What parts did you used to use all the time that you don't use anymore?

[netbumbler]

Well I still use the Nuke engines but not nearly as much (limited to probes and small vehicles).  I've started playing with Tac Life support and Planetary Base Systems so I make sure my Kerbals have plenty of living space for their long, interplanetary voyages as well as enough supplies.  This equates to about 35 tons of added mass for 4 Kerbals over what the stock game requires, so my transfer engines are now Rhinos.  Love those Rhinos: the nukes just don't have the thrust to make transfers feasible for my huge interplanetary vehicles.  I've tried big clusters of them, but the TWR just ends up being annoyingly low as well as the added parts count and complexity. 

Edited January 17, 2017 by netbumbler

[memes in space]

1 hour ago, GluttonyReaper said:

Eh, not so much nowadays. The water physics changed at some point (one of the 1.0 versions?), and now it's actually a pretty reasonable option.

huh

 

you're telling me that ksp has non-crappy water physics? amazing

[theend3r]

I used to use either stock parts or some mod parts to build my craft but not anymore because FAR still isn't updated and nobody even works on Adjustable Landing Gear anymore.

[Fearless Son]

To add to the chain of affirmatives, struts and fuel lines used to be common in all my vessels, but now they are rare.  This was mostly because I would over-use them in early designs because the engine itself was not handling those tasks well.  Attachment was not sufficiently rigid to prevent flight deformation under the forces it needs to endure to take off, so I would apply struts like they were duct tape.  When the physics of the attachment systems were refined, I found I needed fewer of them.  Now that there are auto-strut options for parts, I need very few of them indeed.  I still use a few of them on occasion when I need the reinforcement in particular areas, but they are no longer the essential thing they once were.  

Additionally, fuel lines used to be absolutely critical, but now that adjacent fuel tanks drain evenly across each other and plenty of parts are fuel cross-feed compatible, they are not the essential part they used to be.  I would have to put fuel lines just to ensure the center of mass stayed where I needed it to during ascent, lest the whole craft flip.  Now I do not need to do so anymore.  Even if I want to shift fuel from one tank to another, I can usually do that manually.  The only circumstance where I do use fuel lines is when it is important that some tanks be drained before others, like when I have drop-tanks on a plane, or when liquid boosters are contributing their fuel to the main launch thruster, and discarding the spent fuel tanks saves overall weight.  

Edited January 17, 2017 by Fearless Son

[Kyrt Malthorn]

I'm still using fuel lines...  a tad retro but I like that the fuel transfer only goes one way, Ie. .you know it's time to stage away the LFO boosters when they stop burning (can hear the difference) and they don't start eating the main engine's fuel.  I need to design my launch vehicles kinda idiot proof.

I'm newer to the game than most of the part rebalancing, but I find I don't use lights anymore.  I used to use tons of them because I kept finding myself docking on the night side of Kerbin.  Nowadays I've completely stopped using lights for anything but landers which need to hit a specific biome (when i don't have the luxury of choosing any landing site on the day side) and occasional aesthetic.  Reason being, I got better at rendezvous and now plan my close approach just before reaching the day side of the planet.

 

also I 

[JacobJHC]

Thud engines and struts. Autostrut saved my framerate.

[Ultimate Steve]

Tricouplers.

To prevent a one word post, excessive amounts of any engine. My first Mun lander (if anyone wants the picture I can get it) was terribly overbuilt.

[Sharpy]

17 hours ago, wumpus said:

RT-10 hammer.

I still use it extensively late into the game. I have a subassembly - radially attachable cluster of 6, and I slap two or four such clusters on mostly every launcher except the lightest and the heaviest ones.

This lets me get away with launchers of very poor TWR, that carry more fuel (cheap) and less engines (expensive). Normally, you'd lose all benefits of packing the extra fuel to gravity losses as you sluggishly accelerate while burning lots of fuel and never recover the losses hauling the extra empty tanks. But if you get a good kick of speed early on, even with poor TWR you consistently gain altitude and speed and you reach orbit in good time.

For light launchers, I like to achieve the same using the Launch Escape System. Four of these radially attached will cancel out the angled thrust of each other, and they can get you to some 200m/s in half a second.

5 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Tricouplers.

 

This.

Until PhysX gets its act together - and then Unity integrates the fix - and then KSP integrates it - Tricouplers are no-go. I was happy to use them, then my craft would fall apart and I'd blame Kraken and Squad.

Nope, tricouplers just create a geometry that PhysX can't handle correctly, generating phantom forces.

 

 

Edited January 18, 2017 by Sharpy

[wumpus]

5 hours ago, Sharpy said:

I still use it extensively late into the game. I have a subassembly - radially attachable cluster of 6, and I slap two or four such clusters on mostly every launcher except the lightest and the heaviest ones.

