Let the community replace stock vehicles

[More Boosters]

Hey!

Stock vehicles are outdated, they are bad, they should feel bad, and they don't tell a newcomer anything about how to design a proper rocket. Therefore I am suggesting a contest of some sort to determine a new set of stock craft for KSP, with streamlined easy to use and effective vehicles for various roles.

[Mr. Speed]

That would make a great contest!

[Bev7787]

Agreed!

[Columbia]

What's so bad about stock designs?

They're certainly working and flyable.

[legoclone09]

Not too much for planes, many are not working, like the Stearwing D45. They do need reworking.

[Higgs]

The current stock crafts are the model t crafts. Somewhat working. What we need is a modern generation of craft

[GoSlash27]

I wouldn't be opposed to community reworking of the stock craft, but remember what their function is.

Stock craft are supposed to look good on paper, but have a major flaw that hinders them. This gives the user an opportunity to troubleshoot them and learn about aerospace engineering principles in the process.

If they work well out of the box, it's a disincentive to learn.

Best,

-Slashy

[Lord Aurelius]

The stock designs are pretty poor overall. I'm not expecting a full grand tour craft or manned eve lander, but I do expect the designs to work well in the current version of the game to provide an example to beginner players or a decent starting point for more advanced players who don't want to build a whole new rocket from scratch for a basic LKO mission. Right now the designs do beginners a disservice since most of the designs don't work very well, and a few don't work at all and thus do a poor job of showing a new player how to build a good rocket.

Having the community provide new designs is a great idea, and fits in with how other parts of the game have been crowdsourced. The company logo/flag contest showed how well that can work and I think we could get a lot of great designs for the game.

I wouldn't be opposed to community reworking of the stock craft, but remember what their function is.

Stock craft are supposed to look good on paper, but have a major flaw that hinders them. This gives the user an opportunity to troubleshoot them and learn about aerospace engineering principles in the process.

If they work well out of the box, it's a disincentive to learn.

If that's their function, then the game does a very poor job of communicating that. I've only heard that said here on the forums, long after I decided the stock craft were mostly worthless and poorly designed.

A better approach would be to have a tutorial that gives you a flawed rocket and some guidelines on how to fix it without directly giving the answer.

Edited October 2, 2015 by Lord Aurelius

[Superfluous J]

While I think the craft could use some work overall, I don't think a community-culled list would do the job. I think perhaps getting a single community member to make all of them (like they're doing with certain modders) would be a better way to go.

Like Slashy said, the purpose of the stock craft is to encourage tinkering. They're also there to show how things go together and give ideas. A bunch of community submitted (and worse yet voted on) craft won't do this like a curated, specifically-designed-for-the-purpose set would.

I think what we have is better than what is proposed, and a new set COULD be better than what we have.

[GoSlash27]

^ I'd agree with both posts above. They're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

I think we could have community- designed stock craft, then have somebody "break" the final version in such a way that it can be fixed.

Best,

-Slashy

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I am okay with Design contests but

The Stock Planes and Rockets are perfect for what they are: An Example

If you had perfect crafts from right at the beginning, you wouldnt even make up your mind.

They are flawed in some ways, yes. BUT, they give you a great example how to do things.

[Red Iron Crown]

Moved this suggestion over to Suggestions and Development Discussion.

I agree that the stock craft need a look, they don't show some of the features that were added since they were made (heatshields, fairings, and ISRU come to mind). Might be fun to try to make some designs that deliberately have a fatal flaw that needs fixing, mine are always unintentional.

Who has a design that they think would make a good stock addition?

[GoSlash27]

I am okay with Design contests but

The Stock Planes and Rockets are perfect for what they are: An Example

If you had perfect crafts from right at the beginning, you wouldnt even make up your mind.

They are flawed in some ways, yes. BUT, they give you a great example how to do things.

Actually... I have to swing the other way on this.

They are far from perfect for what they are. The object lesson they currently convey is "a .90 craft doesn't work in 1.04" and everybody knows that.

A properly designed stock craft for 1.1 would be close to working, but have a flaw that can be repaired with a good knowledge of 1.0 physics.

Best,

-Slashy

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Actually... I have to swing the other way on this.

They are far from perfect for what they are. The object lesson they currently convey is "a .90 craft doesn't work in 1.04" and everybody knows that.

A properly designed stock craft for 1.1 would be close to working, but have a flaw that can be repaired with a good knowledge of 1.0 physics.

Best,

-Slashy

Thats right Slashy, but it is for the player to fix the flaws.

[Alshain]

How would you do this contest? In every update they obsolete old craft so the only way to participate in the contest would be to have an advance development build.

[Lord Aurelius]

How would you do this contest? In every update they obsolete old craft so the only way to participate in the contest would be to have an advance development build.

That's a good point, right now it wouldn't make much sense to do a contest given that the parts/physics tweaking is still a WIP. Still, even an unofficial contest could generate some ideas and designs that Squad could use when they're ready to update the stock craft.

Hopefully after 1.1 we'll see more stability in terms of parts and physics between releases (provided the parts actually get properly balanced) so something like this would be more doable.

[Wjolcz]

Voted yes, but it's not necessarily needed. But I would love to see what people can come up with.

