Keith_Bones

I've been subscribed to Day[9] forever, and 3 years ago it was a game he played a bit, he never really got passed barely achieving orbit, but I probably bought the game about 3 minutes into his first video about it. Been playing on and off ever since.

I've been experimenting with seaborne craft in the hopes of attempting the circumnavigation challenge, this is my current prototype. I'm using the now-hollow structural fuselage as pontoons to keep the engines out of the water, which has let me hit 70 m/s. Interestingly, the wheels being deployed doesn't seem to affect anything, which means that either they don't have any drag in the water, or they always have drag. Getting it to turn without Rapid Unplanned Disassemblyâ„¢ is still an issue, and other various work to be done, but it's promising.

A daring "to Duna and back in 1 launch" mission is going smoothy.

You can setup windows to switch between Dvorak and QWERTY with a key-combo. I just use that, it keeps me from needing to rebind every game that I play to custom keybinds. I just switch back whenever I want to type something.

Yeah, this is kinda my problem with balancing the MK1 around reduced max temp because even if heating were actually an issue, like you say, it's not like you would reenter without some kind of shield anyway. And honestly the MK2 is so much heavier that even if it had a higher heat tolerance, crash tolerance, more electric charge and mono prop, and more science containers, the weight would still have to come down some, otherwise you work too much functionality into 1 part, and 2.66 tons would take a lot of functionality to justify.

This has more to do with the way aero heating is applied. Having come in with a similar setup before, I'm assuming your engine was on the bottom, pointed into the wind, followed by the fuel tank, and the lander can in the rear. If that's the case then both the engine and the fuel tank are occluding the can from the aero heating because anything with the same size or larger node will occlude in that way. The legs took heating because any radially attached part will always suffer from aero heating, regardless of visual occlusion, unless the part is stowed in a bay or fairing. So the can was probably only receiving extremely minor amounts of heat, given that the heat first had to transfer from the engine to the tank, and then into the pod, and that process is probably pretty slow because fuel tanks heat up extremely slow, given that they have high thermal mass. It's also unlikely that the engine would blow up because engines are designed to withstand the intense heat of the flames blowing out of them under normal use, effectively turning it into a heat shield on reentry. Or the short version, you essentially reentered with a double heat shield. Heating is not balanced, or even kind of difficult. : /

This actually wouldn't work at all as far as I'm aware. The way atmo heating is applied to parts in the game has nothing to do with visual occlusion, and the heat would probably still be applied to your ship like normal. That being said, you should totally try it because it sounds awesome. Would this be considered litho breaking?

I've done similar tests at about 10km/s that have indicated that a few airbrakes is enough that almost no part in the game even needs a heat shield, and if they do, you still don't lose any ablator. That's really more of an overall heat mechanic discussion, but I see what you're getting at. In a world where heat functions properly, that stat could be a good place to look at.

Red has an excellent point, I think we should return the discussion to the part in question, not overall gameplay choices, or personal preference. We have shown that 2 MK1 lander cans are objectively better in every statistical way. They weigh less, they cost less, even though it has slightly less mono prop and reaction wheel torque, it is easily argued that the reduced weight means that they have more overall effect on the craft, and even if they don't, those stats can be re-added to the craft still for less weight. It has more containers for stored science experiments. We can argue until the cows come home about how we specifically play the game, but the numbers suggest that the thing is bad, even if you can find workarounds.

The beginnings of a station

The inability to revert means that every point of funds spent on every design is potentially spent multiple times, because the little fudge ups that everybody makes like "oh woops, just forget to turn symmetry on" Are also non-revertable. So it very much can become an efficiency thing. - - - Updated - - - I thought I've remained pretty well spoken actually, if not, y'all should let me know.

Yeah, that's a good point, given that multi-kerbal missions are often decided upon for science reasons. But the change would still have to be dramatic, given that I can create a fully functional minmus lander with 2 MK1s (and thus, two science containers) for a full ton under the weight of just the Mk2.

Honestly, I find him hard to interpret myself. No worries manard. Honestly the entire thing has been blown wholly out of proportion, we're really just talking about a tiny number tweak in one place or another, I don't know why it has become this. - - - Updated - - - Nope. I've literally never started a mission and said "the only point of this mission is to land 1000 tons on duna". Now, maybe you have, and I'm certain that some other people have, but don't make broad generalizations for the entire community. So after 5 pages of nonsensical run-arounds you actually agree that the thing could be changed for the better. If you had just admitted to this earlier maybe we would have 5 pages of discussion about how specifically to change the thing, and the merits of each, rather than unfounded, denunciatory garbage. Finally, the argument you should've opened with. Unfortunately we've already talked about how the thing is far past the weight required to be a unique part, and about alternate options if you really want heavy things. - repost for forum strangness-

And this still doesn't explain Jouni's opinion that a heavier payload is better. So you just explained how you were wrong earlier, when you said that a heavier payload is better, and that payload and ballast are the same. Being that the purpose of a payload is the mission attached to it, then weight would have no bearing on the importance of said payload, except that a heavier payload has more logistical difficulties associated with it. And crew modules then can't be considered ballast because they serve a direct function, and aren't "mere cargo". If anything this is just an argument that actual ballast parts should be added to the game, not that the pod is balanced. Oh please, lets. Yup, still looks like opinion. And the rest of your argument is something about the point of funds in the game isn't efficiency, it's about building upgrades, which is still an argument that supports the weight reduction because building upgrades place hard limits on ship designs, including weight. Also, the point of balance for the entirety of career mode funds is way to large in scope to be discussed in this thread, and still has no bearing on a part being statistically worse than the other parts in it's category. I feel like I've said this before.

