I wonder why Squad doesn't want to give us a dV and TWR readout

[Francois424]

I used to play blind.  Was pretty decent at it too.  BUT, it meant far longer testing phases, and you travel all the way and figure you are missing an extra 1000dv.   Then back to add some more POOF rocket equation where those tanks only managed to get you 350 more dv.  As a newb I actially had to watch videos to figure out a way to get good mileage (asparagus or onion).  Allowed me to get on to everywhere but Moho (only managed a flyby @ 15k height) Dres and Eeloo.  But DV display makes it so much more easier/manageable.

[Vanamonde]

This does not bother me. 

[Kyrt Malthorn]

I started teaching myself how to use the rocket equation not long ago.  Don't get new wrong, I'm no math junkie.  But this is something that can be built into a spreadsheet very easily: plug in your ship stats and out comes all the same data KER gives you (or vice versa, I'm working on one that calculates what you need to get a given payload a set dV).  If there were no kerbal engineer or mechjeb, I'm sure such spreadsheets would be every bit as common as dV maps, interplanetary intercept calculators, and other out-of-game resources.

 

That said, it otherwise depends on play style.  Some people play blind and like it that way.  Some people do math (or use tools that do) and like it that way.  I started off with some extremely rudimentary knowledge of rocket science, but I learned so much since because the game encouraged it, and I saw what other fantastic players could do with it.

 

I guess my bottom line is, no it doesn't bother me that it's not in the stock game.  For those who want more maths there are fairly convenient ways besides mods.  The mods make it very convenient (I use KER) which is what mods tend to do: make it easier to conquer space.

Edited April 6, 2016 by Kyrt Malthorn
Bottom line was missing

[Hary R]

It is quite useful when in flight you know how much DV left you have but for planing a mission, no.

[regex]

Yeah, they have it planned.  Yeah, it's going to take some work.

[Tourist]

What is this Delta-V thing people keep talking about.... is it some kind of geography term? 

 

I've never used one or needed such calculators up till now. But, after a few campaigns of just eyeballing it and over-engineering the heck out of it, I've recently dipped my toe into the the idea of more comprehensive planning rather than trial and error.... I had a few never ending Jool missions, were it would have been handy to know that ship four, of a four ship flotilla wouldn't have the juice to complete its mission. 

 

 

 

 

[Yuri kagarin56]

3 minutes ago, Tourist said:

What is this Delta-V thing people keep talking about.... is it some kind of geography term? 

 

I've never used one or needed such calculators up till now. But, after a few campaigns of just eyeballing it and over-engineering the heck out of it, I've recently dipped my toe into the the idea of more comprehensive planning rather than trial and error.... I had a few never ending Jool missions, were it would have been handy to know that ship four, of a four ship flotilla wouldn't have the juice to complete its mission. 

 

 

 

 

Delta V is how much acceleration your ship has. For example for a trans-mun injection burn it costs say, 300M/s of delta-V.  

[Mastikator]

lsp x 9.8m/s x log(mass full/mass empty), Now you know delta-v

thrust / mass - 9.8m/s, You now have the TWR.

It's not unplayable without mechjeb or kerbal engineer. It takes like 10 seconds to plug those numbers into a calculator, you could literally google them.

[Tourist]

To be honest, I'm more aggrieved by the the lack of Kerbal Alarm Clock and Docking Alignment Indicator. Actually the main reason I haven't joined the pre-release is because these mods do not seem to have been updated yet and aren't included in stock in some form. Particularly the latter.... I just can't contemplate the pain of docking by just eyeballing it.  

[pandaman]

Unplayable, no.  Much more difficult and frustrating when trying to do anything beyond Kerbin SOI, for me definitely.  That why I finally installed KER after trying to resist installing any mods for so long.

And as Regex said, there is another recent thread that goes into detail about this, and how and why it's not actually as easy, or straightforward, as it seems.

 

EDIT, the 'another recent thread' is now this one as they have been,quite rightly, merged

Edited April 6, 2016 by pandaman

[Violent Jeb]

56 minutes ago, Kyrt Malthorn said:

But this is something that can be built into a spreadsheet very easily: plug in your ship stats and out comes all the same data KER gives you (or vice versa, I'm working on one that calculates what you need to get a given payload a set dV).

I vehemently disagree with such a requirement in a video game.

Making a spreadsheet to play a game? That's an arrogant demand of man-hours for every player for something could quickly be programmed into the game.

