I don't get the whining about 1.0.2

[boborene]

Generally speaking, the new features like parts and aero are fine, but:

- career is a mess. getting so many impossible tasks/missions is a big no.

- progress is almost a pain. there is no clear goal path in career and tech tree.

I am waiting with eager to see some mods that implement a nice path career and progress.

Edited May 4, 2015 by boborene

[DoToH]

Drag wasn't increased to prevent planes from overheating, but to fix drag for everything other than planes. Now the terminal velocity of rockets and other craft without any parts that implement the ModuleLiftingSurface module seems about right, while it was too high in 1.0.

And planes with highly OP jet engines can't reach mach 1 ASL on level flight. Seems far from right.

[Jouni]

And planes with highly OP jet engines can't reach mach 1 ASL on level flight. Seems far from right.

I just built a small turbojet-powered plane can fly 900 m/s below 1 km. With a RAPIER instead of a turbojet, the same plane reaches 600 m/s. After that, a strange glitch happens, and the engine flames out and reignites a couple of times per second. If I throttle down to avoid the flameouts, the RAPIER-powered plane accelerates to 750 m/s.

[DoToH]

Let me try it. Pics or .craft?

[Redshift OTF]

I just built a small turbojet-powered plane can fly 900 m/s below 1 km. With a RAPIER instead of a turbojet, the same plane reaches 600 m/s. After that, a strange glitch happens, and the engine flames out and reignites a couple of times per second. If I throttle down to avoid the flameouts, the RAPIER-powered plane accelerates to 750 m/s.

What type and number of intakes are you using?

[Temeter]

I just built a small turbojet-powered plane can fly 900 m/s below 1 km. With a RAPIER instead of a turbojet, the same plane reaches 600 m/s. After that, a strange glitch happens, and the engine flames out and reignites a couple of times per second. If I throttle down to avoid the flameouts, the RAPIER-powered plane accelerates to 750 m/s.

You have to keep in mind that these are much more realistic engines. This isn't some magical turbojet producing thrust following some arbitrary graph. The turbojets aren't even turbojets, but turboramjets. That's why they are rather bad below Mach 1, their power output is very reliant on the airstream, which radically differs depending on height, speed and the angle of attack of your intakes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet

[Jouni]

It's just a simple 5-tonne plane with two structural intakes.

The glitch apparently happens, because the intakes can't provide the RAPIER enough air at full power.

[Caelib]

I have been playing with 1.0 for a week now and I've pretty much unlocked the entire tech tree in Career/Normal and visited most celestial bodies. Everything feels pretty solid IMO.

I do agree that many of the contracts being generated aren't practical. I typically ignore 95% of them and just take the basic ones that I know won't require me to jump through a bunch of hoops ... such as "Explore [planet/moon]" or "Gather Science". Unless you're playing Hard-mode, I don't see why people can't just look past the contracts for career mode and do what they WANT to do because generating funds isn't that difficult if you take just the contracts I mentioned above.

As far as launching/new aero ... the new system is great and anyone complaining about it just needs to learn the new system or take some lessons in efficiency. The days of launching massive payloads are gone.

[Redshift OTF]

It's just a simple 5-tonne plane with two structural intakes.

http://jltsiren.kapsi.fi/ksp/1.0/test_flight.jpg

The glitch apparently happens, because the intakes can't provide the RAPIER enough air at full power.

Yes that makes sense. Those structural intakes only take in 1/10th of the air a ram intake does. And I think a Rapier needs at least one whole ram intake worth of air to stop it flaming out.

[klgraham1013]

Everything feels pretty solid IMO.

I do agree that many of the contracts being generated aren't practical. I typically ignore 95% of them and just take the basic ones that I know won't require me to jump through a bunch of hoops ...

I don't see anything about that second statement being solid game design.

[Caelib]

I don't see anything about that second statement being solid game design.

Because the player is given the option to do them. If they were forced then I would agree with your point, but they aren't. A lot of the contacts are hard, but they reward the player with quite a bit of funds -- which just isn't worth the effort for *me*. I'm sure there are other players who don't use quickload or go through Kerbals like crazy who would probably need them.

I'm guessing you aren't playing Hard-mode, because if you were then you would be doing a lot of those contracts because the player needs a LOT of funds in hard-mode.

[DoToH]

It's just a simple 5-tonne plane with two structural intakes.

I made two changes. I switched LF tank with LF + O one (left inakes to generate same drag). Switched rapier with 48-7S (16.2KN ASL). Total mass 4.5t. Needed half runway length to take off.

