CDSlice

Yeah what I was criticizing the Casaba for was having only around 30k-40k dV before the whole engine needs to be replaced which when compared to the rest of the engines in this mod isn't that much. I didn't mean to imply that the TWR was bad. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on the Hammertong.

I've flown my fair share of 0.1 TWR Nerv ships which is why I said that the Fresnel and Discovery were pretty good engines, flying them is like flying a Nerv ship except with way more dV. I have not and will not use ion engines for anything other than probes, once you get to that low TWR everything takes absolutely forever and you can't do things like Hohmann transfers. Stratzenblitz may be OK with spending 2 hours doing 43 periapsis kicks to do a planetary transfer but there is no way I'm doing that. I also never said that I needed the engines to have like 0.5 TWR, in fact I complemented the X-7 Asimov and the Casaba for how good their TWR was at 0.19 and 0.33 respectively. Really the Hammertong is the only engine I think has TWR issues and that is mostly because it is supposed to be an endgame engine that takes 10k science to unlock while having a pathetic TWR that is unplayable for me while at the same time the Fresnel has a much better TWR along with a massive amount of dV in the previous tech tree node.

So here are my thoughts on some of the various engines in FFT. I am using a fairly simple 3.75m interplanetary ship as the payload and attaching various engines to the back to see how they perform. This is also from the perspective of a science mode player, as such cost of the engines or fuel won't really be a factor in my analysis. The ship in question: The Hammertong seems rather pathetic, especially for a true endgame engine in a 10k science node in the CTT. Although it is easy to get over 1M dV with it, your TWR is going to be around 0.02. This seems unreasonably bad gameplay wise, even with persistent thrust or a higher physical time warp making interplanetary burns with this thing is going to take absolutely forever. The high thrust mode is even more useless since you lose a massive amount of dV and in return you get an amazing, game-changing 0.05 TWR. That TWR is pretty much just as bad as 0.02 is gameplay wise and you give up the one thing the Hammertong was good at by losing so much dV. The only things this engine has going for it is that it shouldn't be as hard to launch into space as some of the other engines since it isn't as long and that its fuel is really light and easy to ship from Kerbin to refill it. Other than that unless I needed something with a massive amount of dV to go intersteller and for some reason I didn't want to use my 10k in science to unlock the Frisbee I wouldn't ever use this engine, ain't nobody got time to mess around with a 0.02 TWR craft. The Fresnel is very interesting. Although it isn't as efficient as the Hammertong, it is still really easy to get 800k dV while still maintaining a 0.12 TWR at max engine length. Although this TWR isn't great, it is much more manageable than the Hammertong's 0.02-0.04 TWR and is comparable to some of the more insane NERVA setups in stock, just with way more dV. The Fresnel also is unlocked a node prior to the Hammertong in a 4k science node. The shorter engine lengths are kind of weird since you lose both dV and thrust which means that there is only one reason not to just extend the Fresnel to 22m and load up with fusion fuel. That reason is launching such a long engine is going to be an absolute pain, even with NFLV 7.5m parts. However I wouldn't bother going shorter than 18m or maybe 14m with this engine since you quickly start to approach Hammertong levels of terribly low TWR without the insane dV of the Hammertong. I would probably considerer building a large interplanetary vessel around this engine. The A-134NG "Casaba" could be a really good engine, alas at the moment it is limited by its limited supply of ablator to only around 36k dV with a TWR of 0.33 which makes it merely good. This engine could still find a niche in serving as say a transport between Kerbin and Jool or beyond depending on which planet packs you have, but the ablator is not replaceable so this engine has a pretty limited lifetime. This makes you have to replace the engines in your Casaba powered transports back home at Kerbin instead of being able to refine more fuel at your destination. When compared to the Fresnel which is in a node that costs the same amount of science to unlock (4k), this engine has a better TWR but the Fresnel has much better dV and the ability to get more fuel via ISRU if you manage to run out. Which one to pick probably depends on your mission profile, if you want to reuse your ship for future missions without returning to Kerbin for a new engine or need more dV than the Casaba can provide the Fresnel wins. If you are planning on a mission that fits in the dV budget that the Casaba is limited to, willing to spend the science costs on antimatter, and are returning to Kerbin at the end of your mission or want a one way trip without wanting to use the vessel later the Casaba is probably the better option since it will be smaller with less parts which makes it easier to launch into orbit and dock with your craft and it has a good bit higher