ZenithRising

Hey there. Love the game, and I'm very happy I picked it up. Obviously there are a ton of things I would love to see implemented down the road (why are spaceplanes so awful?), but one smaller thing comes to mind: I've built a few craft now with extra fuel tanks designed to be jettisoned once they are empty and lose some mass, so I want to use those tanks first. Sometimes the game actually seems to figure it out on its own, not drawing fuel from later stage tanks, but that behavior is a bit unreliable, so often times I'm going in and manually disabling my main tanks so it just draws from the ejectable extras. What I would love to see is: 1) That the game remembers which tanks I've disabled (I have to go in and reset it every time I play) 2) That disabling/enabling fuel tanks can be assigned to an action group like most other actions. Thanks! Keep up the good work!

This is awesome.

I think the guy who suggested a skipper is right on. Your design is all thrust and no specific impulse (efficiency). You're running out of fuel part way up. As you get higher, you won't need as much thrust because you are shedding weight, the air resistance is dropping, and you are also coasting off the momentum of previous stages. Skippers are a great choice. They still have a ton of thrust and use much less fuel then the mainsails. I've also had some success with using a few aerospikes in a stage, as they have great specific impulse (though poor thrust). Also, terminal velocity is an issue. Your thrust is giving you diminishing returns once you hit it. You may find that all of those Mainsails aren't actually helping much more than four or so would. I'm far from an expert, but I would jam some extra solid boosters on there to get that early thrust you need (best thrust to mass ratio in the game), cut down on the Mainsails, and replace them with Skippers.