What defines your spacecraft style?

[Kinglet]

I almost always have 0.625m engine pods on my orbiters as main propulsion. I almost always use the one man lander capsule or the two-seat passenger plane pod. Combining these two always created some weird looking spacecraft.

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

Two or four SRBs, Swivel core, Terrier upper stage. All the time.

[ZooNamedGames]

Highly realistic, detailed to the last. Rockets always have extended fuel tanks, just slightly more than what most would use.

[FishInferno]

You can never use the Vector engine too much.  Never.

[Just Jim]

Shuttle landers with big reverse "raptor" wings... I've been building these for a while now, and I love the look.

 

[Randox]

Not something I have ever given much thought. Two major themes strike me as being consistent to my designs. All my rockets have multiple launch engines, whether it be SRB's on small designs, or LFB arrangements on my bigger designs. The number of boosters/auxiliary engines has changed over time, but now it's almost always 6. I've found that six gives me enough space between engines and fuel tanks to do my work, while providing enough thrust to get the job done.

The other feature is that I really like what I am going to call engine nacelles on my final stages. Two if possible. This probably started with LV-N engines, since there is no landing gear long enough to land using a single central LV-N engine. I also frankly like the look, it reminds me of the warp nacelles on Federation and Klingon ships.

 

Also, tail fins. All my rockets have tail fins, regardless of need. I've also in the past had lander stages that had fins, though this isn't so viable anymore since it requires the lander to descend nose first into atmospheres. This is doable, but it precludes the addition of certain parts (if I don't want explosions) that I would normally place to be occluded during re-entry on the nose/command pod.

[steuben]

over power, over build, over fuel

[Overland]

Experience and style in alot of cases, the early diesels I drove had a 6 wheel driven steering wheelset up front. The rear was 4 wheels

The idea was 6 turning wheels would give turning authority for the train.

4408

What happened in reality was on long steep hills climbing the front wheels would slip as the weight of the train dug the rear wheels in..losing traction and horsepower needed to not stall the train.. Steering also became lighter

So it became a design upgrade to switch wheels around.. This became a constant style on all later trains since.. Adding traction and climbing ability but also safer braking.. Its rare I use any other wheel arrangement

 

4429

Most trains have 4 wagons of fuel rarely 5 or more as this represents a balence in weight vs horsepower.. And framerate But also stability.. A 6 car train handles differently.from a 4 car and becomes more of a struggle.. With most of my experience in 4 car trains.. I Know how the trains going to.handle with a new locomotive type.. And ive only got to get used to a new locomotives handling not the whole train.. With 6 cars I tend to forget.. Turn too soon..brake too hard and lead to smashing the wagon off accidently... Starting and stopping power differs greatly too

Its been 2 years and counting.. Things evolved.. 4408 is 4429s older sistertrain in the class.. Theres some similar parts and overall look..but generally experience..practicality and function have dictated the style along with class types

44 class being my primary locomotive of the fleet followed by long hood 40 class.. Both are long range locomotives but for visibility and a compact package.. Ill always choose the 44 class

Thus the design grows.. 4429 being the latest but with a definate nod to her fallen sistertrains

[Jetski]

Ever since Nukes went to pure LF, I've been flying this type of design.  Not necessarily with the same command pod always, more often I have the lighter one plus some sci gear, but always 4 LF tanks, fuel lines run to a single nuke, then placed landing gear, solar, and RCS jets if needed on the outside.  Something like 7K dV if you keep it light, and can land on any moon or planet except Eve, Tylo and Laythe.  Easy to plug in a transfer stage that's just fuel and a docking port, use the lander as propulsion.  Just finished the Ultimate Challenge, mostly with it as my lander.

[Snark]

SRBs, a lot.  Virtually all of my designs lift off on SRBs alone as a first stage, tweaked to give a TWR of exactly 1.5 on the pad.

Usually staged in what I've come to call "poor man's asparagus":  radial boosters in two symmetry groups instead of one (e.g. two groups of 4 instead of one group of 8).  Call 'em group A and group B.  Group A runs at 100% thrust, group B runs at whatever lower amount of thrust will give the whole shebang a launchpad TWR of 1.5.  Group A burns out and is ejected first, allowing B to run for a while longer before ejecting them and igniting the first liquid-fueled stage.

 

[PanzerAce]

SRB first and second stages. Given that my program is still fairly early on in career mode, it's a great way to boost payloads without taking a massive credit hit on engines. I've also fine tuned it to the point that I can usually get a 0 relative velocity, ~5km distance for rescue missions in LKO without having to touch my orbital manuvering stage.