TWR which will make maneuvers easier and more accurate. The only change I would like is to have the ability to replace the engine's ablator in the field so that it can be reused once the ablator runs out, other than that it is a fairly nice engine. The Frisbee is absolutely insane. This engine is able to get 1.2M+ dV with a 1.98 TWR!!! This is the endgame engine, with only two weaknesses. The first weakness is that this baby needs a ton of antimatter, and this much antimatter costs a ton of science. That means you either have to set up antimatter collection ships around Jool or wherever which can take awhile and is annoying to ship the antimatter back to Kerbin or you need to set up an antimatter factory which has its own issues. The second problem with this engine is that it is HUGE. Even at half the max length at 44m (which is the shortest length I can still get cooled properly with the graphene microchannel radiators, this thing is going to be horrible to lug into orbit. In fact I'm not sure if anyone here has done so, all of the screenshots I've seen were of ships cheated into orbit. This is where I think that the previous idea of splitting the engine and radiator segments up could help since then each piece would be manageable to stick on top of a 7.5m rocket and send to orbit. With the help of Konstruction these parts would be combined into one assembly as if they had been directly connected in the VAB. However, since Nertea does not want to do this I am unsure of how else to get one of these bad boys into orbit. The JR-15 Discovery works pretty well as an early-ish fusion engine. It's unlocked in a 2.25k science node so it is pretty accessible and has pretty good performance compared to what you had before. It is pretty easy to get 100k dV with a 0.09 TWR which again isn't amazing but around the same or a little bit better than the best electrical engines like the VW-10k VASIMR with around 10x the dV. Not really much else to say about this engine, it seems like a pretty good upgrade once you unlock while not being so OP that the latter engines are garbage. The X-6 Clark has such low thrust it doesn't make sense to use on a big craft so I am not going to compare it to these engines. The X-7 Asimov in reaction products mode is also fairly useless for large crafts with a pitiful thrust and dV that looks more like one of the electric engines from NFP than a far future engine. However, in afterburning mode this engine transforms into a beast. This engine can give a very large amount of dV with useful thrust. I was able to get 180k dV with a 0.19 TWR which again isn't amazing thrust but isn't so low that you can't do Hohmann transfers. It also utterly destroys the JR-15 with both higher dV and a higher TWR while costing the same amount of science to unlock. This may actually be the most well rounded engine in the mod since it lets you get a very large amount of dV, have pretty good thrust, isn't super hard to refuel as long as you have an atmosphere with hydrogen available, and won't be insane to launch. The X-20 Verne is an OK engine in the 2.25k science tier for larger crafts, however the X-7 pretty much curbstomps it. I was only able to get around 50k dV before the TWR dropped below 0.2 which means that the X-7 lets you have over 3x as much dV for the same TWR. The one advantage the X-20 has is that its fuel can be completely refined from ore without needed a hydrogenated atmosphere to extract liquid hydrogen from, however this seems like a pretty niche use case. The X-2 Nuclear Saltwater Rocket is actually kind of bad when compared to the X-7 or even the X-20. I was only able to get around 34.7k dV before the TWR dropped to 0.20 which is way worse than the X-7 and not even as good as the X-20. I'm pretty surprised by this since everything I've read in this thread suggests that the X-2 should be massively OP which it just isn't, at least for 3.75m interplanetary crafts. So that's my thoughts on the engines in FFT. I think the balance could use a little work, the X-7 Asimov in afterburning mode seems to be pretty OP compared to the other engines in its tier and the Hammertong seems like a trash tier engine, at least for my play style. The X-2 NSWR also seems pretty weak which surprised me, I was expecting something much more powerful based off of the comments so far. I do have a question though. How are we supposed to launch some of these engines into orbit? Especially the really long engines like the Hammertong, and the Frisbee and to a lesser extent the Fresnel seem to be far too large to launch with even the 7.5m parts in NFLV, especially in JNSQ. The antimatter factory shares this problem, weighing 96 tons and being incredibly long which makes it nearly impossible to launch on top of a rocket without the whole thing snapping apart even with struts and autostrut. None of my attempts have succeeded yet anyway, even with my more Kerbal designs to make it fit in the VAB and not collapse under its own weight. (yes those are all vectors under 7.5m tanks)

I don't normally use the Bobcat that much since the Skipper or one of Nertea's cyro engines generally works fine for that but it would be nice to have the Cheetah revamped. It is a very useful engine when you want a bit more thrust than a Terrier but a Poodle is huge overkill.

