Any chance of getting an EM Drive Engine in the future?

[Sharpy]

Just now, Corona688 said:

No, they're not.  You have to get the fuel to the rocket, and the longer it fires, the further away it will be.  It's still subject to the tyrant.

There's exactly one scenario that doesn't apply, asteroids, which are fuel-limited.

The larger the rocket, the farther it can go. The limit is "reasonably large". Every reasonable destination in KSP can be reached with a "reasonably large" rocket from the nearest infinite fuel source and back.

Somebody even recently made an EVE SSTO. So, the Tyranny can be an ultimate roadblock in real life, but not in KSP. With ISRU and a sufficiently - reasonably large rocket, you can go everywhere.

[Corona688]

2 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

The larger the rocket, the farther it can go.

There is an upper limit in achievable dv for stock reaction rockets in KSP somewhere below 10,000 m/s.

Yours has no such limit.

It also violates conservation of momentum, leaving it open for gaming in ways we haven't thought of yet but exist by definition.

 

 

Edited August 31, 2016 by Corona688

[Sharpy]

6 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Well if you can't say what it is to be used for I wouldn't count on it being implemented.  I don't speak for Squad, mind you, but I've never known them to implement a request from these forums that has absolutely no known uses.

As far as overpowered goes, you seem to be under the assumption that means a trip to Eeloo.  That is simply not the case.  It can be overpowered without ever leaving Kerbin's SOI.  Infinite fuel is overpowered in the gameplay structure we have.  There is no risk for reward, I have a satellite contract, I can screw it up all I want because I never run out of fuel, I have infinite attempts to get it right.  That is bad gameplay.

I absolutely don't count on it being implemented.

As for overpowered within Kerbin's SOI... 5 in-game hours burn to Minmus from 100km LKO.

What exactly am I saving doing that?

 

 

 

[Alshain]

3 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

I absolutely don't count on it being implemented.

Why are we here then?  I'm discussing it's viability in stock, what the hell are you discussing?

 

4 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

As for overpowered within Kerbin's SOI... 5 in-game hours burn to Minmus from 100km LKO.

What exactly am I saving doing that?

I don't feel like typing that again so I'm just going to copy and paste....

As far as overpowered goes, you seem to be under the assumption that means a trip to Eeloo Minmus. That is simply not the case.  It can be overpowered without ever leaving Kerbin's SOI.  Infinite fuel is overpowered in the gameplay structure we have.  There is no risk for reward, I have a satellite contract, I can screw it up all I want because I never run out of fuel, I have infinite attempts to get it right.  That is bad gameplay.

[Sharpy]

1 minute ago, Corona688 said:

There is an upper limit in achievable dv for stock reaction rockets in KSP somewhere below 10,000 m/s.

Yours has no such limit.

It also violates conservation of momentum, leaving it open for gaming in ways we haven't thought of yet but exist by definition.

The limit is much higher. I know because I made such a rocket. It had roughly 30,000m/s of delta-V and was necessary to retrieve a kerbal from Sun retrograde orbit before the 70-year contract deadline. And the rocket had quite a bit of room for improvement - I made it for a *profit*.

But that's also about the sensible limit. There is no reason to have more delta-V "in one go".

[Corona688]

1 minute ago, Sharpy said:

The limit is much higher. I know because I made such a rocket. It had roughly 30,000m/s of delta-V and was necessary to retrieve a kerbal from Sun retrograde orbit before the 70-year contract deadline. And the rocket had quite a bit of room for improvement - I made it for a *profit*.

But that's also about the sensible limit. There is no reason to have more delta-V "in one go".

Why not infinite?  I hear there's a mod for that.

[Sharpy]

1 minute ago, Alshain said:

Why are we here then?  I'm discussing it's viability in stock, what the hell are you discussing?

 

I don't feel like typing that again so I'm just going to copy and paste....

As far as overpowered goes, you seem to be under the assumption that means a trip to Eeloo Minmus. That is simply not the case.  It can be overpowered without ever leaving Kerbin's SOI.  Infinite fuel is overpowered in the gameplay structure we have.  There is no risk for reward, I have a satellite contract, I can screw it up all I want because I never run out of fuel, I have infinite attempts to get it right.  That is bad gameplay.

I think your and mine definition of "overpowered" differ.

For me, it means "preferable to other parts in unreasonably large number of scenarios".

What is yours?

Do you have infinite amount of time in real life, that you can screw up all you want?

1 minute ago, Corona688 said:

Why not infinite?  I hear there's a mod for that.

