When is "MOAR PARTS" too many?

[sp1989]

I have been playing KSP since .22. I am not and early early adopter however I have been playing KSP for a long long time. Recently I have been wondering why when I begin a new career mode or sandbox I get frustrated and start over. I am currently playing a new career mode and again I just grew increasingly frustrated with my save. I came to the realization that i have too many part mods. I, like everyone loves to have a variety of mods. I can't just play a vanilla version of KSP. I need part mods. However I think the problem comes with having too many choices. For example I love Bluedog Design Bureau by @CobaltWolf I am not saying anything surprising here that, it is one of the most extraordinary mods ever made for KSP. His maintenance of the parts creation of kerbalized NASA parts is extraordinary. There are hundreds of parts in the pack, so many that I doubt I have or will ever use them all. Now when you install the mod and use it career mode the parts evolve perfectly for the contracts Mercury for the first missions, Atlas parts for relay launches and satellites, gemini for orbits, docking, etc. Then you go to the Mun with the Apollo parts and now the entire kerbol solar system is at your fingertips. But then you are trying to play the game in the confines of a "NASA" style launches and not Kerbal. This is not a criticism of BDB in the slightest but the confines of my own personal imagination. "Do I take an Apollo capsule to Duna?" Now I have restock, near future, Tundra exploration, and more. I want to use those for my launches. Its more realistic and futuristic if I use Tundra parts and near future to get to Duna. Now you're designing a frankenship with parts from everywhere and its messing with the narrative you have in your head. You spend 45 minutes in the VAB trying to put together the GREATEST SHIP OF ALL TIME, and you hate it because you didn't have to overcome obstacles. You didn't have to Kerbalize or problems solve. Which honestly I think is one of the most fundamental parts of the game. I mean before KSP introduced the NASA parts (SLS) parts it was extremely difficult to get to the outer planets. Just being able to get to another planet was satisfying in and of itself. Now you can overbuild crafts and you know you're gonna make it so there is a thrill missing when you ad every possible part imaginable. Every single type of engine imaginable makes the Kerbol system really small and ultimately unrewarding when you get the Jool system. Grand Tours are easy when you have engines that need mere drops of fuel to run an engine that generates 1000 thrust in a vaccum. I exaggerate a bit, but being stuck within the confines of limited choice helps trigger creative problem solving for KSP which is why I think us veterans loved KSP in the first place.  

The long and short of my post is that, the advice I would give to KSP people new and old is to pick a narrative and stick with it. If you're gonna download BDB stick with NASA style missions. If you're gonna use Near Future download all of @Nertea's incredible and astonishing mods and play that way. Pick part types and stick with it. Force yourself to come up with creative solutions instead of looking for mods that have all the answers. I honestly think it's possible to have too many parts now. If you can navigate having ALL OF THE PARTS then you obviously have a much better KSP imagination than me. This is just something to consider for new people who just don't know what to do and maybe veterans like myself who don't know what to do anymore. 

 

Happy Launches Everyone 

[CobaltWolf]

3 minutes ago, sp1989 said:

When is "MOAR PARTS" too many?

5char

[The Aziz]

I just go with simple solution: one part pack per purpose. Ground bases? One pack. Near future parts? Maybe, but propulsion and/or electrical. Orbital stations? One pack. Conventional propulsion and maybe fuel tanks? One pack. I don't have one that has everything in it. I have few but they only contain what I need.

[sp1989]

34 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

I just go with simple solution: one part pack per purpose. Ground bases? One pack. Near future parts? Maybe, but propulsion and/or electrical. Orbital stations? One pack. Conventional propulsion and maybe fuel tanks? One pack. I don't have one that has everything in it. I have few but they only contain what I need.

Exactly. Sound like what I am talking about. Pick a narrative or a focus and go with it. 

[Frank_G]

I have stopped playing with moar parts around .23 or so. I go with stock + official DLCs to keep frustration low and compatibility high.

[katateochi]

38 minutes ago, Frank_G said:

I have stopped playing with moar parts around .23 or so. I go with stock + official DLCs to keep frustration low and compatibility high.

I can't quite bring myself to be pure stock (+DLC), so I use mods like Indicator Lights to improves stock parts (seriously can't be without that mod!), Aviation lights (because things need to blink) and some other part mods like Universal Storage II & KAS.  But I keep the ship's core construction to Stock/DLC parts with the modded components as fairly easily swapped out modules.  Makes it easier when upgrade time rolls around.

[toric5]

I basicly use near tea and MKS, and thats about it for large part packs.

