Antenna Packet Size: Is there something special about 2mit?

[Hirumaru]

So, I've been dabbling in a little MM patching here and there. For example, making sensors (thermometer, etc) transmit 100% of their data instead of a laughable 35%-ish. After unlocking the Gravioli detector in my current career I noticed something . . . annoying. It took forever to transmit the data, no matter which antenna I used. They all transmitted the same percentage chunks albeit at varying rates. Looking into this I discovered that the only real difference between any antennae (even the Remote Tech antennae I also have installed) is the rate at which packets are transmitted and how much EC it costs to transmit each packet. Aside from that all antenna transmit at 2mit/s; FREAKING ALL OF THEM.

My question is: Why? Is it some magical value that, if altered, will unravel the very fabric of spacetime? Will a packetSize of 3 somehow glitch the data being transmitted? Or, is it simply because 2 is everyone's favorite number/simpler to balance? :/

[Hirumaru]

Does anyone know? If not, I'm just going to have to screw around and find out.

[Mecripp]

Have you looked at the Wiki ? http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Antenna#Packets

[swjr-swis]

I don't really know why. Lorewise, you could say Kerbals just standardized packet size to 2Mit in their transmission protocols, kinda like we standardized on 8 bits per byte. A number had to be picked. I'm not sure there's much more to it.

The gravioli detector does have a rather disproportionate amount of data to transmit compared to all the other science experiments, I agree on the annoyance. It is usually single-handedly at fault for having to add more electricity storage and generation to a science vessel.

[Phineas Freak]

Nobody has ever done any balancing for the stock antennae so do not expect the values to be of any importance.

[Hirumaru]

That does not at all answer my question. They are of significant importance since I intend to balance them myself. At least for my own personal playthrough. Before that, however, I need to know what effect it would have to muck around with those values at all; inadvertent, gamebreaking effects, that is.

[Phineas Freak]

Your question was "why" so i assumed that you wanted to just learn that. No game - breaking effects should arise by editing these values.

packetInterval:     Defines the delay between the packet transmittion (in seconds).
packetSize:         Defines the size of each transmitted packet. Example: if an experiment has a size of 10 then it would need 10/2 = 5 packets for the complete data to be sent with a packet size of 2.
packetResourceCost: Defines the anount for EC that is required to send a package (EC/package).