Starting planes useless?

[Triop]

Starting planes useless ?

Wouldn't know, never flew one to be honest.

In fact, I delete them from my savefile.

Edit: Ignore my bs...        

Edited February 21, 2016 by Triop

[Knaapie]

On 2/19/2016 at 6:32 PM, GoSlash27 said:

Knaapie,

 I think you've nailed it. If you start out with the Stayputnik instead of the capsule, remove the science from KSC, and make basic plane parts available from the very beginning, airplanes become a very attractive option in early career.

 You launch sounding rockets and fly a few manned science flights, and this gives you enough to unlock manned spaceflight. If you're ambitious/ skilled enough, you can create an x-15 right out of the gate and pick up the world's first for a bunch of speed records and maybe even space.

Best,
-Slashy

Lol, Yes! That would be very cool with the mk1 cockpit you've suggested.

This sounds perfect for us...... 

But we have to think about the noobs too, the learning curve in the game. Imagine building a plane without any basic knowledge to start with. Your plane will crash and burn without understanding why. You'll have to figure out aerodynamic stability, flight controls and in flight center of mass displacements by trial and error or wikis. If you can't figure it out soon, you'd be at pretty large disadvantage.

That's a though start bro.

I'd say Squad nailed it pretty much here, making planes optional and still provide many parts to fulfill our creative needs.

/lol edit

So, yes, planes are useless....    And that is ok.....      Careers are for noobs anyways.

Edited April 4, 2016 by Knaapie

[Delfinus]

3 hours ago, Knaapie said:

So, yes, planes are useless....    And that is ok.....      Careers are for noobs anyways.

Why the need to insult Career mode players? Just because you dislike the gamemode doesn't mean you need to insult the significant portion of the KSP community which plays it. Career is for anything but noobs, as you have to overcome the restrictions of funds and tech to complete your goals, while sandbox has no restrictions and just gives you all the parts from the start.

Edit: Sorry for going off-topic, on the original topic: Yeah, Aircraft are pretty much useless until the end of the tech-tree when you unlock the RAPIER and are able to build SSTOs, and even then they're not as good at lifting cargo to space as rockets are, and are usually only able to go to LKO, and are therefore only useful for transporting crew to LKO. However I imagine a aircraft equipped with an Aerospike would be useful for exploring Duna or maybe Eve, and Jets work on Laythe, so planes would also be highly useful for exploration of Laythe.

They're also decent for unlocking stuff in the tech tree early on, as the small amounts of science gained from exploring Kerbin will be enough to unlock the early nodes in the tech tree as the costs for them are low, And unexplored biomes on Kerbin will be close to the KSC. But they're still not as good as rockets for getting science.

 

-Dolphin.

Edited April 4, 2016 by DolphinDude3

[Knaapie]

1 hour ago, DolphinDude3 said:

-Dolphin.

I love career !

Read the topic bro. It put a different light on my /lol edit "joke"

 

/edit 2

I'll try

Edited April 4, 2016 by Knaapie

[Delfinus]

1 minute ago, Knaapie said:

I love career !

Read the topic bro. It put a different light on my /lol edit "joke"

Oh, sorry, didn't notice that, although it might be a good idea to make it slightly more obvious that you're joking next time.

[Tourist]

I have to disagree, I love the starting planes. I've just started a new career and its been great getting survey contracts with below altitudes rather than above altitudes. In my last play-through I mainly got survey missions with above altitudes which means I could do virtually no survey missions with single seater planes. 

[Kosmognome]

10 hours ago, Tourist said:

I have to disagree, I love the starting planes. I've just started a new career and its been great getting survey contracts with below altitudes rather than above altitudes. In my last play-through I mainly got survey missions with above altitudes which means I could do virtually no survey missions with single seater planes. 

Yeah, it is fine "for the lulz". But if you start looking at those contracts from an efficiency point of view (which career is somewhat about), the are utterly useless. Planes are slow. I mean really slow. In the time it takes you to do one survey with a plane, you can either rescue multiple kerbals from orbit or launch some satellites (or even both), for a much higher payout and much more funds/time.

 

Its not that there is no usge for planes, but their balancing is terrible. Doing anything else then planes has higher funds/time. And on top of that, you can#t even time-warp. If you get contracts at the poles, you are on a 45m flight you can't accelerate much. So if you add time-warp to the equation, planes get even worse.

 

It's not that planes aren't an interesting thing in the game. But currently, the only justification for using planes is because you want to use planes. If the primary goal is anything else (Generating funds by doing contracts, grinding science), then planes aren't a viable choice anymore, and rockets trump them in every regard (until you get the capability to build spaceplanes/shuttles, which isn "Early planes" anymore).

[Foxster]

On a science play-through I usually find there is a small window early on where a simple aircraft with some experiments onboard is useful. It's during a small window when I've not quite got the parts for a decent Mun or Minmus mission and need to collect some science from some other biomes around and a little further out from the KSC. 

After that though, I do agree they have little practical use. But then this is Kerbal Space Program. 

[Kosmognome]

1 hour ago, Foxster said:

On a science play-through I usually find there is a small window early on where a simple aircraft with some experiments onboard is useful. It's during a small window when I've not quite got the parts for a decent Mun or Minmus mission and need to collect some science from some other biomes around and a little further out from the KSC. 

After that though, I do agree they have little practical use. But then this is Kerbal Space Program. 

You can get to orbit with 10 science. If you are a bit careful with funds, you can easily get the 75k for the astronaut complex upgrade to go on EVA, and then take a spacewalk over every biome. Even a equatorial orbit gives you enough science from EVA (shores, water, grassland, highland, desert, mountains), crew reports (upper atmo, in space low), 2x goo and science bay to be able to land one kerbal on the mun - and after that, you should have enough science to be able to grind out minmus or continue grinding the mun.

The science required for orbit can be gathered at pad and runway, no need to ever actually launch before going to orbit. and once you are done with minmus, you start looking at he parts required for SSTOs / spaceplanes / shuttles, and the whole low-tech plane parts seem just bloat.

 

So yeah, it might be nice for some people to augment their science with planes, but its not really something I ever felt the need for. 

[Foxster]

12 minutes ago, Kosmognome said:

You can get to orbit with 10 science. If you are a bit careful with funds, you can easily get the 75k for the astronaut complex upgrade to go on EVA, and then take a spacewalk over every biome. Even a equatorial orbit gives you enough science from EVA (shores, water, grassland, highland, desert, mountains), crew reports (upper atmo, in space low), 2x goo and science bay to be able to land one kerbal on the mun - and after that, you should have enough science to be able to grind out minmus or continue grinding the mun.

The science required for orbit can be gathered at pad and runway, no need to ever actually launch before going to orbit. and once you are done with minmus, you start looking at he parts required for SSTOs / spaceplanes / shuttles, and the whole low-tech plane parts seem just bloat.

 

So yeah, it might be nice for some people to augment their science with planes, but its not really something I ever felt the need for. 

Sure, there are lots of ways to go about this. Using planes is just one option but, as you say, it's not really necessary.