I checked the parts wiki and it looks like they un-nerfed the hammer (for a long time the larger SRBs had way too much an advantage).  I still think I will stay with the larger SRBs, but I'll look into how useful the smaller ones are.

tri-couplers: haven't they been more or less dead since you've been able to radially attach parts (especially without couplers)?  They might be critical for multiple NV-Rs, so I hope they  work with them.

[Sharpy]

Just now, wumpus said:

I checked the parts wiki and it looks like they un-nerfed the hammer (for a long time the larger SRBs had way too much an advantage).  I still think I will stay with the larger SRBs, but I'll look into how useful the smaller ones are.

tri-couplers: haven't they been more or less dead since you've been able to radially attach parts (especially without couplers)?  They might be critical for multiple NV-Rs, so I hope they  work with them.

Large SRBs are good as main boosters for tiny craft. They lose to LF boosters for ultra-heavy and don't give much advantage over Hammers for medium. (I'd likely use Fleas, but they burn off too fast... and tend to crash into launchpad.)

Tricouplers are important to aerodynamics. Surface-attached parts are not occluded from drag. If you stick three engines on a tricoupler, you're getting only a slight loss for lack of "boattail". If you slap them straight on the bottom of the 2.5m, you're getting three perfectly flat 1.25m pancakes of their mount surfaces into the airstream completely bypassing any occlusion the main stack would normally provide.

[Carl]

On 16/01/2017 at 11:05 PM, Aegolius13 said:

Agree on both counts.  The Mainsail needs some love, and/or the TwinBoar needs to be tone downed a bit.  

The twin boar is way too good, it even crabs on mammoth's if your willing to eat the part count hit.

 

Continues reading...

On 17/01/2017 at 10:12 AM, Sharpy said:

The 2.5m nose cone, since I "discovered" the 2.5 to 1.5m adapters that carry fuel.

 

What sorcery is this... Did i miss a part or somthing or is this mods?

 

On 17/01/2017 at 11:56 AM, memes in space said:

I literally never put reaction wheels on a ship unless it's yuuge and I can't turn with the command pod.

So basically all my designs then .

 

 

[Carl]

21 hours ago, netbumbler said:

Well I still use the Nuke engines but not nearly as much (limited to probes and small vehicles).  I've started playing with Tac Life support and Planetary Base Systems so I make sure my Kerbals have plenty of living space for their long, interplanetary voyages as well as enough supplies.  This equates to about 35 tons of added mass for 4 Kerbals over what the stock game requires, so my transfer engines are now Rhinos.  Love those Rhinos: the nukes just don't have the thrust to make transfers feasible for my huge interplanetary vehicles.  I've tried big clusters of them, but the TWR just ends up being annoyingly low as well as the added parts count and complexity. 

Check out my DER write up when it's done, (next few hours hopefully), whilst it was parts intensive i had a very beefy LV-N stage on that thing you might find handy.

[Sharpy]

15 minutes ago, Carl said:

What sorcery is this... Did i miss a part or somthing or is this mods?
 

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/C7_Brand_Adapter_-_2.5m_to_1.25m

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/C7_Brand_Adapter_Slanted_-_2.5m_to_1.25m

 

...comparing to Mainsail, Twin Boar is expensive. It's sometimes better to use three Mainsails than two Twin Boars. Although it's always a bother. Though... damn, expensive. I have subassemblies, for heaviest rockets. Enormous 5m tank, with a full nose cone, and a 5m to 2.5m quadcoupler. With 4 Twin Boars on it. I love the performance, I love the TWR, but my heart aches when I see the price. Especially that this being a side booster it's best used in pair. Twin Quad Twin Boar But if I got a contract "Lift a Class D asteroid from Kerbin into LKO", I guess four of these would do the job.

Edited January 18, 2017 by Sharpy

[Carl]

Trust me the twin boar may be expensive but lift capacity for lift capacity it's still the cheapest. Remember a Twin Boar packs a free orange tank too and has much better TWR at the end of the burn because compared to tank plus seperate engine it's lighter than any competitor. It's only when you need massive lifting capacity like my DER5 design that mammoth's make sense. And the TB basically invalidates everything else bar the Rhino and the Aerospike unless your going small enough for a long TB to be overkill.

A TB is basically 11250 credits and 6.5 tons in mass for the pure engine component.

 

Also i'm not a plane man so i didn't go down the aerospace tech yet much, no wonder i missed those.

Edited January 18, 2017 by Carl

[Freshmeat]

2 hours ago, Carl said:

Trust me the twin boar may be expensive but lift capacity for lift capacity it's still the cheapest. Remember a Twin Boar packs a free orange tank too and has much better TWR at the end of the burn because compared to tank plus seperate engine it's lighter than any competitor. It's only when you need massive lifting capacity like my DER5 design that mammoth's make sense. And the TB basically invalidates everything else bar the Rhino and the Aerospike unless your going small enough for a long TB to be overkill.

