Worst engine in KSP

[Crown]

Up until now I never used the Thud engine, any radial engines, actually. The cases where I needed some kinda of radial engine, I used the LV45 Swivel and some structure parts. The Flea I only used during the first stages of the career. But since the Ant is little bit better (in 0.24 was it, I think) it sometimes ends up on satellites.

[Terwin]

Which engines do I not use?

Any engine smaller than 1.25m, and the Dawn Ion engine.

I tend not to find a lot of use for the small engines(perhaps because I tend to haul around too much junk.  I don't think I have ever even attempted to bring back just a pod+chutes, I always use my engine as a heat-shield).

The ion engine I don't use because it has capped range.  The nerva I can always refuel with ISRU, but the dawn can only be refueled from Kerbin.

 

[Hotaru]

Personally I've found a use for all of them (except the Panther and Goliath, but that's mostly because I haven't done much plane stuff since they were added). I frequently use Thuds as vernier motors to help attitude control on large single-engine rockets, and I've also used them clipped into the underside of a fuel tank as low-profile engines for large landing craft (low-profile being helpful because of the lack of either decent-length landing legs or ladders). I've also seen them used for early-game spaceplanes. As for the Flea, I'm fond of using it, with its thrust tweaked down, as a final stage on low-cost, all-solid launch vehicles.

[severedsolo]

I feel like I need to come to the Thuds defence here. While it's stats aren't stellar, it has a specific niche.

Imagine a stack, which has more than enough D/V to make it to orbit, but oh no, your most powerful engine doesn't have enough TWR. Enter the Thud.

This usually happens to me at the point where I get 2.5m tanks/Skippers. The Skipper is not quite powerful enough by itself, but boosters would be overkill. Two Thuds give me the TWR boost I need, for just a little D/V

[How to: KSP]

23 hours ago, Randazzo said:

If definition of "worst" is an engine that has no use for me...it would be a three-way tie.

I never use the Thud - Only tried these things once. Never since.

I never use the Twin Boar - For some reason, this booster never even enters my mind. It's mainsail or a mod engine instead, always.

I never use the Ion Engine - I don't have the patience for the long burn times or the initiative to calculate proper AP kicks.

I use the twin boar when I really need more TWR and fuel as they could be nice boosters if you know when to use them

[Corona688]

1 hour ago, severedsolo said:

I feel like I need to come to the Thuds defence here. While it's stats aren't stellar, it has a specific niche.

Imagine a stack, which has more than enough D/V to make it to orbit, but oh no, your most powerful engine doesn't have enough TWR. Enter the Thud.

This usually happens to me at the point where I get 2.5m tanks/Skippers. The Skipper is not quite powerful enough by itself, but boosters would be overkill. Two Thuds give me the TWR boost I need, for just a little D/V

That's pretty much what I assumed, but it has to be an absolutely massive stack for it to matter.  I haven't ever broken even trying it, it blows up in an exponential of more weight needing more fuel needing more engines needing more weight needing more fuel.  It's too heavy for not enough thrust.

[FyunchClick]

On ‎4‎-‎7‎-‎2016 at 7:49 AM, GoSlash27 said:

Another vote for the Flea. There's nothing that engine can do that can't be done better with another engine. The only reason to ever use it is it's the only game in town in very early career, but I work my early career so that I never need it.

It is useful for some of those early career science missions where you just have to throw something into the ocean to test it while splashed down. Grasping straws I know.

On ‎4‎-‎7‎-‎2016 at 1:31 AM, Spartwo said:

The poodle, so bad I haven't given it a second chance.

Incredible, that's my mid career go to engine for any maneuvering once in orbit due to its superior ISP and any Muni/Minmus Lander due to its stubbiness. High TWR is for first stages only (bar special occasions).

[KerikBalm]

Poodles are great, KR-2Ls are great.

While I am fond of the KR-2L, the poodle may be more practical, as I like my payloads in space unreasonably big, and thus favor the KR-2L a bit more than I should.

When I want a puller tug with multiple engines out on "arms" to keep the exhaust from hitting the payload, KR-2ls are overkill (2 of them for two arms... those arms would also need to take a lot of force... nope, I do 4x poodles).

The thud... I'll give you that one, I only have one design family which uses it... and I mostly do it because surfacea ttach aerospikes seem a bit exploity, plus the thud does at least look cool.

Spider engines... those I also agree with... all the others, I have uses for

[IWanttobeEVA]

One of my least favorite engines is the LV-N "Nerv". It's heavy, it's very expensive, and unless you're building fairly big the LV-909 is almost always a better choice.

