I don't get the whining about 1.0.2

[Jouni]

I really think Squad should go back to 1.0 aerodynamics and make a tutorial on reentry. It's really not that hard, just don't re enter straight down at 3000m/s and your craft wont die, even without heat shields. I want my ship to blow up if it re enters at an angle that it should blow up. Whats the point of reentry heat if you can't die? I want to touchdown at 100+ m/s in my shuttle and use drag chutes to slow down. Nothing was wrong with 1.0 Aero. Why was something fixed that wasn't broken?

The drag was much too low for pods and other non-aircraft parts in 1.0. On my first flight, I put a simple pod+heat shield+parachutes combination to LKO, and deorbited with the periapsis at 30-35 km. I immediately noticed that the drag was much lower than in 0.90 with FAR. The pod was still flying 300 m/s at 2 km above sea level, and I wasn't sure whether it would be safe to deploy parachutes so close to Mach 1. Something was obviously broken (though the heat shield center of mass issue was a more serious problem at the time), and I was glad that it was fixed in 1.0.1.

The 1.0.1 patch fixed the aerodynamics for rockets. It still feels a bit different from FAR in 0.90, but rockets seem to behave as they should. On the other hand, some spaceplane people have been complaining that planes no longer behave right after the patch. If so, then the issue is probably with the spaceplane parts, which were balanced for the too low drag in 1.0.

[Aerindel]

I wasn't sure whether it would be safe to deploy parachutes so close to Mach 1

In 1.0 they where indestructible. You could deploy them at 3000m/s and they would instantly slow you to 100/ms, so not only was drag broken, but the entire re-entry mechanic was irrelevant.

[Kuu Lightwing]

It's interesting, but it looks like new heating is balanced for spaceplanes. BBQ speed seems to be higher - I managed to get to like 1200 m/s in upper atmosphere (on RAPIERs) while it blew up at ~1000 before...

[Buzz Kebonaut]

thanks to god the devolopers not listen the people want the game more easy.If you explode becouse you go to fast try to limit the boosters and find the sweet spot.This way you not waste fuel fighting versus the air.

[idulort]

Two major reasons:

1) Reentry heat:

http://imgur.com/a/CBcbH#0 (credit to Timoff from Reddit)

2) Aerodynamics & Lift

https://gfycat.com/AbsoluteFrequentCanine (credit to Yargnit from Reddit)

[klgraham1013]

https://gfycat.com/AbsoluteFrequentCanine (credit to Yargnit from Reddit)

EJ landing a shuttle at a smooth 24 m/s. How are people OK with this?

[Pthigrivi]

Doesn't reentry heat have a difficulty slider you can turn up?

[Superfluous J]

EJ landing a shuttle at a smooth 24 m/s. How are people OK with this?

It's all relative. If I have to choose between planes reaching mach 1 at liftoff and shuttles coming in too slow, I'll pick shuttles coming in too slow.

[Chruschtschow]

If I have to choose between flawed rockets and flawed planes in my space program, I'll pick flawed planes... you could basically put a rocket in 45km orbit and keep it there with only a little boost here and there.

[EDIT]

I admit that they could turn up the heat a bit. Still too few explosions on my rockets.

Edited May 3, 2015 by Chruschtschow

[idulort]

Doesn't reentry heat have a difficulty slider you can turn up?

It's not the turned off version. Here's a comparison of 1.0 & 1.0.1 : http://imgur.com/a/kPwNh (Credit to SuperLink243 from Reddit) Re-entry heat is unfortunately gone. An this is insane... What's the point of heat shields ?

It's all relative. If I have to choose between planes reaching mach 1 at liftoff and shuttles coming in too slow, I'll pick shuttles coming in too slow.

I prefer a balance between both... I think most people do...

The thing is, the tweaks increased drag. That's quite ok with me, and that's making the atmosphere feel more soupy - which is great*. But in order to balance it, they also increased the lift values - which seems way too much right now.

*Great for making orbit Dv values kinda more challenging. (3000 Dv was way too easy, people reported achieving orbit with "Dv<3000" on 1.0 - can't confirm though..

Edited May 3, 2015 by idulort
*

[klgraham1013]

It's all relative. If I have to choose between planes reaching mach 1 at liftoff and shuttles coming in too slow, I'll pick shuttles coming in too slow.

Why can't we have both?

[Redshift OTF]

You are looking for a logical reason. There is no logical reason except that people don't want to learn the new system. This is a symptom of Squad taking so long to fix aerodynamics. Not that I'm blaming Squad for anything mind you, just that if they done this when there were less players it would have blown over rather quickly.

