Pet peeve: orientation during atmospheric re-entry.

[Vanamonde]

basic.syntax, those are all valid questions, to which I do not have answers. It might be that what I’m talking about isn’t possible, but thank you for being one of the first people not to dismiss it out of hand.

If that's true, then justify why it is bad gameplay.

Again? Okay, as I stated several times already in the thread, the current situation causes engines to be unavailable for braking burns during part of the descent. It causes the vessel to flip violently when chutes open, possibly causing damage. It forces the player to try to anticipate whether a heat shield should be mounted on the nose of the vessel or the bottom. And it may force the player to discard more of the vessel before attempting atmospheric landings, reducing the recovery value.

... why is this, in your opinion, different enough to qualify for "bad gameplay"...

Because it is a new problem which has arisen while they are fine-tuning part statistics in response to new aero, it did not formerly exist, and isn’t necessarily inevitable now. This is the time to bring up aero issues, because this is the time the devs are concertedly working on them.

... making the tanks so heavy that this lander would enter tail-first..

I never said a word about making the tanks heavier. Why do you insist on arguing against things I am not proposing?

Don't forget that his craft reenters just fine...

When you brought it down from orbit. I have been flying it to the moons and back. It’s likely I’m coming back with less fuel in my tanks than you had in your test. But for whatever the reason, I find that that ship is absolutely unable to hold a retrograde heading during re-entry from the moons, despite SAS exerting its full force.

Edited June 17, 2015 by Vanamonde
Edited for clarity.

[SHiftER2O]

-snip-

Don't worry Mr Banana

All you have to do is re-do the design in the new suited aerodynamics and all this hassle bassle can be avoids-voids

New version -> New concepts - New things to ponder about :3

[tater]

I made sure I had the same fuel as you did when reentry effects started. If you had a problem at a higher velocity, slow down. You apparently think the LEM should have been able to reenter from the Moon at 11.5 km/s by slapping parachutes on it. If you don't want to build a reasonable craft, aerobrake a few times with a higher periapsis, then reenter as I did. I did nothing but set a periapsis using fuel (I started with more than your image, so I should have had a lower CM) to get it closer to the value in your pic.

Edited June 17, 2015 by tater

[Starwaster]

There are two arguments going on in this thread.

1) That assembly is falling the way physics says it should. Great, Dandy. I never said the physics should be otherwise. I am not part of that argument. I don't care about it. Please, take it somewhere else, because it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

2) This is undesirable behavior for that assembly and the attributes of the parts could be adjusted so that this does not happen in realistic physics. THAT is my suggestion and request.

1) and 2) contradict each other.. Adjusting the parts so that they don't fall that way in realistic physics results in unrealistic physics and said physics WILL be 'otherwise'. (other than what they currently are)

It is part and parcel of the aerodynamics system.

So why don't you just make the very simple settings changes that I suggested? Then your craft will fall exactly as you want it to.

Every craft, every time.

Edited June 17, 2015 by Starwaster

[tater]

The craft already reenters fine, at least from LKO.

I play strictly career, and I've not really worried about recovering anything, and I have loads of funds. I waited to land on the Mun until I could do it sort of Apollo style (I did earth orbit rendezvous, though). Landed properly on kerbin in a capsule.

[ferram4]

Again? Okay, as I stated several times already in the thread, the current situation causes engines to be unavailable for braking burns during part of the descent. It causes the vessel to flip violently when chutes open, possibly causing damage. It forces the player to try to anticipate whether a heat shield should be mounted on the nose of the vessel or the bottom. And it may force the player to discard more of the vessel before attempting atmospheric landings, reducing the recovery value.

All of which, to me, sounds like excellent gameplay. Consider that this is a game about working around problems introduced by the physics and finding solutions to those problems; how is this particular situation different from any other engineering challenge in the game? We already have to anticipate how boosters will detach from rockets, whether our landers will have the TWR to not smack into the ground during a landing burn (which is far more complicated than just TWR > 1), how vehicles will behave during docking, how fuel will flow with crossfeed, all things that are just as complicated as this; why are those acceptable and not this?

Because it is a new problem which has arisen while they are fine-tuning part statistics in response to new aero, it did not formerly exist, and isn’t necessarily inevitable now. This is the time to bring up aero issues, because this is the time the devs are concertedly working on them.

...and if this will be your answer, does that mean that you'd be perfectly for changing the game to get rid of any of the gameplay that I mentioned as counterexamples if they had just been implemented?

