More Boosters

It still kinda is. You still need to incline the engines, though I don't think Squad could have been expected to give them like 50 degrees of gimbal capability lol. And landing that thing... Still haven't managed it, makes you appreciate how complicated of a beast it is, if a bit in vain...

And even less sunlight.

The reason Vector seems too good for a 1.25m part is that 1.25m parts aren't good enough for 1.25m parts in general. I'm looking at you Swivel, and Reliant. Reliant simply doesn't give that "high TWR and thrust" you mentioned. Heck, if you add AV-R8 (at least two and only if you're moving in one direction, 3 if you want full coverage) to compensate for its lack of gimbal, it's worse than the Swivel, which isn't doing wonders to begin with.

Yes the niche it is filling is a good one, it's just a little underpowered right now. I'm just saying that you shouldn't buff its Isp but instead buff its thrust slightly and its mass quite a bit so it is a stock-alike balanced Merlin 1C, pretty much. 1.5t / 440kn fits it very well where it is. If you buff specific impulse then its uniqueness is kinda gone.

They are supposed to be fighter jet-rated though.

Awwwwwww! :3 Man that's beautiful. Why those tiles though?

The people who play this game never cease to amaze me. From working turbines to internal combustion engines to giant robots to huge trains... Just one question though, how are you not bored out of your mind riding one? I get bored if I have to fly around for more than 5 minutes before getting into space!

It may have been an urban legend but I recall reading somewhere that at the Pacific theater during World War II, P-38 Lightning pilots would often use this method to turn more quickly when confronted with the more agile Zeros the Japanese had.

I'm not sure if it was intended (I'm assuming Kiwi was modelled after the Merlin 1D and you probably just subtracted 400 from 825 and called it a day ) but the thrust (not TWR ratio which, however silly it sounds, will be the basis of my argument) ratio between the real SSME and KSP's vector is roughly the same for your Kiwi, which would give out 444 kN (rounded to three significant figures) of thrust. Your Kiwi gives 425 at vacuum, so that's remarkably close to what Squad deemed appropriate for stock balancing, but looking at the TWR ratio between SSME and KSP's Vector again, 73.1 (rounded to three significant figures) divided by Vector's TWR of 25, gives us 2,924, which should be the ratio between Merlin 1D TWR and Kiwi TWR. Dividing Merlin 1D's ridiculous 180 TWR with this number gives us a TWR of 62, rounded to two significant figures, and at 2 tons this implies a thrust of 1215 (1240) kN (rounded down). I can tell that you don't want to balance it in this manner, but this math implies that, if the Vector is balanced, then the Kiwi isn't. Granted, Vector is probably one of the better engines, but we should remember that its TWR is beaten by the Mammoth and is equal to that of the Mainsail so make your own judgements there. Of course Kiwi also has nerfed Isp to fit KSP standards (I'm not sure how you calculated those and I'm not going into that) so keep that in mind too. This might be an idea for a Vector+, rather than something to make Kiwi relevant on where it currently is. So let's assume this is a Merlin 1C. (it probably always was but I'm too lazy to delete my earlier assessment which may be interesting in some regards) The thing is considerably wimpier, topping out at 480 kN vacuum thrust (420 kN sea level) with less Isp and a TWR of 96. Using our magic ratio of 2,924 we get a TWR of 33 (rounded to 2 significant figures), now that's more within the realm of reason. Less dedicated lifting engines have TWR in the vicinity of 25, so 33 certainly seems reasonable for good old inefficient Kiwi. We get 647 (660) kN out of this, but we don't want to upset Gaarst so at a mass of 1.5 tons, with 431 (440) kN, Kiwi is a stock-balanced Merlin 1C. This is probably what you had in mind all along so sorry if I wasted your time. All these numbers are from Wikipedia so I hope they aren't too inaccurate. Edit: I forgot to mention the Isp thing, well, it's hard to compare Vector to the SSME here as the SSME uses cryogenic fuel while Vector is make believe and I don't have much insight into how the other engines compare to their real life counterparts. I do know that they're generally lower so Kiwi should be quite alright at 431 (440) kN, 1.5 tons and no Isp change. Edit 2: Darn it! I calculated stock-balanced thrust using a surface gravity value of 10 m/s^2 when 9.80 m/s^2 would have been more appropriate. The older values with 10 m/s^2 are still in parantheses and they are certainly nicer values to look at so I'm not removing them.

