A "KSP Loading..." Preview: 24-77 "Twitch" Liquid Fuel Engine Revamp

[StrandedonEarth]

I have no problems with the look of the new Twitch, and I don’t mind the slight drop in thrust compared to the Spark since they generally get mounted in multiples,  but I tend to shy away because of the lousy (for a vacuum engine) ISP. So I hope that gets bumped up a bit. 

[passinglurker]

2 hours ago, Deddly said:

Have you seen the internal structure? 

That's really the crux of the problem isn't it? Even when you do come up with a mechanism to explain it(like the hollow ball air duct someone pointed out not that air ducts can stand up as structural rocket parts but whatever let's roll with it) the question then becomes "why wasn't the part modeled to show this in the first place?" As it stands the part is mechanically unintuitive and visually uninteresting the design seems to ask more "what saves me detail work?" or "I don't know how to model an organic aeroshell like the puff and thud engines" rather than "what looks appealing?", "what looks consistent?", "what makes sense?"

This design is just lazy if it's made for vacuum you should remove the encasement and show the mechanically ingesting bits, if it's made for atmos it should be properly streamlined and protected, and ideally you should just do both and use the part variant system to switch between them cause that's a thing we have now! I'm sick of seeing the same lazy design ethos the placeholders had just with standardized textures made by people with no apparent passion or respect for space flight. After the lengths they jumped through to recreate real engines for making history I sincerely thought modeling at least wasn't going to be a problem but now it looks like they just have to be phoning something in one way or another...

Edited February 1, 2019 by passinglurker

[Caelib]

Looks great, but wheeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnn is the game going to get a new skybox ... clouds ... all the things that it has needed for YEARS?!

[klgraham1013]

4 minutes ago, Caelib said:

...when is the game going to get a new skybox and/or clouds?

You ask the eternal questions.

[Nebbie]

4 minutes ago, Caelib said:

Looks great, but wheeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnn is the game going to get a new skybox ... clouds ... all the things that it has needed for YEARS?!

I wouldn't count on it with this update. So far, only thing we know about it is that it has a new Twitch...

I would definitely hope for them to rebalance and retexture most of the engines as a first priority, cause the Twitch isn't the only one in need of an update. If they do add some kind of clouds, it'd make 1.7 pretty amazing, though.

[Superfluous J]

8 minutes ago, Caelib said:

Looks great, but wheeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnn is the game going to get a new skybox ... clouds ... all the things that it has needed for YEARS?!

f they redid the skybox and even if they added clouds, people would then complain that they said they were redoing parts and then abandoned them.

[Deddly]

<Moderator mode activated> Instead of generally crapping on Squad or defending them from said general crap, it is now time to please get back to the topic: The new engine. Like it? Hate it? Constructive feedback and suggestions for this part? That's all cool, go for it. 

EDIT: A few posts were removed for the above reason

Edited February 1, 2019 by Deddly

[passinglurker]

6 hours ago, Deddly said:

please get back to the topic: The new engine. Like it? Hate it? Constructive feedback and suggestions for this part? That's all cool, go for it. 

[snip]

Any way to sum up. I hate it and see little worth salvaging. Ideally since they've shown willingness to break compatibility they should start over with an encapsulated engine like the puff or thud and assuming this new twitch revamp doesn't take some cues from the spark revamp then the spark should be revised to take to take cues from the new twitch, and the new twitch should be buffed (cause again compatibility is out the window with the thrust angle change) so that their relation to each other is more intuitive.

If someone wants to make some self contradictory and convenient excuses to get out of starting over the minimum they could do is redo it from the grey gimbal point down instead showing a bare combustion chamber and how it attaches to the rest of the engine to at least make it more visually interesting, and of course also incorporate a miniature turbo somewhere into the design for technical consistency, and attention to detail's sake.

And if someone were to do both and let us swap between them with the part variant system I'll take back what I said about squad never going all in on a part.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Vanamonde
Let the argument go, please.

[Gapone]

Please no. Reuse the revamped Spark and mount it on a radial mount. It will be so much better this way.

And make the stats same if you do it this way~

Also, the current variant does not seem able to gimbal sideways?..

Edited February 1, 2019 by Gapone

[Nertea]

So I'm not really commenting on these so much anymore, but I do have a question which is orthogonal to my usual opinions - what is the rationale behind the addition of a colour variant choice? No other engine parts have acquired colour variants (even among the new parts added), instead they get physical footprint (compact, boat tails) and a colour swap seems like a variant for variants' sake. In addition, with the trend of the rest of the parts moving towards basic whites, it seems odd to create a variant that is black, if the goal is to allow more harmonious launchers. 

[Ozymandias_the_Goat]

30 minutes ago, Nertea said:

So I'm not really commenting on these so much anymore, but I do have a question which is orthogonal to my usual opinions - what is the rationale behind the addition of a colour variant choice? No other engine parts have acquired colour variants (even among the new parts added), instead they get physical footprint (compact, boat tails) and a colour swap seems like a variant for variants' sake. In addition, with the trend of the rest of the parts moving towards basic whites, it seems odd to create a variant that is black, if the goal is to allow more harmonious launchers. 

Yeah, I don’t really get either why there is only a colour change, and moreover one form the “default” orange option, and not a white one. My guess is that perhaps the twitch is supposed to look more “rugged” and technologicaly rudimentary, so perhaps this colour option sort of makes sense (?). I don’t use the twitch often anyway, and I like all my vehicles to look harmonious, but perhaps there is some market for the twitch as it is?

