Jump to content

Add Better Xenon thrusters


Recommended Posts

Add moar (tiny) boosters

 

The catch is that there isn't a 1.25 to 4x0.625 multiadapter. You can either use cubic strusses to mount them radially or you'll need mods/tweakscale/a MM patch that creates multiadapters for all sizes

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Xenon/Ion Thrusters are from concept Really Trust weak engines. They are never would be planned for "big" things.

You can get them to produce more trust, scatter them and reduce the payload but you loose mostly of theyr strength, the giant chunck of DeltaV.

By the Way Nertea has thrusters where you can get more Thrust for more energy and at ISP cost.

Funny Kabooms 

Urses

Edited by Urses
Mobile autokorrekt...argglll
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, DarknessHasLost said:

i understand that, but they litterally could just double the part size and Triple the Energy consumption

And that's easy to do in the CFG file, its been a while but im sure someone will pick me up if wrong, lets say ten fold weight and consumption of resources and only a 7 and a half increase in power
Find the file in GameData\Squad\Parts\Engine\ionEngine
And change the following lines

mass = 0.25
minThrust = 0
maxThrust = 2

        atmosphereCurve
        {
            key = 0 4200
            key = 1 100
            key = 1.2 0.001
        }


mass = 2.5
minThrust = 0
maxThrust = 15

        atmosphereCurve
        {
            key = 0 3150
            key = 1 75
            key = 1.2 0.001   ((not sure this can go lower but try 0.00075))
        }
 

If you saw my earlier post, ISP amounts dont need to be changed as much.. dur :P fuel flow is determined by thrust and ISP, up the thrust and it will suck proportionally more fuel. 

 

 

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:Changing_Part_Configuration_Files

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Or maybe just use TweakScale:

As to OP's suggestion of doing this in stock, I'm no expert, but hard experience in the game taught me the corollary of the real-life statement above:  If you're trying to do things with massive amounts of ion power, you're not using ion engines "correctly".  There are other, better alternatives.  (Though they may require unlocking other areas of the tech tree in career mode).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I suppose the question is would it be used.

Let's take an example. A ten ton payload with 6500 m/s. The kind of thing you might use for a Moho mission. Well for 0.33 TWR, currently the ions are the lowest mass, but you need about *seventy* of them. That's somewhere a larger more powerful ion engine, but still with the same TWR by itself, would become an advantage.

On the other hand lots of people will complain about even a 0.33 TWR. Bump it up to 0.5 and the Nerv is the better choice anyway. And them some people would complain about 0.5 too and go with a multistaged chemical design.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I personally see no reason not to add bigger ones in 1.25m and possibly larger sizes, not to mention bigger solar arrays to power them. Right now solar-electric propulsion is only a viable option for very small spacecraft, unless your computer can handle the massive part counts that come with clustering zillions of Dawns and Gigantors to power them. (The same argument goes for adding larger nukes and jets as well.) They don't have to be any better performance, they should just be bigger so I don't need quite so many of them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"The 3.75m parts in the game are pretty small, you'd think that someone could've/would've/should've figured this out. I do understand that real 3.75m parts are still pretty 3.75m small and are supposed to be, i just want one with the size of the death star."

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Blaarkies said:

"The 3.75m parts in the game are pretty small, you'd think that someone could've/would've/should've figured this out. I do understand that real 3.75m parts are still pretty 3.75m small and are supposed to be, i just want one with the size of the death star."

All I want from the stock game is big enough parts to use the big parts we already have without stupid part counts. While a case could be made for stock 5m parts, I think anything beyond that can remain mod territory. I'd much rather see complete 2.5m and 0.625m part lineups (comparable to the current set of 1.25m parts) than new 5m+ parts.

Although parts the size of the Death Star do sound cool.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Hotaru said:

All I want from the stock game is big enough parts to use the big parts we already have without stupid part counts. While a case could be made for stock 5m parts, I think anything beyond that can remain mod territory. I'd much rather see complete 2.5m and 0.625m part lineups (comparable to the current set of 1.25m parts) than new 5m+ parts.

Although parts the size of the Death Star do sound cool.

Lags the hell out of your game when the part count excedes 250, otherwise I'd be able to do it easy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again a Ion is invented for a small craft, not a tug! If you will go for big use NERV or chemikal if you will have a probe under 1metrikton there is the Field for the Ion as intended.

That explains why ion's prerequisites are "Miniaturisaton" and "Eleltriks" not "Big Roketry" maybe? (And yes i know they are much higher tier, but i hope you see the idea).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Urses said:

Again a Ion is invented for a small craft, not a tug! If you will go for big use NERV or chemikal if you will have a probe under 1metrikton there is the Field for the Ion as intended.

