Michaelbak

This is besides the point. The reason that the MK2 is so broken is that it's a pod made for landers. When you launch a lander you're not just designing a ship, you're designing two ships. You keep talking about how it doesn't make much of a difference in to the overall craft which is somewhat fallacious but in practical terms could be seen as true. The issue here is not that first craft but the second one, the lander. I don't know how you play but I try to keep my landers as light as possible to squeeze out the absolute most DeltaV possible (I only use three landing legs or none at all if I can get away with it.). The reason why is that once I get my craft on it's way to some place like Minmus, at the minimum, I require it to acquire and or adjust an orbit, land at a designated LZ, take off again, and return safely to Kerbin. To accomplish all of these tasks which I would consider very non extravagant with a reasonable amount of inefficiency (We can't just cop out and say 'Get Gud' when people of all different skill levels play this game, not everyone pilots their crafts perfectly like a computer) requires a surprising amount of deltaV, especially on a body with a strong gravitational pull like the Mun. It's for that reason that the end craft that's doing all this work is where the weight really matters, not in the giant rockets you launch from kerbin but the one you have to land and take off with from the Mun. To say that this task would be just as easy with a big heavy craft would be absurd. Thats why my example of a two person 2.65 ton lander with 1,391 DeltaV was so important. For a craft where weight is almost everything being able to build an entire lander for literally under the weight of just the base part is absolutely absurd and shows how broken it is for the task it's intended to accomplish. And yes you can get away with more weight by having a less efficient craft with an apollo style orbital module, and for landing on a lot of places like Dres this makes perfect sense. But you still need it to be light so that it can have enough deltaV to land and pair up with it again later, besides the fact that the heavier you make the lander module the bigger and heavier you have to make the orbital module which leads to a very different rocket overall. All weight is like a snowball on a race to the bottom. For local moons however, I think a lot players would waste more DeltaV trying to meet up and dock with their orbital craft than to just go straight home. Although it is my opinion, considering that most players have been to the Mun but have probably never even heard of Dres, I think it's safer to bias towards this usage when balancing rather then assume that everyone using a MK2 pod wants to go to Ike with a separate orbital module. Also, I would have to question your adamancy to your position of keeping its current stats. Are you truly pleased by its weight which I have argued is excessive or do you fear for changing the status quo? If its weight were reduced in a future update to something like 1.30 tons for instance, would you create a new thread arguing for days about why we should revert it back to 2.66?

Making a new "Lander" version and making the current one a science based version sounds very intriguing. However, I fail to see how completely redesigning a current part inside and out would be safer for people's save files then simply changing a numerical value. Common sense tells me that simply changing the part's mass would be less problematic.

The difference rarely matters? Need remind you that I was easily able to make a fully functioning mission ready lander using two MK1 pods that weighed LESS than a bare MK2 pod again? There's balancing for terms of asymmetrical game play, and then there's balancing that's just plain broken. This part falls in the latter. Another thing. People keep talking about increasing kerbal capacity as an easier option but I don't really see how programing in more kerbals to be in the craft, remodeling the interior of the craft, and placing new animated kerbals inside the craft will have less of a chance of breaking people's ships then just changing a the mass which is nothing more than a numerical attribute (correct me if I'm wrong).

As many have harped on earlier in the thread, people choose different pod types for different missions. The Cupola might seem terrible for a conventional craft due to it's attachment points and weight. In it's intended usage as a high visibility viewing module on something like a space station however, it's perfect. This can be seen as an imbalance in terms of weight vs technical function but almost all in game pods are actually balanced in respect to their own specific purposes when observed. The problem with the MK2 pod weighing so much verses other designs is that it's a lander pod designed to carry two Kerbals to the surface of a vacuum based celestial body such as Minmus or Dres, this is apparent from it's design both in technical specifications (low crash tolerance) and design attributes relating it to the MK1 lander pod. For practical applications, a lander is usually designed to be as light and fuel efficient as possible. It sits as the top of a pyramid in ways as it's typically the last stage on a craft and acts as pure dead weight during all other stages. This leads to a multiplying problem, 1 extra ton of dead weight in the last stage can mean x amount of extra weight added to earlier lift and even orbital stages. Second, the lander is usually somewhat self sustaining in terms of being able to perform orbits, land, take off, hop between biomes, etc when employed. At it's simplest, paired with a separate orbital module, it still must do a great deal of operations to eventually pair with it as well as perform it's intended mission objectives. If a lander is mean't to land and never return it's technically a base. As it stands the MK2 lander weighs over twice as much as two Mk1 lander pods. When separated by functional category, I.E High crash tolerance pods, lander pods, jet pods, and multiplied by crew capacity, we don't see this drastic a weight gain in any other pod in the entire game. This is made even worse due to it's intended function. How big of a deal is 1.34 tons for a lander? Well for perspective, that's a little less than the weight of two 24-77 engines and a FL-T200 fuel tank yielding 1,364m/s deltaV (read using kerbal engineer redux) and a 1.24 Kerbin TWR when added to two stacked Mk1 pods. In other words you can literally build an entirely functional two person lander for less than the weight of a single MK2 pod by itself. This is why this is such a problem. -Edit- I made another one with a parachute and slightly more DeltaV using clipping that still weighs less than a Mk2 pod.

