Armisael

Sounds like a great idea for a mod.

Yeah, the pods are hilariously overprovisioned with monoprop for experienced players (especially the mk1 lander can, which has 15 units!). @PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleCommand],@RESOURCE[MonoPropellant]]:FINAL { @RESOURCE[MonoPropellant] { @amount = 0 } } You're far from the only one. I was a little surprised no one had released this as a mod when I wrote it.

My bad - it does happen on atmospheric bodies. Could we get that same effect using the terrain scale height on non-atmospheric bodies?

First off: thanks muchly for this - it's great to have good support. Would it be possible to have the timewarp heights scaled based off terrain scaling (or atmospheric scaling, for bodies with atmosphere) instead of the resize factor? I'm playing at 6.4x scale, and it's a little annoying to not be able to timewarp below 32km, given that I usually park at 10-12km.

I'd like to be able to load kerbals directly into the chair on launch, but no more buffs. The part's already crazy good. To be honest, I'd actually like to see it nerfed such that a kerbal in the chair on a ship exposed to >2g falls out.

Why did you even create this poll if you weren't going to believe the results?

Delta-v calculations are way faster than the physics calculations happening every physics tick anyways. If you want to only get delta-v updates every 15 seconds for other reasons then fine - it's your game - but don't expect a meaningful change in performance.

Wind tunnels would be useful even for rockets. There isn't a good way to look at reentry stability right now, and it'd be fantastic to have some way to see if your ship will stay safely behind heatshields.

I'd like to see suborbital trajectories project entirely forward from your position (the same way intercepts work), but I like the current system. The comet trail analogy is much more intuitive to me.

I have a vague recollection that you have to do a munar flyby (maybe minmus counts) before rescue contracts start proccing.

I'm loath to ask you do to this, but would it be possible to get the intuitive node behavior without the rest of PreciseNode? I've been using using the patch that TechnocratiK put in his bug report, but that doesn't work in 1.1.

I agree with OP in that airbrakes should have a higher critical temperature - 1200K is really low. 3300K is probably too much though. I do think that it'd be neat to see a new airbrake or streamer or something that had ablator on it. I might end up using the inflatable heatshield as a skirt at the back of the rocket for aerodynamic stability during high-speed reentries.

You can transfer kerbals between crew cabins with the klaw, so if you send up another ship with a klaw you can dock, grab the tourists, undock, and reenter on your own. Personally I like that tourists are restricted. Maybe if you let them go on EVA but disabled their RCS, but definitely not a fully mobile EVA.

This weighs a quarter-ton less than my proposed cupola, has 65 more monoprop capacity, 50 more electric charge, and equal torque. How is my proposal making the cupola ridiculously OP? Adding ablator capacity to the Mk1-2 wasn't an option I had considered, but it's definitely an interesting idea...

You can stack 3 Mk1 Cans, a medium reaction wheel, and an empty 1.25m heatshield and get significantly more thermal tolerance, the same battery capacity, more torque for less charge, and the same monoprop capacity for exactly the same weight. All of those parts are available earlier in the tech tree than the Mk1-2 pod and you can store more experimental data. The total assembly costs a little bit more, but not by much (3764 vs 5846, both without monoprop). Even small differences in weight need to be justified by some serious benefits. Given current stats, the Mk1-2 doesn't provide enough to justify almost anything, IMO.

I don't think that simple mass changes are sufficient to create a set of parts that are both distinct and useful. I still don't see any reason to use the Mk1-2 Command pod with your changes - the lander cans are lighter, available earlier, and durable enough for reentry. I don't understand this point of view at all. Why should we tolerate and encourage parts that are functionally useless? Boondoggles are fine for mods I suppose, but stock KSP doesn't have enough command modules to justify their existence (in my opinion).

I'm a little surprised that no one has commented on adding a probe core to the cupola. I thought that was my wildest suggestion by far, since it'd be the first probe core with a seat for a kerbal. @Pthigrivi I remember looking at those when I posted a thread asking if this was something people were interested in at all. It's good to hear that people like the tolerance changes, since those're really fundamental to balancing the lander cans IMO. Again, why would the HH be so much more fragile than the crew cabins? The only thing the HH does that those don't is provide 2.5m attachment nodes. Stock KSP doesn't have life support, and parts shouldn't be balanced with respect to that. I don't think anything less than 6 m/s is practical for landings by new players. The part shouldn't require an expert pilot just to land.