A TB is basically 11250 credits and 6.5 tons in mass for the pure engine component.

Exactly this. No career launch should ever be on a Rhino once the Boar is let loose.

[Carl]

Quote

Exactly this. No career launch should ever be on a Rhino once the Boar is let loose.

 Like this

You mean Mainsail, the Rhino still makes sense for upper stages and pure vacuum stages due to it's great ISP.

[Darth Pseudonym]

I used to use the Thud radial-mounted engine a lot, but now I almost never do.  Mostly it's just because I've learned how to weight-balance my rockets better, so I usually don't need the excessive gimbaled thrust to keep them from flipping; to a lesser extent, it's because I've learned to use smaller, more efficient engines for the final/interplanetary stage, so I no longer try to take Thuds to the Mun or what-have-you.

[Sharpy]

7 minutes ago, Carl said:

You mean Mainsail, the Rhino still makes sense for upper stages and pure vacuum stages due to it's great ISP.

Rhino is my go-to engine for asteroids. Recently did some config editing to get heavier asteroids and got a Class G into Kerbin orbit with a pair of Rhinos (not LKO but only 600m/s away from it, didn't want to drain more resources from it.)

Edited January 18, 2017 by Sharpy

[Fearless Son]

I am seeing a lot of love for Twin-Boars, but I am a bit more leery of using them for central lifting engines due to the oddity of their geometry around the base.  It makes attaching fins and radial boosters that do not smash into other parts upon detachment more difficult.  Not impossible, just more of a complication.  Since I tend to view the Twin-Boar as a way to simplify (an engine and fuel tank in one) it is kind of self-defeating for that purpose.  

Still, as a radial liquid-fuel booster for a really heavy craft, they do sound ideal.  

[Carl]

Quote

I am seeing a lot of love for Twin-Boars, but I am a bit more leery of using them for central lifting engines due to the oddity of their geometry around the base.  It makes attaching fins and radial boosters that do not smash into other parts upon detachment more difficult.  Not impossible, just more of a complication.  Since I tend to view the Twin-Boar as a way to simplify (an engine and fuel tank in one) it is kind of self-defeating for that purpose.  

Still, as a radial liquid-fuel booster for a really heavy craft, they do sound ideal.  

I agree this can be awkward and once i've graduated to 3.75m i usually use a 3.75m core with Rhino, with TB radials feeding fuel also to the Rhino Asparagus style.

But best way to seperate 2.5m and 3.75m booster:

 

2 Sepetrons on the top each side just below the nosecone, and 1 each side on the bottom just above the engine, parts intensive but dang near foolproof.

[Darth Pseudonym]

2 minutes ago, Fearless Son said:

I am seeing a lot of love for Twin-Boars, but I am a bit more leery of using them for central lifting engines due to the oddity of their geometry around the base.  It makes attaching fins and radial boosters that do not smash into other parts upon detachment more difficult.

Honestly?  If I'm using fins on a ship that size, I feel like something's gone wrong, unless I'm just lifting something that's really bizarrely shaped.  I mean, we've all launched ugly messes that you have to wrap in an aeroshell that bulges way out, but...

[Fearless Son]

3 minutes ago, Darth Pseudonym said:

Honestly?  If I'm using fins on a ship that size, I feel like something's gone wrong, unless I'm just lifting something that's really bizarrely shaped.  I mean, we've all launched ugly messes that you have to wrap in an aeroshell that bulges way out, but...

That may be my problem.  I probably over-use fairings.  But I like the ability to go full-thrust without worrying about overheating some delicate part on the front of the craft (since most craft re-enter rear first.)

[Guest]

Everything procedural parts replace: wings, SRBs, tanks, cones, heatshields... but not structural fuselages, 'cause the stock one is uniquely hollow.

Technically RT-10s too, but I only ever used them waaay back in 0.17.x.

[ajburges]

Mk2 parts for atmospheric planes. Their drag is conspicuously worse than Mk1. Additionally that drag offers no mass savings or capacity upgrades. The only reason I still try to design with them is 1100 K is far too low a heat tollerance for an exposed part to sustain velocity past Mach 3.

They do make great aerobrake capable taxis though. So I guess they technically don't count.

Speaking of too low a heat tollerance: FAT wings. By the time I unlock these, it's high-Mach or bust!

Also, an obligatory mention of struts and fuel lines.

Edited January 19, 2017 by ajburges

[Parpaza]

I used to use a lot of reaction wheels and go overboard on fitting them onto solid boosters, instead of using fins for atmospheric control (yeah I was that freaking dumb ). Then I'd complain that the game was broken and it was too hard to grind science etc... Nowadays I just stick fins and one nice reaction wheel at the top.

Also, I don't use too many drogue chutes anymore. Before I would go crazy with real-chute and install hundreds of them. Now I just set an extremely long aero-brake and let it land gracefully.

Edited January 20, 2017 by Parpaza