Turboramjet thrust is over 10x 48-7S ASL. Your test plane was over 3,8 TWR with turbojet and 2,80 TWR with rapier. I took off with my modified design with 0,37 TWR.

Two possible conclusions:

1) Your test plane was too much OP. You should be capable of reaching mach 1 with TWR under 2.0. Aero is not ok?

2) My modification was too underpowered to fly. Aero is not ok?

Choose the one you like. Note the question marks in "Aero is not ok?". 1 excludes 2?. Are both true?. Are both false?

[Jouni]

Two possible conclusions:

1) Your test plane was too much OP. You should be capable of reaching mach 1 with TWR under 2.0. Aero is not ok?

2) My modification was too underpowered to fly. Aero is not ok?

What's your point?

Building sea-level supersonic planes is trivial, if you just add enough power and use only the intakes you need for low-altitude flight. The turbojet-powered version of the plane breaks Mach 1 with thrust limiter set to 50%, and reaches 400 m/s with 60%. Spaceplanes probably can't break the sound barrier at low altitudes, because they're intended for high-altitude flight.

You shouldn't assume that a plane with a certain TWR should be able to reach Mach 1 at sea level. Drag is no longer based on mass, after all. In order to keep accelerating, the plane just needs to have more thrust than drag. If the shape remains the same, a large plane will fly faster than a small plane with the same TWR, because thrust scales by r^3 and drag by r^2.

[delder92663]

I ignore the whining. Just like kids that wants a toy every trip to the store.

[DoToH]

What's your point?

My point is: artificially increasing drag and lift (patch 1.0.1) is a bad option.

A low lift plane (your plane) shouldn't fly easily with 0,37 TWR. A low drag plane (your plane) shouldn't need TWR over 2 to reach mach 1 ASL. Remember 60% of 3,80 is 2,28.

That is, of course, my opinion.

[Jouni]

My point is: artificially increasing drag and lift (patch 1.0.1) is a bad option.

A low lift plane (your plane) shouldn't fly easily with 0,37 TWR. A low drag plane (your plane) shouldn't need TWR over 2 to reach mach 1 ASL. Remember 60% of 3,80 is 2,28.

Why do you think that drag and lift were artificially increased in 1.0.1, instead of them being artificially low in 1.0? The only real data point I've seen is that the terminal velocity of a command pod was too high in 1.0, while 1.0.1 brought it closer to reality.

The plane is actually not that low-lift. My best estimate of the wing area is a bit over 9 m^2, so wing loading is actually lower than for most airliners. With thrust vectoring and reaction wheels disabled, the plane takes off at around 60 m/s, which sounds quite reasonable.

You TWR figures are also not that meaningful. I just added an extra FL-T800 fuel tank (4.5 tonnes) to the plane, and it still reached 350 m/s at level flight at 500 m with thrust limiter set to 60%. Under 100% power, it reached 925 m/s below 1 km before flameout.

[AmpsterMan]

It's just a simple 5-tonne plane with two structural intakes.

http://jltsiren.kapsi.fi/ksp/1.0/test_flight.jpg

The glitch apparently happens, because the intakes can't provide the RAPIER enough air at full power.

I can verify for a fact this is not a glitch as I was one of the testers that identified it. The structural intakes don't have enough intake air for the rapier. Try this: put the engines AFTER the air intake (one should do this with every craft btw) you will see, not enough air

[Mister Dilsby]

I trust this will all get tuned further, but for me the game has always been about trying to make the best spacecraft I can with the parts and physics that exist in stock. Change the rules of the game, and I'll change my gameplay to match. There is no such thing as a "broken" game if one can find a way to succeed at it.

...though one mistake Squad definitely made was in the V1.0 tagline ("Conquering Space was Never this Easy"). It should have been,

KSP V1.0: "Change is in the Air!"

[DoToH]

Why do you think that drag and lift were artificially increased in 1.0.1, instead of them being artificially low in 1.0? The only real data point I've seen is that the terminal velocity of a command pod was too high in 1.0, while 1.0.1 brought it closer to reality.

Yes. The fact terminal velocity of a command pod is closer to reality is a great point. Is so good for inmersion that I almost forgot the shuttle gliding at 25 m/s and crazy reentries without heat shield. Thats my point. I know how to tweak atmo values (or install FAR). But a new player will find these strange. A new player will attach a heatshield to the pod. a new player will expect shuttle's glide speed to be faster than a Cessna's.

Aero doesn't have to be REAL. It should give the impression of being real. And, for me, that impression was better with 1.0.

