Should SQUAD look at re-balancing the command pods?

[Armisael]

I think it's pretty universally acknowledged that some of the command pods are never the right choice from a purely mechanical perspective (roleplaying can justify anything). The Mk2 Lander Can, the Mk1-2 Command Pod, and the Cupola are all so heavy that I can't think of a single thing that they really do well. Conversely, the Mk1 Lander Can is so light that it actually is more mass-efficient for carrying kerbals than the Hitchhiker pod.

These could probably be re-balanced by just changing a few numbers in the part files - dry mass, battery and monoprop capacity and torque are all easy - and I'm sure that SQUAD could find a popular community tweak on this front if they were interested.

Assuming SQUAD found an good fix for this, and implementing it took one guy 15 minutes, would this be something worth doing? It would give us more interesting parts (and remove a distinct trap item), but it could alter the properties of rockets in the current saves rather fundamentally.

Your thoughts?

[Kerbart]

I just role-play with it and use the various pods accordingly. The lander-cans might withstand atmospheric re-entry as we all know, but the description clearly says something else and I use them that way: in vacuum only. Similarly the Mk1-2, in my Kerbal world, offers superior life-support and re-entry capabilities, making it the preferred solution over the Mk1 pod which I out-phase as soon as the Mk1-2 becomes available.

Yes, there's a weight penalty, but I simply assume that whatever causes the penalty in the first place is more than worth it.

[Armisael]

That isn't really an argument either way - you can ignore any non-gamebreaking issue by setting personal rules for yourself. Would it bother you if squad decided to cut the mass of the Mk1-2 in half, or would you just roleplay a little differently?

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I made a simple module manager snippet to adjust the masses, as per a previous thread where it was sort of hammered out what a fair weight would be:

@PART[Mark1-2Pod]
{
    %mass = 3.15
}

@PART[mk2LanderCabin]
{
    %mass = 1.85
}

You can add the cupola easily, and change the masses to whatever you deem fit.

[Armisael]

Do you have a link to that thread? I'm curious to see what thought processes people went through.

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, Armisael said:

That isn't really an argument either way - you can ignore any non-gamebreaking issue by setting personal rules for yourself. Would it bother you if squad decided to cut the mass of the Mk1-2 in half, or would you just roleplay a little differently?

It's an old, old issue. Squad never cut the mass of the Mk1-2 in the past despite many pleas. So I'm going to be quite surprised if they do so in the future. If they do I'll happily take the weight reduction. But I doubt there will be any "rebalancing." I'm just going with what the game offers me in this case.

Edited March 26, 2016 by Kerbart

[Superfluous J]

Yeah this is an old issue that still bugs me. I just use Mk1 lander cans for everything I possibly can. Because it's the most efficient for every purpose, with the *POSSIBLE* exception of planes.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

3 hours ago, Armisael said:

Do you have a link to that thread? I'm curious to see what thought processes people went through.

Here ya go- FYI the masses in my post above reflect the pods without monopropellant.

Quote

Yeah this is an old issue that still bugs me. I just use Mk1 lander cans for everything I possibly can. Because it's the most efficient for every purpose, with the *POSSIBLE* exception of planes.

Coincidentally, one of the recent Squad Twitch streams had one of the devs using 4 single cans on a Duna mission- even THEY don't use the 2 man can!

Edited March 26, 2016 by Waxing_Kibbous

[passinglurker]

Yeah this is what I have hated ever since 1.0 released the part ballance for a lot of things is still inconsistent and all over the place. In many cases like the mk2 can and mk1-2 pod the problems and solutions are seemingly painfully obvious yet in all the hotfixes they have rushed out till now and even in the much lauded 1.1 they have done very little to address these balance problems.

unless its for planes... seriously... this is why so many people groan about planes now... they couldn't have spared 15 minutes to make some obvious "better than nothing" config edits to the rocket command pods yet they could give the planes thought out semblance of synergy and consistency? 