Fun fact: when you lead a post with wide-sweeping assertions about what literally everyone thinks most of your responses are going to be from people who disagree with you telling you to go pound sand up your nose. In this thread, for example, your first two responses are from people who're totally uninterested in that mod becoming part of stock. @Snark That is a beautiful way to make docking work better. How have I not heard of that before?

@Grumman Yeah, that's pretty much what I was going for with the different classes of parts. Balancing the external command seats is an entirely different kettle of fish. The existing part already has terrible aerodynamics, 800K effective thermal tolerance, and no torque/monoprop/battery whatsoever, but it's so incredibly light that you can put the chair in a service bay with a reaction wheel and a battery and still come out lighter than even a mk1 can. The only knob you have left to fiddle with is weight, and using that would effectively destroy the part. I think the fix there requires something more than tweaking the existing stats. I'm leaning towards 'kerbals fall out of the chair if exposed to more than ~2.5G', but my modding skills are limited so I haven't tested it - and that seems like the kind of change that would be chock full of unintended consequences.

As requested, the same stat block for the cockpits (as they currently are). This doesn't note the fact that these parts have lower drag (usually 0.1 vs 0.15-0.2 for rocket parts) or that the Mk2 parts provide lift. The situation with the Mk1 and Mk1 inline cockpit is obviously dumb, since a 1.25m nosecone weighs way less than 0.25t, but otherwise nothing here seems totally unreasonable to me. They're heavier than what I proposed for the rocket parts, but they're also much more durable and less draggy. Ultimately I think that they serve a different purpose than the rocket parts do, which makes this a difficult comparison. Why should the Mk1-2 pod weigh more per - well, everything - than the Mk1 pod? Is that just a gut feeling, or do you have a more specific reason? I'd like to know. The mechanics of the game don't support that idea at all, though. Sticking four Mk1 cans together beats the hitchhiker pod at literally everything (except providing 2.5m attachment nodes, and that isn't objectively a good thing).

The mk1-2 is probably the worst part in the stock game. I won't rebalance every other part in the game to fit it, and I hope that SQUAD doesn't either.

From what I've seen and heard, it's pretty widely agreed that the current command modules aren't very well balanced. There doesn't seem to be any good mechanical reason to use any of the 2.5m parts - you can always get the same capabilities by using multiple 1.25m modules stuck together - and even that's usually just the Mk1 Lander Can. In the spirit of making each command module worth using without just outlawing half of them from the game, here's an attempt at a rebalance. First, the current stats of the pods (and the hitchhiker pod, which while technically not a command module is still relevant). Cockpits are not included - I simply don't have a good feel for those parts: When you look at mass-adjusted stats, the Mk1 Lander Can simply beats the pants off any other part in both raw kerbal carrying capacity and monoprop capacity. It's second to only the cupola in battery capacity, and third in torque. It isn't great in stats that don't vary on weight, but to be honest, those don't really matter. A Mk1 Lander Can with a parachute and an empty heatshield still only weighs as much as the next lightest command module. Conversely, the Mk1-2 Command Pod is really truly awful. It beats only the cupola in kerbal-carrying capacity and is the outright worst part in every other stat. The mass-unadjusted stats are a little better - but those are generally pretty easily mitigated with additional parts that are ultimately much lighter. Making all of these effectively size-scaled copies of each other isn't any better - we'd still be functionally down to a single part. Hopefully my changes give each part a useful and distinct role: Mk1 Command Pod: This part is untouched. Mk1-2 Command Pod: Dry mass reduced from 4t to 2.4t Torque cost reduced from 0.08 charge/kN⋅m to 0.04 charge/kN⋅m Mk1 Lander Can: Critical skin temperature reduced from 2000K to 1200K Impact tolerance reduced from 8 m/s to 6 m/s Battery reduced from 50 charge to 25 charge Mk2 Lander Can: Dry mass reduced from 2.5t to 1.2t Critical skin temperature reduced from 2000K to 1200K Battery reduced from 100 charge to 60 charge Torque per axis reduced from 15 kN⋅m to 10 kN⋅m Torque cost per axis increased from 0.05 charge/kN⋅m to 0.06 charge/kN⋅m Hitchhiker Pod: Dry mass reduced from 2.5t to 2.2t Impact tolerance increased from 6 m/s to 10 m/s Cupola: Dry mass reduced from 1.76t to 1.35t Battery capacity increased from 200 charge to 1000 charge Monoprop capacity increased from 10 to 100 Torque per axis increased from 9 kN⋅m to 30 kN⋅m Torque cost per axis reduced from 0.1 charge/kN⋅m to 0.02 charge/kN⋅m Probe core with basic SAS (ie, stability assist only) added to the part. This drains 1.2 charge/minute (this is equivalent to an OKTO). Crew reports still require a kerbal, and if a level 2+ pilot enters the cupola their maneuver abilities are used instead. Critical skin temperature reduced from 2000K to 1500K Impact tolerance reduced from 8 m/s to 6 m/s Dry cost increased from √3188 to √4380 The state of the new parts is summarized below (does not include cost or probe core modifications to the Cupola): All of these changes can be made using nothing more than Module Manager - this guarantees that the changes are both easy to make and easy to setup as a mod for testing. My rationale for each part is listed below. As a general rule I wanted to maintain the weight of a seat in a category (command pods are 0.8t/seat, lander cans are 0.6t/seat) but make the larger parts a little more useful in other aspects. Mk1 Command Pod: Everything is already functionally balanced to this pod - starting engines, parachutes, fuel tanks - so I was totally uninterested in messing with it. Instead, I've used it as a benchmark for roughly how useful a part should be in its niche. The full suite of changes I'm proposing make the command pods the durable choice - particularly good for re-entry - Mk1-2 Command Pod: This part already had triple the seats, monoprop capacity, battery, and torque of the Mk1 Pod, so the natural thing to do was to reduce it to triple the mass as well. The charge required per unit torque was reduced to make it a little more efficient than Mk1 Pod. The high impact and thermal tolerances really work with the "durable re-entry module" theme of the command pods, so I left that. Mk1 Lander Can: Lander cans should be lightweight. They should not survive re-entry from Mun without any shielding. The thermal and impact tolerance nerfs should give the lander cans a defined role (other than "awesome at everything", which is this part's current role). The part still felt too good to me, but I understood why monoprop would be useful in lunar-orbit rendezvous lander. Limiting the battery made the lander can worse than the command pod in every stat except weight and monoprop, which is about where it belongs in my opinion. Mk2 Lander Can: The weight and critical skin tolerances brought this in line with the new Mk1 Can. It's now a little better in battery, monoprop, and torque than the Mk1 but still worse than either command pod in all of those except monoprop. This probably still won't be great for small landers, simply because 1.25m engines weigh less, but it'll be a good choice for slightly beefier ones. Hitchhiker Pod: The Mk1 and Mk2 Crew Cabins both carry 2 seats per ton, and have 40+ m/s impact tolerances. This weight reduction brings the hitchhiker pod in line with those in terms of carrying capacity. I don't understand why it had such a low impact tolerance in the first place - the basic fin is the only part in stock with a lower impact tolerance than 6 m/s. Cupola: This part is in a rough place for balance. This part obviously belongs on a space station (or a mothership - they're nearly the same thing), so impact and thermal tolerance aren't a big deal. On the other hand, it shouldn't be light enough to become a strong competitor for normal rockets. One step is to give this phenomenal battery, monoprop, and torque, and to make the reaction wheels more efficient. That still isn't really enough in my opinion, so I decided that the reasonable thing to do with the Cupola was to make it the next-best thing to a complete space station in a single part to help keep part count down - and that meant adding a probe core so that the space station could still function even without a kerbal. The only things this part is really lacking are power generation and an antenna. For comparison, a Mk1 Pod with an OKTO, 1k battery, large reaction wheel, and an empty 150 unit monoprop tank only weighs 1.4t, so this isn't really even particularly lighter. I've tested all of these in my own install, and they all seem reasonable to me. I'm not the only person in the world though, and I'd like to hear some other opinions.

Y'know, this raises an interesting question: what if the level 1 runway was just a rectangle painted on the grass - ie, white lines on the ground?

I'd much rather settled discussion get moved to the bottom quickly so we can discuss new things. Once we agree that it's a bug, there's no real need to talk about it any more.

This forum will doubtlessly be an unbiased, random sample of all KSP players as well.