Near Future mods: pros and cons

[Clear Air Turbulence]

Hi there

relatively new player (still doing mun landings) playing sandbox here.

I am wondering about the pros and cons of the Near Future series of mods.

i started with the solar panels (mostly because they look cool) but I have now installed the whole suite.

I like the the idea of having a wider selection of engines, tanks, etc but I also wonder whether I am not painting myself into a corner. I have already had some experiences where non stock parts have exploded on me for no reason...

I also wonder how how much functionality I am really adding. KER is unmissable, but how much extra capability am I really getting?

And I realize I may end up in s place where I am deep in a game & can't uninstall mods because I have ships using the parts

(i have the same question about KAS & KIS which I have not installed yet)

[TheXRuler]

Well, I am not quite up to date at the moment but the near future series definitely used to be rather overpowered. If what you want is just a wider selection of tanks and engines I suggest getting KW rocketry and/or procedural tanks. KSP interstellar gives you rather largeselection of future technologies with the added benefit of them being rather well balanced for example you can use thermal rockets but you will need to supply huge amounts of power for them to be actually useful they will hell ever let you switch fuel types and provides potentially amazing specific impulses. same thing goes for atmospheric turbo jets which can actually run off atmosphere not even using any fuel which can of course be very helpful for single stage to orbit vehicles built for example for Eve. however for them to provide any kind of decent trust you will need vast amounts of power and as you can probably imagine nuclear reactors that provide enough power for these methods to be feasible are very very heavy being in excess of 40 tons. If however you don't mind I see no reason to not use the near future technologies

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You might also want to take a look at FASA. That provides provide another huge selection of engines and tanks

[Oafman]

I disagree that the NF pack is overpowered. There are some very high ISP engines in the propulsion pack, but their thrusts are mostly low and they typically require huge amounts of electricity, necessitating one or more reactors, which all leads to additional design challenges. When the masses of these engines, their specialist fuel and their accompanying reactors & radiators is considered, they're far from a win button. In fact, the NF pack always used to nerf the stock ion drive (unsure if this is still the case) to bring it into line with the NF ion options. But they are a very nice option to have, and something completely different from stock, which is less the case with mods like KW Rocketry (which is brilliant, but more stockalike as it's mostly LFO engines etc).

Nertea, who authors the NF mods, make excellent models - the whole pack looks fantastic, as you've already found with the solar panels. And as you mentioned bugs, you have little to be worried about with the NF pack, it's all very stable.

Ultimately, as these are parts mods, I guess I could have a save without them, but I know I would miss them almost every time I went to the VAB.

The same is not true for KAS/KIS. I couldn't play without the functionality they offer. If I couldn't add parts to ships out in space then I would have to remember absolutely everything before launch, and there's very little likelihood of that ever happening! And when you come to do anything meaningful on the surface of another planet, KAS/KIS are an essential requirement; base building is an extremely clumsy affair without them.

Basically, NF addresses gaps in what you can do with stock parts, while KAS/KIS addresses gaps in what you can do with the game itself. I wouldn't want to play without either, but I more or less couldn't play - in the style that I do - without KAS.

[Streetwind]

Hi there

relatively new player (still doing mun landings) playing sandbox here.

I am wondering about the pros and cons of the Near Future series of mods.

I help out with Near Future. If you encounter a bug or want to discuss anything in particular, you can always come by the mod thread and I (and others) will do my best to address all your questions.

In the meantime:

I'm not sure what you mean with "pros and cons" of the mods themselves, or asking about "extra functionality". The former is more a thing you'd ask about individual parts asked, while the latter is largely answered by the preview albums in the forum thread's opening post, unless you mean something else. Could you rephrase your question?

The parts exploding for no reason was a stock thermal bug in 1.0.4 that should be fixed now that 1.0.5 is out. It affected both stock and modded parts.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

I guess I am wondering whether I want to become dependent on them, and what they give me that stock parts don't... I am new to the frame as I said, and I suddenly realized I am Investing in all these mod parts before I have explored stock parts fully.

Edited November 10, 2015 by Clear Air Turbulence

[More Boosters]

Well I never got to a point where I got to use the late game electric engines (I always play career and happen to restart...) but they obviously require a lot of preparation to get going. I don't think you'll be dependent on them, they are unlocked at a point even a player who's playing career for the first time will have enough experience with interplanetary and stuff.

