Levelord

That is one sexy engine configuration.

Doesn't that make it a matter/antimatter engine? If that's the case, the OP should try the interstellar pack.

It might also help having the science bays being able to jettison themselves after use. Since it's an unmanned mission I assume there isn't going to be a science lab, so the used up science experiments aren't re-usable. They'd end up as dead weight after transmission. I dont see any parachutes or langing gears on the craft, so I also assume that he isn't going to bring it back to kerbin for recovery.

I have two questions, 1. What mod gives those ion engines those effects? 2. Are those RTGs enough to power all of those ion engines at full power? O_o

With the current time warp, waiting for the craft to coast to Eeloo is kinda pushing it. Does anyone know of a mod that allows higher time warp?

I believe Kerbals kept falling over in the previous versions because the game thought the craft was always in motion in water. There was a mod back then that forced the craft to be registered as 'landed' while in water, thus allowing kerbals to walk on the now 'static' ship. I assume the fix in 0.23 does the same thing. To OP: That's a really nice boat btw.

The entire forum was wiped in April due to a bug, so a lot of the old threads were lost. That's pretty much it :I

Sure, why not.

This all feels somewhat historic in a RP kinda way. The Kerbals, trying to develop warp technology... It's really fun to play with, though I feel that in the next update SQUAD might inadvertently fix it by improving joint reinforcements. I won't miss it when it's gone though.

Apparently the Kraken can infiltrate your dreams

I don't think KSP will go up to $60 on release. That being said, even if it does go up to $60, the game would still be considered dirt cheap when you take into account the literal thousands of hours of fun it has given me. It is the only game that I had ever spent so much time on and enjoyed. The only game to come up second only has a meager 600 hours, and that was from me modding Skyrim.

I'm disappointed. I spent so much time putting together a nicely written post about the flaws of the engine, the game it inhabits and the possible solutions. Then someone comes along, doesn't read my post, doesn't address my points, calls me an ass and suddenly everything I've carefully tried to explain in my first post is suddenly invalidated. Then I'm lumped together with him as if I'm a forum troll. I'm not going to dwell in it, but I want to let you know how how unfair that ad hominem was and how the points I laid out are still not discussed/addressed by anyone.

Okay let me make it as simple as possible: Why do you NEED it changed? Short answer: I didn't ask for the engine to be changed. Long answer: You didn't want an essay and you didn't read my last post, otherwise you wouldn't be asking this question. p.s. 1.) There was no insults in this thread except the one made by you calling me an ass. 2.) People are talking about the ion engine here because it's the thread topic. We aren't discussing other engines (other than it's comparisons) here because it would be off-topic.