I just don't see how any of this is bad gameplay. Designing a large payload's reentry vehicle requires the same amount of forethought that designing a complex rocket's staging system requires. It requires the same forethought as designing a spaceplane, or a bare-bones low TWR lander, or any other difficult task. Is the difference really just that this gameplay is new and that's enough to justify getting rid of it?

[Vanamonde]

Adjusting the parts so that they don't fall that way in realistic physics results in unrealistic physics...

Consider what you're saying. Same physics but different part masses will result in unrealistic physics? That is nonsensical.

If you had a problem at a higher velocity, slow down.

Don't you think this maneuver would be more effective if my engine wasn't forced to point the wrong way by the airflow?

The craft already reenters fine, at least from LKO.

Your experience differs from mine.

I play strictly career, and I've not really worried about recovering anything, and I have loads of funds.

Good for you. My play style is different.

So why don't you just make the very simple settings changes that I suggested?

That is one response. I am proposing another.

... how is this particular situation different from any other engineering challenge in the game?

In the regard that I don't like it, and am expressing my opinion about it.

Is the difference really just that this gameplay is new and that's enough to justify getting rid of it?

Please stop mischaracterizing my argument. Is this what I said? No. I did not say new is bad. I said that this is a change I do not like. I am not obligated to dislike the other things you list out of some sort of illusory consistency. Surely there have been aspects of the game's revisions that you did not like? I am specifying one of my dislikes here. Edited June 17, 2015 by Vanamonde

[tater]

My experience was to set the SAS, and watch what happened. I think I set periapsis to around 45km, from a 70-something roughly circular orbit. If your craft is capable of reentering without issues, then it's not a craft problem, it's a piloting problem.

Ideally, all reentries in KSP would be sensitive to entry conditions, frankly. Pilot wrong, and you die. As it is you have to actively work to screw it up. Is there any chance the OCTO is upside down?

More reality checks:

I just did a few direct returns from the Mun with this (the first craft pictured with he 3 small tanks). LMO to 40km Kerbin periapsis. Tried to hit as close to 30 fuel as possible upon reentry. Speed from Mun was closer to 2900.

Reenters just fine, flies exactly correct as set, retrograde every time. Only if you turn off the SAS, it flips. Your complex workaround is to set retrograde, then don't turn SAS off. Do you really think that craft should be stable the wrong way with no SAS?

BTW, in the tests where I turned SAS off... it flipped, and still landed just fine. The g-meter never went much above green when the chutes deployed, it was pretty gentle.

This seems like a "solution" in search of an actual problem.

Edited June 17, 2015 by tater

[ferram4]

Please stop mischaracterizing my argument. Is this what I said? No. I did not say new is bad. I said that this is a change I do not like. I am not obligated to dislike the other things you list out of some sort of illusory consistency. Surely there have been aspects of the game's revisions that you did not like? I am specifying one of my dislikes here.

So this:

Because it is a new problem which has arisen while they are fine-tuning part statistics in response to new aero, it did not formerly exist, and isn’t necessarily inevitable now. This is the time to bring up aero issues, because this is the time the devs are concertedly working on them.

Is inaccurate then? Your justification for it being different than my earlier points was that it was new gameplay that you didn't like, and worth complaining about now (as opposed, implicitly, to any other minor gameplay complaints, because those have been there for a longer time), because it was changed recently. Or am I just having difficulty because I'm trying to find justification beyond, "I dislike new constraints." This is me trying to figure out what your basis for disliking this is, and to be honest, I'm trying very hard to find reasoning that is deeper than, "it won't let me do what I used to do, therefore, it is bad," which is really the way this entire argument comes off if you refuse to elaborate on why any of those changes are bad. Remember, you still haven't justified why any of what you've cited is bad gameplay with anything other than, "I don't like it."

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that you really would be best served by what earlier commenters have suggested by going into the cheats menu and switching the older drag model back on. What you are complaining about, fundamentally, can't be fixed universally. If your standard for "good" gameplay is that the aerodynamic properties will match whatever the player wishes they were... then you're chasing a lost cause. Any set of changes to make whatever example you come up with behave the way you want will also make some other example shift from behaving as you'd like to behavior that you don't like. I think you would be best served by either creating a mod to make the changes you want as an example (and then deal with the unintended consequences), or to just own up that you want the old behavior back and switch to it.

[Starwaster]

Consider what you're saying. Same physics but different part masses will result in unrealistic physics? That is nonsensical.

