Tank butts, --- your thoughts?

[Tweeker]

           I took a bit of a hiatus from KSP right after 1.0.5 came out, I played it a couple of times before work started sucking up all of my free time. My impression was that the vector was OP and unbalanced. Rather than comment on it, I let it slide, and as I said work started taking all of my free time.

           Now I have a bit more free time, and I was able to start back up with KSP again. I posted some of my thoughts on the Vector in this thread: The Vector: Your thoughts .   I noticed a lot of talk about tank butts in this thread, 

Quote

 disagree. It is a 2.5m engine in all respects except the absence of a 2.5m butt plate, which is completely superfluous.
 If you simply *must* have a 2.5m butt plate on it in order to remind yourself that it's not actually a 1.25m engine, there is a simple fix:

Now it's a 2.5m engine. Problem solved.

 

  Here is this new engine that doesn't fit the established paradigm, and as an explanation it is said that the engine has had it's "tank butt"  This was something new to me, I don't remember much talk about tank butts before now, I don't see any one calling for the Skipper, Mainsail, Reliant, ETC to have their "tank butt" removed.. To me it seems like a bunch of mental gymnastics to justify the Vector. Are they really going to re-work all the engines in the game to justify the presence of one engine?  

  But I am curious what do the rest of you think about this line of thought?  I can see the merit of having a butt plate on the engine that contains all the internal of the engine, the gimbal, the pumps, and so on. I don't see the what purpose it serves to split each engine into 2 parts.

[regex]

Tank butts are the devil!  Give us thrust structures and proper, separate boattail fairings!

[GoSlash27]

Tweeker,

 I'm perfectly fine with ditching the tank butts/ making them procedural/ or keeping them as- is.

 Where or how I use them isn't governed by the diameter of the mounting surface. It's governed by the job I'm doing. The Vector is way too much engine for any sane 1.25m stack, so I don't use it there.

If Squad does away with butt plates, it won't affect how I design my rockets. The whole idea that "this engine belongs with these tanks and therefore should be compared to other engines that attach to these tanks" is arbitrary and (IMO) silly.

 Engines do what they do. They don't care what shape the space is that their innards have been squeezed into.

Best,

-Slashy

Edited January 19, 2016 by GoSlash27

[moogoob]

I.. like.. tank butts and I cannot lie!

XD

Anyways, there are quite a few clamoring for the removal of butts. Squad themselves said they were testing a system by which certain inline engines might re-size themselves to disclude the butt when attached to smaller nodes.

[Superfluous J]

The reasoning to remove the butt plate is that you could more easily mix-and-match engines to stacks. Would you ever want to attach an Ant to an SLS fuel tank? Probably not, but it'd be nice if you could without it seemingly floating in the air below the tank like it does now.

How much do I care? None. That's right. I care none. If it bothers me I use the gizmo to translate the engine up so it looks like it's physically attached to the tank, and am happy with that. Sometimes, I'll actually do what the screen shot shows, but not always. And I never use larger engines on smaller stacks so there's no issue there for me.

I heard talk in a devnotes recently that tank butts might autosize to the stack to which they connect. This seems fine to me though I'd like to see it in practice before endorsing it. I remember back when Minecraft stairs automatically "figured out" which direction to face and how to fit into corners and it was no end of trouble when you wanted to do anything but the most simple design.

[katateochi]

I've not really used the Vector much, but isn't one of it's 'things' that it's radial mountable so it can be put in clusters easily.  I've made mainsail clusters before and part of the problem with that was the butt plate (I'd never heard that term before today) overlapped outside the tank and so required extra stuff to cover it up.  So it would be quite nice to have the option to have the plate or not.  And surely (looking at what mod parts can do) it could just be a variant of the same part so you could toggle it on/off without needing it to be two separate parts.

Edited January 19, 2016 by katateochi

[Raptor9]

I can understand the reasoning behind making tank butts procedural or toggleable or what have you.  If an engine's performance is ideal for certain conditions or roles (ie: first stage lifter, upper atmosphere sustainer, vacuum-only thruster, etc) than depending on what kind of craft you're making you'll want to choose the right one for the job, and how many of those you will need.  So if you need three Skippers clustered together for an upper stage instead of one, or if you need several Terriers under your small lander, the current system may interfere with that building technique.

[tater]

They should go away, or snap to whatever size they are attached to...

The simple solution is to convince Squad that all engines are in fact for spaceplanes. In that case, all the ugly aspects of them will go away next update, heck, they'd probably get an art pass to not look ugly into the bargain.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

The offset tool. Need I say more?

 

Yes, I need say more, make two variants of said engine that are only aesthetic, and make them switchable in-game with a button in the Tweakables menu.

[regex]

24 minutes ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

The offset tool. Need I say more?

Yes, actually.  How am I to cluster four Skippers on the bottom of a 2.5m tank while keeping it neat, tidy, and obviously four engines?

