Worst engine in KSP

[juanml82]

3 minutes ago, Brownhair2 said:

Except puffs are physics-less, so they have no mass

Haven't physic-less parts been adding their weight to their parent part for the last few updates now? In any case, they are so light that they should only make a difference in miniature satellites.

 

The other use they have is to power simple "adapter" probes: suppose you're managing a fleet and for whatever reasons, you aren't standardizing all your fleet to use the same docking ports. While a tanker or space station might be filled with different sized docking ports, you can also throw in a probe with a 2.5m port in one end and a 1.25m one on the other end (or 1.25 and 0.625m). That probe will need monoprop to dock (and it will turn faster than bigger ships) as well as control and electric power. You can throw in a pair of puffs as engines for that thing.

 

I haven't been playing with the new feature of using RCS blocks as engines, but the puffs have better thrust. It's just that, if a ship has monoprop and isn't big, throwing in the puffs adds some flexibility at a negible cost in dV and funds

[Xyphos]

Puff engines are OMS engines - Orbital Maneuver System
They're not ment to propel a vessel to Eloo, They're primarly for de-orbiting or altering your AP/PE as needed.
Their ISP could use some tweaking, but they're good for what they're ment for.

[Red Iron Crown]

1 hour ago, Brownhair2 said:

Puffs are physics-less, so they have no mass

Hasn't been true for a few versions now, physicsless parts add their mass to the first physicsful parent part.

Edit: Ninja'd, that'll teach me to look at the last page before posting.

Edited July 8, 2016 by Red Iron Crown

[Corona688]

On 7/6/2016 at 11:08 AM, Corona688 said:

That's pretty much what I assumed, but it has to be an absolutely massive stack for it to matter.  I haven't ever broken even trying it, it blows up in an exponential of more weight needing more fuel needing more engines needing more weight needing more fuel.  It's too heavy for not enough thrust.

I take it back.  I had to use the Thud today, because I only had the Skipper when I needed the Mainsail.

[Brownhair2]

3 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Haven't physic-less parts been adding their weight to their parent part for the last few updates now? In any case, they are so light that they should only make a difference in miniature satellites.

 

2 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Hasn't been true for a few versions now, physicsless parts add their mass to the first physicsful parent part.

They still have higher TWR and ISP than RCS thrusters

[Archgeek]

5 hours ago, Xyphos said:

Puff engines are OMS engines - Orbital Maneuver System
They're not ment to propel a vessel to Eloo, They're primarly for de-orbiting or altering your AP/PE as needed.
Their ISP could use some tweaking, but they're good for what they're ment for.

They do, however, make a nice little boost system for those situtations when the body you're oribiting has curvature unfavourable to your ship's  TWR and you find yourself burning mono for just that little more oomph.  Why hold 'H' for the task when you could hit an action group to enable a few Puffs at 20kn a piece?

[KerikBalm]

I use puffs for adaptor probes as mentioned, and also for little "tugs" that just dock/claw modules and reposition them on a station/load something to/from a mk3 bay in orbit.

[Blaarkies]

 

17 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Absolutely. But if your lander carries monoprop anyway (for docking/to help straighten it up if it tumbles during landing), you're just adding the weight of a decoupler and the puffs.

 

On 7/8/2016 at 6:30 AM, juanml82 said:

The Puff is useful to snatch extra dV from a maned lander: you build your thing with a monoprop tank, the lander can and all the electric/control/science stuff on top. Between that and the Liquid fuel tanks, you put a decoupler. And then you place a pair of Puffs at the sides of the pod.

