Search the Community

I'm not quite sure what category to put this in, but I'll go and put it in this one anyways as it is a compilation of science-related balancing issues about celestial bodies in ksp 2 after 2 playthroughs I had, one on normal, one on 50% science. I'll make it quick: eeloo gives too much science for its difficulty and so does dres moho gives too little science jool itself gives too much science for multiple biomes, should only have 1 biome but have the same overall science - incentivizing the player not to use multiple jool probes jool's moons should give more science for their easter eggs overall, currently they are pretty low, despite them being hard to get to dres quarterpipe gives way too little science, same happens with other easter eggs (other bug reports should handle/report this on their own as this is maybe a bug?) duna needs more easter eggs due to its story-mode and gameplay importance with players going there more often than other planets, but currently doesn't have many ike should have more biomes but the science should be more spread out among them due to how the terrain on ike gives a challenge for rovers and such eve ocean gives way too little science, so do all the other eve sample returns, but this may be a bug bop should give more science than gilly, not less because it is much further away from kerbin than gilly, requires you to do more and also has a higher gravity bop should have a discoverable in the supercrater - just a personal gripe Reply to this report with any of your own discoverable/celestial science balancing gripes!

Throttle Controlled Avionics - Continued real-time engine balancing, attitude and altitude control, VTOL autopiloting Originally created by qfeys and Zenka Current development and maintenance: allista TCA is a plugin that enhances the attitude control of a ship by dynamically changing the output of its engines and RCS thrusters. Even with most unbalanced designs TCA maintains stable flight and quick precise response to user or autopilot input. TCA also provides many sophisticated autopilot programs based on this core functionality, including waypoint navigation and automatic landing. It is also fast enough to simultaneously control a whole squadron of ships without much overhead. First read, then fly! TCA Manual First read, then fly! Support me on Patreon Features Functionality: Simultaneous control over multiple vessels. Realtime RCS and engine balancing. Multiple engine roles and engine profiles. Full support of slow engines (jets, propellers, etc.) Thrust attitude control. Hovering control. Many sophisticated autopilot programs. Orbital maneuvering independent of command module orientation. User defined macros. Technical: Both the Toolbar and the stock AppLauncher are supported. Per-vessel/per-save configuration profiles and custom presets. In-game configurable key binding. Full career mode integration (see below). Introduction to TCA2 New Features in TCA3 Launching shuttle with TCA Flying Harrier-like VTOL plane with TCA New orbital autopilots in TCA 3.2.0 TCA Modules in Tech Tree Downloads and Installation !!! ModuleManager is required but not included !!! SpaceDock Page GitHub Releases Source Code If you're upgrading, DELETE the old version before installing a new one BUT do not delete the TCA.conf and config.xml files to preserve your settings. ChangeLog Acknowledgments: First of all, many thanks to qfeys and Zenka for creating the original concept and implementation. Without them TCA would not exist. And I want to express extreme gratitude to @smjjames, who helped me so much with the testing of TCA3 and proposed countless improvements. Without it this version would never have come to a release! My patrons on Patreon. Thank you for your support! Kevin Casey Bob Palmer Ryan Rasmussen Matthew Zaleski Bart Blommaerts eL.Dude Layne Benofsky Igor Zavoychinskiy Issarlk Meiyo BP Jenna Mitchell Squiddy Ted Achenbach SCESW Patrice Hédé Steve Victory Also, here are the mods whose code and ideas were used in one way or another: Hangar MechJeb2

A continuation of a continuation Previous thread, Original thread. Thanks to Gaius and Geordiepigeonowner. Please see new thread: Old thread, for history: This mod lets you assign "pump levels" to fuel tanks (and more!). Higher-level fuel tanks will flow automatically to lower-level tanks. Equal-level tanks can be set to balance automatically. Now with action group support! Compare and contrast with TAC Fuel Balancer and PWB Fuel Balancer. The stock fuel priority system in KSP 1.2 controls how fuel is drained by engines. It never moves fuel from one tank to another, which is what this mod does. Download for KSP 1.7.3: Curse, SpaceDock, Github Download for KSP 1.6: old version at Github Download for KSP 1.5.1: old version at Github Download for KSP 1.4.5: old version at Github Download for KSP 1.3.1: old version at Github Download for KSP 1.2.2: old version at Github Download for KSP 1.1.3: old version at Github Sources: Github License: GPLv3