I will say that I have been running JNSQ in 1.10.1 with bleeding edge Kopernicus and some other mods (Mechjeb, KER, the all of Nertea's mods, SCANsat, and some other mods) and I haven't experienced any bugs or glitches at all so far.

It sounds like the resource definitions aren't being scaled with the planets to me. I'm not sure if it would be on Sigma or FFT to handle that though.

Alternatively if you get Near Future Construction you can get some 3.75m skeletal trusses that you can stick the 2.5m tanks inside. It'll probably look cooler that way as well.

I haven't flown this craft, but what is your TWR? In my experience if the TWR is low my rockets will flip like crazy even without it being draggy.

I can also confirm seeing this with JNSQ without BDB parts installed so it isn't BDB's fault. I assumed it was TUFX or JNSQ's visual mods causing the problem but it could be a stock bug.

That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. Also, wow this is such an incredible update! The revamped early rockets are just so much fun to build and fly and they look absolutely stunning now. Now I just have to figure out how to sort through all these amazing parts...

It's so you can change the graphics settings to JNSQ's custom settings. There is a bug in KSP where those options only appear when there isn't a saved graphics setting in settings.cfg. I'm pretty sure you can just delete that line from settings.cfg and then you'll be able to change the graphics settings to JNSQ's custom settings but it's a lot easier to just delete settings.cfg and re create your settings.

Yeah in the stock solar system BDB parts are massively overpowered compared to real life. If you use a 2.7x scaled planet pack like JNSQ the parts correspond pretty well to what performance you would get in real life. To be fair though, the stock parts are pretty overpowered for the stock system as well. In real life we needed a massive Saturn V to just get a lunar rendezvous moon mission to work while on KSP a 1.25m rocket plus some boosters can easily perform a direct ascent Mun or Minmus mission.

Mopollo and Evepollo are now done! Now all that is left is the Jool V mission.

Episode 8: KSP: Atmosphere War With the full tech tree unlocked, there is no part off limit to Bill and his crack team of unpaid interns to use in their quest to make a craft that can conquer Eve, the single hardest celestial body in the Kerbol system to land on AND return from. Fortunately, a little bit of industrial sabotage of Lowne Aerospace gave Bill an idea of what the requirements for a Eve lander would be when creating his own design. To get the mothership and the lander to Eve, Bill designed the Sarnus KX. This variant of the Sarnus K uses a 5m upper stage instead of a 3.75m upper stage for more vacuum performance, 9 Vector engines instead of 5 Mastodons on a stretched lower stage for more power in the central core, and 4 Clydesdale boosters instead of 2 Pollux boosters for more dV and a higher launch TWR. After dropping the SRBs the lower stage would get Evepollo well on its way into orbit. The massive upper stage of the Sarnus KX would not only get the craft in orbit but would also perform the departure, mid course correction, and capture burn at Eve. After entering Eve orbit, Bob entered the lander and began his descent into the soupy atmosphere of Eve. Bob was able to safely land on a flat-ish area 6km above sea level, which was very important in order for Bob to have enough fuel in his lander to get back into orbit. Although it might have been possible at 4km, it would have been a lot harder. As it was, the ascent wasn't too bad. (spoiler contains out of universe description of problems I had with my first Evepollo attempt) Bob was able to get back into orbit with over 600 m/s of dV left in his tank. However, it would be up to the crew of the mothership to rendezvous with him as Bob didn't have a connection to the KSP for help with plotting maneuverers. After docking what was left of the lander to the mothership, the crew went to visit Gilly. Because fuel was so tight, the crew had a new computer program called M.E.C.H.J.E.B. help them determine the most efficient burns to reach Gilly. After reaching Gilly, Bob undocked the lander again and fell to the surface of the lumpy rock. After placing a flag, Bob waited for the mothership to pass overhead so he could burn straight for it. They then docked the mothership and the lander one last time to get the science, the fuel, and Bob before ditching the lander to head home. At this point Jeb was very concerned about fuel. 1.3km/s of dV wouldn't even be enough to reach home from low Eve orbit, let alone get to low Eve orbit from Gilly and then back home. Luckily for the crew (and my sanity after doing the Eve ascent twice because of my first mothership barely had enough dV to just get into orbit of Gilly), M.E.C.H.J.E.B. calculated a transfer window that would let them get from a similar orbit as Gilly's to Kerbin with just a less then 600m/s burn! Although Jeb (and I) was very skeptical of this claim, after performing the burn Evepollo was indeed on a course back to Kerbin. With barely 700 m/s of dV in the tank, Evepollo was heading home. And with that, Eve had been conquered! Val was very grateful to see her husband back safe and sound as she had been unable to go on this trip for health reasons (read Bill was a jerk and kicked Val off of the flight list and I didn't notice until I had already gotten fairly far into the mission) Now, one last test awaits the KSP: the Jool V, the mission that will see the KSP rise into glory as the premiere space agency (and sell lots and lots of tickets for the documentary Kisney will put out) or fall as an utter failure (and have their contract cancelled by Kisney for any future missions) ------- This was my first time ever doing an Eve return mission, I still almost can't believe that after all these years of playing Kerbal Space Program I've finally beaten the "end game boss" to borrow one of Matt Lowne's descriptions of the purple planet we all love and fear. Thank you @Superfluous J for providing the challenge that prompted me to finally attempt an Eve return and @Matt Lowne for teaching me how to do it with your amazing YouTube videos!