That explains why ion's prerequisites are "Miniaturisaton" and "Eleltriks" not "Big Roketry" maybe? (And yes i know they are much higher tier, but i hope you see the idea).

That's not really true! This particular ion drive is made for small craft.

The ion drive itself scales nicely, it just isn't meant for quick dV changes. It is, due to its low TWR, meant for constant thrust scenarios. No reason to keep them small at all. It is actually handled as a possible drive for manned long range missions.

You are right, though: It is not very suitable for a tug :)

Edited by dr.phees
Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, dr.phees said:

The ion drive itself scales nicely, it just isn't meant for quick dV changes. It is, due to its low TWR, meant for constant thrust scenarios. No reason to keep them small at all. It is actually handled as a possible drive for manned long range missions.

You are right, though: It is not very suitable for a tug :)

You are right too:wink:

You can use them for big things. But the mere(?) Complaint here is more make them bigger for go faster, like i understand here. And problem in stock for it, you need 200 parts and much more only for Engines, Solars, thruts, construction elements. And at this point you have a craft where you need a burntime around 40+min to see some really change in your speed. And there you get the problem with the tanks....they are biiig but don't hold really much fuel Inside.

And i think it is like a small wink. One Tank One Engine some elektriks probe and sience and you have a great probe with halfway good acceleration and lots of DeltaV. 

Or you Tape 200 Engines to a asteroidlike Monstrum and compline "Why this Engine is not big enough"

No offense, but this is the way how i see it. And the gas tanks ARE on the back yard, they are bad but this is the way they are. One you can live with... more... maybe i have a better choice:wink:

Funny Kabooms 

Urses

E: maybe i have better stated:

The ingame Ion is invented...

Edited by Urses
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In real life, the Ion engine is used for adjusting the orbit of a satellite or for getting a probe to the farther away planets in our solar system. Ion engines are not meant to boost interplanetary ships. They are meant for really small probes. However the KSP community has found more interesting and fun ways to use them. And it turns out their only downside is their low thrust and high EC consumption. Also Xenon gas is very light. Too make an ion engine count, you need a very light spacecraft, otherwise, that high ISP won't matter anymore.

The Ion engine is balanced and quite realistic. I think maybe they should add more xenon tanks. There isn't enough variety right now. So I disagree with this post.

Fire

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Firemetal said:

Ion engines are not meant to boost interplanetary ships. They are meant for really small probes.

So far that's all they've been used for (although I wouldn't exactly call Dawn "really small;" it's twice the mass of a Voyager probe), but there's no technical reason I'm aware of why solar electric or nuclear electric propulsion couldn't scale up to power a manned mission.

Of course KSP ion engines have much higher thrust than real ones (and I believe much lower Isp as well), and until we have a good intuitive interface for planning continuous-thrust trajectories (which would be extremely cool, by the way), I think we can expect them to stay that way. Other than the odd side effect that light ion landers are a possibility I don't see a problem with it as a concession to keeping the game playable.

PS. Unless you meant the KSP ions are only meant for small probes, in which case I agree, which is why I think we could do with bigger ones that are meant for larger spacecraft.

Edited by Hotaru
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Firemetal said:

The Ion engine is balanced and quite realistic. I think maybe they should add more xenon tanks. There isn't enough variety right now. So I disagree with this post.

Actually, no. They're not realistic at all. They produce something like 20,000 times as much thrust as they should in KSP. They're ridiculously overpowered-it's just that most people don't have the patience to use them to their full potential.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, IncongruousGoat said:

Actually, no. They're not realistic at all. They produce something like 20,000 times as much thrust as they should in KSP. They're ridiculously overpowered-it's just that most people don't have the patience to use them to their full potential.

Oh... Well... That is even more reason not to buff their thrust.

Fire

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Hotaru said:

much higher thrust than real ones (and I believe much lower Isp as well)

Just looked it up and it turns out this isn't actually true; the KSP engine actually has quite a bit better Isp (4200s vs 3100s)  than the engine on the real-life Dawn spacecraft (and of course orders of magnitude more thrust). So yeah, fair to call it OP.

I still want bigger ones.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ion engines are a bit of a gimmick in ksp unlike real life they have enough thrust to land you on the mun because ksp can't handle the long/slow burn style of flying adding more/bigger ones will just make this more apparent.

If you want to buff them the best thing to do is reduce the xenon tanks dry mass ratio and adjust some of the part and resource prices (it's arbitrary and not balanced making almost any other way to fly more affordable)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...