"Far is hard"

[Camacha]

While I don't entirely disagree, go to 10km and turn 45 degrees is a pretty short learning curve compared to FAR.

You can get away with pretty awkward stuff with FAR. I think Ferram once said that everything is a rocket with enough power behind it, so even a brick with enough thrust will get to orbit. Considering FAR makes the atmosphere a lot thinner reaching orbit should be easier on the fuel consumption too. That is what KIDS is for.

As long as you do not try stupid stuff, like turning like crazy, you will be fine if you use FAR.

[regex]

While I don't entirely disagree, go to 10km and turn 45 degrees is a pretty short learning curve compared to FAR.

It's not because you learn both ways through a simple Google search. Furthermore, under FAR you can use your pre-existing knowledge (if any) of how planes look and fly, and how rockets launch, to help you get into orbit. If anything, stock has a steeper learning curve because things don't work properly.

[cicatrix]

Although I never managed (had patience) to build an SSTO with any practical use (only experimental ones which barely had fuel left on LKO for a return trip) I manage to build decent atmospheric planes which fly rather well. Anyway, once I had installed FAR for the first time I was intimidated by all these charts and derivatives (I do confess I still have only vague understanding of all this). My rockets were falling apart, my planes were doing werid things and at first I thought it's more pain than fun.

But I was too lazy to uninstall the mod and continued to experiment with it. Day after day I started to appreciate low dV cost to get to LKO, I learnt to use aerodynamic forms and proper plane/rocket designs. I found that you can still launch pancakes with FAR and generally it helps a lot to get properly built things flying.

The only thing I really didn't like in FAR is ballistic re-entry. Precise landings on planets with atmosphere in MechJeb's style are impossible. You are always off to you targets. Still it IS more realistic this way which I appreciate and I learned to live with it.

And I turned off aerodynamic failures - this is really as far as I'm ready to do with FAR

Anyway, I use FAR now and I don't find it hard. It's quite easier to fly with FAR rather than in stock aero so I voted 'easy'.

Finally, I think some better documentation/explanation/tutorial than it is now would be a great help to newbies.

[camlost]

That's like anything else in this game, it's easy once you know how to do it. The problem is that people start learning on the completely terrible and inadequate stock system, picking up all of the terrible habits it encourages, before moving on to NEAR/FAR (if so inclined to move on from terribleness). If FAR were the stock system no one would be complaining about it being hard because they would have learned the game using it.

I agree with that. However in defense of the stock aerodynamics, it is not the aerodynamics itself that encourages bad habits, it's the control being jumpy, the runway being short, the engines being overpowered, the inlets being nonsense and such things that encourages bad habits. In short, the whole thing is a mess.

And for those of us who come from other flight simulators, we come with good habits formed in those softwares. Of course we want FAR so everything would make sense. A week into the game I converted to FAR and never looked back.

An example of good habit/bad habit: pulling 15G's at sea level and supersonic speed is crazy, and should never work.

[Camacha]

It's not because you learn both ways through a simple Google search. Furthermore, under FAR you can use your pre-existing knowledge (if any) of how planes look and fly, and how rockets launch, to help you get into orbit. If anything, stock has a steeper learning curve because things don't work properly.

I second this. Whenever you are unsure of how to do anything, just find out how NASA, ESA or Roscosmos do it and you will have a pretty good idea of how to do it in KSP. No guides needed.

[NWDogg]

Just to chime in with a slightly different perspective, when I first started playing KSP, I could barely get even a simple rocket to orbit. I had tried, and tried, and tried...and no matter what I did, I just couldn't get enough speed through the atmosphere to break into orbit, or if I did I was out of gas shortly after, unable to circularize. So, what was my problem? I was trying, like a fool, to fly a rocket like, well, a rocket.

So I jumped into the forums. I found out about this thing called a 'gravity turn' that you did at 10km straight up, pitch over to 45 degrees and you'll get to orbit (huh? won't that just flip the rocket around? I thought). I found out that nosecones were adding drag. I found that flat, bulky rockets flew better than my long sleek ones. I was flabbergasted, as here this whole time I was thinking this game was supposed to be 'realistic' and yet, almost everything I knew about rockets before KSP had to be thrown out the window. Shortly after I started I found FAR, and I've never looked back...KSP is now the realistic-ish space simulator-ish game I've always wanted.

