Fuel Return Challenge

[sdj64]

(updated to be more clear, added badge)

Due to the increasing costs of fuel threatening to drive them bankrupt, the KSC wants to get in on the oil business. Problem is, the oil companies have rights to all the ore on Kerbin, and the KSC doesn't want to risk a lawsuit. So they have to find sources of ore in space to meet demand.

This is a challenge with a simple goal: return as much fuel to Kerbin as possible while using as little as possible.

Rules:

No cheating (infinite fuel, Hyperedit, config file editing, etc.)

You can use any fuel type in your mission.

Mods are allowed as long as they are not more efficient than stock parts. Informational and decorative mods are allowed. Mechjeb is allowed.

You may not make use of any existing craft in your save file, all crafts used in this challenge must be launched new.

You may use any number of craft, but you must total the fuel in all of your crafts.

You do not have to return all of your fuel all at once.

You cannot mine for ore on Kerbin's surface. Any other ore source is allowed, including asteroids.

Score:

Mass of resources returned to Kerbin / Mass of resources used

Mass of fuels in tons per unit, for scoring purposes:

Liquid Fuel: .005

Oxidizer: .005

Monopropellent: .004

Xenon Gas: .0001

Solid Fuel: .0075

Ore: .01

Clarification: You can start with Xenon and Solid Fuel in your ship, even though you can't refine them, they count against "Mass of fuel used". You can just return raw ore if you want, or you can convert it.

Anyone who completes this challenge gets the wonderful badge below.

[noparse][/noparse]

High Scores:

1. sdj64 - 0.282

My attempt, as an example:

Resources used: 162.23 tons

Resources returned: 45.7 tons

Score = 0.282

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Edited May 7, 2015 by sdj64

[sdj64]

Why does nobody want to do this challenge? Too difficult? Too boring? You can enter even if your score is less than 1 (that is, you return less fuel than you used to get it).

[HoloYolo]

Why does nobody want to do this challenge? Too difficult? Too boring? You can enter even if your score is less than 1 (that is, you return less fuel than you used to get it).

First of all, you can only get LF, LF+O, and Mono. Also the scoring is really confusing. Oxidizer weighs more then Liquid Fuel, so there should be more points for oxidizer returns. You might get submits if it's harder and you have a badge.

[SanderB]

Have you thought about making an attempt yourself first? Getting back and forth to the mun's surface isn't easy. Why would anyone take the challenge serious if you haven't attempted it yourself? And obviously xenon and solid-fuel can't be produced on the mun.

[sdj64]

The other fuels are there because you can start with them, but I didn't want them to be free. If they were, then someone would just use an all solid fuel rocket pushing an ion probe that grabs an A-class asteroid and ruins the scoring system. So their weight counts against your starting fuel mass, even though you can't refine them from ore.

I got the masses of fuel units from the wiki. If they changed them in 1.0 I must not have noticed, what do they weight per unit now?

My attempt is in progress.

[MunGazer]

It's a decent challenge. I'd disagree with people that say that it needs to be more difficult to attract entrants. If they want difficulty from this challenge, they need only to seek first place and attempt to hold it. I would agree, however, that there seems to be a correlation between cool looking badge awards and challenge popularity. When people see the 1800+ replies for K-Prize, and everyone jumping around in the forums with that badge, they think "oh that's where all the action is!". And yeah K-Prize is a fun challenge I intend to achieve somewhere in my long sequence of tinkering with ksp. But I feel like I want to make an entry on every challenge, even if I'm ranked last place. So just like I assured John FX of my future participation in his challenge, I assure you you'll also have mine.

Like the K-Prize, you could have different levels of achievement, and then a badge that is awarded for a minimum specified performance. Some people just like to earn that badge for a quick sense of achievement, and to have that notion that "hey, I did something. See look". 1st class miner badge for doing such and such tier of difficult tasks, etc. Your challenge sounds very scientific and Joe average often runs the other way when confronted with big words haha. I like the sciency-ness of it, however.

Some people might be more inclined to check into it if it was called something like "Expert Miner Challenge" or "The Harvester Trophy". Just ideas for ya bro, take it with a grain of salt. Wish all those kids out there playing CoD would come play this instead.

[Tangle]

Does a tweakscaled ISRU unit count as cheating? It's the same efficiency but lower mass, so probably.

[windows_x_seven]

Does a tweakscaled ISRU unit count as cheating? It's the same efficiency but lower mass, so probably.

Most likely yes.