Bring xenon tank mass ratios to standard values

[Streetwind]

Yeah, we tried that thing with balancing engines for tank mass ratio differences in Near Future.

Twice.

It failed spectacularly both times. Literally nobody appreciated it - in fact, I have not a single indication that a single player ever noticed without me explicitly pointing it out to them. And that's despite this being a thing in stock practically since inception. I would personally guess that claiming that 1% of all KSP players are aware of this stuff is a gross overstatement. Which only underlines how completely unnecessary a complexity it is. Complexity of game mechanics does not equal depth of gameplay; Extra Credits (a youtube channel devoted to game design theory) has an excellent two-part series on the topic. KSP has plenty of examples of extracting tremendous depth out of complex systems (orbital mechanics being one of them), but this is definitely not one of them.

[Joonatan1998]

I agree that the xenon tanks could be buffed, but I dislike the fact that they are making all tanks exactly as mass efficient as all others.

 

I think having to sacrifice a small amount of mass-efficiency in exchange for the flexibility given by smaller tanks would be an interesting gameplay feature. 

Edited August 1, 2016 by Joonatan1998

[FreeThinker]

14 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Yeah, we tried that thing with balancing engines for tank mass ratio differences in Near Future.

Twice.

It failed spectacularly both times. Literally nobody appreciated it - in fact, I have not a single indication that a single player ever noticed without me explicitly pointing it out to them. And that's despite this being a thing in stock practically since inception. I would personally guess that claiming that 1% of all KSP players are aware of this stuff is a gross overstatement. Which only underlines how completely unnecessary a complexity it is. Complexity of game mechanics does not equal depth of gameplay; Extra Credits (a youtube channel devoted to game design theory) has an excellent two-part series on the topic. KSP has plenty of examples of extracting tremendous depth out of complex systems (orbital mechanics being one of them), but this is definitely not one of them.

Well for KSPI Extended Liquid Fuel tanks, I went through a kind of evolution in the mass ratio of it's  tanks. Initialy I used a fixed mass but this made low density fuels like Hydrogen have terrible mass ratio, then I custom lowered the mass of certain tanks, but this was a lot of work, then I introduce fixed mas Ratio of 1:8, but this made dense fuels tanks become disproportionatly heavy. Now I'm using a combination between a fixed mass and dynamic mass based on fuel density and it works quite well as it much closer mimics reality where dense fuels tanks have higher mass ratio's and light fuels have lower mass ratios, but within reason. I see KSPI partly as an educational tool and the message I want players to learn is that fuel type and density matters. I guess I fundementaly differ in my opinion regarding complexity, I see it as a tool which enables me to achieve balance and to learn players comething about the space engenering, and certainly not something that must forcebly be dumbed down.

Edited August 2, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Hotel26]

On 09/04/2016 at 8:36 PM, Kerbart said:

Ions have very low thrust, so you only use them for very light probes. As soon as you put crew on your craft you're pretty much in no-ion territory.

I think this statement casts a lot of insight on why possibly ion engines are not used very much.

I've just become interested in ion-drive for interplanetary.  I built the following and flew it to Moho as a test.  I've also ganged two of them, due to the low thrust, and figure I could gang more without structural problems, also due to the low thrust.

Shown above (not very well) is a 16-pax MK3 cabin payload for test, 24x Dawn, 22x PB-X750 (enough for round trip to anywhere) and 32x Gigantor 'sails'.  50 tons including payload.

I've also built a lo-grav 'flitter', 24-pax, that I've flown cruise at 300 m/s over the Mun and which I'm confident could also operate between the surface and station orbit.  That had 2x PB-X750 and 9x Dawn and would definitely benefit from lighter Xenon tanks.

Maybe I am unfortunately making the case that ions are not a marginal use case but ought to be considered unfairly useful, because right now I am questioning my whole architecture built around LV-N.

Edited August 5, 2016 by Hotel26
add total mass

[DaMachinator]

Given that I am the kind of person who enjoys micromanagement, number crunching, and minmaxing, I would like to see tanks with different mass fractions. As a matter of fact, I was quite surprised to learn that using two FL-T400's is just as efficient in terms of fuel mass ratio as a single FL-T800!

However, given that all the LF tanks have the same mass ratio I see no reason why the xenon ones should not. 

And, as it turns out, not just xenon but monoprop tanks too are getting new consistent mass fractions as per a recent devnotes. 

[tater]

What needs to be balance in terms of ions in KSP is outcomes. Short of a system that allows them to function properly (constant thrust trajectories), buffs to the ions can make them a realistically inappropriate choice. I only ever use them for probes, and I get decent enough dv for them to be useful even in scaled up systems.

IMO, you need to imagine the craft in question realistically, then see how it behaves with the balance differences. Realism matters, because realism is the only benchmark that you have to balance it, otherwise you might as well call any given engine "impulse power" and just make stuff up.