1.0.3, where is it?

[Alshain]

What is stock behaviour like at the moment anyway? In FAR (just FAR, no DRE), a direct Minmus return with a 20km periapsis burns about 3/4 of the way through a heat shield (which seems about right from a gameplay POV to me).

In stock a direct Minmus return with a 20km periapsis doesn't need a heat shield. If you do take one, it might burn 10%.

[Jikahn]

illmatic, I'll do you one better. Lets remove maneuver nodes because those are complete BS and unrealistic. You should have to calculate your trajectories manually. Also add in an ultra realistic atmosphere with real solar system sizes, and N-body physics. Basically to play the game you would have to have to literally be a rocket scientist. Lets make the game a real simulation and after about 10 years of post graduate education and experience you might actually get something into orbit... providing you are willing to collaborate with large teams of other scientists who also have an extensive education. Don't kid yourself, Kerbal Space Program is never going to even begin to approach reality even with all the "ultra" realism mods. There is a level of realism that even the most hard core among this community would finally say "Ain't nobody got time fo dat." Then no one would be playing the game, because almost everyone who could play the game would actually be helping to launch .... into space IRL.

So what I'm trying to say is that there is a sweet spot for everyone in regard to realism. And no two people are ever going to agree on exactly where that spot is. The real goal is to make a game that educates as well as entertains. And if you cross the psychological boundary of "ain't nobody got time for dat", you are going to lose most of your players. Typically ultra realism, even in simulators has been left to modding communities. I don't know where that line is, but it's important to stay on the right side of it.

Edited May 26, 2015 by Jikahn

[KerbMav]

I would be happy for a less memory wasting stock game.

Some of the Krakens from service bays and stuff being killed would be great, too.

And maybe in the next five hours? :D

[haltux]

1.0.2 100% reentry heat. I landed a pod at EVE. Direct reentry from JOOL (40Km Pe). Speed was over 6000m/s when hit Eve's atmo. WITHOUT heatshield.

Eve is even more forgiving than Kerbin in terms of reentry, which sounds completely wrong to me. That would mean that it is not just a setup issue, some parameter to tweak and it will be fine, but a deeper problem.

[magnemoe]

In stock a direct Minmus return with a 20km periapsis doesn't need a heat shield. If you do take one, it might burn 10%.

You did not need heat shields with DR either, engine protected the stack behind, the problem was that DR killed the legs.

On the other hand I returned the two man landing can from Mun, grab with skycrane wanted to do two passes, first brake to low orbit then land, drag was higher than expected so it was an direct landing, only thing who blew up was an radial mounted battery.

[Warzouz]

Regarding heat en reentry, I also noticed that a non aerodynamic vessel has less trouble with heat than an aerodynamic one. I tested an atmo, lander (very basic one) on Laythe an Duna Il lander perfectly. Juste a can, a rockamax smal tank, a Terrier and some regular science stuff.

On the other hand, I used an MK3 ship (a command cabine, passenger cabin, an rocakamx adpater and a rockkmax heat shield at the back (no wings). The goal was to reenter backwards. I came form just outside SOI (let's say Minmus velocity). I scrapped atmo twice to slow down to 2500m/s. On thrid pass, even with 4 airbrakes, I burnt to hell at 25km (I cheated the heat - seeing everything going red far from the ground).

On another matter, some parts seems more sensible to heat. On my SSTO rocket stage, I used a rockamax (2.5 -> 1.25) adpater at the bottom of the rocket, (engine are radially attached). On renetry, that adapter blew quite fast, but not the tech bay in front of it. I removed it (letting the 3.75->2.5 adapter with a simple 2.5 heatshield (1/4 filled). Perfect reentry, no overheating at all.

I must say that aerobraking is a fun manoeuver to do. I had a very good time to slow down my 13 parts mission to Jool moons trough Jool and Laythe atmo. I would be sad if this would become too hard.

[Wjolcz]

Eve is even more forgiving than Kerbin in terms of reentry, which sounds completely wrong to me. That would mean that it is not just a setup issue, some parameter to tweak and it will be fine, but a deeper problem.

I confirm this. Yesterday I was landing on Eve. Hit the atmosphere with over 4000m/s. Direct landing. Didn't even burn through half of the small heat shield. And I set reentry heat to 120% just before doing that.

EDIT: Just checked how much ablator actually left on the shield: 139/200

Edited May 26, 2015 by Veeltch

[waterlubber]

I just hope 1.0.3 finds a middle ground between the nice, normalosphere and the souposohere of 1.0.2. It's even worse if you use asparagus, because that's kind of necessary since rockets wobble lime crazy.

[Warzouz]

Yes rocket wobble is a pain. Fairing should prevent internal parts to wobble.

[Holyvision]

Hopefully soon, but I'm sure squad wants to make sure it's a nice clean latch after 1.0.2; I've been staying with 1.0.0 until at least 1.0.3 releases.

[Terwin]

So... if you want a game mechanic to have some of impact in gameplay, you must do things that no one would ever do?. Nice

Reentry heat development time is wasted time, because nobody would ever need a heatshield unless a reentry planned with that purpose.

Perhaps those are things no one would ever(intentionally) do because that is what causes reentry heat to blow up your ship?

It does kind of make sense:

A) You have a game where things are made a lot easier and more enjoyable by cutting down the immense sizes and distances of space by an order of magnitude.

Using real physics in A you get a lot of things automatically such as slower orbital velocities, shorter transit times and smaller atmospheres.

