Personal rebalancing of parts - your thoughts

[Vegetal]

I have quite a lot of play time already, and in general I've been conservative with mods. Only had those quality-of-life ones at the beginning (KER, RCS aid etc) but now I got KIS/KAS and recently installed USI life support. I say I have been selective, getting the mods that have very nice features and have pretty good quality, and could very well be stock.

One thing bothered me, the 2.5m capsules weight. Everyone knows they are simply bad choices, too heavy for what they do. I just never considered them an option from the start, instead using cockpits or other stuff in general.

I then decided to experiment a personal rebalancing of those, and just edited their weight to be proportional to their 1.25 counterparts. The mk1-2 pod now weighs 2.4 tons (0.8 per kerbal) and the lander can 1.2 (0.6 per kerbal). I have to say they feel a LOT more balanced now, like, in the sweet spot. They simply became a reasonable choice.

Have you guys done something like this for the purpose of balance? What do you think?

[katateochi]

I used to monkey with parts more back in the day, and for your own game that's fine, often quite fun!
But I stopped doing custom edits to parts because it gets in the way of sharing craft and also puts you on a different setup to everyone else so you can't compare your experiences with anyone.  

Of course the neat way of doing monkey patches on a part would be to write a module-manager patch for the part and then release your patch as a mod.  At least that means you leave the original parts intact so game/mod updates, reinstalls etc won't wipe your changes and you can share the craft along with your mod more easily than having to explain what changes to make.

[Vegetal]

Yeah, I always thought about craft sharing as a reason not to mod the parts myself, but I really think it's more balanced that way. It would be nice if this was stock in my opinion, but then a dev would have to read this and test too. Unlikely.

[quasarrgames]

No matter how parts are balanced most people wont be satisfied, so just keep them how they are mostly IMHO

[kmMango]

Generally when I mess with parts, I'm trying to make them as unbalanced as I can. For Science.

[Francois424]

Things I have done with parts :
 - Electrical Jet engine (when not installing FireSpitter or other propellers) that can operate in an atmosphere, any atmosphere, and only eats electricity.
 - 4x Weight/cost/heat... and thrust, 2,5m Nuclear engines... Radiators are not useless at all anymore, I love the really big ones.
 - Using procedural parts, a single Ion engine can replace 32 of it's smaller siblings, while still not being unbalanced (heavier 4200ISP still, need a whole lot of electricity).
 - (Mot Recent) my own nuclear reactor that replaces A LOT of RTGs, but require heavy Uranium to operate.  Good efficiency.
 - I calculated every science equipment's weight that I used, and combined it into ONE part... the Science Lab... Works like a charm and no need to search on what to click.  I think B9 did that too back in 0.25 or something.

Convenience parts for the most part...even without the reactor; Stuff to reduce part counts (between procedural parts and a few choice editing, most of my interplanetary "Jool-5" types are between 175-250 parts instead of 350+)
The most cheaty thing I made was a 2,5m engine that ran on Xenon and electricity with about 80'000 ISP(vacuum), and a "Super-Rapier" combining the best of the jet engines and a rocket ISP/THR hat was borderline broken (I retired it after a launch or 2, it was too unbalanced).  Both where created when the tech tree was completed.  I never mod parts until the tree is done.  Consider it my own version of an "Interstellar Mod".

Never thought of rebalancing the capsules the way you did tho... I didn't think there was any need (most of the time).
It's fun to play with parts file every now and then, but I wouldn't do that to... say beat EVE.  I still have not done it, and I wont 'cheat' to do it.