[Jouni]

Yes. The fact terminal velocity of a command pod is closer to reality is a great point. Is so good for inmersion that I almost forgot the shuttle gliding at 25 m/s and crazy reentries without heat shield. Thats my point. I know how to tweak atmo values (or install FAR). But a new player will find these strange. A new player will attach a heatshield to the pod. a new player will expect shuttle's glide speed to be faster than a Cessna's.

The problem with the shuttle example was that we don't know what went wrong there.

• Did the shuttle use any part clipping, either explicitly or with the offset tool? If yes, then nothing went wrong, because stock aerodynamics don't even try to work with part clipping.
  
• Did the shuttle use reaction wheels instead of relying on aerodynamic attitude control? If yes, a real aircraft might have done something similar with magic attitude control.
  
• Would a real aircraft have stalled at such speeds? If yes, then the problem could have been intentional, because Squad wanted to make flying easier.
  
• How heavy the shuttle was, how much wing area it had, and how much its fuselage would have contributed to lift? Appearances can be misleading, because aerodynamics are not scale-free, and large planes behave in a different way than similar-looking small planes.
  
• Was the problem with the aerodynamics simulation or with misconfigured parts? In particular, there are some indications that aerodynamic-looking parts may have been assigned with too high drag coefficients.
  

The problem with safe reentry is simple. Real craft start developing structural failures below 200 °C, while most unprotected KSP parts survive temperatures up to 2000 °C. You don't need separate heat shields, because most parts already have a built-in one.

[X-SR71]

Hey I'm having a blast with 1.0.2! Granted, re-entry seems to be a bit much forgiving now.. A proper shallow reentry wont even need heat shields. More suicidal ones will eat up your ablator but you'll still survive. Seems easier to return with more stuff than just a command pod too.

I did have problems with previous 1.0 rockets getting into space and had to slap a couple of boosters for some quick dVs. But nothing that would concern me much. I haven't tried planes.. actually I don't see the fun in them. Kerbin doesn't have many interesting places to visit and it's huge and it's slow flying around.. The only point in planes for me is for visiting Laythe, but I'm still far in my new career before making that attempt..

[NathanKell]

Drag was incredibly low in 1.0, something like 1/2 to 1/4 FAR's. 1.0.2 has FAR-level drag for blunt objects down low, has lower than FAR above 14km, but does have considerably more drag than FAR does for streamlined planes when down low and than FAR used to in the transonic (with proper area ruling in nuFAR, the latter may or may not be true anymore).

[Temeter]

Yes. The fact terminal velocity of a command pod is closer to reality is a great point. Is so good for inmersion that I almost forgot the shuttle gliding at 25 m/s and crazy reentries without heat shield. Thats my point. I know how to tweak atmo values (or install FAR). But a new player will find these strange. A new player will attach a heatshield to the pod. a new player will expect shuttle's glide speed to be faster than a Cessna's.

Aero doesn't have to be REAL. It should give the impression of being real. And, for me, that impression was better with 1.0.

New players don't bother with nitpicking, that comes only from a small number of experienced players. New players also notice that Kerbin is ten times smaller than earth and has little more than a quarter of earths orbital velocity without getting a stroke.

Also, can we please stop talking about that shuttle? It's interesting how everyone talks about that little gif, but can never actually document his own experiences. I did indeed build an aerodynamic MK2 based spaceplane with only two (big lego 0.2t) wings and two surfaces to stabilize the CoL, and that thing did indeed heavily stall at 60m/s. And MK2 is actually very good at creating body lift compared to MK3.

Edited May 4, 2015 by Temeter

[Laie]

Also, can we please stop talking about that shuttle?

That shuttle is old and busted. New hotness: returning to KSP in a naked Mk2 cockpit. It acts as a lifting body, which is kinda-sorta alrightish (shape's not quite right, but wth) -- what bothers me is that it can land slow enough to glide to a halt on the runway.

http://imgur.com/a/ImS1x#0

As to my opinion: while the atmo has become thicker, I cannot perceive it as utterly horribly terrible. It's certainly a whole lot better than what we used to have for the past years. I could live with it for a few months until the next "proper" update is released. But I'm grateful that a stink has been raised and squad has become aware of the issue.

https://twitter.com/maxmaps/status/595261155406286848

[Brotoro]

...New hotness: returning to KSP in a naked Mk2 cockpit. It acts as a lifting body, which is kinda-sorta alrightish (shape's not quite right, but wth) -- what bothers me is that it can land slow enough to glide to a halt on the runway.

Hahaha! Wow. Just, wow.