Worst engine in KSP

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

15 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

That's easy!  Unity!

[clap clap clap]

[ImaSpaceJunk]

On 31/7/2016 at 1:55 AM, Geschosskopf said:

That's easy!  Unity!

Oh shiii feel the burn!

... no really, feel it. My poor GPU

[foamyesque]

I've been thinking this over, and I think, ultimately, I'm going to go with the Puff. If memory serves me it's the only engine in the entire game I've not used if I'm designing for a purpose. Awful Isp, you're stuck with a monoprop tank's bad mass ratio, and it's a radial engine with no gimbal... the TWR is nice, but any benefit from it is clawed back by all the other problems. It'd be a lot more useful if either a. monopropellant tanks had better mass ratios than LF/O tanks, or, b. reaction wheels weren't so ubiquitous and powerful, so that rockets required RCS for attitude control (hence the Puff would avoid duplicating the tankage).

[W. Kerman]

Puff has plus, and so does ions, do I love them, no. Puff has all over fuel flow, and when I get intercepts with planets, I use ions for pe lowering.

All jets are useless, unless you like whiplash/rapier. 

We want to go to space.

[magnemoe]

On 1.8.2016 at 6:13 PM, foamyesque said:

I've been thinking this over, and I think, ultimately, I'm going to go with the Puff. If memory serves me it's the only engine in the entire game I've not used if I'm designing for a purpose. Awful Isp, you're stuck with a monoprop tank's bad mass ratio, and it's a radial engine with no gimbal... the TWR is nice, but any benefit from it is clawed back by all the other problems. It'd be a lot more useful if either a. monopropellant tanks had better mass ratios than LF/O tanks, or, b. reaction wheels weren't so ubiquitous and powerful, so that rockets required RCS for attitude control (hence the Puff would avoid duplicating the tankage).

Think puff has two roles, one is for RSC tugs for docking stuff to stations, astroids or motherships. Here the puff give more trust than rcs while using the same fuel so you only need an monoprop tank. Previously you could not use rcs directly as other engines either. 
Second is an way to get rid of extra monoprop, lander docks with mothership in Duna orbit, you start going home but is low on fuel, you can then use the puff to get rid of extra monoprop while giving trust. 

[electricpants]

The ant isn't the best, but it has it's uses. It's actually very good for low gravity moons like Minmus, Bop, Pol, and Gilly (It's even OP on Gilly, so yeah). Even the spider is good on those moons. I wouldn't say that any of thos engines are good on higher gravity moons and dwarf planets like the Mun, Vall, Ike, Laythe, Dres, Eeloo, and especially Tylo. Also, I declare the Puff engine as the worst engine, as the super-amazing glitch doesn't work on them anymore. Man, do I miss that glitch. 

[Blaarkies]

2 hours ago, W. Kerman said:

 I use ions for pe lowering.

Right-click main engines
Set "Thrust Limiter" to 5%
Hold down "Control" button
Tap the "Shift" button

Only RCS is faster than this(since you can increase/decrease speed in any of the vector you wish...just by pressing a different button)

[LN400]

I'd say all engines have their uses. That being said, some engines are more widely used than others and niche engines will appear to be more useless than wide-range engines. I think I have used every single engine in the game at some point. One fairly large rocket didn't have enough thrust to get anywhere, putting in the only larger engine was a more expensive option than strapping 2 Thuds on the rocket. Only one rocket but the Thuds saved me some cash. I have had rockets and landers where CoL did not line up with CoM but putting on one or a few Twitch engines solved the balancing issues. The Ant gave some of my micro probes far better range than any other engine could offer, and so on and so forth. I am not a huge user of stock SRBs but even they have found a place more than once.

The keys are "niche" and your style of playing/designing.

Edited August 22, 2016 by LN400
typos, my arch nemesis.

[magnemoe]

29 minutes ago, electricpants said:

The ant isn't the best, but it has it's uses. It's actually very good for low gravity moons like Minmus, Bop, Pol, and Gilly (It's even OP on Gilly, so yeah). Even the spider is good on those moons. I wouldn't say that any of thos engines are good on higher gravity moons and dwarf planets like the Mun, Vall, Ike, Laythe, Dres, Eeloo, and especially Tylo. Also, I declare the Puff engine as the worst engine, as the super-amazing glitch doesn't work on them anymore. Man, do I miss that glitch. 