Episode 7: The Floor is Lava! The science from Eelpolo unfortunately wasn't enough to unlock the entire tech tree with two nodes left after doing as much research as the KSP could do with the science they had. Fortunately, these two nodes contained mostly dead-end technologies and the next mission would easily get enough science to research them anyway. After freezing on Eeloo, Bob wanted to go somewhere closer and warmer for the next episode. With only Mopollo, Evepollo, and the epic Jool V left, the choice was pretty simple. Moho has no moons and while it takes an absolutely ridiculous amount of dV to get there and back without gravity assists that can fairly easily be solved by moar fuel tanks. Learning from the wasted potential of the Sarnus X, Bill created a new Sarnus family rocket for this voyage. The Sarnus K was a cross between the KLS and the Sarnus X, using the core lower stage of the later while using strap-on SRBs and a 3.75m upper stage like the former. Although still a massive rocket, it was a much simpler design to build and fly than the Sarnus X. With five Mastodon engines and two Pollux boosters, the Sarnus K roared into the sky. After reaching space the fairing was deployed to revel the small Moho lander as well as the nuclear mother ship. Although the KSP was not fond of the NERV due to its high weight, low thrust, and the fact that it only runs on liquid fuel and therefore isn't compatible with any of their larger tanks, for a Moho mission a NERV and liquid fuel drop tanks were the only way to get the insane dV required. Fortunately, Bill had designed the Sarnus K upper stage to have enough fuel left to do the departure burn to Moho and part of the mid-course correction burn. The extremely low TWR of the single NERV would have made departing from Kerbin a very long, arduous, and joyless task. Because of how long the capture burn would take, Jeb and Val plotted a course for 230km above the surface of Moho. That way when Pe falls during the burn the crew wouldn't be in any risk of impacting Moho. After arriving in Moho's SOI, it was time to begin the capture burn. Yes, you are reading that right, it is a 40 minute(!) burn that uses 3.2km/s of dV to capture at Moho. Val made a mental note to look up "gravity assists" later. After capturing at Moho, it was time for Val and Bob to descend to the surface. Bob was much more impressed with Moho than most of the other celestial bodies he has visited, exclaiming "Finally, a color other than grey or ice!" Val didn't want to rain on her husband's parade by reminding him that ice wasn't a color. After performing their science experiments, Bob and Val headed back into orbit to dock with the mothership and return home to Kerbin. Another large burn awaited the crew as the plotted their course home, although luckily without the lander and one set of drop tanks the TWR was much better, with the burn only taking 13 minutes to complete. The KSP still isn't sure why Jeb thought firing a nuclear engine in the upper atmosphere while screaming through at interplanetary speeds was a good idea. It wasn't. Other than irradiating half of a continent with Jeb's little idea, the re-entry was safe and the mission was a complete success, bringing home more than enough science to unlock the last nodes of the tech tree. With the entire tech tree unlocked, it is finally time for the last episode in Reach for the Stars before the finale movie-length conclusion. It's big, it's got lots of atmosphere, it has a moon that's really just an overgrown asteroid, but most importantly it's purple, that's right, the next mission is to Eve!