[Rath]

The stock crafts are a massive pile of junk IMHO The new Areo broke a load of them. The can't do Jack right now. (As yo can see, I care rather strongly about this)

Edited October 2, 2015 by Red Iron Crown
Mind the language, please.

[Darnok]

Yes please, I would like some modular crafts in stock To show new players why do you need docking ports.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Stock vehicles are outdated, they are bad, they should feel bad, and they don't tell a newcomer anything about how to design a proper rocket. Therefore I am suggesting a contest of some sort to determine a new set of stock craft for KSP, with streamlined easy to use and effective vehicles for various roles.

That's.. the point. They all have various things wrong with them, ostensibly to stop you just picking them for everything. The Kerbal X is way too powerful, the heavy lander loses some dV to cosine losses, the Aeries 4A (I think.. the SSTO one) is easy to tailstrike the engine, the Ravenspear Mk1's ladder is useless, I don't even know what the K2 is for, the satellite launcher is unaerodynamic, the ion probe doesn't generate enough electricity to run full thrust..

If they were all perfect in every way, why would you ever pick or design anything yourself?

EDIT: I should read things more. Anyway, my point stands. But, I agree with 5th on this - get a skilled builder to rebuild the crafts, including their flaws. They just need updating and showing off the newer features, as RIC said. Make a ISRU rig with drills that can't reach the ground, make something with a heatshield with most of the ablator tweaked out, that kind of thing..

Edited October 2, 2015 by ObsessedWithKSP

[Zombie_Striker]

Whether you feel the crafts should work or not right from the start, we all have to admit that there needs to be more/better crafts to choose from, and what better way is there of getting these ships then from the community. My honest opinion is that the stock ships should work as a model of how to do things (such as a proper way to create an areobraking probe or how to set up an interplanetary/modular base or space station) that way new players can learn how to make their own. I would assume that most KSP players would look at the craft, see why it works, and apply it to their own ships. But even if you feel that the ships should not work perfectly, the community should provide the ships while the developers work on other things.

[regex]

Probably the odd man out here, but I say remove them all.

I've never used a stock craft for anything (except as an example for a rebuilding contest), the appeal of the game was always building my own. A VAB/SPH tutorial/video explaining how to use all the controls and hotkeys would be infinitely more useful than pre-built craft. Plus, I have to delete them every time I install a new update, gets really tiring.

[Slam_Jones]

Personally, I've never used stock vehicles either. In a game where one of the first things you need to do is design vehicles, I feel like the stock vehicles should be a good example of an excellent craft, not something that has one fatal flaw that a new player will never notice, or know how to fix. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere other than the forums that they're supposed to be a little off. I would imagine it would work fine, and serve as an example of what to strive for.

I just think it's silly (and a tad unrealistic) to expect new players (the ones most likely to use Stock vehicles) to be able to identify the flaw of a spacecraft (again, in a game they only just bought) and know how to fix it. Or have the desire to tinker extensively with something they didn't even build. I'd be very curious as to any statistics regarding players who use (or have used) stock vehicles, and whether or not they tinkered with them. I wouldn't be surprised to see a very low percentage of players doing so.

IMO, it'd be leagues better if there were an interactive tutorial saying (something along the lines of), "Hey, look at this ship! See this part here? You need to fix it. Let me show you how..."

Edited October 2, 2015 by Slam_Jones
Grammar

[Lord Aurelius]

Personally, I've never used stock vehicles either. In a game where one of the first things you need to do is design vehicles, I feel like the stock vehicles should be a good example of an excellent craft, not something that has one fatal flaw that a new player will never notice, or know how to fix. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere other than the forums that they're supposed to be a little off. I would imagine it would work fine, and serve as an example of what to strive for.

I just think it's silly (and a tad unrealistic) to expect new players (the ones most likely to use Stock vehicles) to be able to identify the flaw of a spacecraft (again, in a game they only just bought) and know how to fix it. Or have the desire to tinker extensively with something they didn't even build. I'd be very curious as to any statistics regarding players who use (or have used) stock vehicles, and whether or not they tinkered with them. I wouldn't be surprised to see a very low percentage of players doing so.

IMO, it'd be leagues better if there were an interactive tutorial saying (something along the lines of), "Hey, look at this ship! See this part here? You need to fix it. Let me show you how..."

+1 to this, it's basically what I said earlier. The game does not communicate the fact that the stock craft are supposed to be flawed, that information seems to be entirely limited to the forums, yet the people who are most likely to attempt to use them are new players who probably haven't looked on the forum or used any community tutorials. I personally found the stock craft to be basically useless for the most part and I didn't bother with them at all when I was first learning to build things.

[pellinor]

I just think it's silly (and a tad unrealistic) to expect new players (the ones most likely to use Stock vehicles) to be able to identify the flaw of a spacecraft (again, in a game they only just bought) and know how to fix it. Or have the desire to tinker extensively with something they didn't even build. I'd be very curious as to any statistics regarding players who use (or have used) stock vehicles, and whether or not they tinkered with them. I wouldn't be surprised to see a very low percentage of players doing so.

This just makes me think of Maxmaps and the 50% default throttle. If the game insists on putting it there, it must be a reasonable setting, no?

Would it work to have specialized crafts? A few stock crafts which are good designs for some use case, and their descriptions clearly state what they are good at. But an average player can still do better because most of his use cases ask for something different.