In terms of dV I think you need about 4 MkI fuel tanks per LV-N before you get significantly more dV than a LV-909 configuration, and even here you'll still pay around 10 times more Funds for about 15% more dV.

[Snark]

 

1 hour ago, IWanttobeEVA said:

One of my least favorite engines is the LV-N "Nerv". It's heavy, it's very expensive, and unless you're building fairly big the LV-909 is almost always a better choice.

In terms of dV I think you need about 4 MkI fuel tanks per LV-N before you get significantly more dV than a LV-909 configuration, and even here you'll still pay around 10 times more Funds for about 15% more dV.

Sure it's specialized... but it's incredibly effective when used appropriately-- it has more than double the Isp of anything else (excluding the Dawn).  Just make sure not to use it "wrong".  The most common occurrences of "wrong" that I've seen are:

1. Using it on a ship that's too small
2. Using it in a context where you need a lot of TWR
3. Using it with LFO tanks that still have oxidizer in them
4. Using it with LFO tanks that have had the oxidizer emptied (not as bad as #3, but still not great)

Avoid the above and it's great.

[Sereneti]

Golitath engine:

not because this engine is crap. its a good engine.
but there arnt any uses for this:
1) it comes realy late in the tech tree. - before you got this engine, there are so many other things.
2) no contracts: there arnt any atmospheric contracts that need to carry a lot of payload.
3) delete vessels that go below 20km: so it isnt posible to make an air-to-orbit launch...

[GoSlash27]

2 hours ago, Sereneti said:

Golitath engine:

not because this engine is crap. its a good engine.
but there arnt any uses for this:
1) it comes realy late in the tech tree. - before you got this engine, there are so many other things.
2) no contracts: there arnt any atmospheric contracts that need to carry a lot of payload.
3) delete vessels that go below 20km: so it isnt posible to make an air-to-orbit launch...

 Yeah, I'll go along with this as well. The Wheesley and Goliath are fine engines for what they do, but what they do isn't useful in a career game.

Best,
-Slashy

[sdrevik]

Pretty much all the SRBs, once you progress and have larger rockets.  Adding them adds so little dV compared to a liquid booster.

[Finox]

My pick is either the Goliath or the Puff.   I've never had a reason to use the Goiliath, it just never comes up because I haven't needed a turbofan that big.   As for the Puff, I love the idea of monopropellant only satellites (as in real life), but the fact that its only radial limits its usefulness on small probes, which are the only ones that really benefit from using a single propellant anyway.

[cantab]

I found a niche for the Thud in a lander that needed about 200 kN of thrust and good streamlining because it was on an atmo body, but a single Swivel would have made the whole thing too tall. A pair of Terriers wasn't enough, a pair of Swivels massive overkill, and a pair of Aerospikes beyond my tech tree unlocks, but a pair of Thuds was just right for that particular ship.

I think the Goliath is one I too have yet to use, and I find the welded-on mounting somewhat irritating. On the other hand it's still an imposing enough engine I don't feel able to call it the worst. If it wasn't for the nightmare that are wheels in KSP 1.1.x I might give a big plane a go.

[storm_soldier2377]

10 hours ago, sdrevik said:

Pretty much all the SRBs, once you progress and have larger rockets.  Adding them adds so little dV compared to a liquid booster.

The point of SRBs isn't to get delta-v, they are there to get your thrust to weight ratio high enough for the initial liftoff. Although they have terrible ISP, they are generally cheaper than using the L/Ox Engines to achieve the same effect, and the bad ISP doesn't matter much as they are quickly discarded.

[juanml82]

On 3/7/2016 at 11:47 PM, Xyphos said:

While there is no "best" or "worst" engine, because each is better suited for different tasks, I will actually defend Thud's honor by mentioning that it's better suited for short VTOL flight operation and is small enough to fit inside a cargo bay, along it's walls and still have enough room to drop off a size-1 payload.

but in my most humblest opinion, the Rhino is the worst - sure it has the second (or third?) best ISP in game, but it's size, weight and relative lack of power negates any real benefits to using it; I'd rather slap on some mammoths and/or vectors and just muscle my way to orbit. who needs all that fancy efficiency when you can just use raw power? I mean, once it's in orbit, you won't ever need the darn thing again, because it's nukes all the way from here. save yourself some effort and skip the middle stage entirely.