So I've finally had enough time to complete Dunapollo and Eelpolo, I hope y'all enjoy monstrous rockets! Now I'm concerned with what I'm going to do for the Jool V and Eve since I can't really get much bigger...

Episode 6: Ice Cream: Electric Boogaloo After the last mission to Duna, the KSP had unlocked nearly the entire tech tree: (note: I forgot to take the tech tree screenshot until AFTER I finished the mission so rather than redoing the mission again I decided to just screenshot my tech tree before I unlocked any tech with my new science) With the Jool V mission looming ever closer, Bill wanted to gain some practical experience with extreme duration missions. As such the KSP decided to go to Eeloo as its extreme distance makes travel time long and viewer interest high while having no moons for a simpler mission design. Or at least that was the plan before Bill unvieled to the world the Sarnus X, an utterly massive rocket that may have been more than slightly overkill for Eeloo and has Bob terrified as to what Bill will come up for Eve and Jool. With two 5m boosters surrounding a 5m core and a height that barely fit in the VAB, the Sarnus X easily dwarfed the KLS. As it turns out, the Sarnus X upper stage and the orbiter together had over 2.5k m/s of dV left over after completing the mission so while for this mission the Sarnus X was overkill for the Jool V or Eve missions it should end up being a good fit. As the Sarnus X roared into the sky, Bob began to regret some of his life choices. The Sarnus X easily reached orbit with plenty of fuel in its upper stage to send Bob, Val, and Jeb on their way to Eeloo. As the mass of the Sarnus X upper stage plus the Eeloo mission itself was so great even the mighty Rhino engine couldn't do the Eeloo transfer burn in one go, instead having to split it into two burns of around 1.1k-1.2k m/s of dV. After being sent on its way to Eeloo, the crew of Eelpolo deployed the main fairing in order to get the ship in shape for the long voyage. The Eelpolo was split into three sections. On the left was the Eeloo lander, the first lander made by the KSP to deviate from the single Kerbal in a pod with fuel and science strapped to the side philosophy started in Munpollo and perfected in Dunapollo. Instead, this lander would ferry two Kerbals, Val and Bob, down to the freezing surface in search of Vanilla ice cream and science. In the center was the detachable crew and service module where the crew would live and science experiments would be conducted during the voyage. It would stay attached to the mothership for the entire mission, only being ditched during re-entry of Kerbin. Finally, on the right is the mothership with the command pod for piloting the vessel as well as the fuel and propulsion for the mission. This ended up both being massively oversized as well as not large enough as it didn't have enough fuel to to do an engine capture at Kerbin but could get the command pod in position for an easy aerocapture with 2k m/s of dV left. After a long voyage the Eelpolo arrived at Eeloo. Bob then performed some orbital science while Val prepped the lander for their trek to the icy surface. The lander worked flawlessly with the extra large extra grip landing gear preventing the craft from slipping. Bob and Val were able to perform multiple science experiments with fascinating results. Unfortunately, the surface analysis concluded that rather than being made up of ice cream, Eeloo was just made up of ice and rocks. Jeb cheered them up by suggesting that future missions could look into Eeloo's suitability for being turned into snowcones. Bob and Val then headed back into orbit to prepare for the trip home leaving the science equipment on the surface for a future expedition. After ditching the rest of the lander leaving only the command pod which was gutted of equipment and converted into extra living space, the crew plotted their course home. Despite not being able to run as many experiments as previous missions, Eelpolo earned a respectable 5k science points. Now it was time for the crew of the KSP to go from one of the furthest and coldest reaches of the Kerbol system to one of the nearest and warmest.