I agree with the top statement, Puffs beat RCS ports with thrust by miles and the Puff's weight is almost negligible. But the added MonoProp tank between the LFO tank and Lander can...that mono tank is bad weight. Adding the same mass of LFO tank+engine will probably yield more dv. But some players use a lot of Monoprop to dock, that is where this extra tank will shine(as long as they didnt use it)

Edited July 9, 2016 by Blaarkies

[GoSlash27]

On 7/7/2016 at 10:24 AM, sdrevik said:

Pretty much all the SRBs, once you progress and have larger rockets.  Adding them adds so little dV compared to a liquid booster.

sdrevik,

 As pointed out earlier, SRBs aren't intended to add DV. They add buckets of thrust and do so very cheaply. If you want to sling payloads into orbit for cheap, your first stage will need to utilize SRBs, at least in part.

Best,

-Slashy

[FyunchClick]

@GoSlash27 sorry for the off-topic but I've been looking at your avatar for over a year now and only just realized it's Lister from Red Dwarf. I feel so stupid as I absolutely loved that show.

[juanml82]

9 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

 

 

I agree with the top statement, Puffs beat RCS ports with thrust by miles and the Puff's weight is almost negligible. But the added MonoProp tank between the LFO tank and Lander can...that mono tank is bad weight. Adding the same mass of LFO tank+engine will probably yield more dv.

Yes, but not that much. I put together an MK1 Landing can with two 1x6 solar panels, a 1.25 inline battery, the 1.25 to 0.625 adapter and one MK16 parachute.

With a 1.25m monoprop tank and two puffs, it has 1,571 dV and a (kerbin) TWR of 1.82

The fuel tank with the closest wet dry to the monoprop tank is the FT-200 (1.15 vs 1.25 tons, the monoprop is the slightly lighter)

With the ant engine, it has 2,060 dV and a TWR of 0.1 (that's 1.98 at Minmus, so it's viable there. But, for that thrust, you may as well use ion engines and get 50% more dV while also saving 0.875 tons)

Two spiders, 1,870 dV and a twr of 0.2

One spark, 1,849 & 0.86

Two twiches, 1,708 & 1.47

One terrier, 1,697 & 2.41

So indeed, conventional engines beat the puffs in efficiency at every turn. Only the terrier has better thrust and since that one isn't as lightweight as all the others, it may (or may not) change the total dV once we take into account the lower stages.

If you don't need thrust, the ant is the best (or, lightweight as it is, we can mount four on cubic struts, that turns it into 1,972&0.38, if we can still stack this upper stage that way) by far.

However, if you need thrust, you're sacrificing some 278 m/s (in the upper stage, though) for the flexibility of having RCS control in your ship

Edited July 9, 2016 by juanml82

[Kerbinchaser]

On 7/3/2016 at 7:31 PM, Spartwo said:

The poodle, so bad I haven't given it a second chance.

Surprisingly, I use the poodle on almost every single Mün lander I have ever built. 

I also use it as an orbital maneuver engine. 

[storm_soldier2377]

1 hour ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

Surprisingly, I use the poodle on almost every single Mün lander I have ever built. 

I also use it as an orbital maneuver engine. 

The extra 5 ISP of the Poodle generally doesn't make up for it being three times heavier than the LV-909, making the latter a more useful engine. The Poodle does have some use as a lander engine where extra thrust is needed, but for orbital maneuvers the LV-909 and the LV-N are better engines.

Edited July 9, 2016 by storm_soldier2377

[wumpus]

56 minutes ago, storm_soldier2377 said:

The extra 5 ISP of the Poodle generally doesn't make up for it being three times heavier than the LV-909, making the latter a more useful engine. The Poodle does have some use as a lander engine where extra thrust is needed, but for orbital maneuvers the LV-909 and the LV-N are better engines.

Sounds like you haven't had the fun of an LV-N coming back down for a second pass (and hitting PE well below 70km).  If circularization is considered an "orbital maneuver", there are plenty of times I'll take the poodle.  Sometimes even to cut down on the burn time, but less often.

[Norcalplanner]

Poodle works great as an orbital insertion / transfer engine.  But it is definitely overkill for most standard size landers, where the Terrier is more appropriate.

