Squadcast Summary (2015-04-25) - 1.0 Inbound Edition!

[Xavven]

Why would that infuriate the realism crowd? If a plane is well built it should handle great.

Haha! I think 5th might be referring to the fact that the new aerodynamics system is STILL simplified. For example, wing sweep confers no stability advantage at transonic and supersonic speeds. There are some wing shapes that would really just not work IRL but they will in KSP 1.0 stock.

Me, personally? I like realism but only to a certain point. If I wanted 100% realism I'd go do it in real life. Oh, and IRL dying is permanent. We don't kill the player IRL when they lose a video game

[Sandworm]

So is aerodynamic drag still a function of part-specific mass? Do nosecones shield underlying parts or not? What are the new delta-V numbers for kerbin orbit? I haven't seen any practical testing and suspect/fear that little has actually changed. In fact the vids demonstrated that the new system still cannot keep a rocket pointed prograde even in low atmo.

[Superfluous J]

Why would that infuriate the realism crowd? If a plane is well built it should handle great.

Yes, but planes that are only 99% perfect won't flip out of control and crash before leaving the runway anymore. At least, I hope so.

[Xavven]

Copying this from the Hype thread. Thanks, Robotengineer, for finding the link:

Cinematic Trailer

I don't think this is the official trailer that we hear about in the dev notes, though. Squad has been talking about huge render times, smoke effects, etc. I'm sure we'll see that tomorrow or Monday.

[Superfluous J]

So is aerodynamic drag still a function of part-specific mass? Do nosecones shield underlying parts or not? What are the new delta-V numbers for kerbin orbit? I haven't seen any practical testing and suspect/fear that little has actually changed. In fact the vids demonstrated that the new system still cannot keep a rocket pointed prograde even in low atmo.

I've seen one single instance of an aerodynamic rocket performing a real gravity turn in all the videos I've seen today. That rocket reached a flawless orbit after a very nice and natural turn.

Everybody else is boosting up to 10km (at least. Some go up to 20) and cranking it over.

Oh and the streamer just said "the chat room knows more about the game than I do!"

...don't worry about it, dude. It's been happening all day.

[Sandworm]

I've seen one single instance of an aerodynamic rocket performing a real gravity turn in all the videos I've seen today. That rocket reached a flawless orbit after a very nice and natural turn.

Did the rocket+gravity perform the turn, or was it the pilot/sas following the prograde? I'm interested in knowing whether the new aero is capable of stabilizing a rocket in flight without control input. That would be a good first step towards something worth calling aerodynamics.

[Guest]

Haha! I think 5th might be referring to the fact that the new aerodynamics system is STILL simplified. For example, wing sweep confers no stability advantage at transonic and supersonic speeds. There are some wing shapes that would really just not work IRL but they will in KSP 1.0 stock.

v0v The Realism crowd will simply install FAR anyway because ferram4 owns. The voxelized nuFAR is turning out quite nice, was a real pleasure to see a launch going as I expected with what was essentially an alpha release; the man knows his stuff.

Again, I reiterate, so long as stock at least pays respect to aerodynamics I'll be happy. The 0.90 aero simulation was embarrassing, I can hardly see how they could possibly do worse.

Yes, but planes that are only 99% perfect won't flip out of control and crash before leaving the runway anymore. At least, I hope so.

Dude, lrntoFAR.

[Superfluous J]

Did the rocket+gravity perform the turn, or was it the pilot/sas following the prograde? I'm interested in knowing whether the new aero is capable of stabilizing a rocket in flight without control input. That would be a good first step towards something worth calling aerodynamics.

I don't know. It's one of the very first things I'll be trying in 1.0 though.

Dude, lrntoFAR.

Nowai man.

[Eric S]

So is aerodynamic drag still a function of part-specific mass? Do nosecones shield underlying parts or not? What are the new delta-V numbers for kerbin orbit? I haven't seen any practical testing and suspect/fear that little has actually changed. In fact the vids demonstrated that the new system still cannot keep a rocket pointed prograde even in low atmo.