32 minutes ago, Mastikator said:

It's not unplayable without mechjeb or kerbal engineer. It takes like 10 seconds to plug those numbers into a calculator, you could literally google them.

Unplayable without mechjeb, KER, a scientific calculator, or the ability to do intermediate math with pen and paper every time you want to play a game.
FWIW, I can't google anything with KSP open without the very real possibility of a CTD. Sounds good.

 

like, its fine if you admit you're forcing people to compute numbers (or add a mod) out of some self-righteous idea of "educating the masses", but don't try and say that this game is in any way enhanced without a dv readout (even via alt-F12). It's not.

Edited April 6, 2016 by Violent Jeb

[Mastikator]

Having delta-v and TWR readout is better IMO. But is it required to even play the game at all?

No. Let's put the goalpost back where it belongs shall we. The issue being can you even play KSP without a delta-v readout? Yes, yes you can. I started using mods about 1 year ago and I managed to get to Moho before that. Without knowing how to do a proper Hohmann transfer, without knowing the delta-v requirement or doing the math on how much I had. How? Trial and error + over-engineering the rocket.

[Xavven]

31 minutes ago, Mastikator said:

thrust / mass - 9.8m/s, You now have the TWR.

Shouldn't this be (Thrust/Mass) / 9.8?

5 minutes ago, Violent Jeb said:

Making a spreadsheet to play a game? That's an arrogant demand of man-hours for every player for something could quickly be programmed into the game.

Overall I agree that delta-v and TWR needs to be calculated by the game. Just to play devil's advocate, though, spreadsheets aren't unheard of for math-loving gamers. If I'm not mistaken, the term "theorycrafting" was coined to describe such a hobby. Not saying it's for everybody, but you should see the crazy stuff people have made for optimizing builds and gear for games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, etc.

[Superfluous J]

3 minutes ago, Mastikator said:

Having delta-v and TWR readout is better IMO. But is it required to even play the game at all?

No. Let's put the goalpost back where it belongs shall we. The issue being can you even play KSP without a delta-v readout? Yes, yes you can. I started using mods about 1 year ago and I managed to get to Moho before that. Without knowing how to do a proper Hohmann transfer, without knowing the delta-v requirement or doing the math on how much I had. How? Trial and error + over-engineering the rocket.

You can also play Rocket League with your feet. I'm going to keep using my hands, though.

And KER.

[Mastikator]

49 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

You can also play Rocket League with your feet. I'm going to keep using my hands, though.

And KER.

Personally I've found that using a racing wheel and pedals in car games to be a superior experience than using a keyboard. I haven't tried it on Rocket League specifically I but bet that playing it with my feet would be an improvement.

[jwbrase]

Just a couple real quick and dirty rules (not mathematically exact):

If your fuel mass is 2/3rds of your launch mass (i.e, a mass ratio of 3), your delta V will be equal to your ISP. If your fuel mass is 7/8ths of your launch mass (mass ratio of 8), your DV will be twice your ISP.

If your fuel mass is 1/2 of your launch mass (mass ratio of 2), your delta V will be about 40 percent of your ISP.

Your thrust to weight ratio is your thrust divided by your mass, with the decimal point shifted one digit to the left.
 

[Kosmognome]

It possible to play without TWR and delta-v readouts.

 

I played complete stock, and managed to land on the Mun and Minmus, I even had an orbital station around Minmus and a hopper that landed on Minmus and grinded it out.

 

But it was inefficient. I made rules of thumb how much fuel I needed to go where which what kind of vessel. It was more or less finding delta-v by using fixed payloads, using them, and then matching the fuel volume. It was painful.

 

Before I went to land on Duna/Ike, I looked up the whole delta-v and TWr concept, and installed KER. It was a game changer, and sudenly interplanetary voyages looked a lot less daunting, and the game became a lot more fun to me, because I did not longer have to get enough fuel by trial & error.

 

I think delta-v and TWR readouts change the game quite a bit, but for the better. Its painful without, and looking back at it, I would not ever play without KER again.

[Kyrt Malthorn]

2 hours ago, Violent Jeb said:

I vehemently disagree with such a requirement in a video game.

Making a spreadsheet to play a game? That's an arrogant demand of man-hours for every player for something could quickly be programmed into the game.

And I'm glad the mods are there for people like you.  I see your point, but personally, I don't call it arrogant.  It's the game SQUAD intended it to be, and whether you desire to be educated or not doesn't change the fact that it very much can be educational and inspiring.  And lots of weird numbers could turn away kids who dont have a clue about dV, nor do they want to.  Or other players who have no issues playing 'blind'.