Because you guys are going off can I just state that the original intention of this thread was to ask for a reduction to the weight of the MK2 Lander Pod so that it was more like a doubled version of the MK1 lander pod...

I run OSX, could you please explain to me how changing a number in part's file from "2.66" to something like "1.70" would cause memory issues?

But the problem is that life support isn't a thing. You shouldn't defend current misbalancing based off possible outlets which will have to be accounted for in the future.

Maybe somebody can tell me the purpose of the MK2 lander can because I can't see one. In the past the MK1 was the lightest and yet most fragile pod in the whole game. The MK2 weighted a lot more than the MK1 but was more crash tolerant as well as having a larger size. We see this as well in the MK1 and MK1-2 Command pods even in the current update. It weighs more than the smaller ones tripled but has a much greater crash tolerance as well which balances it. But now the MK1 and MK2 have the exact same crash tolerance and the MK2 weighs over twice as much as a doubled MK1! Why would you ever use it? I mean sure I guess it has bigger reaction wheels, but I can add an external one to get the same capability and it still weighs under half. Bigger diameter size? Maybe, but why does it weigh over TWICE as a doubled MK1 instead of like 125%-130% as much???

Thanks for the tip but I don't really see any "Mumbo Jumbo" about simply adding their job title below their name in the HUD. It states it in the astronaut complex It states it in the map view tab It states it in the tracking station I just don't understand why it doesn't in the in game view. All it would do is make the game's experience more streamlined and easier to approach.

Hey small suggestion but could you add the job title of a kerbal to the in game HUD? It's really annoying to have to try to remember all their titles byor quit your flight, visit the staff building, view the title, and then re-control the craft just to find the kerbal with the desired position to perform a job specific action. I have a space station with over 20 kerbals and it's a chore to try to find an engineer whenever something like a solar panel accidentally breaks. Please add this to the game it would save a lot of headaches and just plain makes sense. Just make it so the little kerbal IVA window in the lower right would say like: "Jebediah Kerman" "Pilot"

Lightweight-Vacuum-Personnel-Lander MK-1 Hi KSP forums! I'm really used to seeing a lot of big beefy landers for landing on places like the Mun and Minmus but I like to focus on lighter weight designs. The LVPL MK-1 is my newest lander and by far the most effective. It's a two stage design consisting of a primary stage for general use with a throw away fuel tank to aid in initial orbital and landing phases. It consists of four separate mono propellant thrusters which give it extremely versatile maneuverability and balance, only being biased to one side due to a landing light (which can be removed for day time only operations). The craft is even balanced enough to be entirly usable using only two thrusters if one is compromised during a faulty landing. This design uses a great deal of weightless parts and as some of the images show has room to be configured with extra batteries, science parts, or lights as necessary for the mission protocol. A few key notes for effectively understanding and operating this craft: -It has a fairly unique landing procedure as it lands on it's parachute which is located on the center bottom of the craft. The chute can withstand forces equal to that of landing legs but greater care must be taken so that the craft lands directly on the chute itself. The thrusters are designed in such a way to be recessed from taking any damage from landing, however landing directly on a fuel tank will likely result in some form of major failure. -Due to it's unique design the craft must be mounted upside down on it's lifter craft and flipped around when preparing for landing. -The first stage of the craft is mean't to be disconnected ONLY when the craft is landing and moving downwards within vacuum. Separating this external fuel tank stage while moving forward or in a pressurized environment may lead to collision with the craft and damage or otherwise major failure. If disconnecting the stage within these parameters is necessary, equipping a single sepratron to one side of fuel tank (as seen in some of the photos) has proven to be extremely effective at safely performing this separation. -The craft being equipped with the standard parachute cannot safely land on Kerbin with certain levels of fuel left in the tanks. It is strongly advised to fire any remaining fuel during the re-entry stage to ensure a safe landing on kerbin after a mission. Specs: Stage 1 3,076 Delta/v 4,025kg 2.03 TWR Specs: Stage 2 2,594 Delta/v 2.94 TWR 2,775kg Landing light and communotron 16 with 1,250 electric charge capacity equipped standard. Cost 15,250 Download

I think it would be really beneficial to add a Rover Assembly Building or other Rover centric building features to ksp in order to make building rovers and other small craft easier. Perhaps players have become complacent with the current system but I find a fair bit of difficulty to build even simple crafts. Placing wheels on a vehicle body in the VAB is a MAJOR pain. The spaceplane hangar makes this a lot easier but placing almost anything else on the rover in a symmetrical fashion such as solar panels or batteries is once again, frustrating. Further more there is no official way in game to transfer vehicles between assembly buildings in the currant system. If I wanted to build a rover in the SPH, test it from that building, then launch it on a rocket built in the VAB to send it to Duna or something I can't do that! I would have to attempt to rebuild it in the VAB which completely defeats the purpose of using the spaceplane hanger for connivence; Yes I know there's ways to do it thru save files but that's besides the point. Building rovers right now feels like an exploit. With the current system it seems to heavily imply "You're using a system to build rockets to trying to exploit it to make something completely different" but that's not how it should be! I love using rovers to explore body's and all the parts are included vanilla so it's not an exploit! They are an integral part of the game! So WHY is the core foundation for building these vanilla supported vehicles so flawed? A spaceplane hanger was added to the game, why not a rover assembly building?