Can we reduce the number of parts？

[green people]

We all know that the KSP program is a very creative game. We can complete all kinds of fun things. However, with the increase of components, computers began to jam and sea monsters began to increase. At this time, I began to wonder whether we can reduce the number of components in some ways.

I hope to reduce the number of spacecraft with more than 200 parts to every digit as much as possible.I imagine that if we can define a complete spacecraft, including cockpit, fuel tank, engine, command and control, components, connection, load, wing, landing gear, thermal energy, electronics, communication, science and equipment, and then we combine them, maybe we can effectively reduce the number of parts

[jastrone]

well we saw in one of the videos that we would have procedural wings so we dont need as many wings on a plane in ksp 2. i also think it  will be the same with fuel tanks.  what the devs could do is put parts inside the ship and not load them as physical parts. ex you can fit a certain amounts of experiments inside a command module. 

[AtomicTech]

On 1/23/2022 at 10:33 AM, green people said:

We all know that the KSP program is a very creative game. We can complete all kinds of fun things. However, with the increase of components, computers began to jam and sea monsters began to increase. At this time, I began to wonder whether we can reduce the number of components in some ways.

I hope to reduce the number of spacecraft with more than 200 parts to every digit as much as possible.I imagine that if we can define a complete spacecraft, including cockpit, fuel tank, engine, command and control, components, connection, load, wing, landing gear, thermal energy, electronics, communication, science and equipment, and then we combine them, maybe we can effectively reduce the number of parts

There's a mod that does that.

[ElonsMusk]

It's a reach but an official Weld tool would be... amazing.

[problemecium]

That sounds like a start, yes, but what we're discussing, mathematically, is data compression, and data can only be compressed so much without significant loss.

Imagine an extreme case, for argument's sake, wherein all of the information you described was contained in a single massive data structure and the ship were only one part. The ship would be entirely rigid and unable to detach stages. Perhaps a stage could be detached by procedurally rebuilding all the data about the ship and repacking it into two separate craft, but that sounds like something that would cause a big lag spike, no? That's not even mentioning that yes, we'd have eliminated the physics engine burden of calculating drag cubes and inertia and forces etc. etc. for the parts, but all that data about fuel flow, crew, heat, etc. would still have to be processed, and that single part would have very complex geometry (including colliders and other invisible geometry used for physics calculations) and thus perform far worse than a single part normally does.

In short, a lot of the data processing that makes craft lag isn't made simpler by reducing the nominal part count, and there's a big cost associated with aggressive optimizations like this, and with the diminishing returns of one optimization after another, KSP is already pretty close to as good as it is practical to get it. That's part of the motive behind making KSP 2 - to get KSP much more performant than it is would require so many changes to its code base, from bottom to top, that the time and effort involved would be comparable to a big chunk of a whole new game.

In the meantime, the existing part welder mod is pretty effective at what it does and might be enough to tide you over until the sequel lands.

[Azimech]

On 1/23/2022 at 5:33 PM, green people said:

We all know that the KSP program is a very creative game. We can complete all kinds of fun things. However, with the increase of components, computers began to jam and sea monsters began to increase. At this time, I began to wonder whether we can reduce the number of components in some ways.

I hope to reduce the number of spacecraft with more than 200 parts to every digit as much as possible.I imagine that if we can define a complete spacecraft, including cockpit, fuel tank, engine, command and control, components, connection, load, wing, landing gear, thermal energy, electronics, communication, science and equipment, and then we combine them, maybe we can effectively reduce the number of parts

I guess you're ten years too late. The amount of parts made available has made this game iconic as it is. Reducing the amount of parts? Might help some people who don't have enough memory in their pc but would enrage thousands of players who depend on them.

It is never going to happen.

But you're free to delete part files from the install folder.

Edited January 29, 2022 by Azimech