Allow surface attachment for all parts

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

What I'm saying is the current system has advantages that make it interesting.

I'm having a hard time seeing those advantages.

4 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Finding an impossible combination isn't a design-defeating problem, it's an opportunity to find a clever solution.

Or an opportunity to use an extra part to attach something.  I see it more in that light, cubic struts solve pretty much everything, and now we have offset tools.  It's more of a hassle than anything.

4 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Demanding more freedoms to make existing functionality easier and cheaper to accomplish seems petty-minded to me, and ultimately will just result in more demands for more freedoms for more functionality for other things that then become possible as a result. Where does it end?

it doesn't end until development stops, people always ask for QoL improvements.  This is a quality of life improvement.

Not entirely sure how it's "petty-minded" either.

Also, see @Red Iron Crown's post, slippery-slope fallacy.

3 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

I agree. I hate having to embed parts to the last attachment node and then add another part to that just to be able to attach engines, copulas, or whatever to parts without nodes. Hidden parts still change the physics, add to the part count, and other than just being there to hold parts, don't have any real contribution to the craft.

There are those that will argue, "but that's the way it is done in real life...get over it..." yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. But this isn't real life.

I always assumed the hidden structural parts were included in the mass of the part itself.  vOv

 

[Superfluous J]

13 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Demanding more freedoms to make existing functionality easier and cheaper to accomplish seems petty-minded to me, and ultimately will just result in more demands for more freedoms for more functionality for other things that then become possible as a result. Where does it end?

With us having lots of ways to make ships. How ghastly.

Edited August 17, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[RocketSquid]

I say make everything radially attachable, with perhaps the exception of the hubmax and the 3.75 engines, since radially mounting the former seems truly bizarre and radially mounting the latter seems unnecessary.

[The_Rocketeer]

5 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Aside from the engines that do surface attach, we also have the multicouplers and radial attachment points.

Multicouplers - which came long after engine clusters had become common practice among game users.
Radial attachment points - which provide exactly the functionality that people here are complaining is lacking.
 

6 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

a slippery slope

It has to be wrong to be fallacious. Can you prove it's wrong? Didn't think so.

[adsii1970]

1 minute ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Oh look, a slippery slope fallacy. I think people are just looking for consistency in how engines and fuel tanks attach to other parts.

[edited by adsii1970 for relevant content]

Exactly. There are some stock parts that do not behave like the others. There are also mod parts that have their own unique behaviors. Many of my craft are a hodgepodge of stock and mod parts. When a part I want to use doesn't have attachment nodes, especially fuel tanks, I do use just about every means I can to get it to work. There are only so many times you can use offset before you get wonky effects. Part rotation doesn't always achieve the look either...

[tater]

4 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Multicouplers - which came long after engine clusters had become common practice among game users.
Radial attachment points - which provide exactly the functionality that people here are complaining is lacking.
 

At the expense of an extra part for every single such attachment in a game that is fundamentally limited by part count.

The net result is exactly the same, except for those extra parts. Nothing is added, except parts.

Quote

It has to be wrong to be fallacious. Can you prove it's wrong? Didn't think so.

It's the very definition of a slippery slope fallacy. "Where does it end?" You are making a claim, so for it to be true, you must demonstrate that it is true.

Edited August 17, 2016 by tater

[The_Rocketeer]

Look, I don't mind people disagreeing with my opinion, but I do mind being mobbed by a gang of intellectual bullies for expressing it. My experience of KSP doesn't require this change at all, and for me that's all there is to it.

But since I can tell my personal take on this suggestion is super-unpopular with a bunch of you, I guess I'll just make my exit now.

[Red Iron Crown]

7 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Multicouplers - which came long after engine clusters had become common practice among game users.

Why does that matter?

Quote

Radial attachment points - which provide exactly the functionality that people here are complaining is lacking.

Except they don't. They add to part count and interfere with heat transfer in a way that directly radially attachable engines don't.

Quote

It has to be wrong to be fallacious. Can you prove it's wrong? Didn't think so.

It's a fallacy on its face. "We'd like engine and fuel tank attachment to be more consistent." "Not a good idea, we'd eventually have to remove all design constraints." The person making the second claim has the burden of proof that the first will lead to it, which you haven't done.