[Kerbinchaser]

19 minutes ago, Norcalplanner said:

Poodle works great as an orbital insertion / transfer engine.  But it is definitely overkill for most standard size landers, where the Terrier is more appropriate.

yeah. I'm starting to use the terrier more now. 

[Artheus]

On 4.7.2016 at 3:31 PM, cantab said:

Least useful, Flea. Apart from the first launch in a career, what are you going to do with it? It's too short and fat to look right as a booster on 1.25m rockets and doesn't perform well in that role either. It lacks the specific impulse to be an upper stage. I suppose it has a limited niche as a giant sepratron on huge boosters, or as a RATO engine as shown above. I'd like to see it rebalanced to be oriented as an upper stage SRB, with lower thrust and good vacuum efficiency, similar to the STAR motors in real life. Something that's a cheap way to push to orbit when you aren't picky about the exact apo and peri, or to kick-start an ejection burn on a probe. But still capable of useful thrust on the ground too.

Biggest letdown, Kickback. Considering it's supposed to be based on the most powerful rocket engine ever, period, the Kickback is pathetically small and wimpy. I guess it's stuck as it is, but I think the game should add a 2.5m SRB.

Ven's has a 2.5m srb and its not really useful in most cases. Almost only Ares-1 style boosters can use it, as it is just too long for most rockets to look good/be efficient when attached radial.

[Norcalplanner]

1 hour ago, Artheus said:

Ven's has a 2.5m srb and its not really useful in most cases. Almost only Ares-1 style boosters can use it, as it is just too long for most rockets to look good/be efficient when attached radial.

SpaceY has SRBs in 1.875m, 2.5m, and 3.75m diameters, in a variety of lengths.  When the center stack is 5m or 7.5m, then 2.5m SRBs look great.

[Kerbinchaser]

9 hours ago, Norcalplanner said:

SpaceY has SRBs in 1.875m, 2.5m, and 3.75m diameters, in a variety of lengths.  When the center stack is 5m or 7.5m, then 2.5m SRBs look great.

I love SpaceY's SRB's. I use the heavy lift ones all the time. 2 can carry you into LKO. 

[Artheus]

13 hours ago, Norcalplanner said:

SpaceY has SRBs in 1.875m, 2.5m, and 3.75m diameters, in a variety of lengths.  When the center stack is 5m or 7.5m, then 2.5m SRBs look great.

My lift needs are not so big, most of my rockets are 2.5m. Heaviest launcher is made for 60t to lko.

[jedensuscg]

I use the thud more than I should out of laziness. Usually after building a rocket and finding one of my intermediate launch stages is under powered I slap a few around the outside if I have the delta v to spare because I am too lazy to rebuild my launch vehicle. Works wonders for those short bursts where you need just a little more twr during launch. 

[KerikBalm]

in the past, I used thuds to augment the thrust of a skipper based rocket, before I unlocked the mainsail... but that was back in 0.24. My first use of them post 1.0 career mode has been as VTOL engines on a Mun/Duna dropship... but even then, their TWR isn't so good

[Corona688]

Yeah.  The Thud would be a lot more useful if it was a little stronger -- for thrust augmentation -- or a lot weaker/lighter, for landers.  There's a big engine gap between the spark and the big boys which the spark used to fill until they nerfed it.

I wish they'd just made it heavier, instead of cutting its thrust in half

[NSEP]

The ION engine. It does give me 10 kilometers of Delta-V. But to get to the Mun, i need to do a 20 minute burn, wich makes it feel a little useless.

[GoSlash27]

In defense of the LV-T30:

 It's an engine that's so underrated, I consider it to be a secret weapon, especially in career mode. There are very few LFO engines that can beat it in terms of cost/ tonne to transstage burn, and those engines are way too big for early "caveman" style missions, where mass on the pad, part count, and price tag matter.

 I probably use the LV-T30 more than any other engine in the game in career mode.

Best,
-Slashy