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Under used parts


Kerbal pancake

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Ion engines, because I don't want to wait for hours to complete my burn

Largest rover wheel, because my mining rig is always static and use landing legs instead

Nuke engines, because I'm pretty bad at managing heat (and it's heavy)

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I rarely use Nuclear Engines, i don't want to use them in stock yet but when i gain acces to them in RP-0 i will use them all day long.

I never use Ion engines in RO, but i do in stock. Ion engines in RO are extremely slow, so if you thought 3 hour burns where long, im gotta say, that 3 month burns are not better either.

I never really use the Mk2 plane parts either.

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2 hours ago, MinimalMinmus said:

I've never used the "dawn" ion thruster, and I know I'm not alone not to, because, 3 hours burns... HAHA! NO.

I recently decided to give ion engines another go....I pretty much cleaned my whole house while waiting for the burn to complete. I miss the old overpowered ion engines from Mechanical Mouse Industries! 

55px-Mk3EngineMount.png This thing, I've never used this. In fact I hadn't actually noticed it until recently when picking apart someones else's craft to see how'd they'd built it and thought hang on....is that really a stock part?

60px-Probodobodyne_HECS2.pngalso never had a use for this

28px-MK1COCKPIT.png and the MK1 cockpit, since it was changed it has gone from being a highly used cockpit to one I almost never use.

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I don't use Nukes or Ion engines, for the reasons already mentioned. When you hit the gas, a rocket should take off like, well, a rocket.

The Narrow Band Scanner cuz, where do you put the thing? And why?

I'm not sure if I'll ever use the Launch Escape System. Maybe for a challenge or a game with no reverts.

What I find strangest of all though is the Structural I-Beams. The description says they're for building huge rockets (and I've built plenty of huge rockets), but I've never found a use for them. I make-do with small and large struts, and tons of strut connectors.

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7 hours ago, MinimalMinmus said:

I've never used the "dawn" ion thruster, and I know I'm not alone not to, because, 3 hours burns... HAHA! NO.

I like the ion stuff, for small probes.  Even did a 2 hour Moho capture once on a manned craft with 4 ions.

Then again, when I play KSP, I am almost always doing something else at the same time.  So I just set up the burn, then adjust another window so I can still see KSP on the bottom for the burn time.

48 minutes ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

I don't use Nukes or Ion engines, for the reasons already mentioned. When you hit the gas, a rocket should take off like, well, a rocket.

Well, you don't launch with Nukes.  They're nice for interplanetary.  This is a quick and dirty comparison, but ~31% more dV on a craft that's ~43% heavier?  I'll take it over oompf any day!

9e1screenshot9.png319screenshot10.png

As far as what I don't use... of the stock parts, all I can really think of that I've never used is the Ant and those hardpoints.

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50 minutes ago, worir4 said:

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/The_Not-Rockomax_Micronode

 

This thing. its pretty cool if you use it for mini craft using the small diameter parts, but for anything else its too small to be any use. At least it is not as bad as when it didn't have the nodes on all sides

I absolutely love the micronode. It's an extremely useful part. Especially for attaching struts at right-angles.

 

35 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I like the ion stuff, for small probes.  Even did a 2 hour Moho capture once on a manned craft with 4 ions.

Then again, when I play KSP, I am almost always doing something else at the same time.  So I just set up the burn, then adjust another window so I can still see KSP on the bottom for the burn time.

Well, you don't launch with Nukes.  They're nice for interplanetary.  This is a quick and dirty comparison, but ~31% more dV on a craft that's ~43% heavier?  I'll take it over oomp any day!

I definitely didn't mean to launch with them. When I say "take off" I mean accelerate. When I need to make a plane-change or capture burn, I want it to happen quickly. Speaking of which; a manned, ion-powered capture at Moho? That's impressive. Don't think I'd try that with a naked Kerbal strapped to a Dawn. :)

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Preface to this post: in order for a part to be "under-used", IMO it has to be worthy of use in the first place. If there is an utterly pointless and useless part, and it never gets used, I wouldn't call it under-used, I'd say that its being used the right amount :P 

10 hours ago, Kerbal pancake said:

for me it’s probably the structural hardpoint. I’ve never used it for a craft.

You know they are de-couplers, right? They also don't leave any "nubs" or anything on their parent craft, so I like them and use then in some spaceplane designs (when I do strap-on spaceplanes / recoverable boosters). Sure radial decouplers serve almost the same purpose, but the hardpoints look better on spaceplanes

9 hours ago, maceemiller said:

Nuclear engines for me. Just never have...

Well, in that case, I would say under used, they'rrrrreeee grrrrrrrreeat

9 hours ago, MinimalMinmus said:

I've never used the "dawn" ion thruster, and I know I'm not alone not to, because, 3 hours burns... HAHA! NO.