From SQUAD's standpoint, they could add a dV readout and even TWR - but the modding community would still build mods that have them even more information.  They're letting us have free reign over our own play style, and I see that as a very good thing.

[Bomaye]

Yes, but probably no 

[Padishar]

7 hours ago, Sequinox said:

I like to think that it's because it's meant for you to do that on your own. They are trying to keep the game mostly pure it seems, and leave mods to do these kind of things.

I'd like to think that people would read the thread before posting opinions that directly contradict Squad staff...

[Oafman]

If a game requires the use of a calculator, it's probably sacrificing some of its wider appeal....

[Val]

Merged identical topics.

[Mr. Scruffy]

9 hours ago, cantab said:

There are many potentially problematic situations.

[Examples: A to G]

[...] hopefully I've given some idea of some of the pitfalls in Squad just taking mods and making them stock.

Ugh, yes you did. Thx. What a mess.

And it seems like even compitiions (in the way i mentioned before) would not exclude the possiblity of 3rd party code being used in the entries. Well, it would have to be explicitely mentioned in the announcment, that anyone entering it, gurantees (in a legally binding way) that the code used in their entry is owned by them. But what if somebody lied about it, and 3 months after the released implementation, somebody steps forward and sues. Squad could then redirect to the alledged author, but still could face hell, trying to put humpti-dumpti back together again (e.g. extracting ´illegal´ code from their release). Hmm, yeah, looking at it this way, maybe rather not...

[Blaarkies]

2 hours ago, jwbrase said:

Just a couple real quick and dirty rules (not mathematically exact):

If your fuel mass is 2/3rds of your launch mass (i.e, a mass ratio of 3), your delta V will be equal to your ISP. If your fuel mass is 7/8ths of your launch mass (mass ratio of 8), your DV will be twice your ISP.

If your fuel mass is 1/2 of your launch mass (mass ratio of 2), your delta V will be about 40 percent of your ISP.

Your thrust to weight ratio is your thrust divided by your mass, with the decimal point shifted one digit to the left.
 

delta-v equal to isp? ...i think I understand what you actually mean.

Let us run a  LV-T30 "Reliant" Liquid Fuel Engine, with an isp of 300(vac)

isp * 9.81 * ln(wetmass / drymass) = dv

-1/2rds
300 * 9.81 * ln(2/1) = 2039.93m/s
300 * 6.8 = 2040

-2/3rds
300 * 9.81 * ln(3/1) = 3233.22 m/s
300 * 10.8 = 3240

-7/8rds
300 * 9.81 * ln(8/1) = 6119.80m/s
300 * 20.4 = 6120

So, "delta-v equal to (isp * 10)" sounds more like it. Then:
- 1/2rds of your launch mass -> gives dv number equal to 67% your isp*10
- 2/3rds of your launch mass -> gives dv number equal to your isp*10
- 7/8ths of your launch mass -> gives dv number equal to twice your isp*10

For TWR, think about it like this: 10kN is nearly the same weight as 1ton(all part mass in KSP is given in tons)
*I say nearly because: #kN = ( #ton * 9.81 ), so that 1ton=9.81kN.
So just remove the last zero from the thrust rating number, and you know how many ton that engine could lift to a hover 

 

[jwbrase]

4 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

Let us run a  LV-T30 "Reliant" Liquid Fuel Engine, with an isp of 300(vac)

isp * 9.81 * ln(wetmass / drymass) = dv

-1/2rds
300 * 9.81 * ln(2/1) = 2039.93m/s
300 * 6.8 = 2040

-2/3rds
300 * 9.81 * ln(3/1) = 3233.22 m/s
300 * 10.8 = 3240

-7/8rds
300 * 9.81 * ln(8/1) = 6119.80m/s
300 * 20.4 = 6120

So, "delta-v equal to (isp * 10)" sounds more like it. Then:
- 1/2rds of your launch mass -> gives dv number equal to 67% your isp*10
- 2/3rds of your launch mass -> gives dv number equal to your isp*10
- 7/8ths of your launch mass -> gives dv number equal to twice your isp*10
 

Oops... I'm used to another sim where ISP is measured as straight effective exhaust velocity. I forgot for a moment that KSP measures it in seconds.
 

Anyways, yes, in KSP you need to multiply the ISP by ten. And yes, the 40% figure I gave for 1/2 fuel fraction was wrong, your figure is correct.