why is 1.0.3 so easy

[SoWeMeetAgain]

Hello everyone,

I just recently started playing. Immediately went for some realism mods like FAR (which was a pain) and 1.0.3 seems to have broken some of the mods. So I tried playing a vanilla career game just for fun.

Two successive boosters put you into suborbit. And not even close. Why? I remember it being a good, nice little challenge to first get into suborbit with only 30 lowtech parts and 18t maximum. Now it's just ... click click done.

Is this a trend that will continue? Broader audience by making it child-easy? The ones who want it hard will do their mods or something?

And I didn't do the math ... but how the hell does that work now? What changes were made that make the same booster so much more able to get you into space?

looking forward to hear your opinions,

cheers

[Renegrade]

Point: You only needed one RT-10 to get into sub-orbital spaceflight in FAR in 0.90~

Air is air, not jello.

[Wheffle]

I'm pretty sure atmospheric drag was reduced quite a bit. Patch notes say they adjusted the solid boosters accordingly, but you know how it goes. I'm personally happy that the souposphere 2.0 was at least mitigated.

As far as I can tell, every patch there are a healthy batch of threads either commenting on the update making the game too easy or too hard. Everyone has different tastes and I guess you can't satiate them all.

[tutike2000]

I remember it being a good, nice little challenge to first get into suborbit with only 30 lowtech parts and 18t maximum. Now it's just ... click click done.

I don't remember suborbital flights ever being hard to do. Two SRBs used to be enough to get a pod above 70km, as far as I recall

[Xyphos]

I don't remember getting to sub-orbit ever being hard, so long as you know what TWR is.

if you still think KSP is easy, try landing a Kerbal on Eve and returning him to Kerbin safely.

[The Yellow Dart]

I don't think you need to worry about this as a trend. The problem is just that we are getting an unfinished, unbalanced game with a label on it that says "Finished Game". All of these game balance fixes we keep getting should have been done during the Beta period that never was. Then you would have gotten a disclaimer with your update saying it is a work in progress and things will still change, and you wouldn't worry about all these problems as much, (or about the fact that the updates are essentially save-breaking since we cannot depend on launched crafts to do their jobs now). Squad got jumpy and threw a 1.0 on KSP too soon and now we have to pretend that each of these bug-riddled, unbalanced messy "hot fix" updates are "finished games" when they are very far from it.

[regex]

KSP has never put realism first, so when they actually added a realistic element and made planes and rockets fly like planes and rockets, everything became easier for those who know how to fly FAR. 1.0.3 flies a lot like FAR or NEAR from 0.90, actually, so that should be your reference point.

Edited June 23, 2015 by regex

[Wheffle]

Actually yeah I'm seeing now that the SRB's were actually buffed a bit. I'm not complaining, they weren't very useful in 1.0.2.

Also, like others have said, I found it much harder to get into orbit in 1.0.2 than in 0.90+FAR. 1.0.3 feels a bit closer to my 0.90+FAR experience (not so soupy atmosphere, well-designed thin rockets get into orbit fairly easily).

[Starwhip]

I haven't tried 1.0.3 yet, but I did try FAR a while back, and it was very easy to get to orbit with just a few stages.

[regex]

I haven't tried 1.0.3 yet, but I did try FAR a while back, and it was very easy to get to orbit with just a few stages.

Most of my lifters are a 1+1 configuration, you rarely need more than a single stage plus a handful of boosters to up the TWR above 1.2. I've so far lifted 150 tons to orbit on a 1+1, I don't doubt I could put more up by just making it bigger. Basically versions before 1.0.x obscured the fact that Kerbin requires very little in the way of orbital velocity. Plus, Kerbin is spinning at a fantastic rate so you've already got a massive boost before you even launch.

[boxman]

KSP has never put realism first, so when they actually added a realistic element and made planes and rockets fly like planes and rockets, everything became easier for those who know how to fly FAR. 1.0.3 flies a lot like FAR or NEAR from 0.90, actually, so that should be your reference point.

That is not what they said in older days at all. They used to say they wanted ot to be very realistic, but yet at the same time fun. They even talked on the early squadcasts about how they spent so much time tweaking engines to be as realistic as possible to real life versions. And how they also made kerbal system as close as possible to ours that i could in that smaller scale.

But since the steam release that is apparently not a thing anymore and now suddenly realism is boring??

The only place where they sacrificed realism for "fun" was with long tedious tasks like long burns and slow ascent created by things like full scale solar system/planets. They still had realism as first priority.

If they dumb it down much more it is not going to be fun to anyone. What squad needs to realize is that realism equals fun for alot of us.