I didn't see anything that made me think that drag and mass had any relationship anymore. I didn't see anything obviously wrong either, though there were definitely a few things that I saw that made me think "I need to test that when I get my hands on 1.0." It's possible that air flow occlusion is modeled in more than just the simple "part a stacked on part b" case, we saw limited evidence of that.

It's about 3500 delta-v to orbit, from what the streamers are saying. Atmospheric ISP has been nerfed, SEVERELY in the case of engines intended to operate in orbit. The LV-909 has a sea level ISP of 85, if I remember correctly. It took Shimmy a little while to figure out that the KR-L2 engine is no longer viable as a first stage engine. With changing ISP affecting the thrust rather than maximum fuel consumption, the basic "mk-1 capsule, fuel tank, lv-909" lander couldn't even lift itself off the launch pad.

[Sandworm]

I didn't see anything that made me think that drag and mass had any relationship anymore. I didn't see anything obviously wrong either, though there were definitely a few things that I saw that made me think "I need to test that when I get my hands on 1.0." It's possible that air flow occlusion is modeled in more than just the simple "part a stacked on part b" case, we saw limited evidence of that.

It's about 3500 delta-v to orbit, from what the streamers are saying. Atmospheric ISP has been nerfed, SEVERELY in the case of engines intended to operate in orbit. The LV-909 has a sea level ISP of 85, if I remember correctly. It took Shimmy a little while to figure out that the KR-L2 engine is no longer viable as a first stage engine. With changing ISP affecting the thrust rather than maximum fuel consumption, the basic "mk-1 capsule, fuel tank, lv-909" lander couldn't even lift itself off the launch pad.

Lol, 85 is firecracker/black powder territory. That's a ridiculous nerf for a liquid engine. Replacing a magically-thick atmosphere with magically-inefficient engines isn't much of an improvement. The tuning of engines or, more accurately, their nozzles for atmosphere or vacuum changes their ISP a few percentage points either way. It doesn't make them useless in either.

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

This talk makes me very glad that I'm going to be playing with RealFuels and x10 RSS configs.

[Renegrade]

It's about 3500 delta-v to orbit, from what the streamers are saying. Atmospheric ISP has been nerfed, SEVERELY in the case of engines intended to operate in orbit. The LV-909 has a sea level ISP of 85, if I remember correctly. It took Shimmy a little while to figure out that the KR-L2 engine is no longer viable as a first stage engine. With changing ISP affecting the thrust rather than maximum fuel consumption, the basic "mk-1 capsule, fuel tank, lv-909" lander couldn't even lift itself off the launch pad.

Ugh, I only had time to see part of Kof's stream, and it was all sandbox crap and mostly focused on graphical effects like new part looks, IVAs, launchpad effects etc, then I had to depart.

I'm glad to see that space and launch engines have specific uses now (although people have to realize that 'space' really starts at around 8km to 12km altitude in terms of engines and that assuming you have enough TWR, a 'space' oriented engine will work fine there).

Lol, 85 is firecracker/black powder territory. That's a ridiculous nerf for a liquid engine. Replacing a magically-thick atmosphere with magically-inefficient engines isn't much of an improvement. The tuning of engines or, more accurately, their nozzles for atmosphere or vacuum changes their ISP a few percentage points either way. It doesn't make them useless in either.

It's been stated here by our engine geeks that a liquid fuel vacuum-oriented engine can be as low as 100 Isp in atmosphere, so 85 doesn't sound too far off to me, given that the peak vacuum Isp has historically been 390 for KSP chemical engines (vs. over 460 for hydro-lox designs in real life).