Ant is nice for light probes, an probe core, smallest fuel tank, ant, 3 small solar panels and a battery give you 2300 m/s and weight 380 kg fueled. 
this can take you to duna or ike, perfect as an secondary payload on interplanetary missions. Not an good landing engine, here two spiders is better, higher twr and as they are radial you can land on the fuel tank. 

[Sharpy]

Thud is pretty valuable while landing legs are broken - big flat tanks (like 3.5 to MK3 adapter, with added bonus of huge impact durability so you can ground pretty hard) make great lander platforms providing you don't put anything under them. For higher gravity places, like Mun, you have an option of either Thuds, or a setup of radially mounted tanks, Terriers and fuel pipes to feed them. Or many Twitches.

Thud is definitely a niche engine, but it's useful at times.

I'd used Fleas as powerful separatrons.

I wonder how useful it is if you're playing without saves and reverses, but I've never used LES for anything serious.

[KerikBalm]

I actually have used the LES combined with fleas with their fuel tweaked way down as a reusable booster. They have great TWR... 0-100 m/s in very little time -> jettison -> go to orbit and later recover the flea+LES+parachute packs (they land before leaving the physics bubble, and are thus 100% recoverable).

Puffs I've used on tugs that have a lot of monoprop. reaction wheels may be good for turning, but in my tugs I want a lot of translation capability, so reaction wheels don't help there, Its a pretty small niche before i just use bipropellant vernors though...

This may be unpopular... but the mainsail... I haven't used that in a long time, at least not since 1.0 came out.

In the old 0.18 days, I used it all the time on my asparagus lifters... but now... between the KR-2L, the mammoth, the twin boar, and the skipper, I haven't used it.

For a while the skipper was only 0.5 tons heavier than it, and produced a lot more thrust with much better vaccum Isp (but the 1.0 nerfs hit it significantly... 65. tons -> 9.0 380 Isp to 340)

3 hours ago, W. Kerman said:

All jets are useless, unless you like whiplash/rapier. 

We want to go to space.

Rapiers are great. Whiplashes are great.

Panthers are OK... 800m/s at 20km is not a bad start to getting into space.

And earlier in the thread, I already presented arguments for the juno, panther, and wheesley for engines on laythe... which certainly involves going to space.

I still can't get behind the goliath. I just like to use the model for an "electric fan" - which is good for places other than kerbin/laythe with atmospheres (particularly with mod adding more planets and moons), and thus going to space is involved as well.

Stock goliath... meh I'm sure some people have fun with it... the model looks nice... but meh

[magnemoe]

48 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Thud is pretty valuable while landing legs are broken - big flat tanks (like 3.5 to MK3 adapter, with added bonus of huge impact durability so you can ground pretty hard) make great lander platforms providing you don't put anything under them. For higher gravity places, like Mun, you have an option of either Thuds, or a setup of radially mounted tanks, Terriers and fuel pipes to feed them. Or many Twitches.

Thud is definitely a niche engine, but it's useful at times.

I'd used Fleas as powerful separatrons.

I wonder how useful it is if you're playing without saves and reverses, but I've never used LES for anything serious.

Thud is anyway nice for many landers, one bonus with KIS is that its easy to add to an lander to upgrade its TWR, used it moved an Ike base to Duna, it needed more TWR for landing so I added two thuds. But yes its an niche engine but would be missed if it was gone. 

I agree about the LES; even with no revert its pretty pointless as rockets in KSP don't explode very powerful. Its a few settings where it helps but mostly an abort who turn off all engines and separate pods will save you. Excption is lots of solid fuel boosters or first stage who break off and continue to burn. 

Agree with KerikBalm about the Mainsail, its a bit to squeezed between the skipper and twin boar. 
The Rhino is probably even more squeezed, lower trust than the twin boar, mediocre surface ISP but to large for most upper stage work, might work well together with lots of SRB like ariane as its have good vacuum ISP. Has only used it once on an space station / fuel depot, who the mainsail was a bit weak while the twin boar would look stupid on the end of an 3.75 meter tank. 
Vector is another little used engine, yes I see it would be nice for an core stage who need more trust than the mammoth or twin boar but has not had the need.  

[Sharpy]

I disagree about Mainsail, as it's better than Skipper in all respects and has good vacuum performance (which Boar is lacking.) If anything, my vote would be for Skipper, which is really a niche between Poodle and Mainsail that is nearly useless. Actually, if I were to restrict my choices for LF engines, I'd pick Skipper.