No. Absolutely not. Actual payload is about carrying capacity, which already actually exists in the game and has a function. In fact there is a large community of people that enjoy making highly efficient SSTO spaceplanes, and one of the factors they rate their planes on is orbital payload capacity. And I imagine you would have a hard time trying to convince one of them that weighing more is better. Designing a larger rocket is not always the point, some people like SSTOs, spaceplanes, aeroplanes, and all other manner of challenges that aren't directly tied to getting heavy things to places. And if moving heavy things around is what you're all about, then you already have options at your disposal to do so, like the mod I linked earlier, or you could just clip more parts into your thing.

It's actually worse than just two being better than 1, Michaelbak posted a picture earlier that showed that he achieved a fully mission capable lander with 2 MK1's in the same weight as just a single MK2 on it's own. Extrapolating on that a bit, I did a couple of tests, and landed an absolute barebones version on minmus from a 30k orbit on 1.7 tons. In other words, you could strip a whole ton off of the thing and still build fully achievable missions in the given weight with 2 of the other pod. I'll refine my thing and post pics tomorrow...maybe.

So I was right about you not understanding what payload actually is, but I'm not going to bother with semantics, and we get to see how your previous, supposedly quantifiable argument was just more of your own, personal opinion. Aside from moving the CoM to preferable spots, actual ballast serves no function, Making things heavier for no reason is objectively bad. You like heavy missions, we get it. So please, see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/76231 this mod gives you a configurable test weight, and you can make your missions as unreasonably heavy as your heart desires, and leave the rest of us with actually usable parts More of your opinion on how career mode is fun for you. I really don't know how many times we're going to do this.

I don't think that we're quite far enough into the full release that minor tweaks are not an option, but I totally understand the concern of breaking post-release ships with an update. +rep for the first reasonable argument against weight reduction in the thread. Also, if we are past the point of potentially breaking ships in minor ways, I still don't quite think that crew capacity is where the numbers need to come from, I feel like you would need 4 kerbals for the weight to be appropriate, but then we are encroaching thoroughly on the property of the Hitch Hiker Storage Container. But the actual numbers for this are obviously still debatable. I don't quite understand what you're getting at here, nobody is talking about using either pod in atmo, and reentry heating balance is probably a discussion for another thread. I found this logic pretty impossible to follow, and even though I have a suspicion that you are confusing payload with ballast, I'll just ask you to elaborate on this point. With actual numbers prefferably Career mode is​ a large part of the actual game, and the abundance of funds in career mode (which could have an entire thread dedicated to it's numbers getting tweaked) still has no effect on the part in question not being comparable in any meaningful way to the other parts in it's category

Is the engine exhaust from the circularization burn pointed anywhere near the exploding body? I know you said you put separation boosters on, but I have no idea how far the heat from the exhaust actually reaches.

Having done some very basic testing, I am guessing that something non-standard is going on with air brakes, and the drag they generate. They seem to create an otherwise unreasonably high amount of drag when deployed, more so than a part of similar proportion in a similar position. But that being said, I'm quite fond of an "air brake umbrella" atmo reentry design I've played with a number of times, with closed airbrakes forming the leading nosecone on takeoff, and have never experienced these issues. Maybe some screenshots, or craft files so we can see the issue you guys are having?

I really don't know how many times I have to say this. The missions and restrictions you set for yourself are subjective and un-quantifiable. They hold no bearing on the experience of the rest of the player base. By the fluid nature and creative way that you play the game, having a part weigh slightly less would have almost no definable affect on your game. But there are a lot of players that play career mode where weight matters dramatically. More weight means more fuel to push it to it's mission, which means more money, and the launch pad can have weight limitations, everything is considered and must be balanced as such. There simply is no logically sound argument to be made against a weight reduction, and your arguments so far have amounted to no more than "I personally like it this way" So I'll try to break this down as simply as possible. Do you have a numerically, logically, or otherwise tangibly representable reason not to reduce the parts weight? And, does your argument contend reasonably with the numerous arguments for why this affects career mode players? - - - Updated - - - I do want to say, the length of this discussion makes the issue seem more important than it is, realisticly this issue is overall relatively minor, and as a sandbox player myself, I also don't really feel the affects personally. But it is a real thing as far as I can understand, and I'll advocate for it as long as there is a discussion.

The improved UI is a good idea, and I think most of the functionality is already in place in the tracking station.

It seems like it would have to work this way, because when you click on the antenna and ask it to transmit then it really has no way of knowing what specific data you are asking for, so it just does all of it. I guess the workaround is to manually go through your stored data and ask it to transmit from the sample itself : /

That's true, landers for duna need to be equipped for atmospheric environments, but seeing as the two pods both have the same heat tolerance, crash tolerance, and are otherwise comparable in most ways other than weight, and pure weight has arguably nothing to do with how the lander can handle atmo, then we can deduce that they are designed for the same environment. Though this does bring up the possibility of a future, atmo-based lander.

Then a payload of 2 kerbals shouldn't weigh almost 5 times what a payload of 1 kerbal weighs But I think he was talking about tools and utility equipment again.