*shrug* do you mean Hyperedit's infinite fuel?

Because if that was a jab at the Em Drive, then I want to remind you I had a 70-year deadline.

[Corona688]

2 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Because if that was a jab at the Em Drive, then I want to remind you I had a 70-year deadline.

Better ways to exploit the em drive must exist -- again, by definition.  That's the can of worms violating conservation of mass opens.

[Alshain]

7 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

I think your and mine definition of "overpowered" differ.

For me, it means "preferable to other parts in unreasonably large number of scenarios".

What is yours?

My definition of overpowered is having no consequences for your actions.  In this case, there is no consequence for performing a burn using this engine.  If you make a mistake, it doesn't matter because you have infinite fuel to correct it.

 

Edited August 31, 2016 by Alshain

[Sharpy]

Just now, Corona688 said:

Better ways to exploit the em drive must exist -- again, by definition.  That's the can of worms violating conservation of mass opens.

Surely.

You can, for example edit the file and increase the thrust.

Or you can think up a way to build a fantastic vehicle with them, that somehow overcomes the TWR and allows you to land and take off from Eve at will.

Actually, in this game, you can use the landing legs to accelerate the ship at thrust much higher than the EMdrive, and completely for free. Or you can use the airbrakes as landing legs. Or stick wing pieces to an engine, nullifying need for power-hungry radiators. Or get a kerbal out of the craft, and push it. Then when it's low on fuel, reenter the craft, have the fuel refilled and continue pushing. Hey, infinite delta-V!!

[Alshain]

7 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Do you have infinite amount of time in real life, that you can screw up all you want?

Yes I do, I can continue playing KSP for as long as I want, since I can save it and come back later.

[Sharpy]

3 minutes ago, Alshain said:

My definition of overpowered is having no consequences for your actions.  In this case, there is no consequence for performing a burn using this engine.  If you make a mistake, it doesn't matter because you have infinite fuel to correct it.

If you think loss of fuel is the only possible consequence of a mistake in this game, you really have no clue.

[Alshain]

Just now, Sharpy said:

If you think loss of fuel is the only possible consequence of a mistake in this game, you really have no clue.

So tell me then, what is the consequence of putting a satellite up orbiting in the wrong direction of a contract with this engine?  With any other engine a plane change burn would likely use up your fuel.  How do you introduce this overpowered engine and still keep that consequence?

[Corona688]

12 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Or you can think up a way to build a fantastic vehicle with them, that somehow overcomes the TWR and allows you to land and take off from Eve at will.

That's more what I had in mind.  Some way to concentrate the thrust of a bunch of EM-drives into one unit like the bouncing ball executive toy, maybe.  You couldn't do it with rockets and their escalating cost and decreasing efficiency, but since the cost and efficiency are constant...

My point:  It wouldn't be an exploit.  It wouldn't be a kraken drive.  It'd be physics properly behaving.  Violating conservation of momentum just leaves it open to it.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Corona688

[Sharpy]

In this scenario?

After I put the satellite in orbit orbiting in wrong direction, and it has the EM drive on board...

It's, say, around KEO, at 1 009.81 m/s - so I need twice that to fix my mistake.

Well, less. 388m/s to raise the apoapsis to Kerbin SOI, about 40 to reverse, another 388 to re-circularize in KEO. About 800 total... that's a 4h 15min EmDrive burn... compressing that to 4x phys-warp, about an hour of real time.

So what I'm doing? I'm switching to Tracking Station, selecting the satellite, and I click "Terminate". Then I go to VAB, load up the satellite again, and launch it in the proper direction. I have the contract completed in maybe 10 minutes real time, and I'm short maybe 10% value of the contract. I also have saved 50 minutes, which I can spend fulfilling other contracts that will recuperate the losses several times over. Also, skirting Kerbin's SOI edges would take about 4 weeks of game time. The situation is remedied within 2 hours of game time.

I *could* finish it in much shorter game time performing the burn backwards in place, or only somewhat raising my apoapsis (to account for altitude drop during the burn). But that would mean a burn of roughly 2000m/s. That's over 1d4h of game time, so about 2.5h of real time. Absolutely not worth it.

[Alshain]

You are making a choice to do that though, there is still no consequence for simply using the engine to do it.  That's not keeping a consequence at all.  Real time is not a factor.  It's not an in game consequence.

[Sharpy]

5 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

My point:  It wouldn't be an exploit.  It wouldn't be a kraken drive.  It'd be physics properly behaving.  Violating conservation of momentum just leaves it open to it.