I guess maybe I'm not the typical case study, as I came from playing Orbiter. I would actually keep Orbiter running for a week at a time to simulate a real-time mission to the moon, so I felt very out of place with the physics of KSP (at least in atmosphere; in space it is still pretty darn good, and actually helped me learn quite a bit about Orbiter as well.) I guess my ultimate point is, from someone who has at least a basic understanding of real-life rocketry, FAR is intuitive while stock aero is hard. If this game didn't come with the excellent community that it has, I and many others probably would have written it off long ago due to the frustratingly unreal aerodynamics.

[RainDreamer]

I would say that FAR is not hard. It is just...detailed.

[Jouni]

Rockets are easier in FAR than in stock, while atmospheric landers are harder. I don't care about things with wings, as they require too much fine-tuning.

[eddiew]

The only hard thing about FAR is aerodynamic disintegration - which you can turn off in its options

The detail window is not required to get to orbit, and in fact I have several working FAR spaceplanes for which I have never checked the stability statistics. They got to orbit during prototyping, and they didn't lose control on re-entry; I therefore don't care about any red numbers that might be lurking. If you understand CoM and CoL, and you have a feel for how a high speed plane should look, then you can manage just fine

Other than that, FAR makes common sense apply to the launchpad and runway. If your plane looks like a plane, it often flies like one. If your rocket looks like a rocket, it often flies like one. If your plane looks like an imbalanced tangle of wings that shouldn't fly, then it probably won't fly.

FAR can however gimp your style... Because it forces you to take the common sense answer of smooth rockets and balanced wings, it's harder to do weird and crazy contraptions. It doesn't mean that you can't make pretty rockets and planes, but you may have to tone down the oddball ideas. If you like mad and crazy shapes (which I admit can look awesome) which have never appeared in terrestrial engineering, then FAR isn't going to be for you.

[smjjames]

Rockets are easier in FAR than in stock, while atmospheric landers are harder. I don't care about things with wings, as they require too much fine-tuning.

Less DeltaV required to get out of the atmosphere too.

[sal_vager]

Less DeltaV required to get out of the atmosphere too.

Funny how this is being seen as a negative point to Squads aero overhaul

[smjjames]

Well, lets just see how things perform in Squads aerodynamics overhaul. I doubt they'd make things require more DeltaV to get out of Kerbins atmosphere than they already do. So, in any case, it's likely to be less DeltaV anyway.

[Alshain]

My question is why shouldn't it be less? Why should you have to build an asparagus staged monster to get anywhere?

[smjjames]

My question is why shouldn't it be less? Why should you have to build an asparagus staged monster to get anywhere?

Hopefully Squad will consider that question.

[gmiddlemass]

Don't really see the need for the first two choices in the poll... how am I supposed to form an opinion on whether something is too hard or too easy if I've never used it?

For balance it should probably have the option of "I'm not really interested in FAR" or "I've not tried it because i THINK it will be too hard"

Sorry for being picky... no offence intended to anyone.

[Alshain]

Don't really see the need for the first two choices in the poll... how am I supposed to form an opinion on whether something is too hard or too easy if I've never used it?

For balance it should probably have the option of "I'm not really interested in FAR" or "I've not tried it because i THINK it will be too hard"

Sorry for being picky... no offence intended to anyone.

He was trying to prove a point, a lot of people assume FAR is hard so they don't try.

[Jouni]

My question is why shouldn't it be less? Why should you have to build an asparagus staged monster to get anywhere?

Building launch vehicles is a large part of the game. If launching large payloads to orbit is too easy, there's much less to do in the game.

(I would also like to make asparagus staging more dangerous. If staging cuts a fuel line, and an engine is draining fuel from or through a fuel tank that was connected to the fuel line, the tank should explode. To avoid explosions, you should only cut interstage fuel lines when the engines are not running.)