[Kuansenhama]

Low part count over anything else since I have a potato computer. A robust space station has 300 parts. My new SSTOs have 35.

[cubinator]

"It works? Great."

Whatever does the job, man. A good example of this is the...thing I used to transport my Elcano rover to the Mun. Boy, did it have problems but eventually it got the job done.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I hear that my designs look like

On 2/15/2016 at 7:41 PM, Kuzzter said:

[snip] a hat rack trying to make love to a fire extinguisher. (And I mean that in the nicest, sweetest, Valentines-i-est way, of course )

 

[NathanKell]

The antithesis of Kerbal.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

Spaceplanez.

[JamesL86]

I suppose the things I look for are more functional than aesthetic in nature.  I have even been thinking of sharing a few designs on here for the first time.  My design list is as follows...

1) If the mission doesn't need it, then the craft doesn't either.  For instance, I have a crew pod I use a lot that has about 250m/s deltaV with just mono engines, no service module.  It has two of the round mono tanks either side of the docking port on the nose of the MK1-2 pod.  With a couple of mono engines, RCS, parachutes, and the heatshield with ablator tuned down, it can deliver 3 kerbals to and from my stations easily with a total cost of less than 24,000 kerbal bucks including the launcher.  I would note however that I was only able to achieve this design by using the Gravity Turn mod.  The gravity turn that program can achieve is far better than anything I have ever seen before and its predictability allowed me to design the craft down to a "T".

2) I have a strong dislike for "severe" part clipping.  I do clip things a bit from time to time but I only started doing it after we got stock tools that allowed it.  I never purposefully try to "jimmy" things or hide things by using it though.  In my mind, I try to stick to the way I feel the parts were intended to be used when they were put into the game.

3) "Kerbalizing" is encouraged.  I think this one sort of speaks for itself lol.  

[GoSlash27]

Utilitatarian.

Best,
-Slashy

[Temstar]

I enjoy designing launch vehicles, and conceptually everything I launch is composed of a payload and a launch vehicle that's responsible for putting it into LKO. After all once you're in orbit you're half way to anywhere.

And because I enjoy building launch vehicles I have lots of different launch vehicle designs waiting around, with their maximum payload capacity to LKO carefully noted waiting for payload. Once I actually want to do a mission I'll design the payload to do the mission from LKO onwards, weigh the payload then put it on top of an appropriate sized launch vehicle. Once in a blue moon the payload might get its own custom designed launch vehicle due to unusual form factor or something similar.



Here for example is a payload that's a reusable interplanetary craft, capable of carrying a fairly large lander in its cargo bay and use aerocapture to save delta-V using its replaceable heat shield. The two space plane looking things are reusable winged rockets that are the payload's launch vehicle.

[Mister Dilsby]

Not sure how I would "define" this style, but recently have been working with a design that carries internally all the ships needed for a Jool 5 expedition--including a Mk2 SSTO for Laythe:

Key elements of the design include several Mk3 cargo bays faced inwards to serve as a hangar deck, a 'pressurized' bridge built into the bay up top, and a willful disregard for part count  

[ShadowZone]

I would define my style as exorbitant.

 

[storm_soldier2377]

2-4 Kickback SRBs, Mainsail or Mammoth first stage, Poodle or Terrier last stage.Give or take a middle stage with Skippers or last stages with LV-Ns every now and then.

[Streetwind]

Minimalism.

Where other people love to build giant launchers that lift huge spacecraft into orbit, I try to get away with the bare minimum amount of material investment that'll do for a specific task.

As a result, I pretty much never use struts or fuel lines, and the only reason I accept going to 2.5m cores is because the engines are so much better than the 1.25m starter tech junk And I upgrade the launchpad to tier 3 mostly to get rid of the dumb vessel-stuck-to-launchpad bug, not because I need the mass allowance...

Edited February 22, 2016 by Streetwind

[Camaron]

Modular. Since I am a master of stock docking, I often build crafts with detachable points that can reconfigure the engines attached or add/remove fuel capacities. I've been messing around with interchangeable design since 2014.

[eddiew]

Part count... I have too many mods to NOT run OpenGL, but there's a big performance hit on my system when doing so. Result is I have to scale up a lot of usually small parts in order to run at any kind of sensible FPS.

(Dearly looking forward to stable 64 bit with 1.1 - DirectX mode alone will give me 50% better fps.)