Question about Remote Tech and Deadly Reentry

[Broax]

I'm about to start my "official" save for KSP (by which I mean the save I intend to use as my main career game until my personal objectives are all fulfilled) but before that I need to settle some questions I have regarding which mods I'm going to use. Specifically:

• I'm having a hard time choosing between RT2 and Antenna Range. I'm personally inclined to RT2 as it seems more realistic, I like the delay issue for probe communication, the added layer of having to use satellites to establish uplinks, etc. But I really don't want to micromanage satellites every hour because the orbital periods within a given constellation isn't perfectly synced. Also I'm not 100% sure how much busywork is involved in pointing the conic antennas in the right direction for there to be an uplink. I don't mind having to do it once but I really don't know if the antenna keeps pointing at the right spot after you set it or if I have to adjust it as it goes on its orbit. TL;DR: My perception is that there is a lot of busy work and micromanagement on RT. Is that true or some sort of misconception?
  
• The other mod I have some questions about is Deadly Reentry continued. As of 1.0 I don't know (and can't seem to find) the main differences between stock reentry and deadly reentry. What does DRE add to 1.0? As far as I can tell I can still use the stock fairings (which I enjoy for the scorched effect) so that's not an issue but what are the key differences between DRE and Stock?
  

If anyone could give me a hand about this it'd be pretty great!

[Minwaabi]

Remote Tech: There will be some micromanagement but not a lot. Yes, satellites will move around a bit and you will have to resync their orbits. If you get their orbitals to be nearly identical, you will not have to do this every hour. More like every week in game time if you are using a small number of LKO's. Using more satellites than you absolutely need and/or using Synchronous orbits (which you should be using anyway for that task) will mean that you shouldn't have to adjust orbits more than once a month in game time or so. (At least in my experience). It doesn't matter which way your satellites point. So don't worry about that at all. Conic antennas have a button you click and then select a target, it could be the KSC, another craft, or a planetary body. If it's a planetary body, you will hit all craft in its cone. One of the tricks is to launch comm sats with lots of antennas. (Since you have to have at least one antenna pointing at probes traveling to their destinations (preferably 2). Once they get there, you can just use the antenna (or 2) for that body. Hope that helps.

DRE: If you look through the posts on DRE's page you will find lots of info about what it changes. However, here is a quick summary from Starwaster:

Mainly that only a portion of a part's mass is used when applying heat. That's the skin. (or hull if you prefer that term)

If one thing has more mass than another (and all other factors are equal) then the more massive thing will heat up more slowly. This is a large part of why stock reentries feel weak.

The other reasons are

Slower reentry speed over Kerbin than over Earth.

Less time spent in reentry

To correct these two problems, convectiveFactor was increased to 50. This means things are subject to convective heating 50x faster. (you could also think of it as 50x the heat, but in practice, part temperature and skin temperature act to limit this so that things will heat up only until they reach equilibrium or explode)

Also, the amount of heat produced in reentry has been increased so that it is comparable to an Earth reentry

radiationFactor was also increased to 50 so that it's still possible to reach thermal equilibrium after convectiveFactor was increased.

Also: OP was updated to remove any confusion as to what to do with ModularFlightIntegrator.

[Broax]

Thanks... Your answers were exactly what I wanted to know! :-) as for DRE I actually looked for that but couldn't find this post...

Thanks for the info! :-)

[Mecripp]

The only thing RT has that is more realistic then Antenna Range is the delay and Antenna Range has setting you can set that you have to have line of sight for control.

[hab136]

But I really don't want to micromanage satellites every hour because the orbital periods within a given constellation isn't perfectly synced.

Instead of trying to get perfectly-synced orbital periods, you can do Molniya-type orbits.

See this post: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/56399-0-23-RemoteTech-2-v1-3-3-Late-Christmas-Edition?p=782970#post782970

Also I'm not 100% sure how much busywork is involved in pointing the conic antennas in the right direction for there to be an uplink. I don't mind having to do it once but I really don't know if the antenna keeps pointing at the right spot after you set it or if I have to adjust it as it goes on its orbit.

You don't have to ever re-point or adjust an antenna. If it's pointed at Duna, it will always be pointed at Duna (unless you change it).