How do we fix intake spam?

[kiwiak]

Maybe just limit how much intakes can one engine handle?

[helaeon]

Probably add some parts, tweakables, and/or change the properties of the atmosphere so something else would generally be considered a better idea than adding a pile of intakes. Which would also be preferable because it would bring the part count down.

I'm not a big fan of taking things away and saying "nope you can't do this anymore". Need to have a way to solve the problem that previously had a solution. If you want to limit the number of intakes one engine can handle then some hyperjet parts are probably warranted.

[Tex_NL]

Best way to limit intake spam is your own sense of realism. Personally I have no moral dilemmas with multiple intakes but I will not stack them. My intakes can't be blocked, they must all have direct airflow.

[Kasuha]

I think intakes could have a bit more mass. Apart of that, the only thing that needs to be fixed on intake vs jet engine relation is asymmetric flameout. Everything else is fine by me.

First, you can only get so far with intake spam, above 3-4 intakes per engine you hit diminishing returns pretty hard.

And second, if you don't like intake spam, then just don't spam intakes.

[Frank_G]

Intake spam in general is something i don´t really get... It looks terrible and you can get an SSTO with 4 RAPIERs and only 4 Intakes into 100 km orbit with almost 2000 delta V left... Limiting however is not KSP style. I would do nothing about that and let the players decide.

[Sirrobert]

Why would you?

If it bothers you, don't use it. Trying to limit it only blocks of play styles for someone that isn't you

[macegee]

And how do you fix "MOAR BOOSTERS" spam?

[kiwiak]

And how do you fix "MOAR BOOSTERS" spam?

With proper aerodynamic system that makes flying pancakes rocket impossible.

Hovever fixing intage spam woudl probably nod tequire such dreastic measurements.

[macegee]

It was a rhetorical question. Devs said many many times that they won't try to limit players in any way.

[Joonatan1998]

I don't understand how are they planning to make career mode work in any way if they don't want to limit players.

The whole point of the career mode is to give players limitations, and I don't think that it can be good if those limitations are all only based on science and money.

I think that they should make intake spam not work in career mode, but leave it working on sandbox.

(or maybe several options, like:

Re-entry heat on/off

Life support on/off

Intake spam on/off

that would by default be on in career mode, and off in sandbox mode)

I understand that this is a sandbox game, but if the career mode doesn't have any limits on anything, we could as well just have sandbox mode.

Edited March 23, 2014 by Joonatan1998

[Kasuha]

Re-entry heat on/off

Life support on/off

Intake spam on/off

Hmmm... let me continue:

Fuel lines on/off

Struts on/off

Engines on/off

But to be honest, I think there are limits which make sense, and limits which don't.

Besides, you can always make a plane with 15 engines and 15 intakes, then decouple 14 engines.

[PhaserArray]

In my opinion, the intakes should only work when they are not blocked by other parts. I actually build my planes to not have any blocked air intakes.

[kiwiak]

It was a rhetorical question. Devs said many many times that they won't try to limit players in any way.

Sure thing.

Why fuel on my ship is not infinite

I feel restricted!

[Hodo]

The simplest fix is to recode the whole jet engine code and set it so that each jet engine is modeled after a real engine, and has limitations placed on it as in the real world. Be it speed, altitude, heat or any combination of them. The plugin AYJ does a great job of this, along with FAR.

But I have a feeling a large part of the community would birth jumbo-32 tanks if SQUAD implemented that level of realism.

[John FX]

So the question is more "Why can`t I impose a restriction on other players which would make no difference to me?"

Just don`t spam intakes if you don`t want intakes spammed...

When the aerodynamic and atmosphere systems are made more realistic then certain tactics will fail to continue working without having to code for a special case (always a bad idea).

[Sirrobert]

Sure thing.

Why fuel on my ship is not infinite

I feel restricted!

Alt F12 to open the cheat menu.

There you go, unrestricted fuel

[tntristan12]

I think the problem isn't so much with intake spam but with the bjorked aerodynamic model in the game. I have a feeling that more realistic aerodynamics will quickly incentivise more realistic intake behavior.

[Joonatan1998]

Alt F12 to open the cheat menu.

There you go, unrestricted fuel

So limiting intake spam is OK, as long as we get an option in the cheats menu to enable it?

[Nuke]

some ideas:

1. cap the flow rate at the engine, limit how much intake air the engine can consume (its not easy to cram a lot of stuff into a little hole).

2. if you have more intake capacity than an engine can consume, make the intake produce more drag. this actually happens in real engines.