It has already lost some of that sense of achievement you would get since they made things like landing so easy now thanks to unrealistic landing legs that can handle impacts of like 20m/s.

Can only imagine how it will be in a year or two thanks to console port...

Edited June 23, 2015 by boxman

[NecroBones]

I'm pretty sure atmospheric drag was reduced quite a bit. Patch notes say they adjusted the solid boosters accordingly

The SRBs were sort-of both buffed and nerfed.

They all received an increase in propellant mass, ranging from 40% for the Flea, to only 4% in the Kickback. This means a better fuel mass ratio, but also a slightly lower starting TWR on the pad. Their ISPs were increased across the board, but for all of them except the Flea, this also resulted in a larger proportional gap between the SL and Vac ISPs, meaning the TWR is even lower on the pad. But they'll be more efficient overall, and have a longer burn time. The Flea just had its SL ISP raised, its pad TWR goes up from that, which will help offset its 40% increase in propellant mass.

[SoWeMeetAgain]

I don't remember suborbital flights ever being hard to do. Two SRBs used to be enough to get a pod above 70km, as far as I recall

see, if it was not super easy for me, and now I am complaining about how easy it is, what does that tell you?

That is not what they said in older days at all. They used to say they wanted ot to be very realistic, but yet at the same time fun. They even talked on the early squadcasts about how they spent so much time tweaking engines to be as realistic as possible to real life versions. And how they also made kerbal system as close as possible to ours that i could in that smaller scale.

But since the steam release that is apparently not a thing anymore and now suddenly realism is boring??

The only place where they sacrificed realism for "fun" was with long tedious tasks like long burns and slow ascent created by things like full scale solar system/planets. They still had realism as first priority.

If they dumb it down much more it is not going to be fun to anyone. What squad needs to realize is that realism equals fun for alot of us.

It has already lost some of that sense of achievement you would get since they made things like landing so easy now thanks to unrealistic landing legs that can handle impacts of like 20m/s.

Can only imagine how it will be in a year or two thanks to console port...

that is sad to hear indeed :/ but mods will fix it ... I guess

thanks for your reply

[Slugy]

Hello everyone,

I remember it being a good, nice little challenge to first get into suborbit with only 30 lowtech parts and 18t maximum. Now it's just ... click click done.

...

Broader audience by making it child-easy?

cheers

The main thing is that you have learnt how to build a better rocket since those days. Try it in .90 (or whatever version you first started with) - you will find it easy now.

"Broader audience by making it child-easy?" - it is meant to be a game accessible to children, and that is a pretty patronising sort of statement.

The lowered dV to get to orbit certainly helps, but it also makes getting the turn (and shape of rocket) right more important - not a terrible balance, although the size of rocket required to get to orbit has always been rather small imho.

[regex]

And how they also made kerbal system as close as possible to ours that i could in that smaller scale.

Well, there's your problem. They wanted it as realistic as possible but they never put realism first.

[klgraham1013]

"Broader audience by making it child-easy?" - it is meant to be a game accessible to children, and that is a pretty patronising sort of statement.

Sorry to say it, but I'd prefer KSP to not be child friendly. There should be a certain level of intelligence required to play. Note: I'm talking about children, not pre-teens / teens. I know I certainly would have been playing a "realistic" version of Kerbal at 13 years old, if such a thing had existed.

-edit-

I may have misinterpreted your comment due to semantics and what you could mean by "child."

Edited June 23, 2015 by klgraham1013

[Wheffle]

With Kerbin scaled down, it naturally has a pretty low dV requirement to get into orbit. So if they wanted to make it harder just for the sake of making it as close to real life Earth launches as possible, they only have a handful of options, like nerfing engines compared to their real life counterparts (which they have) or increasing drag to unrealistic levels. Whatever they do could break another aspect of the game or cause a bunch of other complaints.

The same thing happened to re-entry heating. Everyone complained about how it wasn't dangerous enough, but realistically speaking you wouldn't burn up in an Earth-like atmosphere with Kerbin-system re-entry velocities. In 1.0 re-entry heating was significant only because atmospheric heating was unrealistically punishing, which in turn made rockets and space planes explode at low atmospheric velocities.

They're constantly walking a tight-rope, and when you tweak one system it affects a dozen others. There's always room for improvement and I'm sure they will be trying to get things right for a while, but I'd give the devs a break and just enjoy the game.

[SmallFatFetus]

The one thing I dislike about stock aero is that I can slow down my plane from 800m/s to 200 just by sharply pitching up. there should definitely be a aerodynamic failure option in the settings menu. Aside from that, stock aero seems balanced, and not too difficult or forgiving.