[TBenz]

IMHO, the best counter to "moar parts" is "moar challenging mechanics". Life support, distant planet packs, that sort of stuff. That way, even though you have more tools for solving problems, you also have more problems you need to solve. It ups the complexity though, so you need to be willing to think harder and plan more carefully for your missions. 

[Guest]

Nooooooo! Kerbals that run out of life support etc make me too sad  

the mods are great tho, I only play vanilla now but really miss the near future parts  

 

6 hours ago, Frank_G said:

I have stopped playing with moar parts around .23 or so. I go with stock + official DLCs to keep frustration low and compatibility high.

Yep!

[Klapaucius]

I use all sorts of mods for environment etc. but I stay with stock parts, partially for the reason you stated and partially  for shareability. I play in sandbox, but I enjoy the limitations imposed on me by needing to work with what I have. It forces creative solutions.

[Flavio hc16]

Almost all  your problems can be' solved with 2 figures: those are either 

3.2 or

6.4

(Rescale)

Add a little of smurfs variation in needed

[Atkara]

When is "moar parts" too many? When you can't immediately recognize the parts you're looking at. It means you don't use them often -or you haven't used them at all. And if you don't use them, you don't need them.

That's when, as far as I'm concerned.

[Xurkitree]

When is moar parts to many?

When restock manages to make 4 engines seem like the same part

[Nuke]

when your framerate is better measured in seconds per frame rather than frames per second. 

[Mr. Peabody]

18 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

5char

The "L"ag is real.  

Spoiler

 

Edited June 5, 2019 by The Dunatian

[Frank_G]

13 hours ago, Dale Christopher said:

Nooooooo! Kerbals that run out of life support etc make me too sad  

the mods are great tho, I only play vanilla now but really miss the near future parts  

 

Yep!

 

I actually play with life support. On bases, stations and long term mission i dock containers to the vessel or buildings, pretending, that each container contains consumables for 1 year. It is easy to keep track and adds a little spice to the game, without getting too serious. Here is a base with docked containers:

[sp1989]

On 6/4/2019 at 11:02 PM, TBenz said:

IMHO, the best counter to "moar parts" is "moar challenging mechanics". Life support, distant planet packs, that sort of stuff. That way, even though you have more tools for solving problems, you also have more problems you need to solve. It ups the complexity though, so you need to be willing to think harder and plan more carefully for your missions. 

I havent played KSP without some sort of life support mod since .24 They are essential IMHO and I think have to be added to the core game sometime in the future. Even if its Snacks which i feel is the most Kerbal way of implementing Life Support. 

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, sp1989 said:

I havent played KSP without some sort of life support mod since .24 They are essential IMHO and I think have to be added to the core game sometime in the future. Even if its Snacks which i feel is the most Kerbal way of implementing Life Support. 

Since 0.20, I have played many games with life support and have tried them all (except Kerbalism) many times each.  In that experience, I have come to the conclusion that life support is not at all an essential game function, nor does it add any gameplay value whatsoever.  Therefore, even though I play with life support much more often than not, I do not agree that it should someday be stock and in fact hope it never becomes so.

LIfe support adds zero depth to gameplay, it only adds width.  As in 1 more thing to remember to add in the design phase but, once seen to there, never becomes a factor again.  Throw enough cans of supplies and (if a thing) recyclers aboard to last the trip, make sure you can power them, and problem solved.  You'll never have to worry about it again unless you screwed up badly somewhere in the rest of the design or execution of the mission, so the trip lasts longer than intended.

So, assuming your rocket designs can do the job (enough dV and TWR, docking ports not blocked, etc.), and you don't have any pilot error, adding life support to the game has no effect at all other than:

1. Remembering to load it in the design phase
2. Adding more parts to your ship, which increases cost and part count
3. Adding more mass to your payload, which increases lifter cost and part count

Bottom line, life support is in exactly the same category as needing electricity for crewed ships.  When I started playing, only probe cores consumed EC, not reaction wheels or even lights.  Therefore, only probes needed batteries and solar panels.  This changed somewhere in the early 0.2's so we suddenly had to start adding batteries and solar panels to crewed ships.  As we weren't in the habit, everybody had a few missions were crews got stranded for lack of EC.  But we soon learned and now it's second-nature, an automatic thing when building a ship.  If you play with life support, the exact same thing happens.  And just as you never think about EC (other than remembering to deploy panels) again, same with life support.

So, why do I keep using it?  Mostly for narrative purposes.  I like to tell stories in the Mission Reports forum and having life support adds a potential story hook in the highly unlikely event of things going wrong.  But just having it allows the Kerbals to gripe about their rations in the story