Its fairly easy to get 0.1 m/s/s acceleration with them. Heck, you can do Ion landers on Minmus, which requires at least a 0.5 m/s/s acceleration... but lets go with the 0.1 m/s acceleration. 3 hours = 10,800 seconds.... so 1080 m/s burns to 5,400 m/s burns would take that long.... yea... I wouldn't use them for that... but 100 m/s here, 100 m/s there... etc etc, they're good for that. I wouldn't do ejection burns with them, nor capture burns at Moho (and capture burns farther out are dubious because of power generation) but for orbital maneuvers like adjusting inclination, changing orbit height, fine tuning rendevous, they will do just fine.

 

8 hours ago, Spricigo said:

I don't use :Mk1-2 command pod, mk2 and mk3 mp tank, Puff engine, LES, avionics hub, external fuel duct, RCS thrusters block, micronode, small converter and narrow band scanner.

 

 

Mk 1-2 command pod is too heavy IMO, I rarely use it as well. The Mk2 and mk3 MP tanks.. who TF needs that much monoprop. I only use them along with the puff, for novelty purposes, where "realisitically" most LF bipropellant engines cannot restart or have limited restarts...

Micronode.... I don't think I've ever used it for any real purpose (and I consider behemoth rovers mucking around on kerbin at high speed just for fun a "purpose"). The small converter I've used before, and then came to hate it. I only really consider using it with a series of base modules based on 1.25m diameter parts.... I would also consider using it on something that won't have to refuel often (like all the small ISRU needs to do is refill 1 craft once between transfer windows that come less than 1x per year)

The narrow band scanner... if it had some function like scan sat to make an accurate overlay, I'd use it. The way it works now, I can't be bothered to sit there refreshing the window and making notes of ore... I just change a few values in the ore overlay .cfg file to make that overlay accurate.

 

9 hours ago, ARS said:

Largest rover wheel, because my mining rig is always static and use landing legs instead

I never bother to take the largest wheels off kerbin either... but they can actually get craft going really fast along the ground by alternately steering left and right while keeping forward pressed down... it seems to be an exploit of their turning system, but the wheels will keep accelerating the craft like that. I've made some big honking beefy rovers that traverse haul cheeks over the terrain of kerbin at 80 m/s with those wheels. Completely impractical for most other destinations, and they're too heavy anyway, but they are good for messing around on kerbin

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44 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Well, you don't launch with Nukes.  They're nice for interplanetary.  This is a quick and dirty comparison, but ~31% more dV on a craft that's ~43% heavier?  I'll take it over oompf any day!

 

Bad example, for that payload I'd beat both in deltaV and mass with a dawn engine: 2t, 20km/s, TWR 0,1.

In any case a moot point. Depending on deltaV and TWR requirements either Nukes or Chemical will have the upper hand, and requirements depend on what (and how) the player chose to do.

 

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1 hour ago, Spricigo said:

 

Bad example, for that payload I'd beat both in deltaV and mass with a dawn engine: 2t, 20km/s, TWR 0,1.

In any case a moot point. Depending on deltaV and TWR requirements either Nukes or Chemical will have the upper hand, and requirements depend on what (and how) the player chose to do.

 

Yeah shortly after I posted that I realized it wasn't a good comparison, since my brain was in "for comparable amounts of fuel" mode, which is kinda irrelevant.  Unfortunately I was driving when that light came on and wasn't able to fix it.

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52 minutes ago, A Soviet Tank said:

I'm surprised so many people don't use nukes, I use them all the time, although I've started to use them a bit less recently. For me, I don't think I've ever used a thud engine before, or a monopropellant engine.

I find some  use for the Thud in lower tech Spaceplanes in a niche in between the terrier and the swivel/reliant. Mind you, not exactly the backbone of my space program.

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1 hour ago, A Soviet Tank said:

I don't think I've ever used a thud engine before

I use them all the time for roll-control (great gimbal range) and supplemental thrust. Combined with a Skipper they make a fantastic light LV lower stage. Add some SRBs and you can run a space program on that launcher.

The micro-node thing. I don't think I've ever used it since I bought the game and believe me, I've tried.

Also, the Mk1 cockpit but not because the old one was good or the new one is bad, but because the inline cockpit is just loads better every time.

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4 hours ago, worir4 said:

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/The_Not-Rockomax_Micronode

 

This thing. its pretty cool if you use it for mini craft using the small diameter parts, but for anything else its too small to be any use. At least it is not as bad as when it didn't have the nodes on all sides

That is my go-to part for attaching multiple fold out parts with robotics!

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I've never used nukes.  Whenever I put one on, my KER dv calculator tells me I will get better TWR and more dv if I use a Poodle or a Terrier, which take up less space on the rocket.  What is the purpose of nukes if they are outclassed by these other vacuum engines?

Edit 1: My question has been answered, ignore my stupidity.

Edited by HeliosPh0enix
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1 hour ago, HeliosPh0enix said:

I've never used nukes.  Whenever I put one on, my KER dv calculator tells me I will get better TWR and more dv if I use a Poodle or a Terrier, which take up less space on the rocket.  What is the purpose of nukes if they are outclassed by these other vacuum engines?

Have you tried leaving the oxidizer behind? The LV-N doesn't use that.

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