 

[Poodmund]

Aren't the colour of the engines supposed to represent their manufacturer also? This seems to be forgotten with the recent revamps. Historically all Rockomax Conglomerate were done in their signature orange and greys whereas all the Jebediah Kerman's Junkyard and Spacecraft Parts Co engines featured their signature yellow and greys.

• New Poodle: No signature colour branding
• New Spark: Orange combustion chamber shroud... but weird contradicting yellow colouring on the boat tail variant shroud.
• New Terrier: No real visual identity of branding (granted, the old terrier did not have this either but effort could have been made to rectify this in the revamped model).
• New Twitch: Default variant has the Rockomax orange but new variant introduces off-brand styling cues.

Is part brand not considered anymore when art direction is decided on anymore?

[Vanamonde]

Nobody gets to have the last word in an argument after the moderators call for it to stop, guys. A comment or two have been removed. 

[Nebbie]

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

So I'm not really commenting on these so much anymore, but I do have a question which is orthogonal to my usual opinions - what is the rationale behind the addition of a colour variant choice? No other engine parts have acquired colour variants (even among the new parts added), instead they get physical footprint (compact, boat tails) and a colour swap seems like a variant for variants' sake. In addition, with the trend of the rest of the parts moving towards basic whites, it seems odd to create a variant that is black, if the goal is to allow more harmonious launchers. 

It is indeed odd. I find it very strange the Poodle has no variant choices, while some engines have three, others have two, and this one just has color... That said, I really like both color variants and would love to have something less orange and obtrusive. I really want things to all have color choices in a consistent manner so we can style rockets as we choose, but it seems like Squad doesn't yet want to go that far.

1 hour ago, Poodmund said:

Aren't the colour of the engines supposed to represent their manufacturer also? This seems to be forgotten with the recent revamps. Historically all Rockomax Conglomerate were done in their signature orange and greys whereas all the Jebediah Kerman's Junkyard and Spacecraft Parts Co engines featured their signature yellow and greys.

• New Poodle: No signature colour branding
• New Spark: Orange combustion chamber shroud... but weird contradicting yellow colouring on the boat tail variant shroud.
• New Terrier: No real visual identity of branding (granted, the old terrier did not have this either but effort could have been made to rectify this in the revamped model).
• New Twitch: Default variant has the Rockomax orange but new variant introduces off-brand styling cues.

Is part brand not considered anymore when art direction is decided on anymore?

I sure hope part brand is completely forgotten, it was a lore flavor sort of thing that I never cared about and I hated the way it made rockets not visually look together. In fact, I still have issues because of the 3.75m tanks having no orange options, when I really like to make ascent stages orange.

 

Overall, I can see them revisiting this slightly to maybe put a little slanted cap at the top or something, but I think it's fine as-is. I think the concerns about the asthetics are a bit out of proportion considering the old version of it, while somewhat more fitting with other parts, looked just plain bad; seems like it might be nostalgia more than objective reasoning to me. Regardless of the whys of disliking the new asthetics, I must say that stats matter more here because the current state of the engine makes it a complete dud worse than the Thud, being an engine clearly (and moreso with the revamp) designed for vacuum use, yet having stats that make it bad in atmosphere and utterly terrible in vacuum.

[airtrafficcontroller]

Well, I like it, the textures seem to be in a higher resolution than the old engine and that gimbal mechanism surpassed my expectations.

The grey version will look good with the Oscar tank and that silver reflective line could be used in more parts.

Now the constructive feedback, just paint that orange line in grey version with black or white, we already have the orange variant.

Thats it, many thanks to squad and to the artist.

[Nebbie]

1 minute ago, airtrafficcontroller said:

Well, I like it, the textures seem to be in a higher resolution than the old engine and that gimbal mechanism surpassed my expectations.

The grey version will look good with the Oscar tank and that silver reflective line could be used in more parts.

Now the constructive feedback, just paint that orange line in grey version with black or white, we already have the orange variant.

Thats it, many thanks to squad and to the artist.

I actually like gray with orange stripe...but again, I think the proper thing for Squad to do is have a base texture variant and then separately switchable primary and secondary colors, so that we could just choose which colors it is outright.

[Serenity]

This looks so nice!!

[GeneCash]

I like the new version because it got rid of the 2 nasty "attachment blocks" cube thingies and replaced it with a saner-looking swivel system.

I'm a simple bloke. That's enough to make me happy.

Honestly, I used it less because I would snap it on, one of those ugly blocks would be waving in the breeze, and I'd be "ugh, no, anything else"

Edited February 2, 2019 by GeneCash

[lunardog15]

I think it looks nice 

[ndiver]

Evrn if i find it nice, I would like to see from Squad on engine overhaul:

1) coherence: one color scheme per manufacturer, explanations concerning the changes

2) a roadmap

[DonaldPK51]

On 1/29/2019 at 4:10 PM, DonaldPK51 said:

Please be a drop in replacement please be a drop in replacement...

Lots of deployed vehicles with the current Twitch

Aaaaaaand it's not. Now I have to redo lots of engines on craft files. Same with the RCS block.

[Fraston]

Welp, 1.7 is out!

[Jestersage]

11 hours ago, DonaldPK51 said:

Aaaaaaand it's not. Now I have to redo lots of engines on craft files. Same with the RCS block.

Look at my text file in the tutoriual.