Any use in LV-30 and other no gimbal engines?

[JERONIMO]

My opinion, maybe. Thrust compensated by less Dv from gimbal engines. Naaah they are still useless)))

[MisterKerman]

cheepr

[Empiro]

It's an early-game engine that gives you good TWR and decent ISP to get you into orbit. You don't really need gimbaling if you do a good gravity turn using the built-in torque of command pods. You can also use it as boosters for a central Swivel, since you don't need all engines to be gimbaled. You do quickly stop using it as you get better engines though.

Edited July 12, 2019 by Empiro

[MisterKerman]

I use it for boosters or as the main stage lifting engine of smaller budget rockets, usually. It's a disposable engine for me that is punchy and cheap and useful.

[Superfluous J]

What engines don't gimbal? I know the Reliant doesn't but what others?

Mostly I don't know because pod torque is almost always enough, and I want pod torque to be able to turn when the engines aren't running anyway.

[Jestersage]

19 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

What engines don't gimbal? I know the Reliant doesn't but what others?

Mostly I don't know because pod torque is almost always enough, and I want pod torque to be able to turn when the engines aren't running anyway.

The AeroSpike, Kodiak, and NERV are the only others that does not Gimbal.

Kodiak was basically a souped up Reliant at a cheaper price that fits three diameters, so if one want to build a proper sized Proton (ie not using vector), you can.

[Superfluous J]

Just now, Jestersage said:

The AeroSpike, Kodiak, and NERV are the only others that does not Gimbal.

Kodiak was basically a souped up Reliant at a cheaper price that fits three diameters, so if one want to build a proper sized Proton (ie not using vector), you can.

Hm, so the engine I used to use to get off Eve before the Vector beat it, an engine I've only used to liftoff (where as was mentioned gimbal isn't as important as power), and an engine I rarely bother to use. Seems about right.

When it comes down to it I'm more affected by engines that don't supply electricity, than those that don't gimbal.

[Jestersage]

27 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Hm, so the engine I used to use to get off Eve before the Vector beat it, an engine I've only used to liftoff (where as was mentioned gimbal isn't as important as power), and an engine I rarely bother to use. Seems about right.

When it comes down to it I'm more affected by engines that don't supply electricity, than those that don't gimbal.

Besides, all 3 can be remedied by either a RW, RCS thrusters, or the RV-1 Cub (which is designed to use with Kodiak but can be used for anythign else.

[Cavscout74]

Like others have said, works great for boosters assisting a Swivel or even larger cores - I have a few designs that use a 1.875 or 2.5m core with 1.25m radial boosters powered by Reliants for extra thrust & dV.  Also the Cub works great to cover other engines' lack of gimbal if needed, and give a slight boost to thrust

[cantab]

There's a fair few non-gimballers. The Nerv and the Dawn don't gimbal, but they're the only engines of their class. Same for all the SRBs, which are good at offering high thrust for low cost and complexity.

The Ant's another. Anything small enough to use an Ant is usually small enough that probe core torque is plenty.

As far as the early-game engines go, the Reliant is the superior first stage engine in other respects, with 22% more liftoff thrust than the Swivel and more sea level Isp, and lower mass and cost. Rockets with multiple engines can do well to mix Swivels and Reliants to get more power but still have enough control.

The Kodiak is straight up a superior Reliant but it's quite late in the tech tree. I've not used it much; by the time it's unlocked I'm normally launching bigger rockets. But it's there if you want an advanced 1.25m rocket or liquid booster that doesn't need as much thrust as a Vector. (And a Vector under a 1.25m stack is usually overkill.)

The Aerospike's another one-of-a-kind engine, being the only thing that offers high efficiency both at sea level and in vacuum, and with higher TWR than all other vacuum engines except the Rhino too. But I don't tend to use it that much. I think partly because for launchers I rarely *need* high efficiency through the whole flight plan. Meanwhile for orbital craft I'm usually packing enough delta-V that I want a Nerv or a Wolfhound.

EDIT: Oh, and the non-gimbal club is rounded out by some of the jets. Most planes get plenty of control authority from their control surfaces and don't need thrust vectoring.

Edited July 13, 2019 by cantab

[ExtremeSquared]

Radially mounted engines that are vertically close to the Center of Mass are more annoying than useful when they attempt to control heading with the gimbal. A problem with some designs of rovers and mines.

[Geschosskopf]

4 hours ago, JERONIMO said:

My opinion, maybe. Thrust compensated by less Dv from gimbal engines. Naaah they are still useless)))

Gimbals are only of use if you have to turn while under thrust.  Thus, for rockets, gimbal is only useful for atmospheric lifter engines in the course of the gravity turn, and then only if the rocket is too big to be steered by fins.  And even when the rocket is too big for that, Vernors do the job quite well without any gimbal.  Once in vacuum, gimbal and Vernors  do more harm than good as you point at the maneuver node and burn straight ahead.  The only other case where gimbal is useful is for jet dogfighters using vectored thrust.

Thus, in general, I only use gimbal on my lowest lifter stages.  And I'll READILY use the Reliant over its more expensive, less-efficient, LV-45 stablemate because even the 1st controllable fins you get more than compensate for the lack of gimbal on a 1.25m stack.  I always disable gimbal on any engine that will function in vacuum.  I also disable it on spaceplane engines because it makes it impossible to maintain a smooth flightpath.

So bottom line, I'd be perfectly happy if no engine in KSP had gimbal at all.  In fact, I'd be happier as then I wouldn't have to remember to turn it off for all my Poodles and Terriers.