Well, anyone? A video or pictures would be nice.

To be fair I think they're using the existing stocks and not producing new ones. Don't quote me on this tho.

I gave it a shot and I ran into the problem of Kerolox being much heavier than LH2/LOX, resulting in the ET shifting the center of mass much further. The vectors, for all their gimballing, also can't compensate for that without being rotated with the rotate tool. And the SRBs caused all sorts of trouble, eventually sending my shuttle into a flat spin. The thing is certainly more complicated than it looks and I'd like to know how it's done.

Well if we're talking about pure efficiency, off-world contracts are much better with science anyway so might as well enjoy what you've got

If this was once the case it hasn't been so for a long time. Skipper is better than Swivel at both TWR and Isp, not sure about LV-909 vs Poodle but the latter has better Isp and Reliant doesn't even have a gimbal! (Or anything to make up for that)

How can it be a lift engine if its TWR is worse than the Skipper? The Skipper is usually middle stage or good for lifting relatively light loads. It does have a worse vacuum Isp than the Mainsail by 5 seconds. Are you saying Mainsail + 909/Poodle wasn't the same thing? Because right now, if Skipper can pull your load, you should definitely use it over the Vector. It's not like it doesn't have a better Isp and a third of the price.

NecroBones, what do you plan to do with the Kiwi? It was never particularly impressive with its efficiency (and also worse TWR than Mainsail and only slightly better TWR than Skipper), but with the Vector around now there doesn't seem to be anything going for it.

Okay then let me rephrase my position to sound less dismissive. I don't think that the existence of modes where funds don't matter should preclude some parts being balanced over cost. The Vector is reasonably powerful and definitely an interesting choice, and yes, it is clearly one of the best lift engines if not the best in Sandbox but Sandbox is where there is no limit to anything. Nothing keeping you from "more boosters". And it's not like Vector has a better TWR or Isp than other engines. It has a better gimbal rate that doesn't matter for most launches, which are symmetrical.

Well I never got to a point where I got to use the late game electric engines (I always play career and happen to restart...) but they obviously require a lot of preparation to get going. I don't think you'll be dependent on them, they are unlocked at a point even a player who's playing career for the first time will have enough experience with interplanetary and stuff. The Mk3-9 Orbital Command Pod may cause an addiction and make you question the existence of Pilots though.

And balancing does not matter in those modes. If it did you would see people talk about how underpowered Reliant and Swivel are. At least in career you have to use them at some point.

Not sure why you guys insist that it is imbalanced. It has the same TWR as Mainsail. Are you arguing that cost can't be balancing mechanic? I mean if you were so concerned about balance, why is this coming up now that there's a decent 1.25m engine? Why not ask to get Reliant and Swivel up par? In retrospect this sounds a bit aggressive but I'm really just not seeing what's overpowered about it when it is so expensive.

Well, Skipper has a worse TWR and gimbal range but it is lighter and more efficient. Also like a third as expensive as Vector.

Its TWR is 16/15 times Mainsail's. 4000 kN is fair, it's like 2/3rds of the real thing and its heavier too. The mammoth is fine, what's all wrong is the Kickback.

SRBs are underpowered for sure, they cut off far too early. But that doesn't make mammoth OP imo.

Are you saying Mammoth's 4000 kn is overpowered?

You do realize, that the Vector is both heavier and weaker than the SSME? (Also less efficient as the real SSME uses LH2) The problem here is simple, SRBs are far too weak and Kerbin is small.