(it's hard to corroborate that from published engine stat blocks as engines intended to operate purely in vacuum environments tend to not even give an atmospheric Isp. For instance, can someone tell me what the LEM's descent engine Isp would be at 1.0 atm? Also, I'm too lazy to work out the p/pe stuff for myself)

[Nobody_1707]

Haha! I think 5th might be referring to the fact that the new aerodynamics system is STILL simplified. For example, wing sweep confers no stability advantage at transonic and supersonic speeds. There are some wing shapes that would really just not work IRL but they will in KSP 1.0 stock.

Isn't that basically how NEAR works?

[GusTurbo]

I've seen one single instance of an aerodynamic rocket performing a real gravity turn in all the videos I've seen today. That rocket reached a flawless orbit after a very nice and natural turn.

Everybody else is boosting up to 10km (at least. Some go up to 20) and cranking it over. And I'm not even part of the "realism crowd."

Oh and the streamer just said "the chat room knows more about the game than I do!"

...don't worry about it, dude. It's been happening all day.

I was really unimpressed with the knowledge level of the streamers I saw. Hard to give a good preview if you don't know the game you're playing.

It was painful to see people doing the silly old 10 km "gravity turn" over and over.

Also, did anyone else notice how powerful drogue chutes were? Seemed a bit OP.

Edited April 26, 2015 by GusTurbo

[Temeter]

Also, did anyone else notice how powerful drogue chutes were? Seemed a bit OP.

Well, either they are very powerfull at greater heights or they are completely useless (kinda like they are now).

[Superfluous J]

During Akinesis' feed at about 7:25am (25 minutes in or so) he had the SOI prediction bug where the orbit flickered between showing the SOI change and not.

However, he time warped to a point beyond the SOI change, and even though he blasted through the boundary at high warp his periapsis remained exactly where he put it.

[smjjames]

During Akinesis' feed at about 7:25am (25 minutes in or so) he had the SOI prediction bug where the orbit flickered between showing the SOI change and not.

However, he time warped to a point beyond the SOI change, and even though he blasted through the boundary at high warp his periapsis remained exactly where he put it.

The SoI flickering is a floating point problem I think.

[Superfluous J]

The SoI flickering is a floating point problem I think.

The cause doesn't matter. It should not be in a polished 1.0 release.

- - - Updated - - -

Resources have "full background processing" according to Roverdude. To me that means it will NOT quickly run through the 6-hour-at-a-time series of steps when you focus on your vessel.

Also, drills can overheat but adding solar panels and engineers to the craft will help dissipate heat.

So, even more reasons to never hire scientists, or pilots once you have decent probe cores (which you'll have by the time you unlock these parts).

We need a mod that just tuns everybody into an engineer.

[RoverDude]

For clarity. It WILL do catch-up mechanics ala Regolith.

[Superfluous J]

For clarity. It WILL do catch-up mechanics ala Regolith.

Thanks for the correction!

[basic.syntax]

... So, even more reasons to never hire scientists

I think they may be needed in the revamped science lab, to keep its new time-based science running.

[smjjames]

And you'll probably need pilots for better fuel efficiency and more efficient maneuvering since they can get more out of it/be more precise.

[RoverDude]

Yes - scientists are incredibly useful as you need them for the updated (and very useful) science lab.

[Superfluous J]

Yes - scientists are incredibly useful as you need them for the updated (and very useful) science lab.

Does that mean that I can't max out the tech tree before leaving Kerbin's SOI due to getting hundreds upon hundreds of free science from random contracts?

In my .90 playthrough I never used the science jr or goo pods, and never used that "cheaty" strategy to get tons of science by converting. I still was swimming in so much science I had to actually convert it into funds because I kept having more science than I could spend without upgrading the R&D lab.

EDIT:

And hey, another streamer who barely played 0.90 and is playing 1.0 for the first time.

Am I the only one who would consider getting early access to the game an honor?

Edited April 26, 2015 by 5thHorseman

[Guest]

We need a mod that just tuns everybody into an engineer.

What we need is none of these dumb "classes" of Kerbals.