There are logical reasons, (and this is addresed to multiple posters not just yourself. ). Spaceplanes have to be long and thin with stubby wings to overcome drag issues. They need to have a lot of Rapiers on them if you need to get decent orbital DeltaV's and carry significant payloads. Good luck mounting all those engines. Many pieces cannot be used for aesthetic purposes due to drag issues. Spaceplanes have to carry an inordinate amount of DeltaV to get into orbit as Jet engines cannot get planes up to half orbital speeds. Most Spaceplanes have to use Rapiers alone as Turbojets are even less up to the task. VTOL's? Yeah, I don't think you'll find many VTOL Spaceplanes anymore. All these issues harm the creativity in the game and reduce the variety of Spaceplanes that can be built. Look on YouTube. There are tons of planes people made on there but there wont be nearly as many in the future. Same with the Spacecraft exchange. I'm willing to bet you'll find a tenth as many unique designs in these places now.

Now if you are arguing about realism then I get your point. But if people say there are no issues and when they are pointed out say SSTO's are not realistic then perhaps you should have been more honest in the first place and said I don't think these craft designs should have been in the stock game because they are not realistic.

So is it realistic to want to attach many different parts to a Spaceplane to give it a unique look? Given that we are bound by only a limited number of parts and can't custom make hulls you can't compare that to reality. The other argument is that people are only complaining because the game become harder and they can't get into orbit with SSTO's. Well no, I rose to the challenge and made an SSTO that can get an orange tank into orbit with enough DeltaV to rendezvous with a Space Station if necessary and land again. So it's not about pilot skill. And yes, it does look like a flying hotdog with a ton of clustered Rapiers.

I don't think there is anything wrong with highlighting these facts particularly when those that disagree continually state that there is no problem and state things like "Learn to fly n00b" and are not being honest about the changes. I'm willing to bet most of the people that disagree with the notion that Spaceplanes have become niche designs were never involved in building any before 1.0 came along.

The only real issue with real life SSTO's is the ability of jet engines to produce meaningful thrust in the upper atmosphere. The only projected engine that could theoretically do that and produce thrust near the ground and act as a rocket engine is the Sabre engine. If it works it will be the first and there will be better versions of it in the future. Scram jets can already reach near orbital speeds by gathering atmospheric air alone. Should KSP build or tweak parts in anticipation of near future developments? I don't see why not. They already did it with the Ion engines. They decided to up their thrust from 0.5 to 2 so people would enjoy them more and so it would be less niche. It's not like I'm asking for Fusion engines here. Don't like it? Don't build Spaceplanes then. I don't think many of you did in the past either.

Edited May 3, 2015 by Redshift OTF

[Klingon Admiral]

It's all relative. If I have to choose between planes reaching mach 1 at liftoff and shuttles coming in too slow, I'll pick shuttles coming in too slow.

If your plane still hasn't taken off at Mach 1 then your design is pretty terrible.

In 1.0.2 my planes have a takeoff-speed of 50 m/sec - what is this, GTA V?

[tater]

I imagine the major balance problem involves the variable none of these 1.0, 1.01, 1.02 experiments have access to. The size of Kerbin (which would also change the velocity you hit the atmosphere with, obviously). When realistic aero was discussed here before 1.0, it was pretty clear that it's hard to make it work without making the system at least 2x bigger. Balancing for both launch and reentry are gonna be cludgy without access to that. FAR/DRE/RSS can't happen soon enough for me, lol

[DoToH]

The game has a reentry heat system that means NO danger for direct interplanetary reentrys without heatshields.

In my opinion, this is a big issue.

Why introduc¡ng reentry heat?. To render it useless 5 days later?

For the people with the "just learn the new aero" slogan: We learned the 0.90 aero and that doesn't mean it was good, nor realistic.

[Jouni]

[quote name='idulort;1898640

1) Reentry heat:

http://imgur.com/a/CBcbH#0 (credit to Timoff from Reddit)

[DoToH]

This isn't a major issue. Atmospheric reentry isn't too dangerous at low speeds like 2-3 km/s. At those speeds, the kinetic energy is a few megajoules/kg, while real spacecraft have to lose ~10x more energy. You may still lose exposed parts during reentry, and heat shields may be necessary, if you're aerobraking with a heavy ship, but losing a command pod to a low-speed reentry is just plain silly.

Why losing dev time implementing reentry heat? If they've planned reentry heat not to be dangerous because of kerbin's size, they could've left the cosmetic graphical effect from 0.90.