So, Real Life(TM) got in the way of me being able to play KSP and make mission reports the last two months. I'm hoping to finish this challenge in a reasonable time frame now that I've gotten all but three missions done. Hope y'all enjoy reading these mission reports as much as I enjoy writing them! Episode 5: We Like Ike! (oh and his brother is OK I guess) After the mid-session break, the producers wanted to get the hype rolling again with something Big. After going through the list of planetary systems left and analyzing them to determine if the system could be explored with their current tech and how big of a hype factor a mission would have Jeb, Bob, Val, and Bill decided on visiting Duna and Ike. These bodies were a perfect fit as they were close by and could easily be reached with the KSP's current tech and since Duna had a moon Kisney could stretch this mission into a double length special as the mid-session opener. On this mission Bill would be accompanying Bob and Val in order to gain valuable first hand experience on how his designs work. In order to accommodate the larger lander and orbiter needed to complete the mission objectives Bill made a larger 3.75m rocket with an even larger fairing. Christened the Kerbal Launch System or KLS, it unfortunately came in overtime and over budget which combined with Kovid meant that this mission was delayed. However, all of that is in the past as it is time for the mission to Duna to begin! The KLS was slightly overpowered with its upper stage able to take the orbiter, the lander, and two com-sats all the way to Duna orbit. After reaching Duna orbit, the crew's first objective was to land on Ike. Val and Bill expertly plotted a maneuver node to get them to Ike while Bob checked on the science experiments. After entering Ike orbit Bob flew the lander down to the moon's gray, rocky surface. This lander was a slight modification to the Dres lander with more fuel, experiments, and parachutes for the Duna landing. Again, Bob was suspicious with how closely Ike resembled the Mun, however the clear view of a big red planet in the sky convinced him that Ike was not the Mun. After collecting the science Bob then flew the lander up to the mothership to head to Low Duna Orbit and land on the red planet. The parachutes worked perfectly to shed the lander's speed, requiring only a quick burst of the engines at the end to land safely on Duna's surface. After posing for the perfect marketing photo, Bob ran the science experiments and then headed back into orbit to dock with the mothership for the voyage home. The ship easily had enough dV to do an engine capture at Kerbin, saving the crew from a toasty extreme-G re-entry. And with that, another successful mission came to a close for the KSA. Bringing home a whopping 5.9k science Bill was able to research new exciting technologies that allowed the KSP to conduct their longest and coldest mission yet.

Oh my gosh what is this unholy abomination??? Also, what the heck is that thing on page 8? I suppose one advantage of SRBX would be that the first stage boosters should be refurbishable, although I seem to remember that refurbishing Shuttle SRBs wasn't very cost effective or fast.

Would you mind sharing those TUFX configs? I've been trying to find a good looking set and your's look fantastic.

@Pioneer_Steve those screenshots are gorgeous! What visual mods are you running?

Maybe they meant the 1.875m station parts you posted ideas for in your dev thread?

If you have Kerbalism installed all bets are off as to what the reactors do, Nertea has never provided support for that config. Your best bet would be to ask the Kerbalism folks since with Kerbalism installed the reactors are basically Kerbalism reactors with Nertea models.

@Angel-125 this has been an awesome series, would mind making a post here when your new series starts so I and the other people following this topic know to check it out?

Interlude: Less Pain, More Gain After the last mission the KSP was in a pretty good shape tech wise with one exception: they hadn't researched 3.75m tanks yet. This seriously hampered Jeb and Bill's planning for where to go next as the 2.5m tanks and engines just didn't provide enough oomph to take a larger lander and mothership very far out into the Kerbol system. As such they decided to gather the last bits of science they needed by calibrating their instruments across the KSC. With the new sciencemobile Bob was able to gather lots of science from across the KSC. In fact, they not only got enough science to unlock the 3.75m tanks but they also unlocked the Atmospheric Fluid Spectro-Variometer. Now that the only science part missing was the gravioli detector the KSC had a tough decision to make. Should they go to Moho, the closest planet to the sun and the planet where the least amount of science could be gained in order to maximize science from other missions? Or should they go to Eeloo, whose massive science multipliers would ensure that plenty of research was gathered? Or should they go to Duna and Ike which although they have the lowest science multipliers being able to visit two bodies and gather atmospheric science would allow for a massive science haul even without the gravioli detector? Stay tuned to the next episode to find out where they decided to go!