[Padishar]

(I would also like to make asparagus staging more dangerous. If staging cuts a fuel line, and an engine is draining fuel from or through a fuel tank that was connected to the fuel line, the tank should explode. To avoid explosions, you should only cut interstage fuel lines when the engines are not running.)

While I agree with what you are saying about cutting a fuel line that has fuel running through it should go bang, this isn't how asparagus rockets are built. You drop tanks and the engines connected to them when the tanks are empty and the engines attached to the tanks have stopped. The fuel lines that connect those tanks to the other engines of the rocket no longer have fuel running through them so this wouldn't make any normal asparagus design any more dangerous unless you decide to drop tanks and engines before they are empty, in which case you are taking a big risk of the tank and engine taking a jolly jaunt through the rest of your rocket anyway...

Edit: I voted "easy, I've used it" because I have and it is. I have numerous different installs with different setups (stock, NEAR and FAR) and I regularly play all of them, and I find that FAR is far easier than stock because it is much closer to reality (and my intuitive understanding of aerodynamics that I've developed over the 30+ years I've been flying model aeroplanes and flight simulators).

Edited January 15, 2015 by Padishar

[Alshain]

Building launch vehicles is a large part of the game. If launching large payloads to orbit is too easy, there's much less to do in the game.

That's bull. No other way to put it. It takes just as much time building a rocket for launch in FAR as it does in stock, the emphasis is just on weight and fuel balancing rather than running fuel lines in confusing configurations, and in the end your rocket looks like a rocket instead of a bunch of toilet paper rolls.

[smjjames]

Given how much more effective asparagus staging seems to be, I wonder why it isn't done more in RL?

Obviously part of the answer is money, but still.

@Alshain: Asparagus staging would still be useful when you've got a REALLY heavy load to push to orbit. IMO, asparagus staging is fine, but each to their own.

Edited January 15, 2015 by smjjames

[tater]

Are you guys really at odds? Perhaps he means that launching a monster in 1 piece is "less to do" than having to rendezvous in orbit and assemble it since you'd have to send it up in rockets that look like rockets first.

[Guest]

That's bull. No other way to put it. It takes just as much time building a rocket for launch in FAR as it does in stock, the emphasis is just on weight and fuel balancing rather than running fuel lines in confusing configurations, and in the end your rocket looks like a rocket.

This, exactly.

I fall more into the "Tried FAR but found it a bit more fiddly than I currently want to be bothered with." Not complicated by any stretch. The only thing I had to modify were my ascent profiles since my rockets all look like, well, rockets rather than a berserk ferris wheel on an acid trip. But rather than get too far down the road with FAR or NEAR, I stayed hopeful Squad would finally give us a workable aerodynamics model and opted for Stock Drag Fix seeing as I don't bother with planes much. I can build planes just fine, I'm just a rubbish pilot.

[regex]

Given how much more effective asparagus staging seems to be, I wonder why it isn't done more in RL?

Obviously part of the answer is money, but still.

Because it's very difficult mechanically and very dangerous to do when there is an actual risk of failure (you are adding more failure paths). Only one rocket will have cross-feeding fuel from boosters to core and it hasn't been built yet.

[smjjames]

Are you guys really at odds? Perhaps he means that launching a monster in 1 piece is "less to do" than having to rendezvous in orbit and assemble it since you'd have to send it up in rockets that look like rockets first.

Only problem is that in stock KSP, there is no way outside of using docking ports to connect pieces in orbit, and docking ports don't make for stiff connections.

[Alshain]

@Alshain: Asparagus staging would still be useful when you've got a REALLY heavy load to push to orbit. IMO, asparagus staging is fine, but each to their own.

Oh yeah, you can still use it in FAR, it's just not an almost requirement like Stock.

One of the biggest problems with Asparagus in real life is it's very hard to get fuel pumps to work that quickly. Your engines will burn the tank that is gravity feeding them much faster than the fuel pumps can refill them. Essentially Asparagus is a "near future" tech that KSP allows, not that much different from SSTOs which don't exist in r/l either. Add to that, the potential failure would be disastrous.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Alshain