Edit: Adsii is a ninja

[tater]

EDIT, the fact that you say "Can you prove it wrong?" is pretty telling. Nothing needs to be proved wrong. Positive claims need to be proved true.

[Red Iron Crown]

3 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Look, I don't mind people disagreeing with my opinion, but I do mind being mobbed by a gang of intellectual bullies for expressing it. My experience of KSP doesn't require this change at all, and for me that's all there is to it.

No one is bullying you, we are just disagreeing with your opinion (which you are saying you don't mind).

3 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

But since I can tell my personal take on this suggestion is super-unpopular with a bunch of you, I guess I'll just make my exit now.

That is your prerogative, of course. 

[Guest]

It's almost like there are some people who think this quality of life suggestion is a good idea and wish to support it.

[panzer1b]

I have to agree with this because all forcing structural parts does is increase lag and make stuff wobblier.  Yes i understand the argument from the crowd that wants a "challenge" working within game limitations, but there is nothing stopping you from building the old way even if radial attach is allowed on engines.  Then again, what i do not understand is the lack of consistency present here.  2 of the engines allow radial attachment (aerospike and the shuttle one), but none of the other ones even with similar sizes allow this.  Itd be best to either allow radial attach on every engine (minus perhaps the very large ones), or just say no radial attach and remove it from teh 2 that have it right now.  I hate inconsistency when it doesnt make sense...

That said, the one thing that i never understood is why a select few fuel tanks cant be attached radially while others can be.  Howcome the small monoprop tank allows radial attachment, while the 2 larger ones dont?  Same thing with teh oscar-B (although that was patched a while ago) which for a very very long time didnt allow radial attachment despite absolutely no reason it shouldnt when every other cylinder fuel tank could be?  Its not that im fundamentally against one way or the other, but lack of consistency (just like the engines) is what really annoys me here, if you do not want fuel tanks to be radially attachable i can live with that (although itd break 90% of my designs ), but then make them all unable to radial, and vice versa, if fuel tanks should allow radial attach then make every bloody one of them that way.

That said, when you really take a look at what matters and is critical in KSP, i say make every fuel tank and engine radially attachable.  That would cut down on part count, and while i may not share everyone's view, part count and lag is the single biggest let-down in KSP because it limits the vast majority of everything i do moreso then id like it to.  Yes there are those that never see this limitation because they build small scale and launch 1-2 vessels at a time at most, but anyone who has ever built a truly large space station or land base will know the meaning of lag, and then ofc there are those like me that enjoy building capital ships, fighters, tanks, ect and having large scale battles on or above various planets.  Yeah not fun when you bring 4 300 part ships and their fighter ecorts into render distance of each other simultaneously...  All in all, i support every single measure to minimize part count even if it makes certain craft easier to make (its not liek the cubic strut is going to dissapear so those that liked the old way feel free to not use radial mode and spam struts everywhere to increase your happiness).

 

Luckily though there is nothing stopping me from editing part files and adding radial attachment points manually (which i already did)...

Edited August 17, 2016 by panzer1b

[Alshain]

I don't have an opinion on whether it should or shouldn't be changed.  I can deal either way, so I don't really care on that, but don't fool yourself into thinking this is a Quality of Life change.  There are challenges presented with being restricted on where and how you place parts, even if it's just the added mass of adding a Radial attachment point, you still have to deal with that mass.  That makes it a gameplay change.  Whether that gameplay is desirable is another matter, but it's still a gameplay change.

[Red Iron Crown]

4 minutes ago, Alshain said:

There are challenges presented with being restricted on where and how you place parts, even if it's just the added mass of adding a Radial attachment point, you still have to deal with that mass.  That makes it a gameplay change.

While I guess that is true, it's a trivial challenge. The interim part weighs all of 1kg, in almost all cases it is insignificant. I consider it less of a design innovation and more of a workaround for part inconsistencies.

[Alshain]

3 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

While I guess that is true, it's a trivial challenge. The interim part weighs all of 1kg, in almost all cases it is insignificant. I consider it less of a design innovation and more of a workaround for part inconsistencies.

Well, that was just one example though.  Radially attaching a Xenon tank and keeping it aerodynamic would require another tank or something that does support radial attachment to attach it to. So it's not all black and white.

However, I will say I was very happy when they added radial attachment to the OscarB.