 

On 4/7/2016 at 10:36 AM, storm_soldier2377 said:

There's no worst engine for me, just a couple of ones that I find limited uses for.

 

• The Reliant iis quickly rendered obsolete obsolete by the swivel. Sure it is slightly more powerful but it does not have the thrust vectoring that's needed for a gravity turn. Using the thrust vectoring engine works out cheaper than relying on winglets.
• The Aerospike is a jack of all trades but ends up being master of none. It's got decent ISP on atmosphere and vacuum, but in neither situation is it the best. I only use it in early career spaceplanes and Duna landers.
• The Puff finds no uses for me because I can't think of a situation where I only rely on monopropellant as fuel.
• The Flea is quickly rendered obsolete by other SRBs, yet I do use it on occasion for the lightest of launches.
• The Vector's power is between that of a Skipper and a Mainsail, yet it is more expensive than the latter. It doesn't have much use outside of building shuttles. It may be useful for an Eve ascender as one can put them on decouplers unlike Mammoths, but I haven't gotten to that yet.

The aerospike has almost the same isp as the terrier but three times the thrust. If you need a 1.25m engine and the terrier doesn't give you enough trust, it's the go-to engine.

The Puff is useful to snatch extra dV from a maned lander: you build your thing with a monoprop tank, the lander can and all the electric/control/science stuff on top. Between that and the Liquid fuel tanks, you put a decoupler. And then you place a pair of Puffs at the sides of the pod.

If your main fuel tanks don't run dry, the added weight of two Puffs doesn't significantly cut dV - the things are incredibly light. If you run out of fuel, you decouple the tank and you get several hundred m/s of dV out of the puffs. Think of it as an abort system. Or a way to maximize dV if you really need it.

On 4/7/2016 at 10:37 AM, Lo Var Lachland said:

I just think that ion engines are not that great. 

If you can deal with the long burn times and are using light probes, they are the best. I've made light landers from them - the problem since they changed solar power to follow the inverse square law is powering them in Dres and Jool. That can be done with fuel cells or by a combination of rtgs and lots of batteries. You can make landers and vehicles with thousands of dV. They'd be great of harvesting Minmus for science if they didn't come up so late in the tech tree.

 

As for the Rhino, I usually end up in LKO with some fuel left in my ascend stage - I rather have some margin of error/premade subbassemblies. If that's feeding a Rhino, that's an efficient engine for some periapsis kicking or maybe even the entire interplanetary burn, thus avoiding 5+ minutes inaccurate burns.

[Blaarkies]

1 hour ago, juanml82 said:

If your main fuel tanks don't run dry, the added weight of two Puffs doesn't significantly cut dV - the things are incredibly light. If you run out of fuel, you decouple the tank and you get several hundred m/s of dV out of the puffs. Think of it as an abort system. Or a way to maximize dV if you really need it.

If your main engines are 330+ Isp, then you would have more dv by not adding the monoprop tank. You are losing dv by adding the safety feature, since monoprop tanks have a wet to dry mass ration of 6-7 vs the LF-OX tanks' ration of 9. Rather add a Oscar tank(or bigger depending on the lander size), and lock that tiny fuel tank until you need it.

This isn't an attack on you, I apollogize() if it seems that way, but I have seen this reasoning too many times before. I like to keep an eye on my fuel/dv to know how much more I can do in a mission, but sometimes we forget things, it's only human...that's where the locked Oscar tank could come in handy(an Ant engine on the last stage would really maximize your dv)
* Filling the capsule with MonoProp and using a RCS thrusters yields a few hundred m/s dv aswell(This is fine, since you are already hauling around the empty capsule anyway, so this is not adding any dry tank mass) 

edit: Puff does have amazing thrust, you could escape a failing Mun landing with such system

Edited July 8, 2016 by Blaarkies

[RocketBlam]

On 7/3/2016 at 4:31 PM, Spartwo said:

The poodle, so bad I haven't given it a second chance.

Best ISP of a non-nuclear, non-ion engine in the game.

It doesn't have a lot of uses, because by the time you'd use it for a transfer stage you'd probably be using nukes, but it has a niche.

I vote for... hm... I think the Puff. I never use it, although it may have some use. 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, RocketBlam said:

Best ISP of a non-nuclear, non-ion engine in the game.

It doesn't have a lot of uses, because by the time you'd use it for a transfer stage you'd probably be using nukes, but it has a niche.

I vote for... hm... I think the Puff. I never use it, although it may have some use. 

Poodle is an good upper stage engine and nice for large landers / miners.

