SofusRud

I think a good way to balance these parts would be to make the efficiency of their transmission, as in how much science you get from transmitting, dependent on both which antenna you use and how far from Kerbin you are. As an example, all of the antenna might be equally good around Kerbin and on the Mun, but once you go to say Duna you might find that the Communotron 16 gets you 10%-20% less science than the others. At Jool you might again find that the Communotron 88-88 gives you the best performance, making up for its weight and higher power consumption, and so on. I think this would allow for better balancing and give the antennas a greater degree of specialization.

Here are a couple of projects I have underway Orthros Mk-1 At this point its a purely atmospheric plane. I wanted to work on my air-frame-making skills, in particular with regards to the construction of a large SSTO. What with all the lifting surfaces it flies like a dream, even though its not as balanced as I would like, but then again this was without a payload. I hope to later turning it into a proper SSTO, with cargo capacity and interplanetary range and what have you. Kylon Mk-1 an attempt at making a Skylon look-and-workalike using the new extra large fuel tanks as the main fuselage. As you can see in the pictures, it has gone through several iterations, with each one subtracting excess fuel, increasing number of engines, increasing amount of wing surface and so on. At present moment it has 8 RAPIERs and 2 Turbojets, and can actually lift off after the end of the runway although it looks far less like the Skylon than it did initially. I previously had to switch to rocket mode on the RAPIERs or add disposable solid rocket boosters in order to take off, and disposable SRBs kinda goes against the concept of an SSTO. At present moment it can climb to about 6km before it begins to loose vertical speed and starts descending. early version current state any ideas on how to improve this design or should i drop this crazy idea?

Tried to get this monstrosity of an SSTO to work Had to go through several iterations: remove excess fuel, increase number of engines, increase lift, untill I got this: Still can't make orbit though, but at least its capable of lifting off the ground (after the end of runway drop) and stay in the air, so that's something. Maybe it was hubris that got me to try and make an SSTO with the new big rocket parts as a fuselage, but then again it does look cool.

Name: Disposable Chute Pod A decoupler, 3 chutes and 2 separtrons. For when you want to land stuff on an atmospheric body but don't want to have to lug around the excess weight and part count. I've been using if for all of my Laythe base module delivery needs. once landed, you activate them and they fly off and are destroyed on impact and a demonstration The DL: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wfoi6hy8iuqs2sd/EIl56607po

I posted these a while ago in the SSTO thread, but since I am still so excessively proud of them, and with them still being some of my best SSTOs to date (both functionally and aesthetically), I'll share them again here: Thunderlane Mk-3 3.7 tons to orbit it's a subassembly Thunderlane Mk-5 7.5 tons to orbit also a subassembly Fluffles Mk-4C 1.4 tons to orbit, or whatever fits in the bay again, a subassembly Fluffles Mk-4 My current Laythe Base to Laythe Space Station crew ferry. It features rover wheels, requires short takeoff, and can carry 3 kerbals, making it very well suited for long-term assignments on Laythe What i like most about these four planes is that the middle fuselage has a structural panel(s) in the middle, splitting it into two tanks, with each end of the middle section feeding into only one of the engine sections of the wings. This method solved the issue i was having with COM drifting too much, making my crafts unstable. DL: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/g5toine4cjtxh3q/V9ZQad0IjL

Here is the latest pretty SSTO i came up with. It uses the Stock Rebalancing mod, meaning that the structural parts have fuel in them. I find that this gives me the ability to make craft that are both functional and good-looking without forcing me to use excessive part clipping or other shenanigans.

Made an SRB plane. The tricky part was tweaking the thrust limiter on the SRB so that it gave me enough acceleration, but burned long enough for me to get to the island runway. In the end I had to do a couple of loops to let the fuel burn off before I could land. Granted, it does have very good glide characteristics.

Careful, you might clip it into a singularity

That depends on how you design them. Its a matter of designing them for the challenge. Here is an example: This is my surface-to-orbit Laythe shuttle. It has very good glide characteristics, allowing it to land very slowly, and also requires a very short takeoff. Of course it helps to place your landing spot someplace reasonably level, but having done multiple trips to the surface of Laythe and back, I would say that it is totally possible to do reliably. Of course, good design can only compensate so much for bad piloting Here it is on Laythe (to the left) and in orbit around Laythe

wait, you wanna go to space from Eve?! With that? You are either gonna need to strap a lot of boosters to it or you are going to have to reevaluate your design. Gravity on Eve high and the atmo is thick. Personally, my way of checking if a craft is capable of getting off Eve is that it has to make orbit around kerbin at half throttle, with an immidiate gravity turn, and still have a boatload of delta-v once i get it into orbit.

There are quite a few 3.75m parts missing actually. Others have mentioned stack separators and RCS tanks, but thats just the tip of the iceberg. We also lack: nosecones, fuselage parts, a number of different 3.75-to-other-sizes adapters, 3.75 multiple node adapters, a number of fuel cans of different lengths, a stackable probe core, a reaction wheel, stackable battery, not to mention a whole host of structural parts

where is the option for the inline one?

