Ore is Overpowered

[klgraham1013]

Design choice was made to make this mass neutral due to conflicts with other systems.

Gameplay conflicts, though, yes? So I can increase the weight without weird things happening?

[RoverDude]

Gameplay conflicts, though, yes? So I can increase the weight without weird things happening?

Correct

[klgraham1013]

Correct

Cool.

[arq]

Ore is not overpowered, its an option.

Option A

Launch everything at once from KSP to reach your desired destination.

(Fixed amount of fuel)

or

Launch a refinery+support equipment and then launch the main spacecraft to its destination.

(Extended/unlimited amount of fuel)

Pro:

More range.

Less cost in fuel.

Con:

Refinery costs money to setup.

More player action required.

You are paying for the ability to refuel your spacecraft.

You missed the point. Option C is "Launch a rocket with minimal LFO and a lot of Ore and refine the ore along the way (even without mining extra later) and do even better than launching with just LFO." This is enabled by ore tanks having a better mass fraction than LFO tanks, and is the issue I address here. Yes, the whole point of ore is to be able to REFUEL your ship en-route. The issue is that it is actually more efficient to CARRY Ore+ISRU than to carry LFO (even from the launchpad on Kerbin, rather than mining it), as long as you are carrying >100t.

[Payload]

You missed the point. Option C is "Launch a rocket with minimal LFO and a lot of Ore and refine the ore along the way (even without mining extra later) and do even better than launching with just LFO." This is enabled by ore tanks having a better mass fraction than LFO tanks, and is the issue I address here. Yes, the whole point of ore is to be able to REFUEL your ship en-route. The issue is that it is actually more efficient to CARRY Ore+ISRU than to carry LFO (even from the launchpad on Kerbin, rather than mining it), as long as you are carrying >100t.

No you missed the point. That being that you don't know that you cannot do this because you are looking at the numbers and not the conversion rates or heat generated by the process.

Are people even playing the game? The maximum rate of the converter is about .5 units of fuel per tick. There is no way you can run a rocket off of just the Ore alone. Never mind that the converter unit overheats in seconds. Gotta love people flying off the handle about this or that is OP when they haven't even tried it in the freaking game.

[Superfluous J]

The maximum rate of the converter is about .5 units of fuel per tick. There is no way you can run a rocket off of just the Ore alone.

What about launching to orbit, running the converter (with solar panels and engineers to keep heat in check) until the tanks are full, burning to eject to your destination, using the hundreds of days travel time to convert more ore into fuel, then burning at the destination to enter orbit?

[Aerindel]

What about launching to orbit, running the converter (with solar panels and engineers to keep heat in check) until the tanks are full, burning to eject to your destination, using the hundreds of days travel time to convert more ore into fuel, then burning at the destination to enter orbit?

Sounds like a good idea to me. It may very well turn out someday that its better to load large ships up with ice covered in mylar or something really light to protect them from thermal effects and refine fuel as you go rather than using large amounts of refined fuel.

I was kinda hoping you would be able to do this in KSP, but when I clamped a mining ship on the largest asteroid I could find I wasn't even able to fill up an orange tank with fuel before the asteroid was depleted. No asteroid based ships for me it seems.

[Payload]

What about launching to orbit, running the converter (with solar panels and engineers to keep heat in check) until the tanks are full, burning to eject to your destination, using the hundreds of days travel time to convert more ore into fuel, then burning at the destination to enter orbit?

Engineers cannot keep the converter from overheating. I've tried. If you are prepared to baby sit the thing for months in real time then you might as well just use Ion engines. Please stop pontificating about what might be, and actually try to do it. It's not going to work out like you think. Of course I already know that because I actually play the game. I don't just play forum kerbal and bother the devs about some imaginary scenario in my head. Ore is not OP in the slightest. It's worse than kethane. If you actually run into a scenario while playing that makes you feel like something isn't balanced, then by all means, exercise some restraint and don't do it.

You guys clearly haven't tested this at all. All this what if business is a waste of your time. Holy crap. You can spin up a ship at the apoapsis of an elliptical orbit and get free dV out of it. You have been able to do so since day one. You know what I think? I think keyboards are OP because clearly they allow you to control your craft way too well. FFS OP is an opinion and this is a single player game. If you don't like it, then mod it.

[Superfluous J]

Engineers cannot keep the converter from overheating. I've tried. If you are prepared to baby sit the thing for months in real time then you might as well just use Ion engines.

You obviously don't want to converse about this. I was musing while not in a position to play the game and test, based on how the system was described to me by the person who wrote it. I plan on testing it when I have a chance, but I actually have a life outside KSP so must sometimes prioritize how I spend my time.