Puff is a bit redundant as you can use rcs thrusters now. I only use them on rcs tugs on large ships 

[RocketBlam]

2 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Poodle is an good upper stage engine and nice for large landers / miners.

Puff is a bit redundant as you can use rcs thrusters now. I only use them on rcs tugs on large ships 

yeah, I use it occassionally as the final stage to get into orbit. I've used it as a transfer stage to Mun and Minmus too, but I rarely use the 3-man lander.

[lajoswinkler]

I never use monopropellant radial one, or the thud one. I find them ugly. Thud used to be really ugly and now it's better, but still... They annoy me.

[juanml82]

8 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

If your main engines are 330+ Isp, then you would have more dv by not adding the monoprop tank. You are losing dv by adding the safety feature, since monoprop tanks have a wet to dry mass ration of 6-7 vs the LF-OX tanks' ration of 9. Rather add a Oscar tank(or bigger depending on the lander size), and lock that tiny fuel tank until you need it.

This isn't an attack on you, I apollogize() if it seems that way, but I have seen this reasoning too many times before. I like to keep an eye on my fuel/dv to know how much more I can do in a mission, but sometimes we forget things, it's only human...that's where the locked Oscar tank could come in handy(an Ant engine on the last stage would really maximize your dv)
* Filling the capsule with MonoProp and using a RCS thrusters yields a few hundred m/s dv aswell(This is fine, since you are already hauling around the empty capsule anyway, so this is not adding any dry tank mass) 

edit: Puff does have amazing thrust, you could escape a failing Mun landing with such system

Absolutely. But if your lander carries monoprop anyway (for docking/to help straighten it up if it tumbles during landing), you're just adding the weight of a decoupler and the puffs.

[Brownhair2]

5 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

Absolutely. But if your lander carries monoprop anyway (for docking/to help straighten it up if it tumbles during landing), you're just adding the weight of a decoupler and the puffs.

Puffs are physics-less, so they have no mass

Edited July 8, 2016 by Brownhair2

[wumpus]

On 7/6/2016 at 11:16 AM, severedsolo said:

I feel like I need to come to the Thuds defence here. While it's stats aren't stellar, it has a specific niche.

Imagine a stack, which has more than enough D/V to make it to orbit, but oh no, your most powerful engine doesn't have enough TWR. Enter the Thud.

This usually happens to me at the point where I get 2.5m tanks/Skippers. The Skipper is not quite powerful enough by itself, but boosters would be overkill. Two Thuds give me the TWR boost I need, for just a little D/V

I've heard this strategy works well with combining thuds with LV-N nervs/nukes.  I haven't had the chance to try it out much, but it sounds solid (I've had a few hairy experiences watching my nuke upper stages go through a ~60km perigee before getting a second chance to circularize).

11 hours ago, storm_soldier2377 said:

The point of SRBs isn't to get delta-v, they are there to get your thrust to weight ratio high enough for the initial liftoff. Although they have terrible ISP, they are generally cheaper than using the L/Ox Engines to achieve the same effect, and the bad ISP doesn't matter much as they are quickly discarded.

Actually SRBs are perfectly fine for getting the first couple thousand delta-v (see this thread for examples of cheap rockets with SRB first stages)

The reason they work well with a terrible ISP is that the upper stages count as dry mass, so you pay a roughly linear penalty instead of the full logarithmic one.  Kickbacks are typically the cheapest way to supply delta-v off the launch pad.  In practice, there is still the effect of "use them to add TWR" since you should keep adding them till you get the right TWR (and accept the delta-v you get, throttling rockets isn't very efficient, especially at low altitude). The biggest catch for all solid stages is that they don't supply any control (AV-R8 winglets come in handy for full-solid stages.  Sometimes you can get away with just a pair of them N-S to allow control over the gravity turn and let the capsule/gyros control the rest).  

• The Flea (RT-5): Typically only used for the first mission.  Possibly used where seperatrons aren't quite enough.  Try explosive staging for extreme first missions.
• The Hammer (RT-10): often set aside for the liquid engine in the few career missions it might make sense.  I'm pretty sure that using this in the second or so mission works better, but it takes more time to design right and probably isn't worth it to most players.
• The Thumper (BACC): Don't underestimate this one.  Great for getting a mk1 into orbit, remains useful for those small satellite jobs.  Pair it with a terrier and be surprised how cheaply the delta-v comes.
• The Kickback (tolong): The cheapest TWR/delta-v off the pad.  Only really obsoleted by SSTO craft.