You seem to be confusing the LV-N with some other, hypothetical engine. The LV-N is based on the NERVA engine, which does not, as you put it, eject radioactive fuel. What it does is that it uses the nuclear reactor, functioning in a closed and stable system, to heat up fuel passing through. The Fuel expands as it passes through the engine and is expelled out the back. It is NOT expelling a radioactive substance, but rather just a very hot one. Squad is also very aware that the engine works this way, but keeps it using the same Liquid Fuel/Oxidiser combo as a placeholder. The LV-N is rather balanced in terms of its TWR, because basing it on the performance of the real NERVA would have made it the best engine for all possible scenarios

downloaded Stupid_Chris's stock rebalancing mod. Designed a new heavy launcher, but couldn't do much more due to the train I'm in being kinda shaky

Fine then, here that picture of my slapdash Single Stage to Laythe craft. Again

That the goddamn point! The kerbal universe is scaled, therefore the engines need to be scaled to match! So of course any engine based off of real life engines have balance issues. How is this difficult to understand? Why do you think the atmo ISP and TWR of the LV-N are so ridiculously low compared to their real life counterparts? I'll give you a clue: it rhythms with "bame galance" As for whether or not the engines actually are unbalanced, I'll simply refer you to Stupid_Chris's plotting of the engine stats: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/74603-Engine-balancing-issues-in-ARM

You can also choose not to use any engines and faff about with rovers and sculptures made from structural pieces. What you, the player, chooses to do is completely irrelevant with regards to game design/game balance. Its what you can do that matters.

I feel like I'm repeating myself here. Does it not worry you that the new engines have made Rocket Singe Stage To Laythe craft not just possible, but really easy to throw together, using only one engine (x7)? Could you do that in the demo?

It is totally related to this issue. Because the implication of all gameplay balancing being a "choice" of the player is that the game would be better if Squad didn't bother at all. In such case the engine stats might as well be assigned by throwing a dart at a wall covered in numbers. My position is that Squad should balance the parts in the same way that they always have, up until now. Its not like that hasn't been restricting you until now, or do you still mourn the old aerospike?

So by your standards the devs might as well have made a bunch of engine models and used a random number generator to assign stats?

Could you do Single stage to Laythe using only one type of engine? Because that is my point, way to miss it. The my argument isn't that "engines let you do stuff" but that these ARM engines are practically ALL you need to do stuff. And sure, Aerospikes and nuke engines have higher ISP, but that is balanced with a lower TWR that precludes doing the things with them that you can now do with the ARM engines. Single stage to Laythe used to be a difficult business of jets, wings, nukes and copious fuel management, and that's what made managing to do it cool. For that matter, rovers are cool, and I find your assumption that I wouldn't like them to be odd and slightly insulting. As for just limiting myself, see my previous post on this thread wherein I explain why I reject that argument

that is not what I am saying. I am saying that there is a point at which "SSTO rockets are possible" becomes "SSTO are a viable way to go places and do stuff (again, see my Laythe rocket)", and with the new ARM engines that point has clearly passed

Actually because kerbin is smaller, for reasons of processing power and gameplay, engines in KSP have a significantly higher mass compared to real-world rockets. Again, this is for balance purposes, in order to lower TWR and make rocket SSTO less easy and less viable. SSTO rockets are not "supposed" to be easy

The point is that when a new engine allows slapdash constructions like mine to do stuff like that it demonstrates an imbalance in that engine. That's the whole point of having a wide array of rocket engines for different purposes. My single stage to Laythe clearly demonstrates that is simply not true. The new engines are so overpowered as to make other rocket engines unnecessary for that kind of mission. Not only does the practical obsolescence of a large number of parts bother me, but its also the fact that these new engines make it too easy. I got no sense of achievement from that Laythe mission because the engines are so overpowered that i might as well have had infinite fuel on. Can we at the very least agree that part of the fun of going to other planets in KSP is the sense of achievement you get from doing something difficult. Also, as to the the folks who say that "if we think engines aren't balanced then we should just stop using them": What kind of argument is that? Part of the fun in achieving something is mastering the tools in your disposal in order to overcome a difficult task. If one of the tools at your disposal is an instant problem-solving device then that cheapens the whole process. And if we were to accept that argument the devs might as well have been deciding engine stats by throwing a dart at a wall covered random numbers, but they haven't. Until now the engines were more or less balanced (see Stupid_Chris's graphs) and the devs have made efforts to keep parts balanced when they weren't (see Aerospike and LV-N), so why shouldn't they do so again in this case.

Perhaps you missed my point. The point I was making with my Single Stage to Laythe was to demonstrate that the new ARM engines were unbalanced to such a degree as to make it possible to hastily throw together a craft (using only one engine type) that can reach that far in a singe stage.