MisterKerman

Holy bumz. What a great craft @Yakuzi

Here's my last space station before restarting my career. Of course I made sure it was as dark as possible before taking the screenshot. You know... like every unplanned screenshot anyone's taken for KSP ever.

Seems pretty clear to me that 1.25m isn't being utilized for stations by practically anybody, but I'll still consider it as long as I can manage to figure out a way to both make it look nice as well as functional in regards to rigidity, but chances are the part count will be really ugly and I'll opt for the obvious/easier/practical choice instead.

Basically my formula is make a small "train" of 2.5m components. Core, Habitation with lots of ports, Power Plant and utilities with some refueling ports, and the caboose is a big fuel tank. I was just thinking aside from the hitchhiker cans and fuel tank, 1.25m should be fine for all my "needs". I just want to try to make something lightweight and industrial looking this time around. This was the latest iteration of my fuel depot/tourism terminal:

Bought some plane parts and made a surprisingly balanced plane first attempt with no edits. It just flies rock steady aside from a lack of lift. I might fiddle with it but it's incapable of breaking 6000m as it is so it's not exactly something I want to spend too much time on. It's original purpose was to collect on 7 very close proximity observation contracts surrounding KSC, but they're 20km up soooo... maybe next time.

I will this playthrough. I plan on launching probes all over the god dang place. I'm more scared than incapable.

I just restarted my game. I want to try smaller more efficient builds if I can manage, including space stations maybe? Is there a benefit to building small for a space station? Less torque and less fuel, but either of those issues can be solved with a well placed component engineered to accomodate that. I want to try, but I'd like to hear from you guys what size you normally use seeing as 2.5 is most common due to useful parts for space stations often being that size. I can imagine 1.25m getting pretty wobbly.

I haven't gone interplanetary yet. I really should have but I always get to building space stations and doing Moon Tourism trips and end up restarting after a patch or something. I feel like @Geschosskopf nailed it with his 4 reason summary though. Stations are more of a buffer zone for convenience than a necessity. I would place one at every celestial body I plan to visit lots. Laythe and Duna for sure, but even then it's mostly for RP purposes essentially, aside from being a good base of operations if you plan to use it as a fuel depot with multiple landings on the surface.

I use it for boosters or as the main stage lifting engine of smaller budget rockets, usually. It's a disposable engine for me that is punchy and cheap and useful.

cheepr

Yea, I was just being dramatic. I did however start a new career that night shortly after that post and I'm attached to the charm of working my way up the tech tree again. About to unlock some plane parts and build a small observation plane, but due to my old career I don't think I'll be wasting time observing Kerbin in atmosphere or in a polar orbit unless it's extremely convenient for me. Tourism and part testing seems to be where the most reliable and less time consuming funding seems to be.

o poo On a now moot point, I've delivered the... space station components... to my space station I won't be needing anymore... . *Starts new campaign.*

Played KSP finally. Haven't played since Breaking Ground was released so I downloaded that and decided instead of scrapping my career I would carry on. I was in the process of redesigning my station anyways due to a possible bug. Ditching old Power Plant and Hab Module. Station Core docked to cargo shuttle awaiting delivery of replacement space station components.

Ah okay, well thanks for the information you guys. It looks like there were a few members other than myself that got a little bit of clarity out of this too so I'll probably leave this topic to wither and die rather than closing it in case someone else has anything to add. I'll continue to part clip as conservatively as possible, but it's good knowing that I was worrying a little too much about it for what that stress was worth.

@The Doodling Astronaut I think I might do something similar for my first Duna mission. Those are really really clean craft designs though. Had to say something!