I mean - if you're going to use two engines, your second engine is Poodle. And your first engine will not be Skipper, because it lacks thrust so much, you'll need buttload of them to carry your launch, and in the end, you're better off with a mainsail instead. Even if to reduce the number of tanks which you need to attach these Skippers to.

If you're going with a single engine, or an extra engine to supplement the nukes in space, Twin Boar is both overkill, and has worse vacuum ISp than Mainsail.

I tried some bare configurations, with launch TWR a notch above 1.5, as much fuel as needed for the TWR to be that (with tanks fitting the amount), probe, battery, nose cone.

Twin Boar reached LKO with 2600m/s remaining.

Mainsail - 2200.

Skipper - 1700.

 

I might be biased but my first successful Duna mission was a mainsail and two nukes. The mainsail used some SRBs and drop tanks in reaching LKO, then served to perform the departure burn (timing critical). Adjustments, plane change, insertion burns, were performed by nukes.

So - Twin Boar is my atmospheric boosters engine. Mainsail is a space-faring one. Poodle goes if I don't want nukes in space, either no need for so much delta-V or I want more thrust. Skipper goes unused.

4 hours ago, electricpants said:

The ant isn't the best, but it has it's uses. It's actually very good for low gravity moons like Minmus, Bop, Pol, and Gilly (It's even OP on Gilly, so yeah). Even the spider is good on those moons. I wouldn't say that any of thos engines are good on higher gravity moons and dwarf planets like the Mun, Vall, Ike, Laythe, Dres, Eeloo, and especially Tylo. Also, I declare the Puff engine as the worst engine, as the super-amazing glitch doesn't work on them anymore. Man, do I miss that glitch. 

Ant is very good for microprobes.

How do you get a lot of science from a lot of Eve biomes? Pack a mission with 16 or so microprobes consisting of bare minimum to survive reentry, and drop them into all biomes down below. Ant+Oscar B is perfect for the reentry burn.

Spiders are okay for reentry burn for capsules. I've made a dropship carrier for all my reentry woes, and each of the capsule carries two Spiders.

Edited August 22, 2016 by Sharpy

[W. Kerman]

LES is useless with reverting, and when you don't have reverting, parachutes are better.

 

[foamyesque]

15 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Think puff has two roles, one is for RSC tugs for docking stuff to stations, astroids or motherships. Here the puff give more trust than rcs while using the same fuel so you only need an monoprop tank. Previously you could not use rcs directly as other engines either. 
Second is an way to get rid of extra monoprop, lander docks with mothership in Duna orbit, you start going home but is low on fuel, you can then use the puff to get rid of extra monoprop while giving trust. 

 

Just use linear RCS ports. On anything big enough for them to not work I don't even bother with RCS quads and just swap over to a pure LFO RCS system using vernors anyway.

[KerikBalm]

Well, above I made a mistake and said skipper when I meant rhino in one instance. Prior to 1.0, the rhino was 6.5 tons, and the mainsail was 6.

After 1.0, the skipper got a nice mass reduction, although honestly I barely used that in career either.

20 hours ago, Sharpy said:

I disagree about Mainsail, as it's better than Skipper in all respects and has good vacuum performance (which Boar is lacking.)

...

I mean - if you're going to use two engines, your second engine is Poodle.

...

Twin Boar is both overkill, and has worse vacuum ISp than Mainsail.

...

Twin Boar reached LKO with 2600m/s remaining.

Mainsail - 2200.

Skipper - 1700.

...

So - Twin Boar is my atmospheric boosters engine. Mainsail is a space-faring one. Poodle goes if I don't want nukes in space, either no need for so much delta-V or I want more thrust. Skipper goes unused.

That the thing... I don't consider the mainsail's 310 Isp to be "good" in a vacuum. I only use it for atmospheric launches... which you just showed the twin boar does better.

For upper stages... like an ejection stage, the poodle can be a bit weak, and sometimes the skipper can be attractive for an ejection stage engine, but the mammoth would be more thrust than needed, and have less dV due to its mass and Isp.