3. more intakes means more compression means more heat. inject that heat into the engine, so running with intake spam results in overheats (also realistic).

any combination of the 3 would work.

also this doesnt limit you, if you want to ride action groups and take off with only a few open intakes, then open more of them at altitude. by all means. your engine gets hot, put some heat reduction parts on it. too much drag? add more boosters. every problem has a workaround, if you want the added complexity/weight. its up to the player to come up with the best combination.

Edited March 23, 2014 by Nuke

[PDCWolf]

Not sure if somebody mentioned this already but there should be no thing as "more intakes = more air" to begin with. Engines have both a maximum and a minimum of how much air they need. More air doesn't mean anything, less air means they don't work. For me, the solution should be taken in two steps:

First: Rewrite the intake logic. This means intakes need a direct or semi-direct path to the engine/s (Connected by stuff like a nacelle or structural fuselage or whatever), this would nullify things like placing intakes on cubic struts on your wings.

Second: Give engines minimum and maximum air consumption. More air and you are generating useless drag and probably overheating your engine. Less air than minimum and the thing won't work (high altitude flameouts).

[Hodo]

I think the problem isn't so much with intake spam but with the bjorked aerodynamic model in the game. I have a feeling that more realistic aerodynamics will quickly incentivise more realistic intake behavior.

Oh so true, but again a very vocal part of the community would scream like little school Kerbals as soon as you took away their automagicalwouldneverworkinamillionyears aircraft that they have made and flown around to different planets in. They would say you are impossing on their ability to play.

If you really want to see the level of divide in the KSP community look at the spacecraft exchange forums or the challenges forums. And see the number of people who scream bloody murder if you post an aircraft or a SSTO that uses FAR, DRE, B9, KW, or AIES parts on it. Some people will go as far as to report you to the moderators and say that you are destroying their thread or some other BS. And god help you if you use Mechjeb on something even for the information it provides.

I would LOVE if SQUAD added the FAR and DRE plugin to the stock KSP to fix some of the cartoon physics they currently have going on.

[Joonatan1998]

I don't think that the problem is that engines become more powerfull with more intakes, they just workat much higher altitudes and high altitudes mean less drag and that means that you can almost reach orbit with jet engines.

[6.forty]

I would LOVE if SQUAD added the FAR and DRE plugin to the stock KSP to fix some of the cartoon physics they currently have going on.

FAR would be perfectly fine, but I would prefer to do without DRE. I'm already bad enough at forgetting RCS thrusters, solar panels, or antennas that I wouldn't want to add heat shields to my already too long "Why I Failed" list.

First: Rewrite the intake logic. This means intakes need a direct or semi-direct path to the engine/s (Connected by stuff like a nacelle or structural fuselage or whatever), this would nullify things like placing intakes on cubic struts on your wings.

This seems like the logical solution to me and I already try to build planes that way. I see intakes functioning on struts as a very exploited bug. As it is, intakes act like magic portals for air.

[Dunbaratu]

Intake spam is *already* limited by a rather artificial unfair game mechanic - the incorrect way oxygen is delivered to the engines unevenly so that if you have, say 2 engines with 2 intakes each, for a total of 4 intakes, and each intake is operating at only 1/3 capacity because the air is getting thin, such that there's a total of of enough air for 1 1/3 fully functional engines, then the air capacity is not distributed evenly as giving 2/3 air to each engine. Instead you end up giving 100% to one engine and only 1/3 to the other, making the aircraft spin out of control from the uneven thrust. This is true regardless of how you've arranged the air intakes and how symmetrical you make the craft. All the air intakes add air to a common pool that all the engines pull air from, satisfying one engine entirely before seeing how much is left for the next engine.

The correct behavior for that sort of "air pool" algorithm would be to sum the total air all the engines are trying to use, sum the total air available in the pool, and if the total air available is only X percent of the total amount needed, for any X less than 100, then give *all* the engines only X percent of the air they are requesting, evenly. If you're going to use the 'air pool' method, then do it that way. The even better solution is not to have an air pool at all and instead let the airplane designer designate which air intake is connected to which engine when building. That would be more realistic and get rid of the problem. But if you *are* going to do it with the common air pool, then at least make the engines pull from that pool evenly as described earlier in this paragraph.

This misfeature in the game *already* makes spamming intakes pointless. Until that problem is fixed the issue of spamming intakes doesn't matter because it just doesn't really *work* to try to do so anyway.

[m4v]

Just making intakes to not work when blocked (the same way solar panels do) would help to prevent intake spam without having to rewrite any logic.