What is your favourite KSP Engine?

[AntINFINAIt]

As the title says: WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE KSP ENGINE? (mods too)

Mine's modded  

Edited March 15, 2018 by AntINFINAIt

[Atkara]

I play with stock engines. I don't really have any favorites, as I'll always use the engine I deem fitting for the role and the mission parameters of the craft in question.

[MechBFP]

The dart. Efficient, powerful, and small. 

[XB-70A]

Stock too. It's hard to take a decision as I like the Thud (for the look and easiness to place) as much as the Terrier (surely not for the look...).

[Canopus]

I hate the look of the Terrier, but it is my engine of choice for crewed to missions to Duna and Gilly. Seriously though it and the Poodle are in dire need for a redesign.

[A_name]

In stock, my favorite for vacuum is the Rhino, good thrust and crazy efficient. For atmosphere it would be the Vector, very good thrust, reasonably efficient, plus bonus points for nostalgia factor since I'm a fan of the IRL Space Shuttle. (Incidentally, I just found out the Rhino was supposed to be the equivalent of the Apollo service module main engine before the DLC, but then why is it so big? Who knows.)

 

The Aerospike gets an honorable mention for having a good TWR and efficiency across the board, but it's so small it's hard to find useful applications for it.

12 minutes ago, Canopus said:

I hate the look of the Terrier, but it is my engine of choice for crewed to missions to Duna and Gilly. Seriously though it and the Poodle are in dire need for a redesign.

Hear, hear.

[MechBFP]

Just now, A_name said:

In stock, my favorite for vacuum is the Rhino, good thrust and crazy efficient. For atmosphere it would be the Vector, very good thrust, reasonably efficient, plus bonus points for nostalgia factor since I'm a fan of the IRL Space Shuttle. (Incidentally, I just found out the Rhino was supposed to be the equivalent of the Apollo service module main engine before the DLC, but then why is it so big? Who knows.)

 

The Aerospike gets an honorable mention for having a good TWR and efficiency across the board, but it's so small it's hard to find useful applications for it.

It’s surface attachable, so you can add like 8 or 9 of them to a 2.5m tank. 

[Canopus]

3 minutes ago, A_name said:

In stock, my favorite for vacuum is the Rhino, good thrust and crazy efficient. For atmosphere it would be the Vector, very good thrust, reasonably efficient, plus bonus points for nostalgia factor since I'm a fan of the IRL Space Shuttle. (Incidentally, I just found out the Rhino was supposed to be the equivalent of the Apollo service module main engine before the DLC, but then why is it so big? Who knows.)

It came in the ARM update so it most likely represents the J2X that was originally planned as the upper stage engine for the SLS.

[A_name]

Just now, Canopus said:

It came in the ARM update so it most likely represents the J2X that was originally planned as the upper stage engine for the SLS.

That makes much more sense.

8 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

It’s surface attachable, so you can add like 8 or 9 of them to a 2.5m tank. 

That's true, but you run into diminishing returns fairly quickly due to the weight of the multiple engines. As a quick example, to match the thrust of the Vector, you need 6 Aerospikes, which weigh 2 tons more than the Vector. And there's only so many you can reasonably fit on a tank.

[CSieg]

The terrier is my go-to that seems like I can slap on any reasonable upper stage and it'll make it to Minmus and back.

[panzer1b]

Taking stock KSP only, my fav and most used engine has to be the nuke since its the ONLY engine in the game as of this moment that is practical for interplanetary vessels that carry any sort of armor.  Ions are neat too (i love the way they look), but their TWR and thrust in general is so low that id need hundreds of them per ship (part count nightmare), and they require a whole electric support system which adds another double that in parts.  All the LFO engines are too low ISP to compete with the nuke outside of very low mass vessels (aside from weapons and starfighters, very few ships are actually light enough to benefit from LFO engines over even 1 nuke).

 

That said, if we are talking favorite in terms of asthetics, just about everything out of Ven's mod, since all them engines look beautiful and put stock KSP to shame.

[Delay]

The spark, in combination with a toroidal tank "doughnut", is a nice engine to power size 1 rockets. It's a light, efficient engine, with more dV despite lower Isp due to its lower mass, and has enough thrust to be used on landers for the Mun, Minmus and any other planet or moon with similar gravity.

[Ace in Space]

Good Terrier. Best engine.

[krone12]

NERV-best Isp, best look, best every thing

Edited March 16, 2018 by krone12

[blakemw]

For me there's really no question: Twin-Boar. It has the highest TWR and the highest Thrust-Cost-Ratio (tied with the Reliant) of any LF/Ox engine - and by a fair margin. Other than the Reliant which is also an outlier, it offers about 30% more thrust-per-funds. That's not all, if you want to recover it the Twin-Boar will never burn up on reentry. Drop it into the atmosphere from near-hyperbolic speeds and even then it probably won't burn up. This is because it's pretty draggy, and when going in reverse its flared base makes it really draggy. Also a quirk of the heating model is that parts have "thermally superconductive skin", the entire skin of a part is one thing. The skin heats up where it is exposed to the oncoming air, and radiates heat where its not exposed, this means that long parts have a better "heat in to heat out" ratio than short parts (Mammoth and Aerospike both burn off really easily). The Twin-Boar has the highest fineness ratio of any engine which is a second reason it handles reentry heating gracefully. After the hot part of reentry again the high drag in reverse means it slows easily to safe chute speeds, and then when it hits the surface it has a 20m/s impact tolerance so you can skimp on chutes and really spectacular buoyancy, a Mammoth can have trouble protecting parts above it in case of a splashdown, but a Twin-Boar will never slide into the water deeply enough to threaten higher up parts.

The Twin-Boar works well both as an SSTO and as a first stage with a Skipper or Wolfhound second stage.

Basically, the Twin-Boar is really cost effective and idiot-proof to recover making it my go-to engine for launching stuff.

 

But I also have to give honorable mention to the LV-N, which is my other go-to engine, beyond a certain mission deltaV - roughly Moho or Jool mission or even biome-hopping on Mun, LV-N becomes a no-brainer. It also has high impact and heat tolerances. Funnily enough, my most downloaded craft on KerbalX combines my two favorite engines: LV-N lander with Twin-Boar launcher.

Edited March 16, 2018 by blakemw

[wumpus]

I've missed most of the greatness of the twinboar out of love for SRBs.  Typically when you have enough kickers you don't need a twinboar, although I'm changing my build concepts to include it.  So kickers are probably my favorite, thanks to terrier and LV-N splitting the vacuum "vote".

The biggest problem with the LV-N are the stock tanks.  You are stuck with either the 1.25m tank or plane tanks.  But you still want one in orbit once it is unlocked (to ferry anything to Mun, Minmus, or a special orbit) and it is the goto engine for interplanetary travel.

The terrier is just amazing.  Unlock it as soon as possible.  I really wish the demo had it, although I guess the challenge of getting to the Mun without it stretches out the demo's usefulness and feeds the need for "real" KSP.

[Dfthu]

Mine is the Skipper, All around great stats. Plus it has a nice blue glow. Although the new Cheetah engine is growing on me.

[Frozen_Heart]

Vector. 

 

Has nice gimbal, reasonably efficient, 1.25m form factor, and absurdly high thrust.

[Numerlor]

Unity

[ave369]

Why no love for the humble Thud? It may not be the most efficient engine, but it's the first radially mounted engine to be unlocked, and you can make all sorts of crazy stuff with it. Such as a small shuttle.