[Pthigrivi]

Yeah its a long standing issue, hopefully they'll take a look at the 2.5 modules during the rocket part overhaul, but I finally gave in and started modding the cfg's on my most recent save.

 

Here are the current ratios:

 

MK1 Cockpit: 1.28t/Kerbal

MK1 Inline Cockpit: 1.03t/Kerbal

MK2 Cockpit: 1.03t/Kerbal

MK2 Inline Cockpit: 1.05t/Kerbal

MK3 Cockpit: 0.975t/Kerbal

MK1 Command Pod: 0.84t/Kerbal

MK1 Lander Can: 0.66t/Kerbal

MK1-2 Command Pod: 1.373t/Kerbal

MK2 Lander Can: 1.33t/Kerbal

PPD-12 Cupola: 1.8t/Kerbal

 

PPD-10 Hitchhiker Storage Container: 0.625t/Kerbal

MK1 Crew Cabin: 0.5t/Kerbal

MK2 Crew Cabin: 0.5t/Kerbal

MK3 Passenger Module: 0.406t/Kerbal

 

Which are pretty all over the place. I tend to think you could apply a certain rigor there with some assumptions about tolerances, resources, etc. Here's what I did:

 

Base weight /Kerbal: 0.5t

Heat shielding: 0.075t /100deg

Crash reinforcement: 0.075t /5m/s

Reaction Wheel: 0.05t /5kn*m

Monoprop: .004 /1l

Battery: 0.005t, /100e
 

Which gives new totals:

 

MK1 Cockpit: 1.2325t

MK1 Inline Cockpit: 1.2325t

MK2 Cockpit: 2.2675t (1.1338t/Kerbal)

MK2 Inline Cockpit: 2.3075t (1.1538t/Kerbal)

MK3 Cockpit: 4.0t (1.0t/Kerbal)

MK1 Command Pod: 0.9675t

MK1 Lander Can: 0.7625t

MK1-2 Command Pod: 2.7525t (0.9173t/ Kerbal)

MK2 Lander Can: 1.465t (0.7325t/Kerbal)

PPD-12 Cupola: 0.8t

 

PPD-10 Hitchhiker Storage Container: 2.15t (0.5375t/Kerbal

MK1 Crew Cabin: 1.6t (0.8t/Kerbal)

MK2 Crew Cabin: 3.05t (0.7625t/Kerbal)

MK3 Passenger Module: 9.25t/Kerbal (0.5781t/Kerbal)

Which is pretty good balance wise, but I added heat tolerance and mono to the MK1 cockpits and made some adjustments to the Cupola and MK3 Passenger cabin.

 

MK1 Cockpit: (2200k) 1.3825t

MK1 Inline Cockpit: (2200k +10l monoprop) 1.3925t

Cupola: 1.2t

MK3 Passenger Module: 6.75t (0.4219t/Kerbal)

 

I think this brings things more in line.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Pthigrivi

[Armisael]

I don't think you can implement a good fix just by fiddling with masses. You can't get around the fact that rocketry is ruled by the almighty kilogram - people will settle on the lightest parts (read: the lander cans) unless you give them a really good reason to do otherwise (adapters are so lightweight that . I think you'd need to determine a particular role for each class of part (command pods, lander cans, the cupola, the hitchhiker pod, the various cockpits) and fiddle with the stats to make each part desirable in a certain role but lackluster otherwise (eg, lander cans are light but fragile and provide low torque and battery whereas the cupola is heavy and fragile but provides lots of torque and battery for a spacestation).

That said, I deliberately didn't propose a particular solution because I suspected the following discussion would get rather down in the weeds. Rebalancing the command pods seems to be a popular idea (in theory, at least), so I'm satisfied with this thread. I have some ideas for personal changes, but I think I'll want to try those personal with a mod in 1.1 before I get to suggesting anything serious.

Actually, here's an interesting question - which command module would you like to see different modules balanced towards? Personally I think that the Mk1 Command Pod is about right and other modules should be changed to be roughly as useful (in their niche), but I recognize that not everyone agrees with that.