21 hours ago, magnemoe said:

The Rhino is probably even more squeezed, lower trust than the twin boar, mediocre surface ISP but to large for most upper stage work, might work well together with lots of SRB like ariane as its have good vacuum ISP. Has only used it once on an space station / fuel depot, who the mainsail was a bit weak while the twin boar would look stupid on the end of an 3.75 meter tank. 
Vector is another little used engine, yes I see it would be nice for an core stage who need more trust than the mammoth or twin boar but has not had the need.  

#1) the word is tHrust, not trust... just FYI

#2) In addition to combining the Rhino with SRBs, I've also used it with SSTOs combining it with turboramjets.

Its fine as a 2nd stage as in this design:

Spoiler

Well, its also a first stage engine too... (the whole thing is 100% recoverable)

I also use it as an ejection stage for large long duration missions like so:

 

Spoiler

Ejection stage decoupled, "payload" finished ejection burn

Ejection stage after retroburning with its nukes, to be refeuled from Mun/minmus ISRU/ in LKO

I love the Rhino, and use it often for my large missions.

[magnemoe]

37 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

 

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Ejection stage decoupled, "payload" finished ejection burn

 

Ejection stage after retroburning with its nukes, to be refeuled from Mun/minmus ISRU/ in LKO

I love the Rhino, and use it often for my large missions.

Liked the idea of an high trust tug and yes here the rhino would be perfect. 

[Sharpy]

31 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Liked the idea of an high trust tug and yes here the rhino would be perfect. 

Rhino is one of best engines in the game. Other than being unwieldy huge, it has one of the best vacuum ISp of all chemical engines, and a killer thrust. It's not often needed, because in vacuum there aren't many uses for that kind of thrust, but there are some applications...

---

On a semi-unrelated note.

Load one of your early designs, that use Reliants or Swivels, something early in the career. And switch them for Vectors.

The effects may be... interesting

Edited August 23, 2016 by Sharpy

[Corona688]

On 8/1/2016 at 10:13 AM, foamyesque said:

I've been thinking this over, and I think, ultimately, I'm going to go with the Puff. If memory serves me it's the only engine in the entire game I've not used if I'm designing for a purpose. Awful Isp, you're stuck with a monoprop tank's bad mass ratio, and it's a radial engine with no gimbal... the TWR is nice, but any benefit from it is clawed back by all the other problems. It'd be a lot more useful if either a. monopropellant tanks had better mass ratios than LF/O tanks, or, b. reaction wheels weren't so ubiquitous and powerful, so that rockets required RCS for attitude control (hence the Puff would avoid duplicating the tankage).

I've thought about it for my little grab-and-deorbit robots, which work nicely enough because they're small.  Including another fuel tank for RCS wakes up the rocket equation tyrant and it becomes an overblown, unmanueverable mess.  Running purely on RCS might make the difference.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Corona688

[W. Kerman]

Ant and spider just have way to low ISP for how low their thrust is.

[nascarlaser1]

LES. Its weak, and makes my command pod spin around in circles, resulting in death to kerbals.

The ant can be used for deorbiting satellites after their use is over, as is with the spider.

[KerikBalm]

LES... weak? its got one of the best TWRs in the game. Its only competitor is a bunch of Sepratrons.

The offset thrust does seem offset too much, but using them with radial symmetry gets rid of that... they are great on recoverable boosters that just accelerate your ship to 100m/s off the launchpad at 10 Gs (so that only a ~1 second burn is needed to reach 100 m/s)

[Magzimum]

I never use the Puff. I never put enough monopropellant onto my ships for it, and I do not see the point of it... if I need the same functionality, I would use the Twitch.

And I don't use the Reliant much, as it cannot turn its nozzle, which is definitely a feature I need a lot. But that's ok, since this is one of the first engines that is unlocked in the career mode, and it stands to reason that the early engines are kinda sucky compared to the later engines.

[Sharpy]

2 hours ago, Magzimum said:

I never use the Puff. I never put enough monopropellant onto my ships for it, and I do not see the point of it... if I need the same functionality, I would use the Twitch.

Neither do I. Even though I commonly made monoprop-only craft... RCS-powered.
I also had a couple quite successful probes that ran only on Vernors

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

On 8/22/2016 at 3:32 AM, W. Kerman said:

Puff has plus, and so does ions, do I love them, no. Puff has all over fuel flow, and when I get intercepts with planets, I use ions for pe lowering.

All jets are useless, unless you like whiplash/rapier. 

We want to go to space.

LIAR! Planes are cool!