So, going Whackjob on the EM drive?

Interesting idea.

Neglecting the cost - playing Sandbox...

Of course, not solar. The amount of gigantors needed would make this thing structural nightmare. You can't clip them - they obscure each other. But you can clip PB-Nuks all you want. And you need only to leave a little bit of the engine open...

200 drives. 3600 RTGs. No cooling - the test will be too short for that. The launchpad is loading forever... My quad-core i7 with 16GB ram is down to a crawl. Hack gravity, because that thing is SURELY destroying the launchpad. Hyperedit to LKO... not responsive. Physics still didn't kick in.

Okay, Hyperedit refused LKO but allowed Minmus. I'm getting about 1FPS.

Staged! Engines are started. Throttle to the max. The engines lit up, and I'm down to one frame per two second.

aaaand I'm up to 0.05m/s^2.

Sorry, no screenies, the computer is really non-responsive.

And something just exploded...

Nah. I'm no Whackjob.

@Whackjob? Would you mind trying this?

 

 

 

32 minutes ago, Alshain said:

You are making a choice to do that though, there is still no consequence for simply using the engine to do it.  That's not keeping a consequence at all.  Real time is not a factor.  It's not an in game consequence.

You still fail to realize the consequence despite what I wrote. You don't consider time - neither real, nor in-game, to be worth anything.

[Wjolcz]

Of course! We can make it happen if we believe! After all, KSP is a gaem! Who cares about realism? Anything will be added as long as a lot of people requests it!

[Slam_Jones]

53 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

You still fail to realize the consequence despite what I wrote. You don't consider time - neither real, nor in-game, to be worth anything.

 

I mean if one is rich enough not to have to go to work 5 or 6 days out of the week, sure, time won't be a factor.

But I'd say for a lot of us, time is a big factor. 

Can't speak for others in specifics, but personally my video game time is precious, and only becomes more precious as I get older and gather more responsibilities and things that I have to take care of.  The idea of spending a few hours babysitting the PC but not really playing looks more and more dull as time goes on.  Again, this may only apply to me.  Your mileage may vary.

As they say, time is money.

 

(That said, I do not personally support the idea of a stock EM Drive)

Edited August 31, 2016 by Slam_Jones

[Sharpy]

10 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

I mean if one is rich enough not to have to go to work 5 or 6 days out of the week, sure, time won't be a factor.

And even then - would you consider executing a single maneuver for 2 hours to be a time well spent? And it takes two hours only because of your choice of propulsion. You could achieve the same thing on a Nuke in 5 minutes. It's only... I don't know, your OCD, your stubbornness, your own twisted concept of optimality, that guides you to this choice.

[Alshain]

1 hour ago, Sharpy said:

You still fail to realize the consequence despite what I wrote. You don't consider time - neither real, nor in-game, to be worth anything.

Precisely.  It is not.  In-game time is not a consequence because of time warp.  If I have to explain why real time spent playing a game is not considered a consequence then there is no hope of explaining it to you.

Time in KSP is irrelevant.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Alshain

[Sharpy]

9 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Precisely.  It is not.  In-game time is not a consequence because of time warp.  If I have to explain why real time spent playing a game is not considered a consequence then there is no hope of explaining it to you.

Time in KSP is irrelevant.

You must really love Freemium games. The new Dungeon Keeper... that must be a game of all times!

I guess we must agree to disagree. And just adding a personal opinion - you're really weird if you believe what you wrote.

[Slam_Jones]

14 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Precisely.  It is not.  In-game time is not a consequence because of time warp.  If I have to explain why real time spent playing a game is not considered a consequence then there is no hope of explaining it to you.

Time in KSP is irrelevant.

*Cough cough*

57 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

 

I mean if one is rich enough not to have to go to work 5 or 6 days out of the week, sure, time won't be a factor.

But I'd say for a lot of us, time is a big factor.

-snip-

 

If you are using your thrusters, then you can go to a maximum of 4x Physics Time Warp, correct?  So for a 2 hour burn, that's 30 minutes of... watching your ship slowly accumulate velocity?

I mean, I guess everyone enjoys different things.  If that's how you get your jollies, more power to you.  Regardless, what I wouldn't give to have the amount of free time you apparently have...

Edited August 31, 2016 by Slam_Jones

[Snark]

Locking thread per OP's request.  Folks who want to discuss Cannae / Em-drive are welcome to do so in the thread for it over in Science & Spaceflight, which has already been mentioned a few times in this thread.