TL;DR: is this generally considered a "don't do this" type of thing for spaceplanes, or just a tradeoff? Hi, I've been refining a Mk3 "do-everything" spaceplane for a while now (all science, ISRU, amphibious, etc.) and I'm wondering if I'm making a mistake with the balance. The default CoM is very stable and just a tiny tiny bit forward of the CoL, but I understand that although these being very close makes the plane more maneuverable, it also makes it more vulnerable to loss of control. My question is: is this generally considered a "don't do this" type of thing for spaceplanes, or just a tradeoff? —Liftoff/landing: CoM and CoL being on top of each other is good here, right? —Ascent: CoM being somewhat ahead of CoL makes the plane more stable. But if it seems pretty controllable then is there a reason to worry? —Reentry: CoM being somewhat ahead of CoL makes the plane recover from aggressive reentry profiles. Is it reasonable to say "I expect to have some fuel left to create this condition for reentry" or is that considered a bad design? (It needs 10% fuel to ensure recovery from radial out position) Basically, I like the idea of maximum agility (for a Mk3 spaceplane) but I don't want to overlook a fatal flaw.

Stock Antenna Balance Uses ModuleManager to adjust the range, power usage and other attributes of the stock antennas and how they function with the new CommNet that was added in KSP 1.2. This makes it much more important to use a mix of direct and relay antennas to communicate with Kerbin's Deep Space Network (DSN). License GPL 3.0 Links: SpaceDock / GitHub (downloads & source) Source code: https://github.com/WuphonsReach/KSP-StockAntennaBalance Current effects: Direct-connection antennas are changed so that you usually can't reach back from Jool/Eeloo without relying on a relay network. Stock antennas now have better defined niches. Relay antennas are now equivalent in power (or stronger) then DSN antennas on Kerbin's surface. This makes it possible to disable the extra ground stations on Kerbin's surface in the difficulty options. The drawback is that relay antennas also consume a lot more power when transmitting data and should not be used on science-gathering probes / spacecraft. Relay antennas are also heavier and more expensive and some have constant power draw. The optional contracts will give you guidelines on how much battery capacity you need to operate through Kerbin's shadow. Full details are available at GitHub, including sample network links. Installation: Because this is all done through ModuleManager patches and no new models or assets are included, it doesn't matter where you put the contents of the .zip file as long as it's under GameData/ somewhere. This also means that as long as ModuleManager and ContractConfigurer support the newest KSP versions, then this addon will probably work okay as well. You must have ModuleManager installed (or from GitHub releases), this comes with a lot of other addons, so I'm not including it. Installation of ContractConfigurer is optional, but provides in-game contracts for building out your CommNet. Download one of the releases from GitHub. Extract the .zip file into a folder under your GameData/ directory. Upgraders should delete the old folder before installing the new version. There are no settings that get shared across releases and this prevents problems in case I rename one of the configuration files. Effect on existing games: May cause loss of probe / craft control due to changed CommNet ranges. May cause power issues due to the constant power demand of the relay antennas. Science gathering spacecraft may be unable to send data back home if they only have relay antennas installed (and not enough battery capacity or power generation ability to process and transmit the data). Removal is easy as long as you have not used any of the antennas which were added by this mod, removing this addon's folder under GameData/ will revert your antennas to the stock capabilities. Recommended KSP difficulty settings: These are available in the "Settings / Difficulty Options / Advanced" menu and can be changed at any time in a career save. I'm running with the following values in my current career save: DSN Modifier set to between 0.02 and 0.10 Turn off "Enable Extra Groundstations" Occlusion Modifier, Vac = 1.02 Occlusion Modifirer, Atm = 0.98 If you don't adjust these values, you'll find that the DSN ground stations are often going to take priority over those relay satellites that you lovingly placed into KEO orbits. Change log: https://github.com/WuphonsReach/KSP-StockAntennaBalance/blob/master/CHANGES.md ModuleManager Patches included for these mods: DMagic Orbital Science (Soil Moisture sensor and SIGINT experiments) SXT Continued (Comm DTS-R4, Komm 16)