[arq]

Are people even playing the game? The maximum rate of the converter is about .5 units of fuel per tick. There is no way you can run a rocket off of just the Ore alone. Never mind that the converter unit overheats in seconds. Gotta love people flying off the handle about this or that is OP when they haven't even tried it in the freaking game.

The ISRU can feed a single LV-N at a 1/3 duty cycle. I dunno about you, but even in my trips to the Mun (to say nothing of other planets) I really only run my engines for a few minutes on takeoff and a few more minutes at a time after that. I have copious 'sit and wait' time during transfers or waiting for maneuver nodes where an ISRU would be more than happy to churn along. I had some analysis in the OP that suggested that with a little buffering an ISRU can feed multiple engines given this fact, meaning that you can get by with a low but workable TWR.

Heat generation is a very nascent mechanic. Not only do I expect significant re-tuning over the next several patches (including 1.0.1), but it is abundantly clear that Squad needs to make parts specifically for heat management and I would be shocked if they don't come by 1.1. So I expect heat issues to diminish dramatically in the near future.

The point of the OP is that the prospect of filling up your car with crude oil and hauling around a refinery in your trunk to convert it to gasoline as you drive is a silly one. Even if you could convert 100% of the crude to gasoline, the refinery is heavy and would weigh your car down unnecessarily - you'd do better to stash the refinery in your garage and just have a bigger gas tank in your car. But the mass fraction of the ore tanks actually makes this haul-the-refinery option preferable for large ships.

In my mind, the refinery should be a design tradeoff where you suffer additional mass (losing dV) to enable en-route refueling. Engineering, including KSP, is all about such tradeoffs (do I use an LV-N for high ISP or an LV-T45 for higher TWR?). However at the moment the ISRU/ore combo actually allows one to design a ship that not only can refuel but also has less mass (and more dV). The tradeoff is gone.

[Superfluous J]

Okay instead of prepping for my next episode, I "actually" did this and guess what? It worked like a charm. The only thing you said that would happen that actually happened is that the converter did get really hot and therefore took longer to convert the ore to fuel, but all that means is it took a few days instead of a few hours. My ship was so poorly made that I had to convert ore into fuel *3* times for my Jool ejection and I still had time to do it all in one go, counting waiting for the converter to make the fuel.

It was not the most elegant process, but that had far more to do with the fact that I slapped it together quickly and the ore tanks aren't the size of orange tanks so I had to do a lot of clicking to move ore around so I could toss empty tanks. When I modify things so the GoodSpeed GPOSpeed pumps work on ore, it'd be much easier.

I have no idea why you think the converter won't work in time warp. It even works when the vessel is in LKO and you're time warping at the space center.

EDIT: All that said, I won't be using this "overpowered" system. I don't think its OP. I think it's a lot of busywork for a little gain.

Edited May 1, 2015 by 5thHorseman

[Red Iron Crown]

IMO the balance of the new resource system is just about spot on. The 1:1 conversion ratio, higher mass ratio of ore tanks, and mass of the ISRU converter makes both surface refining and orbital refining viable in some situations, and it's not a deep penalty if the player chooses to use the less efficient method. I ran the numbers for the breakeven point of carrying ore+converter versus normal fuel and it is at about 100t of propellant, not counting electrical/cooling systems and the receiving tankage for the ISRU plan. This is reasonable to me, a refine-as-you-go spacecraft can be more efficient as long as it's large enough and the player is willing to pay the price of greater complexity and limited fuel per burn. Having more viable, interesting options is a good thing, to my mind.

The only revision I'd like to see is to set the price of ore as equal to that of LF. This would close up the "refine VAB-added ore on the pad and recover for profit" loophole while still permitting ore to be added in the VAB for testing. I would be strongly against removing the ability to add ore in the editor, it just makes testing designs much harder.

[MacroNova]

But the mass fraction of the ore tanks actually makes this haul-the-refinery option preferable for large ships.

From what I understand, this problem is being caused 100% by the relatively low mass of the ore tanks compared with fuel tanks (ore and fuel mass the same when you factor in conversion, right?). And Rover has already said that they are looking at that discrepancy and are going to fix it, no?

the breakeven point of carrying ore+converter versus normal fuel and it is at about 100t of propellant, not counting electrical/cooling systems and the receiving tankage for the ISRU plan. This is reasonable to me, a refine-as-you-go spacecraft can be more efficient as long as it's large enough and the player is willing to pay the price of greater complexity and limited fuel per burn.

Just want to point out that anyone saying this is unrealistic might be interested to know that there are real world applications of this methodology. Cruise ships carry their own refineries.

Edited May 1, 2015 by MacroNova