I'm not following. Where in my post did you get the impression that I said I am smarter than everyone else? I simply laid out objective points to explain my thoughts on the issue and called out a logical fallacy that had no contribution in a discussion. I'd rather you counter the individual points about the ion engine than resort to calling someone an ass. Because: 1. It's trivial name-calling that adds nothing to the discussion 2. You make no valid objective points than saying people are jealous, which says nothing about the build of the engine itself or how it relates to the game. 3. You ignored the points made in my post which lays out a practical reason the engine doesn't seem to be popular and a possible solution. Which mind you, has nothing to do with changing the actual engine itself, so I don't see why you are all defensive about it. As what peadar1987 said in response to my post, there is always an alternative to the ion engine, which I agree. The point to take into consideration is that not all choices are made equal, and that choices have incentives built into them. For example, I have a choice to go watch TV or watch shows online. Both are choices, but I have a better incentive to watch shows online because I can avoid ads, save videos, multitask, and more. The same applies for ion engines when put side by side with other engines they really don't add up unless you are a hardcore realism simulator. The ion engine offers the least incentive to be chosen into craft designs when you factor in practicality, time management, and payload carrying capacity. People think that if you buff the ion engine (which is not what I'm arguing for) that people will choose the ion engine exclusively, because, "why ever use anything else?". Well, the opposite is true when the ion engine has a very long burn time with few advantages other than it's ISP, then people will say, "why ever use the ion engine?". This to me is something that is misbalanced. Over-using an engine is unbalanced and under-using an engine is equally unbalanced. Compare this to the RAPIER and the Ramjet engines, these two engines are almost perfectly balanced in terms of having equal incentives while still performing their own specific roles differently. I've yet to see a majority choose one engine over another as each provide vastly different benefits and drawbacks. The ion engine's apparent benefits are overshadowed by the lack of specific parts for it's size and the long burn times. At least if the time warp issues were addressed, the ion engine could have been a strong contender against the nuclear engine and people would begin considering it for other craft designs. You are reading the poll incorrectly. The poll says nothing about how many people actually use the ion engine, it just records people's opinions on if the engine should be changed. I don't use the ion engine, but I voted to keep it the same, because I opted to have time warp upgraded to allow higher levels of warp. If you want to get a feel of how under-used the engine is, go to the spacecraft exchange (and the mission reports section if you want more data) and tally the number of interplanetary crafts people post and then count how many of them use ion engines and how many use nuclear engines or other. Then calculate the fraction/percentage over the total and you can see that there are very, very, very few crafts that utilizes the ion engine. I've only seen ion drives used on ultra light SSTOs twice, and on a small orbital bike with a chair once (that orbital bike is arguably not interplanetary but I'll give it a pass for argument's sake) out of the few hundreds of interplanetary crafts posted monthly. If you want to be really accurate, you could make a separate poll asking people specifically if they use the ion engine and how regularly they use it. I'll readily accept the data you provide me. Now, consider that the smaller science equipment usually gathers less science. They can only be activated in certain areas, for example the Double-C Seismic Accelerometer can only be activated on a planetary surface, or a GRAVMAX Negative Gravioli Detector which can only be used on the surface or in deep space but never in atmosphere, while a SC-9001 Science Jr. or Mystery Goo Containment Unit can record data at all altitudes high/low, on the ground, low orbit and high orbit, deep space, enabling you to choose the area which provides the highest amount of science points. All things being equal, gathering arguably less science negates the advantages the ion engines offers. Which brings me around to my previous point where I feel that there needs to be specific small probe parts that can/cannot carry science in order to make small probes worthwhile, especially ion powered ones. The apparent lack of science returns for the smaller units could probably be compensated by part spamming the small science modules, but there is only ever so much real estate on a small probe to place them. Now, given that there's no money in the game yet, people can accomplish the same thing you did with your ion engines in under half of that time without time warp and still get back more science. Possibly when money gets implemented the ion engines might be a viable cheap alternative to using the nuclear engines, but one could argue that within the 12 to 30 (however long it takes) to burn the ion engines to save money, someone could have done 3 missions to earn the money back using conventional means. But I'm crossing into pure speculation here, so I won't put so much weight on what is being said about the money side of things until it gets implemented and tested. To summarize, I firmly believe that allowing higher levels of time warp and more probe specific parts (possible electricity rebalancing) can be a good start. There was a mod where it had solar sails, and it could function well (thrust) under the static time warp, because its thrust was so gentle. I believe the same could be done to ion engines, place it on rails and allow higher time warp levels.