C) A direct consequence of A+B is that you need lower energy budgets both to get places in a reasonable time and have less relative energy to dissipate on arrival.

D) You are using realistic trajectories for the scaled-up world(with some adjustments to match the actual body attributes)

With A+B+C+D why would you expect to be at the edge of survivability?

When there is so much less energy in the system, even without more durable equipment(which is more forgiving for those of us who are not rocket-scientists), why would you expect to be at the edge of survivability?

If you want to be at the edge of survivability, you EITHER need to be dealing with the full scale system with the much larger energy budgets involved with realistic trajectories, OR you need to be doing things that are not so conservative that they could actually work in the scaled up system while still working in the low energy-budget system.

Personally I *LIKE* having the lower energy-budget system so that I can do fun things like space-planes using existing technologies while still having a cargo budget and rocket trajectories that need not be 100% perfect just to have enough fuel to get to low orbit with a 2.6% payload with 2 stages(Falcon 9 v1.1) or 4% payload with 3 stages(Saturn 5).

(Compared to SSTO Space-planes with 30%+ cargo capacity mentioned in other threads on this forum, usually with enough extra capacity that they can still be manually flown and need not follow a 100% perfect computer generated trajectory)

[Findthepin1]

1.0.3 needs a 3.75m docking port and for the 3.75m-2.5m structural adapter to have fuel.

[OddFunction]

I feel like I'm the only one okay with no 1.0.3 because I just got all my mods set up a few days ago

[BDelacroix]

No, I'm not in a rush either. But I'm usually more or less mellow about such things.

[DanJourney]

I think that they are taking their time to get it right, which is awesome.

Maybe we'll get an update with Devnote Tuesday.

[TothAval]

And we got new informations on the devnotes. 1.0.3 will arrive in a matter of days, not weeks, as harvester pointed out in the notes. i am looking forward to it.

[GusTurbo]

I'm ok with this taking longer. Better than a rush job.

[boxman]

From what I understand, the current heating model is pretty realistic, the reason it is not more hazardous is that orbital velocity is below 2.5km/s while earth has an orbital velocity above 7km/s.

Try a steep reentry at 7km/s or higher and I am sure you will encounter serious problems.

A periaps above the heavy atmosphere(~20km) is hardly a steep approach and should be quite safe if you have a reasonable design.

I know that I have had heating bars from LKO return on small draggy parts like the basic fin even on a shallow trajectory(~25km), not enough to cause damage but plenty to show that there is heating going on and a less reasonable ship/trajectory could be in trouble.

If you want more hazardous heat, try having a steeper descent(like a periaps below -100KM) with a non-trivial velocity.

Then what exactly is the point?? Must make it the most useless feature ever then.

And why not do with every other feature and SCALE IT UP to fit with the smaller solar system??

[Murph]

Then what exactly is the point?? Must make it the most useless feature ever then.

And why not do with every other feature and SCALE IT UP to fit with the smaller solar system??

It's not anything like so simple as to just "scale it up". It is already causing borderline too much heat for mach 3.0 planes at 20,000km (during ascent, not re-entry). It's a very difficult balancing act. It also can never be as difficult as a minority on here would prefer, as that would simply stop being fun for the majority. Too difficult on the 1.0 release would have been a disaster for Squad, likely generating terrible reviews with words such as "impossible", "unplayable", etc; as well as losing many current and future customers because of it. Too easy has far less downside for them, and anyone who walks away from KSP over it, frankly they are a complete idiot who is better off gone.

It literally has to be "too easy" in many ways, for a fairly wide variety of good reasons. It's good that it's there even when it is "too easy", as it gives overall flavour to the game, acknowledging one of the significant real world physics issues. It doesn't have to perfectly emulate real life, when any idiot should be able to clearly see that the game is only intended to be an interesting and fun approximation, and not a perfect simulation.

Those who want extremely deadly re-entry heat are a very small minority, and they frankly should kindly go forth and install a mod or tweak their many configuration options to something suitably extreme. It would be a huge mistake, entirely wrong, to tune the game to their demands.

[rkman]

Those who want extremely deadly re-entry heat

Any meaningful reentry heating is extreme relative to what we have now: effectively no reentry heating.

It is to bad that ascent heating of spaceplanes is holding back the gameplay experience with rockets - especially considering that KSP started out as a rocket game and the addition of planes is an afterthought.

[Janos1986]

As it is, reentry heat is a joke.

[LostOblivion]

Reentry heating is not something anymore that belongs in a mod as the feature is already there, instead it should be a much broader range in the difficulty options to turn heating all the way up to down-right hard. Not realistic, since a reentry on an IRL Kerbin would be far easier than Earth, but hard as in as hard as an IRL reentry.

If I was to use Deadly Reentry now it probably wouldn't be to get the more realistic approximation Starwaster implemented with skin heating, but to get an actually difficult reentry because he tweaked the heating parameters to make reentry harder. If a 300 % heating option was there in the stock game, I'd use it.

[Mipe]

As it is, reentry heat is a joke.

It's fine. It's just that everyone keeps forgetting this is Kerbin, not Earth. Try a steeper reentry at like 7 km/s.

[rkman]

It's fine. It's just that everyone keeps forgetting this is Kerbin, not Earth.

And some people forget this is a game, where various aspects of it must be balanced against one another, such as reentry heating versus the small scale of the game universe.

[michaelsteele3]

*Reaches behind your head*

Oh! What's behind your ear? 1.0.3!