OTOH, If a Duna return is a "low speed reentry" in KSP scale, please give me the link for RSS.

Edited May 3, 2015 by DoToH

[juanml82]

The only real issue with real life SSTO's is the ability of jet engines to produce meaningful thrust in the upper atmosphere. The only projected engine that could theoretically do that and produce thrust near the ground and act as a rocket engine is the Sabre engine. If it works it will be the first and there will be better versions of it in the future. Scram jets can already reach near orbital speeds by gathering atmospheric air alone. Should KSP build or tweak parts in anticipation of near future developments? I don't see why not. They already did it with the Ion engines. They decided to up their thrust from 0.5 to 2 so people would enjoy them more and so it would be less niche. It's not like I'm asking for Fusion engines here. Don't like it? Don't build Spaceplanes then. I don't think many of you did in the past either.

The problems are payload fraction and heat. It is perfectly possible to make airplanes capable of match 3, even at sea level in real life - missiles do this and more often than not, they use ramjets to achieve this instead of solid fuel. The problem is heat. Keep such an airplane going at match 3-5 in the upper atmosphere for long and the heat caused by friction will begin to cause structural damage. Sounds familiar?

[Beale]

I only have gripe with the "Add fins" business.

Because of course all launch vehicles have fins. Can't fly without them.

Now I seem to experience unexpected fin-less rocket flipping even with a low TWR and very slow pitching.

[Superfluous J]

Why can't we have both?

Because you can't. You would have to have an Earth sized Kerbin with an atmosphere that mimics Earths, and roughly double the size of all parts, increasing their mass by 8. You'd then need to balance all the engines and parts to all this new stuff and when that was all done, it'd suck because taking 20+ minutes every launch is boring.

[Redshift OTF]

The problems are payload fraction and heat. It is perfectly possible to make airplanes capable of match 3, even at sea level in real life - missiles do this and more often than not, they use ramjets to achieve this instead of solid fuel. The problem is heat. Keep such an airplane going at match 3-5 in the upper atmosphere for long and the heat caused by friction will begin to cause structural damage. Sounds familiar?

This is actually a very good point. Thanks. Although if you were to develop very powerful engines then perhaps you wouldn't have to hang around in the upper atmosphere for as long and wouldn't take in as much heat?

[zekes]

The only beef I have is the LV-N clusters blowing up - other than that I love this update. I hated it origionally because SSTOs didn't work, but I now realize SSTOs were never my thing anyway...

[Jouni]

Why losing dev time implementing reentry heat? If they've planned reentry heat not to be dangerous because of kerbin's size, they could've left the cosmetic graphical effect from 0.90.

Reentry heat changes a lot of gameplay beyond the trivial "how can I get this pod safely home". Try flying a mission that requires big heavy ships, such as Jool-5 or Eve return. Reentry is much more dangerous, if you have a 20+ m long fully fueled ship behind the exposed parts than if you have just a single pod.

OTOH, If a Duna return is a "low speed reentry" in KSP scale, please give me the link for RSS.

There's no such thing as KSP scale. A 3 km/s reentry is low speed, while a 11 km/s reentry is high speed.

[DoToH]

There's no such thing as KSP scale..

NO KSP scale? So reentry from LEO is the same as reentry from LKO? RSS is only about changing names?

Sizes are different. Speeds are different. Kerbol system is scaled down if we compare it to sol system. For reentry heat to be of any danger, you have to scale up heat danger.

So heat shields are only for Jool-5 or Eve return missions. Maybe is more realistic, but makes reentry heat a feature with minimum to nothing impact on gameplay.

[Jouni]

NO KSP scale? So reentry from LEO is the same as reentry from LKO? RSS is only about changing names?

Sizes are different. Speeds are different. Kerbol system is scaled down if we compare it to sol system. For reentry heat to be of any danger, you have to scale up heat danger.

So heat shields are only for Jool-5 or Eve return missions. Maybe is more realistic, but makes reentry heat a feature with minimum to nothing impact on gameplay.

I meant that a 3 km/s reentry is a 3 km/s reentry, no matter how big or small the planets are. The idea is to have gameplay emerging from simulated physics, not arbitrary developer-imposed gameplay.

Arbitrary game mechanics that are designed with specific gameplay in mind are a bad idea in sandbox games. Their interactions with other game mechanics often have unintended consequences that nobody can see in advance. If you just simulate physics and let the gameplay emerge on its own, the game mechanics will usually work better together. (There may still be unforeseen consequences, but they should be less common, because billions of people have been looking for them for millennia.)