The Mk3-9 Orbital Command Pod may cause an addiction and make you question the existence of Pilots though.

[regex]

I guess I am wondering whether I want to become dependent on them

Man, I hate to think what would happen if you started playing Realism Overhaul...

Near Future is one of my "must-haves", even if I don't use the engines that much, mainly because the solar panels are just so damn useful and good-looking. The trusses are excellent for station building as well.

[TK421d]

only con for NFT is the still missing iva's for the station parts.

[passinglurker]

only con for NFT is the still missing iva's for the station parts.

Oh god do you realize how useless those would be? it's a station you're not driving anywhere with it you can't control the experiments from the inside its a hell of a lot of work for no reason better than "immersion" there are better ways a modder could spend his time namely doing what he wants to.

[RoverDude]

tbh I never consider the lack of a custom IVA a 'Con' unless the IVA is critical to operating the part (i.e. command pods where a stock IVA is not suitable).

[Streetwind]

I guess I am wondering whether I want to become dependent on them, and what they give me that stock parts don't... I am new to the frame as I said, and I suddenly realized I am Investing in all these mod parts before I have explored stock parts fully.

Alright, here's an overview of how NFT compares to stock parts:

- Propulsion is an extension beyond stock; no part appears earlier than the stock 'Dawn' ion engine. The engines have a performance progression, and the high end ones are quite good - enough to outclass the 'Nerv' nuclear engine in every way, even when factoring in the weight of power production. However, the stock solar system is so small that these engines can rarely stretch their legs fully; when you can effortlessly fly all missions with 350s Isp engines no problem, then ten to fifty times that specific impulse isn't really required. But if you add things like Outer Planets Mod or solar system rescale mods, the NFP engines 'grow with the challenge' so to speak.

- Electrical is an extension beyond stock; most parts come beyond the 'Nerv' nuclear engine. Those that come earlier are just additional form factors of batteries with stock stats, and a different form of power storage that weighs less but works in a different way. If you run Propulsion, you probably want this pack too. Solar can power some electric engines as well, if you stay around Kerbin or closer to the sun, but for the biggest ones (or when going to outer planets) you do need reactors. These reactors are a lot better at generating power than anything stock or solar, but they are also very expensive and take a lot of research.

- Construction integrates into the second half of the stock tree. It contains lots of different structural elements, most of which are cosmetic. There is however a greater selection of size adapters and single-to-multipart adapters than stock offers, potentially allowing you to build designs that would not work in stock.

- Spacecraft integrates into the second half of the stock tree. It's probably the least invasive of all the packs, because it has the fewest parts and those parts are the closest to stock, technology and operation wise.

- Solar partly integrates into the second half of the stock tree, and partly goes beyond. A lot of the solar panels are much larger than stock options, and though they also weigh more, ultimately the top choices do outperform stock options noticably.

You should realize that when I say that a pack "goes beyond" stock, what I really mean is that you should install a different tech tree. There is no room in the stock tech tree for most of what Near Future adds. The parts will still be crammed in there, but they will be unlocked too early for too little science cost, and there will be no meaningful progression. I recommend Community Tech Tree, because it is simply an extension to the stock tree instead of a completely different layout, and many other mods support it as well.

Download ALCOR, add the battery, put it on the pad and just sit in it in total awe. IVAs add absolutely new level of immersion. Especially such a high quality IVAs.

There are players in this world - like me - who can count the number of times they go IVA during an entire career progression on the fingers of one hand... and then only because of accidentally hitting C instead of X I'd rather look at rockets than screens, even if the screens are particularly fancy.

[JedTech]

There are players in this world - like me - who can count the number of times they go IVA during an entire career progression on the fingers of one hand... and then only because of accidentally hitting C instead of X I'd rather look at rockets than screens, even if the screens are particularly fancy.

Right, IVA = waste of RAM

[hab136]

"In his 2001 essay Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth,[2] Joel Spolsky argues that while 80% of the users only use 20% of the features (a variant on the Pareto principle), each one uses different features."

So I don't use IVA, or joysticks, or planes, or boats, or a lot of things that are in the game. I'm not petitioning for any of them to be removed/ignored because I probably use some feature that someone else considers a waste of RAM.

Anyways, Free IVA makes IVAs more interesting, and provides an incentive to make IVAs even for boring station parts. The "cross-section" view (seeing outside of ship + inside) is really cool. When it gets polished up, it might make IVAs significantly more attractive.