Edited August 17, 2016 by Alshain

[Guest]

The biggest gameplay change I can see here is early career where clustering engines may be desirable in certain cases and the part count, and crossfeed (I think?), prevents it, but that could also be balanced against part costs.  Then again, costs aren't really a limiter considering difficulty options.  It's interesting that career hasn't really come up as a factor until now.  Regardless, I don't think the gameplay change would be very big at all.

[tater]

It's funny, people complained that aero was going to get fixed, because it was bad for so long that "bad" was equated with "the way things should be." The soup "is a challenge to be designed around," etc, ad nauseum. If they could suddenly make all the planets have awesome, realistic craters and landscape features down to cm resolution with no performance hit at all, people here would post that lousy, boring planets were "kerbal" and making them better was a bad idea  .

[Red Iron Crown]

1 hour ago, tater said:

It's funny, people complained that aero was going to get fixed, because it was bad for so long that "bad" was equated with "the way things should be." The soup "is a challenge to be designed around," etc, ad nauseum. If they could suddenly make all the planets have awesome, realistic craters and landscape features down to cm resolution with no performance hit at all, people here would post that lousy, boring planets were "kerbal" and making them better was a bad idea  .

A bit before your time on the forums, but the exact same thing happened with the Great Joint Stiffening of 0.23.5. "Wobbly is kerbal!" "Strut placement is a skill that is no longer needed!" "Now anyone can slap together a rocket and have it work!"

In my experience every change to the game has some people objecting to it, no exceptions. Heck there are people who have argued that bugs are part of the game's charm and shouldn't be fixed. Obligatory XKCD.

[Andem]

1 hour ago, tater said:

It's funny, people complained that aero was going to get fixed, because it was bad for so long that "bad" was equated with "the way things should be." The soup "is a challenge to be designed around," etc, ad nauseum. If they could suddenly make all the planets have awesome, realistic craters and landscape features down to cm resolution with no performance hit at all, people here would post that lousy, boring planets were "kerbal" and making them better was a bad idea  .

Yup, removing the fog from the Silent Hill remake was a brilliant decision.  /Devil's Advocate (Even though I agree with you...)

Moar obligatory XKCD

[Stoney3K]

14 hours ago, Alshain said:

Well, that was just one example though.  Radially attaching a Xenon tank and keeping it aerodynamic would require another tank or something that does support radial attachment to attach it to. So it's not all black and white.

However, I will say I was very happy when they added radial attachment to the OscarB.

That gave birth to my classic upper stage: A 2,5m tank with four OscarB's stuck underneath and a quad of Spark engines attached to the engines. Add fuel lines, landing struts and other support components to taste, and still keep a lower profile than using a Poodle.

Necessity may be the mother of invention here, but I'd rather just stick those Spark engines directly underneath the main tank because the OscarB's are just a makeshift attachment point which is hardly necessary for design reasons.

[Azimech]

On 16-8-2016 at 9:55 PM, 5thHorseman said:

And with any luck at all, you'll catch yourself a nice tasty kraken!

I've been doing it for years as standard and never seen a kraken because of this. The only kraken moments I experience is if I attach a huge number of parts radially on a small root (for example 30 I beams on a cubic strut). I just add struts and it's done.

[The_Rocketeer]

16 hours ago, tater said:

It's funny, people complained that aero was going to get fixed, because it was bad for so long that "bad" was equated with "the way things should be." The soup "is a challenge to be designed around," etc, ad nauseum. If they could suddenly make all the planets have awesome, realistic craters and landscape features down to cm resolution with no performance hit at all, people here would post that lousy, boring planets were "kerbal" and making them better was a bad idea  .

Geez, and I get accused of fallacy.

[tater]

7 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Geez, and I get accused of fallacy.

People actually said all of those things here and more. 

Edited August 18, 2016 by tater

[The_Rocketeer]

Just now, tater said:

People actually said all of those things here and more. 

Including the part about improving planets? No, they didn't, and the suggestion is ridiculous.

[r4pt0r]

In the interest of moving on from the futile conversation on fallacies, Can we get back on to the topic at hand?


Why does the Rocomax Micronode have no surface attatchment? I would love to the individual panels on it, or science equipment. being only able to attach to its nodes is annoying.