[Dilli]

Hello everyone,

I just recently started playing. Immediately went for some realism mods like FAR (which was a pain) and 1.0.3 seems to have broken some of the mods. So I tried playing a vanilla career game just for fun.

Two successive boosters put you into suborbit. And not even close. Why? I remember it being a good, nice little challenge to first get into suborbit with only 30 lowtech parts and 18t maximum. Now it's just ... click click done.

Is this a trend that will continue? Broader audience by making it child-easy? The ones who want it hard will do their mods or something?

And I didn't do the math ... but how the hell does that work now? What changes were made that make the same booster so much more able to get you into space?

looking forward to hear your opinions,

cheers

I'm pretty sure two (or three) boosters have worked to get sub-oribital for a very long time - as long as there has been a career mode IIRC. I think experience has more to do with it than a changing of the game - when the building upgrades first came out 30 parts, 18t and low tech parts were hard (for me) to get into space (bad habit of more boosters from sandbox); on the same version and many restarts later it was easy.

[klgraham1013]

With Kerbin scaled down, it naturally has a pretty low dV requirement to get into orbit. So if they wanted to make it harder just for the sake of making it as close to real life Earth launches as possible, they only have a handful of options, like nerfing engines compared to their real life counterparts (which they have) or increasing drag to unrealistic levels. Whatever they do could break another aspect of the game or cause a bunch of other complaints.

The same thing happened to re-entry heating. Everyone complained about how it wasn't dangerous enough, but realistically speaking you wouldn't burn up in an Earth-like atmosphere with Kerbin-system re-entry velocities. In 1.0 re-entry heating was significant only because atmospheric heating was unrealistically punishing, which in turn made rockets and space planes explode at low atmospheric velocities.

They're constantly walking a tight-rope, and when you tweak one system it affects a dozen others. There's always room for improvement and I'm sure they will be trying to get things right for a while, but I'd give the devs a break and just enjoy the game.

...or they could just scale up the system to a realistic size. That would solve most of these problems.

[Wheffle]

...or they could just scale up the system to a realistic size. That would solve most of these problems.

True, but same push-and-pull problem. People would complain about 30 minute launches

[foxkill2342]

Air is air, not jello.

This. Please keep trending towards this Squad! I don't want to have to battle to get into Orbit. There are so many more complex challenges in this game. Why make it a challenge just to get into space? If you want a challenge getting into Orbit, go to Eve, set up a base and launch all your craft from there.

[Nich]

I have always thought there was something way off about the aero in KSP. Does anyone know if an airfoil creates a moment in the KSP model or not? I am an aerospace engineer and for the life of me couldn't make a stable plane to fly without SAS

[goldenpsp]

see, if it was not super easy for me, and now I am complaining about how easy it is, what does that tell you?

That you like to spring new information that nobody knows on people further down the thread? (Since we don't know anything about your KSP pas)

You are getting better at KSP?

That maybe they forgot to adjust the Flea booster for 1.0.3? (it does seem more potent).

[stevehead]

This was partially discussed in the thread for KScale2, a Kopernicus config that scales the solar system by a factor of 2...

Pre-1.0 with the stock aerodynamics, for the general population of gamers, the rocket sizes to orbit were about where they needed to be for the balance between realism and game play. Once you start adding more realistic aero, obviously less souposphere means smaller rockets. This plagued FAR/NEAR users ever since those mods were created, which is why many of us were drawn towards larger scaled solar systems (i.e. 64K) among other reasons such as a grander sized solar system, realism, etc. Now that the souposphere is gone for everyone, the people that never played with FAR/NEAR are now subjected to this problem of having orbit-capable tiny rockets. I tried playing the 1.0.x game with stock scale, and I just cannot do it... it's just too easy.

I've been playing KScale2 (2x scale) for my "stockalike" install, and I have to say it's the best scale I've played that best matches the original feel of the game I had when I first started playing KSP around 0.21. It feels like KSP pre-1.0, but with more realistic aero. Double-sized Kerbin with the new aero has a launch to low orbit ÃŽâ€v that roughly matches the pre-1.0 ÃŽâ€v. The ÃŽâ€v for non-atmo maneuvers is about 50% more than stock (e.g. takes about ~1200 m/s ÃŽâ€v to transfer to the Mun), but honestly that doesn't make the game that much more challenging. It actually balances the parts better by making the 2.5m and 3.75m parts less overpowered for launches (slightly larger payloads for interplanetary transfers + the higher launch ÃŽâ€v). I think Squad dropped the ball on the solar system size. It should have been doubled with the 1.0 release, but unfortunately it's too late since game breaking changes shouldn't be introduced to a released game; oh wait... (*ahem* 1.0.3 heat shields ).