25t in payload (about 2%), which would get me below 590. Might need to build that just to prove it!

The main new idea: calculate at what pitch you should thrust so that upon reaching orbital velocity, you'll reach 42km altitude. Code will be forthcoming; the math is fun.

[linuxgurugamer]

Has anyone thought to do a similar challenge, only for 1.1.3?  If not, I have some ideas for that

[Norcalplanner]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Has anyone thought to do a similar challenge, only for 1.1.3?  If not, I have some ideas for that

We could certainly crank it up again for 1.1.3, but I don't think there have been any significant changes in part costs or capabilities which would lead to significantly different results. The only things that might be interesting (to me at least) would be to establish payload weight classes and/or create a modded division. My free time for KSP is more uneven these days, so I don't feel I can give such a challenge the attention it deserves. If you or someone else who's participated in the 1.0.5 challenge wants to resurrect it for 1.1.3, be my guest. I would only ask that the name be kept similar and that the OP contain a link to this thread.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Norcalplanner
Stupid auto-correct

[linuxgurugamer]

1 hour ago, Norcalplanner said:

We could certainly crank it up again for 1.1.3, but I don't think there have been any significant changes in part costs or capabilities which would lead to significantly different results. The only things that might be interesting (to me at least) would be to establish payload weight classes and/or create a modded division. My free time for KSP is more uneven these days, so I don't feel I can give such a challenge the attention it deserves. If you or someone else who's participated in the 1.0.5 challenge wants to resurrect it for 1.1.3, be my guest. I would only ask that the name be kept similar and that the OP contain a link to this thread.

I'm thinking of opening it up to parts mods, (only a single parts mod per entry), with Leaderboards for each parts mod (ie:  KWRocketry, SpaceY, etc).  As you said, it hasn't changed that much  in capabilities, but the game itself has changed a bit, and this would also highlight some parts mods.  I would also allow mechjeb (not counted as a parts mod), and SmartParts

[Norcalplanner]

52 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

I'm thinking of opening it up to parts mods, (only a single parts mod per entry), with Leaderboards for each parts mod (ie:  KWRocketry, SpaceY, etc).  As you said, it hasn't changed that much  in capabilities, but the game itself has changed a bit, and this would also highlight some parts mods.  I would also allow mechjeb (not counted as a parts mod), and SmartParts

Sounds reasonable, although you may still want to give some thought to payload weight classes.  The way the physics and part pricing interacted with the scoring system tended to skew the results in favor of larger payloads, which began to have limited applicability to typical game play.  Of course, opening it up to parts mods may end up making things more attractive for smaller payloads again, particularly with larger SRBs in some parts packs.

One thing I would definitely do - prohibit Real Scale Boosters.  The costs aren't well balanced, and the weights and thrusts are based on RL examples, and therefore blow stock (and other mods) out of the water. Unless you want to do a Real Scale Boosters leaderboard, which would be interesting, but far removed from anything else.

[linuxgurugamer]

21 minutes ago, Norcalplanner said:

Sounds reasonable, although you may still want to give some thought to payload weight classes.  The way the physics and part pricing interacted with the scoring system tended to skew the results in favor of larger payloads, which began to have limited applicability to typical game play.  Of course, opening it up to parts mods may end up making things more attractive for smaller payloads again, particularly with larger SRBs in some parts packs.

One thing I would definitely do - prohibit Real Scale Boosters.  The costs aren't well balanced, and the weights and thrusts are based on RL examples, and therefore blow stock (and other mods) out of the water. Unless you want to do a Real Scale Boosters leaderboard, which would be interesting, but far removed from anything else.

Each parts mod will have it's own leaderboard, so that anyone who wants to do Real Scale Boosters can do it against anyone else using the same mod.  I am not going to mix mods together.

After some thought, i think I will allow a single parts mod which adds rockets, tanks, boosters, etc.  But will allow others which don't add rocket parts.  This will allow cameras, science instruments, SmartParts, etc to be used.

[Norcalplanner]

Sounds fun.  Let me know when it's up and running and I'll make an entry. 

[linuxgurugamer]

16 hours ago, Norcalplanner said:

We could certainly crank it up again for 1.1.3, but I don't think there have been any significant changes in part costs or capabilities which would lead to significantly different results. The only things that might be interesting (to me at least) would be to establish payload weight classes and/or create a modded division. My free time for KSP is more uneven these days, so I don't feel I can give such a challenge the attention it deserves. If you or someone else who's participated in the 1.0.5 challenge wants to resurrect it for 1.1.3, be my guest. I would only ask that the name be kept similar and that the OP contain a link to this thread.

Here you go: