Nebbie

Cool as godrays are, I have the same opinion of them here as I do when they're used in artwork: They're easily overdone and when they are, they overshadow everything else and render half the visual stuff irrelevant, if not break its realism outright. Good riddance, basically.

I'd definitely like EVA packs to be an unlock, but first we would need some kind of tether feature. There's just no tethering system in KSP, which is one of the huge differences between real EVAs and KSP EVAs.

Welcome to stock's utterly pants-on-head retarded drag modeling.

The Thud isn't a jet engine, and is super draggy. It's terrible for use in VTOL jets.

Yep, compare with the Dumpling. About the same size, but the Dumpling holds about half the fuel! The dry mass is correct, however. I would really like a higher-thrust ion (maybe 1.25m diameter), and for the current one to be unlocked earlier.

Very, and it would make some sense. Yeah, I was apparently the first to notice. I didn't feel like making a big fuss speculating on new DLC anywhere and just poke the devs that they let slip a likely codename early. I was hoping they'd just announce whatever it is, but instead, they were apparently working on a new Twitch model.

Well there aren't any monsters, so...

That would make spaceplanes a lot more complicated because you couldn't share fuel between the LV-N and jet engines.

But there's no "high tech" radial-mounted engine for a shuttle OMS. You get the Thud, and only the Thud. Also, the Reliant would need a hell of a buff to compete with the Kodiak, and the Swivel a hell of a buff to compete with...well, anything really.

I would not recommend balancing against the Swivel and Reliant because they're pretty much trash right now, and meant for atmospheric use (nobody really wants to use them for vacuum use despite their decent Isp in it because they weigh a [metric] ton and then some, and for upper stages, mass matters greatly). Also, the Spark utterly creams them in TWR and Isp right now. I do think they could use a buff like Reliant: 1.25t, 265/310s -> 1t, 275/305s and Swivel: 1.5t, 250/320s -> 1.25t, 260/315s. The Thud should be primarily for vacuum use as OMS and should be balanced against the Spark, Terrier, Twitch, etc.; it needs at least 320s of vacuum Isp to be competitive due to the ultralight Spark (which has some gimbaling) having 320s. Unfortunately, I think part upgrades are still off the table in Squad's current design philosophy. They would help a lot with alleviating the problems of balancing early Career vs Sandbox.

I think from tinkering that the Wolfhound doesn't eclipse the Cheetah because of its rather large 3.3t mass, but it does the Poodle, because the Poodle's almost 2t anyways and that extra 40s of Isp makes up for it. I'd love to see someone run the numbers into a graph. Wolfhound definitely becomes a great option at large masses. I really wish the Rhino had the highest LFO Isp in the game. It's so weird having that honor go to the Wolfhound, a 2.5m engine, and I really don't see much point using the Rhino when it's so easy to cluster engines now. To compare with similar-mass and similar-thrust, with at-least-same Isp engine configurations in vacuum: 1 Rhino: 9t, 340s, 2000kN 9 Aerospikes: 9t, 340s, 1620kN - 11 Aerospikes: 11t, 340s, 1980kN 18 Terriers: 9t, 345s, 1080kN - 33 Terriers: 16.5t, 345s, 1980kN 6 Poodles: 10.5t, 350s, 1500kN - 9 Poodles: 15.75t, 350s, 2000kN 9 Cheetahs: 9t, 355s, 1125kN - 16 Cheetahs: 16t, 355s, 2000kN 3 Wolfhounds: 9.9t, 380s, 1125kN - 5 Wolfhounds: 16.5t, 380s, 1875kN I don't know about you, but I'd probably go for a Wolfhound cluster. At the scale of needing 2MN of thrust, 7.5t probably doesn't matter compared to 40s of Isp.

I'd just reduce the mass of it a bit and add a 1.25m version. It's not that big a deal that it's a little odd with stats considering its purpose is primarily asthetic.

Nah man, 1.7 will be followed by 2, but it'll be internally versioned as 1.10. Unity isn't that bad considering what it's doing. The problem with KSP is that it's one of those things that started with what's easy and then ballooned from there, accruing new features that it was never originally intended to have. KSP could do something like switch to fixed-point arithmetic, but that'd be a lot of development time down the drain just to fix a few bugs. In the long run, I would expect a sequel to fix the major bugs. Starting from scratch using lessons learned is often the bast way forward when it comes to code. In the meantime, the game is veeeery slowly getting the bugs worked out, the old art replaced, and the QoL features added. Wheels might still be unpredictable, and craft may float above the surface of Mars in RO, but the game will have a lot less of those moments where you just stare in the VAB at what you have to do to get what you want and go "why, Kraken, why?".