[Agost]

IMHO the Aerospike should have a small thrust vectoring capability and more SL ISP (like ~315)

And I'd like a stock linear mk2 version of it 

[RizzoTheRat]

I always think back to how it would work in reality. So using the above comments as examples:

• Comparing a Mk1 and a Mk1-2 command pod, 5 times the weight seems a bit excessive, but a quick back of the fag packet calc gives it at least 3.5x the surface area, and a big chunk of the weight will be the heat shielded base which is 4 times the size in the 2.5m case than the 1.25.  The current pod being 5 times the weight does seem a bit high, but I wouldn't go below 4x.  Interesting the 3 man Apollo command module was about 4 x the weight of the 1 man Mercury capsule. 
• How would a gimballed aerospike work?  A conventional rocket has a bell exhaust that you can move, but angling the cone on an aerospike would completely trash the aerodynamics and probably burn out the cone, so you'd have to vector the entire engine which would make it a lot more bulky and heavier.
• How would an electrical jet engine work?  A ducted fan would work but that's going to be lower altitude and speed than a turbojet.

On the other hand merging functionality of several parts in to one to save on part count while maintain the weight makes perfect sense to me.

 

However the point of the game is to have fun, those are only my justifications other peoples are likely to be very different, and as quasar points out above you can't please everyone.

Edited January 25, 2016 by RizzoTheRat

[radonek]

My pet peeves:

• RC-L01 Remote Guidance Unit (big round probe core) is almost identical to small one, but way too heavy. If you combine smaller probe core, battery and reaction wheel, you get more oomph in less weight.
• Docking ports are way too light. I often find myself using large docking port instead of large rockomax decoupler, because it weights half as much. To be fair, I should throw in some separatrons to add more separation force, but it still comes out lighter.
• Hubmax is kinda heavy compared to other structural parts.

Other than that, I think stock parts are pretty well balanced. Even NASA parts, which I thought to be overpowered at first.

[Agost]

1 hour ago, RizzoTheRat said:

How would a gimballed aerospike work?  A conventional rocket has a bell exhaust that you can move, but angling the cone on an aerospike would completely trash the aerodynamics and probably burn out the cone, so you'd have to vector the entire engine which would make it a lot more bulky and heavier.

Looks like there are some studies about thrust vectoring on toroidal aerospikes; it is achieved by redesigning the combustion chamber and allowing more fuel in one part of it, producing more thrust from one side and less in the others. The cone stays still. 

Obviously it won't get as much thrust vectoring as normal gimbals, but it's more than nothing.

Example:  http://enu.kz/repository/2011/AIAA-2011-293.pdf

 

Edited January 25, 2016 by Agost

[RizzoTheRat]

Another reason I love KSP, there's always something to learn

[Vegetal]

3 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

I always think back to how it would work in reality. So using the above comments as examples:

• Comparing a Mk1 and a Mk1-2 command pod, 5 times the weight seems a bit excessive, but a quick back of the fag packet calc gives it at least 3.5x the surface area, and a big chunk of the weight will be the heat shielded base which is 4 times the size in the 2.5m case than the 1.25.  The current pod being 5 times the weight does seem a bit high, but I wouldn't go below 4x.  Interesting the 3 man Apollo command module was about 4 x the weight of the 1 man Mercury capsule. 
• How would a gimballed aerospike work?  A conventional rocket has a bell exhaust that you can move, but angling the cone on an aerospike would completely trash the aerodynamics and probably burn out the cone, so you'd have to vector the entire engine which would make it a lot more bulky and heavier.
• How would an electrical jet engine work?  A ducted fan would work but that's going to be lower altitude and speed than a turbojet.

On the other hand merging functionality of several parts in to one to save on part count while maintain the weight makes perfect sense to me.

 

However the point of the game is to have fun, those are only my justifications other peoples are likely to be very different, and as quasar points out above you can't please everyone.

Interesting numbers Rizzo. I didn't go research real capsules like that, I just looked at the balance other command pods have in the game, like the mk3 cockpit - it carries *four* kerbals, a lot of monoprop and weighs less than the mk1-2.

Thinking about Apollo again.... It was designed for long missions, so I believe that also meant increased weight. Mercury was just a go-kart to orbit in comparison.

[RizzoTheRat]

True, but then again that tends to be how I use them in KSP too, Mk1 gets used for a few early missions to the Mun and Minimus, and then the Mk1-2 starts getting used as I get in to doing longer missions.