[Eriksonn]

I tend to favor the swivel over the relient, even as a first stage engine, as my staging setup usually means that the center stage persists quite far into the flight, maybe even into space. And as the swivel overtakes the relient fairly early in terms of isp it tends to win out over the whole flight. And as i almost always use solid boosters the high thrust of the relient as main engine gets nullified as in the low parts of the atmoshpere the boosters produce so much thrust that i throttle down the main engine, and in the high parts of the atmosphere the ship is so light that i again throttle down the main engine. The only time i can see use in its higher thrust is to prevent a heavy ship from loosing speed just when decoupling the boosters at 10km altititude or so.

[RocketSimplicity]

On 7/13/2019 at 4:44 AM, Empiro said:

You don't really need gimbaling if you do a good gravity turn using the built-in torque of command pods.

I read “built in” as “BS” and it had the same effect.

It’s simple. Use the non gimballed engines on side boosters and have the core engine on the centre stage gimbal. 

Edited July 14, 2019 by RocketSimplicity

[Xavven]

I dont' like using SRBs, so the Reliant and Kodiak fit perfectly as radial liquid-fuel+oxidizer boosters. With higher thrust than the Swivel, they give just a bit more power to get off the pad.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

On 7/12/2019 at 9:18 PM, Geschosskopf said:

And I'll READILY use the Reliant over its more expensive, less-efficient, LV-45 stablemate because even the 1st controllable fins you get more than compensate for the lack of gimbal on a 1.25m stack.

This^

Reliant+Fins>Swivel.

Edited July 15, 2019 by Rocket In My Pocket

[purpleivan]

On 7/13/2019 at 12:57 AM, 5thHorseman said:

Hm, so the engine I used to use to get off Eve before the Vector beat it, an engine I've only used to liftoff (where as was mentioned gimbal isn't as important as power), and an engine I rarely bother to use. Seems about right.

When it comes down to it I'm more affected by engines that don't supply electricity, than those that don't gimbal.

I've used the Aerospike lots of times for my ascent from Eve. One time I ended up with a fairly tall thin rocket (after dropping all the big stuff) powered by a single Aerospike. Then I found out the issue of having a non gimballing engine, no aero control surfaces and only the puny torque of a Mk1 command pod to keep things pointed in the right direction. Ended up tumbling end over end a few times, before I could start thrusting again in roughly the right direction.

Thing still made it to orbit though.

Agreed about non electricity generating engines. The number of times I've ended up in a small vehicle with no juice and puzzled why that would be, only to realise that "oh yeah... a Terrier's not gonna fill my batteries is it".

Edited July 15, 2019 by purpleivan

[TheFlyingKerman]

On 7/13/2019 at 9:18 AM, Geschosskopf said:

Thus, in general, I only use gimbal on my lowest lifter stages.  And I'll READILY use the Reliant over its more expensive, less-efficient, LV-45 stablemate because even the 1st controllable fins you get more than compensate for the lack of gimbal on a 1.25m stack.

Controllable fins are even more expensive.

And SRB rules.

[klgraham1013]

They really should have taken advantage of the part upgrade system they sent the time and money to build and implement for these early career engines.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

16 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

They really should have taken advantage of the part upgrade system they sent the time and money to build and implement for these early career engines.

Yeah, would make a nice focus for a free patch update, not quite meaty enough for a DLC, but it's a relatively easy to implement idea and most likely would be received well.

Edited July 17, 2019 by Rocket In My Pocket

[ARS]

To compensate for high gimbal engine. Low gimbal high thrust > nearly uncontrollable, while high gimbal low thrust > too controllable. High gimbal engine such as KS-25 still maintains it's high gimbal despite insufficient thrust when lifting super heavy payload. While adding more KS-25 is a no brainer, more KS-25 means increased control sensitivity, which makes the rocket too controllable and unstable, given high thrust per engine. While lowering thrust and gimbal authority is an option, KS-25 is more expensive than engines without gimbal. For those seeking low cost high efficiency, a rocket could use 4 reliants as main lifting engine and a single KS-25 as steering engine

[KerbMav]

3 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

They really should have taken advantage of the part upgrade system they sent the time and money to build and implement for these early career engines.

Upgradable engines were very loudly argued against by the community.

Never using the system for anything (e.g. upgrading "old" probe cores with new SAS capabilities as they are unlocked in other probe cores along the techtree) is sad though.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

Honestly it's pretty interesting; the reliant and swivel are very obviously balanced against each other. Their descriptions straight up compare and contrast the features and what the lack/presence of them means for the user; this makes sense from a game design standpoint especially since these are the first real engines a KSP player will use. What doesn't is how this is all abandoned in the entirety of the rest of the tech tree; instead having each part seemingly independent of each other and hardly much balancing against other engines. This isn't a bad thing; just a very curious approach to me in terms of game design.

[Aegolius13]

I agree they make great radial boosters.  But one other application I don't see very often around here -- using the small radial engines to act as verniers for the Reliant / Kodiak / Dart.  If you're gentle with maneuvers, you can get the necessary attitude control with just a couple Spiders.  And they're cheap, light, more consistent than aero surfaces, and provide a little bonus thrust.  ISP is not great apart from the Cub, but their consumption is so small the net effect is negligible.

And not like it's not without real-world precedent, since that's how the venerable R-7 family (Vostok/Voshkod/Soyuz) does its thing.

Vernors are also probably an option now that the price went way down, or even monoprop RCS thrusters with the capsule's built-in supply.

Edited July 19, 2019 by Aegolius13

[Athen]

They're cheaper, stronger (usually), and are great for side boosters. Basically liquid SRBs.