When people playing don't care what the units mean, having that little unit on the end doesn't matter. It is only a bonus for when people want to design craft ahead of time, to know right away what the numbers mean so they can start applying math and/or converting to different units. Knowing my thrust in kN means I can figure out my TWR, but when I look at RCS (which can be used as main engines...), I see "thruster power"; I wouldn't know what "thruster power" is and it doesn't help me understand my TWR...but knowing that it is just kN does help me. This is one area where the game has, quite simply, slightly hurt my ability to design craft, and there is no justification for "thruster power", someone who is doing something else with RCS thrusters won't care whether it's called that or kN, but in fact, seeing kN helps them understand how powerful their translation/rotation is compared to using normal engines. It only helps to have units, provided the units aren't blatantly wrong. I actually would rather they fix things to be a bit more realistic with at least wheels, cause the current battery usage of wheels is downright ludicrous, making rover design a serious headache on power. As for the ion engines, they are most definitely unrealistic on purpose to make them somewhat usable, and I wouldn't worry about players trying to do the math on how much energy it takes to shoot out Xenon, as anyone going that far would surely know that KSP's ions are intentionally more like LFO engines for gameplay reasons. Lots of things like fuel tanks and the planets themselves are unrealistic, sure...but that's not the point of units. Nobody comes in expecting the units to match up with real life perfectly, but units allow us to do proper math on things and compare things. Because the fuel tanks are in metric tons, and the thrust in kN, I know that I can just multiply my vehicles listed mass number by Kerbin's gravity (9.81m/s) and divide by my total thrust and I get my TWR. That's a little less important in the current version, which calculates TWR for me, but still, it's really nice to know how to compare things. A big one that KSP messes up is RCS thrust; it states "thruster power" when it means "kN". Knowing that an RCS thruster's thrust is some amount of kN while an engine's thrust is so many more kN gives me an idea of relative scale. Similarly, knowing that KSP's reaction wheels are using kN*m would go towards comparing a given reaction wheel setup with a given RCS alternative. Having to check what KSP's numbers actually mean first is just an extra step the game is throwing in my way to reason about things, and that's bad. It is most sane to always display units from the same system so that we can compare across things. As to which system to use, it's best to just stick to the real life one because learning an additional one is a lot of work. It doesn't matter that the data points of what KSP has in that system are a little different than real life, what matters is that KSP should tell us straightup how it's numbers relate.

Here's what's wrong with the Thud: Its Isp is good for atmospheric, trash for vacuum (so it's an atmospheric engine) It has higher drag than a radially-mounted hammer with an aerodynamic cap, so it causes a lot of drag in atmosphere It's 0.9t...but you need at least 2, so it's more like 1.8t with double the thrust. That's as heavy as a Poodle, and much heavier than 1.25m engine options. With the Making History DLC, it is massively outclassed by the Cub (especially for landers), an engine with 5x lower mass, but only 3x lower thrust, and +5/+5 Isp, with the only downside of only one axis of gimbal. While you effectively need 4x Cub minimum...that's still less mass than 1 Thud (of which you need 2). Because of 1, and being radially-mounted, one of its niches is to be an early TWR booster...but the Spark outclasses it at this, and 2 means that it's probably better on drag to have radially-mounted tanks with caps and clustered Sparks on the bottom than to use Thuds. It's obvious intended asthetics, and one niche where its radial mounting and gimbaling should make it great, is as a shuttle OMS. The terrible vacuum Isp holds it back, however, and this clashes with its other main use being atmospheric. That drag needs to be fixed. Beyond that, I don't think it needs touching (and shouldn't be buffed much overall lest it become OP) for atmospheric use, since nobody really asked for that to begin with and not everyone even plays Career. The Cub also makes more asthetic/historical sense anyways. As for vacuum, I think the obvious thing to fix would be the OMS use case, to make it actually do what it looks like it should do. The two problems here are its mass and vacuum Isp. I think both should be about in line with 2 Thuds being only a bit worse than a Terrier. It also should be slightly worse than the Skiff, as that engine's pretty good and there should be a slight penalty for radial-mounting. Thus, the stats change I recommend is: 0.9t, 275/305s Isp -> 0.6t, 270/325s Isp.