Title. The mainsail has almost the same thrust at sea level as the mastodon but the mainsail also has far better max isp in vacuum so the mastodon is redundant both as a launch engine and as an orbital engine. The mastodon should really have a higher thrust ( thrust in the middle of the min and maxthrust for the mainsail (around 1400?) would be better then it's got a niche as a more powerful launch engine than the mainsail but with less efficiency) , it's supposed to be a launch engine, at the moment there is no point using it at all except for aesthetic purposes. Also I should add the skiff is pretty weak in terms of thrust too, I made a saturn v replica and the S-II and S-IVB stages with a full tanks of accurate size had terrible thrust to weight ratios, something like 0.3 which is useless for an upper stage in the atmosphere. It should probably have twice as much thrust as a swivel for what it is, it's a 2.5 m engine.

Compared to an FLT-100, both the Oscar-B and ROUND-8 contain far too much fuel for their size. The volume of an Oscar-B for example is roughly about 1/6 that of the FLT-100, yet it contains 2/5 of the fuel. The fuel and corresponding weight of both tanks should probably be adjusted to roughly half their current values, something like 1/5 - 1/6 of the FLT100 for the Oscar-B and 1/3 - 3/10 of an FLT100 for the ROUND-8.

The past few weeks I've been trying to make spaceplanes for other users on Kerbal X. As such I've been restricting myself to designs that require no mods whatsoever to fly, but the problem I'm hitting time and time again is fuel balance. As you may be aware , all jet engines in game drain fuel evenly , from every tank in the vessel. If your plane is down to 50% internal fuel, every tank onboard will have 50% of it's full capacity, regardless of size. Eg. your FAT-455 airplane wing will now have 300 LF out of 600 max capacity, whilst your mark 0 fuselage will now have 25 out of 50. Adjust your airplane so that there's as many tanks ahead of CG as there are aft of it, then everything balances perfectly, full to empty with no handling problems. FULL TANKS EMPTY TANKS *this plane was modified off a design Bewing sent to me, original here Now the problem is, when you fire up the NERV or any rocket engine at all , for that matter. Rocket engines only take fuel from the stack of tanks immediately ahead of them, radially attached wings or tanks on other stacks are ignored. Well , if that was the only problem you could run fuel ducts, though given how bugged the drag from these are, it's not great. But I've made some designs that kept ducts to an absolute minimum. But the real show stopper is that the rocket engine drains the tanks sequentially. It looks for the furthest away tank that's on the same stack as it, and empties it completely before taking so much as a drop from the others, then moves on to the next one down. So, by emptying tanks at the front first, the plane's CG moves aft, behind the CoL and suddenly it wants to do backflips. Other than using mods, what can you do about it? use a single large tank per engine. I suppose for LF/O engines you have options. You could mate one FT800 per Terrier engine and that'd be about the right compromise between fuel endurance and thrust for a spaceplane. If LF only however, the biggest we have is the 400 capacity mk1 fuselage tank. The mk2 has an 800 LF fuselage tank but it's the wrong diameter and much draggier. fuel ducts. Draggy ! Also, the tanks have to be the same size, because unlike the jet engines, ducts don't take account of how big the tank is that they're pulling from. It will pull (for example) 3 fuel per second from each tank whether it's a little Oscar B or a Kerbodyne. locking tanks and manual transfer. TBH, this arrangement works pretty well if you're keeping Rick Wakeman, Tony Banks, Geoff Downes or other legendary keyboardists chained up in your basement, they can work all that for you while you operate the flight controls. Unfortunately the food costs were breaking me and i had to let them go. So devs, how about a nice little toggle on each engine so we can set fuel drain mode between sequential and balanced? I can sort of see why sequential mode exists for rockets.. gravity feed and all that, it assumes you're combining three FT400s into a single large tank, but it's not the same if the tanks are lying horizontally in an airplane. Even in a rocket, do the tanks not have internal baffles, multiple pick up points etc? Seems to just be an artificial way of increasing difficulty in the VAB on early career mode. Make us want to spend science points to unlock larger tanks even though they're exactly the same in terms of dry/wet mass ratio, diameter, heat tolerance and fuels carried.