[SpaceplaneAddict]

@regex, did you ready the second bit of my post?

28 minutes ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

Yes, I need say more, make two variants of said engine that are only aesthetic, and make them switchable in-game with a button in the Tweakables menu.

 

[AlamoVampire]

First, I think engines should have tank butts. Why? Because it looks clean. Secondly, I never would have thought this sort of thing would merit a few threads... However in the interest of all ppl, just give it a toggle and make it procedural. Win-win-win.

[regex]

26 minutes ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

@regex, did you ready the second bit of my post?

Missed that, somehow , and would fully support it.

[Tweeker]

1 hour ago, tater said:

 

The simple solution is to convince Squad that all engines are in fact for spaceplanes. In that case, all the ugly aspects of them will go away next update, heck, they'd probably get an art pass to not look ugly into the bargain.

Sad, but true. When are rocket going to get some love?

[Frybert]

Squad, the community has spoken! Update 1.2: All About Tank Butts. Get crackin!

[jarmund]

I for one actually like the tank butts. Yes, they take up room, but it just looks wrong to me if there's no "visual connection" between engine and tank. Besides, a lot of an engines vital parts are visually a part of the tank butt. If something has to be done with them, then I am for the procedural approach.

Just a thought: Make it more modular. Instead of just sticking an engine onto a tank, just stick a nozzle onto a tank if you please, but with the option of having a procedural tank-butt in between to change/improve the characteristics of the nozzle slightly. The tank but defines vectoring capability, while the nozzle defines the thrust. Both of them together define the Isp. This sounds like a nice mod that i'd love playing with, as I generally like tinkering with the finer details.

---

Edit:

Just to elaborate on the mod-idea: the tank-butt won't be required, but something that you may want to use. Without it it'll act slightly less efficiently with no vectoring. Essentially, a throttle-controlled bottle rocket on steroids.

Edited January 19, 2016 by jarmund

[Frozen_Heart]

I think tank butts really need to go. It really damages modularity and the ability to cluster engines. Yes I could just have them all hanging over the side but that looks ugly as sin.

If you look at real life rocket engines they don't have a massive plate stuck onto the top.

 

Also give vacuum engines larger engine bells not smaller ones.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Frozen_Heart

[monophonic]

35 minutes ago, Frozen_Heart said:

I think tank butts really need to go. It really damages modularity and the ability to cluster engines. Yes I could just have them all hanging over the side but that looks ugly as sin.

If you look at real life rocket engines they don't have a massive plate stuck onto the top.

 

Also give vacuum engines larger engine bells not smaller ones.

I also think the multi-adapters should be lower in the tech tree. They would naturally direct new players towards the idea of clustering smaller engines. Butts or no butts.

[monstah]

10 hours ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

make two variants of said engine that are only aesthetic

The problem is it's not just aesthetic when you play with FAR, for example.

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I support removing tank butts. There's only a few rocket engines you can cluster, and i don't like that. Many real-life rockets don't have just one engine on first stages and such, they have many engines clustered together. I would love to be able to attach multiple Swivels or Reliants or what have you to a 2.5 m fuel tank, rather than just one. Yes, I know they have stuff like quadcouplers, but those work... weirdly.

[pincushionman]

We need more multicoupler options anyway, really.

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, monstah said:

The problem is it's not just aesthetic when you play with FAR, for example.

How is that a problem? Ignoring that stock KSP can't ask "how would this work with all the mods available for the game?" on every change they make, how would adding a second variant (while keeping the original) cause problems in FAR?

The problem I see is that instead of potentially lessening the number of parts in that side list, this suggestion will instead double them.

[r_rolo1]

17 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

How is that a problem? Ignoring that stock KSP can't ask "how would this work with all the mods available for the game?" on every change they make, how would adding a second variant (while keeping the original) cause problems in FAR?

The problem I see is that instead of potentially lessening the number of parts in that side list, this suggestion will instead double them.

AFAIK FAR voxelizes the parts to get the drag cubes needed to calculate the aerodynamic variables. If the part changes shape ( like having or not tank butts ) that might give issues ...

[monstah]

16 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

How is that a problem? Ignoring that stock KSP can't ask "how would this work with all the mods available for the game?" on every change they make, how would adding a second variant (while keeping the original) cause problems in FAR?

Oh, no! I wasn't saying your suggestion is a problem. What I called a problem was the tank-butts jutting out of the main stack. In stock that's just aesthetical, not so much in FAR.

Now that I read it again, I misinterpreted you. What you called aesthetic was the tank difference; I thought you had meant the tank butts jutting out. My bad.

[Motokid600]

You wouldn't even need them to be procedural. Squad could ditch the tank butts all together if they remodeled all the fuel tanks to look like actual fuel tanks with sidewalls and hemishphereical ends. ( tank butts )