I believe the point of the thread is 'what can be done (or if it's fine on it's original state) to make the ion engines a more viable choice of engine in KSP'. Ion engines are a big thing in real life where astronomers, engineers, physicists and other scientists are pushing forwards the technology to be incorporated more into spacecraft design while in KSP, the exact opposite is true, where a very small niche of players make some active use of the engine while everyone else avoids it and sees it as a curiosity. From a realism standpoint, it's the most unrealistic engine in the game, resembling very little of it's real counterpart in terms of thrust and ISP. From a gameplay standpoint it is an engine a very small minority of players in the community have time for. Real life ion engines run for weeks at a time and while it's fortunate that KSP players don't have to wait that long for their burns, it's still too long in the frame of the game it is in. Time paradoxically, is a luxury scientists have and people playing video games don't have. In fact KSP makes use of a lot of shortcuts in order to get us right into the concept of space travel instead of bogging us down with things like 'taking time to build a space craft', 'waiting for funds to come through', 'waiting for engine ignition times', 'waiting for the craft to be rolled out to the launchpad' and so on. Kerbin's been scaled down to save time on long orbital launches, and higher levels of static rails time warp was implemented in order to travel interplanetary. Why does SQUAD even bother optimizing the load times if everyone is comfortable bringing up Game of Thrones on another monitor while the game does it's thing? The reason why we skip those aspects of space travel, preparation and general waiting (while arguably interesting to watch) is that the player spends the majority of their time doing absolutely nothing while waiting for things to move along. We were even given a special physics time warp to help move us along those long nuclear engine burns. Unfortunately the time warp is insufficient for ion engine burn times (which is something I would strongly advocate changing instead, as having an ion engine buff displeases so many people). The "If you don't like them, you don't have to use them." answer can be used for literally any argument that avoids addressing the actual points or possible flaws in a discussion and is quite frankly the cheapest of cop-out one can provide. "Don't like that Unity doesn't use a quad core? Then don't play KSP" "Don't like the way your monitor is colored? Then don't use your PC" "Don't like the way education is done in schools? Then don't go to school" "Don't like the way the ion engines are under-used because they aren't consistent with the other engines in terms of the time it demands? Don't use it" Never ever use that line of flawed reasoning again. It drives me up the wall. The ion engine appears to be in a corner of it's own and doesn't even serve as an educational tool like the other engines in the game. Nobody in a school is going to sit for 30 minutes in a class to see if an ion engine can take you interplanetary. I can understand that people want to keep the ion engine the way it is, and in some ways I agree. If you'd let me elaborate: People don't have an actual problem with the engine, people have a problem with the ridiculous wait time associated with it. Which to me, is entirely reasonable. An additional point I'd like to make is that everything around the ion engine works disproportionately against it. Science instruments are oversized and too heavy (as they were never intended to be used on craft with ion engines) which further pushes up the burn times. Small batteries contain too little charge and solar panels don't provide enough power to run the engine at max (which means using the biggest solar panel which again drives up the weight and slows everything down further). In theory and from personal experience building minimalist craft, the ion engines are not sufficient to carry any useful scientific payload beyond Kerbin's sphere of influence, and the time spent burning despite it's high ISP still means that it will have the majority of it's xenon tanks depleted by the time the burn completes, which in all intents and purposes, means you are better off using nuke engines. Ion engines are relegated to the realm of roleplay where you pretend you are launching a probe, but it's not carrying any of the actual scientific payload. People are against adding smaller scientific parts to fit small probes, they are against buffing the engine, and they are against anything really. The best solution would be to increase the level of physics warp allowed for the ion engines. It's the only solution I know to combat the ridiculously long wait times. I don't want to be playing a game where I spend 90% of my time not actually playing it.

I'm interested in knowing what exactly you are trying to imply with that statement. Nuke engines already take about 10 minutes (depending on the average weight of interplanetary craft) which nobody has complained about in the history of... whenever. From what I gather from your statement, you are implying that a 30 minute burn is a good thing in terms of game play and possibly realism. I'd like you to explain to me how, waiting for 30 minutes doing nothing in a videogame is justifiable.

Hit the nail on the head with this one. For people who are too stubborn to accept that the ion engines need tweaking for gameplay's sake, at least they should accept that we need higher orders of time warp to compensate 45 minute engine burns. Seriously, waiting 45 minutes for an engine burn in a video game is excessive and unreasonable no matter how 'hardcore' you want to be.

Here you go: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16683090/KSP/Warp%20Drive%202.craft

I went through my entire design process not knowing this O_o But I did manage to make a miniaturized version of a Kraken drive. Which I then made into a working engine. and incorporated into my spaceplane design Later, I made a final prototype. The great thing about the engine is that it doesn't break down. It is exceptionally reliable. Now it seems, I am going into slightly more dangerous areas of Kraken physics. I've christened this ship Event Horizon. I'll be back with results on this one.

I can see something like "WE'RE LOSING CONTAINMENT! THE KRAKEN IS LOOSE! THE KRAKEN IS LOOSE!"

Assuming there are only 2 Kerbals in the front 2 cockpits, I would fly close to the ground and then immediately pull up on the stick to kill all horizontal speed. Then, pointing up I'd let the aircraft slowly fall back down and crash on it's rear. Essentially lithobraking and allowing the aircraft body to absorb the damage. The cockpits should fall off safely. I'd like a save file so that I could test out that theory.

If I manage to capture an asteroid in my cargo bay and bring it back to Kerbin, would I be given a crazy amount of science for it?

I do exactly the same. I use hyperedit to test out new space craft designs. Why should I need to endure a 5 minute launch flight that I know will work 100% of the time only to spend the last 30 seconds testing and tweaking the payload? Then reverting back to the SPH/VAB to make adjustments again? It's a massive waste of time. Once I'm happy with the design then I run a full mission without hyperedit.