It's what YOU are proposing that doesn't make sense. You want parts to ... somehow... have parameters changed that will make your vehicle NOT fall in a manner that every fiber of its design says that it MUST fall. Its center of mass is up high near its nose and the cross section taken down near the bottom is broad. And you don't even know what these parameters are or even IF they exist nor what consequence might exist for their alteration.

THESE are the things that don't make sense.

Even less sensible is why you won't just make the necessary changes in settings that will give you back the behavior you desire.

Don't you think this maneuver would be more effective if my engine wasn't forced to point the wrong way by the airflow?

Your engine is pointing exactly the right way as dictated by airflow and the locations of its center of pressure and center of mass.

[Kuu Lightwing]

I'm wondering, have you played 1.0.0? In that version risk losing your ship on reentry was real (unless you just pop a chute that was OP)... Returning a science bay from orbit was a new challenge, because standard craft with science bay at the bottom of the capsule was flying nose first and burned on reentry. Well, I just made a detachable science bay and it landed separately from the capsule - 22.5km physics range in atmo helps with that one. You may try doing that.

[Tarmenius]

I've been following this thread from the beginning, and I think I may have a way to clarify what's being misunderstood here.

With the addition of new parts, the possibility space for craft design has been expanded (a wider range of part combinations exist). The possibility space for successful designs is much smaller, and the new aerodynamic and heating models have made it smaller still. This is good for people who favor Realism over Gameplay (when the choice needs to be made) because it more closely mimics our reality in that we must carefully design our spacecraft. However, consider that this extra time and effort is spent just to achieve the same goal as before: Getting to and from orbit. Increased effort for the same result is the very thing HarvestR was trying to avoid when he decided Kerbin should be much smaller than Earth.

Thus, the new systems have shifted KSP a bit toward the "Simulation" side (for lack of a better term) and for people who favor Gameplay over Realism, this is a negative change. So, Vanamonde's issue here (if I've been reading correctly), is a reflection of that shift. Hopefully there exists some solution that will reduce the time and effort aspect without sacrificing the Realism of the game's calculations. Honestly, I think this also highlights the fact that the physics simulations being run by the game are far more sophisticated than the tools available to the player. This is the game design fault I was referring to much earlier.

[tater]

The very notion of "gameplay over realism" is utter nonsense, the 2 things have exactly nothing to do with each other.

The reentry effects are basically nonexistent, anyway. They scrub a few parts off the outside of poorly built craft. I tested heat shields and capsules at actual Mars/lunar reentry speeds (at kerbin, however) and had no failures (11-12 km/s direct reentry with a 20km periapsis).

This is all aside from the fact that OP's craft works just fine, losing NOTHING, the only change in behavior is to set SAS retrograde, and don't turn it off.

[Tankman101]

The very notion of "gameplay over realism" is utter nonsense, the 2 things have exactly nothing to do with each other.

Gameplay over realism is a thing (KSP not using N-body and life support for example. That would be painful.)

However it should be added that that does not mean making things arbitrary for the sake of being arbitrary.

[tater]

Gameplay over realism is a thing (KSP not using N-body and life support for example. That would be painful.)

However it should be added that that does not mean making things arbitrary for the sake of being arbitrary.

We could argue n-body, but I don't need to. You need to demonstrate that ANY choice that increases realism always hurts gameplay. So any dangerous reentry must harm gameplay if what you say is true. Any more rather than less realistic treatment of orbital mechanics harms gameplay, etc. if that is not true, then the 2 are not the opposites you make them out to be. If rockets are better than "lift wood" then your argument fails.

note that I do not claim that realism always makes gameplay better, as the 2 are unconnected.

Edited June 18, 2015 by tater

[Tankman101]

You need to demonstrate that ANY choice that increases realism always hurts gameplay.

Not really, no. The argument is contextual.

Realism vs Gameplay in making time warp. They obviously felt that making missions take 4 literal years was bad.

Realism vs Gameplay in Re-entry heating. They obviously felt that it was worth including as a default 100% setting (It's a bit borked at the moment, but that's another story.)

Anyway this is getting off-topic.

[tater]

They are entirely unrelated to each other, period. More realism can make better or worse gameplay. If context matters, it's the context, not the "realism."

[Vanamonde]

Thread's gone off-topic, and I'm tired of people demanding that I provide justifications I've already provided, and being told that my opinion is objectively wrong. As OP I'm requesting that the thread be closed, and as a moderator, I am granting my request.