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

[Tyko]

I used to use fins and SRBs a lot more. Now I go almost exclusively with LRBs and, unlike many on here, I still use Fuel Lines to my center stack. I place the radial decoupler in the upper third and the fuel line in the lower third - which lets it also serve as a strut. I still use them because KER understands them and I like that my LRB engines burn out when their tanks are full rather than pulling fuel back from the core. It just makes the process of launching so much simpler.

[Leafbaron]

In general, most of the stock parts. I have mk2 stock expansion, B9, OPT,  the Mark IV parts and near future. even though most of these parts are stockalike, I prefer their look over stock. and since most if not all of my space fairing is done via spaceplane now, I rarely use stock parts. The only ones being command capsules and probe cores. 

[Fearless Son]

8 hours ago, Parpaza said:

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.

Inversely, drogue chutes are something I use more now when I hardly used them before.  This is mostly due to the changes in the atmospheric modelling since 1.0.  In the old souposphere, by the time you were at a high enough pressure for the main chutes to be effective you were already going slow enough for them not to get ripped off.  But now that is no longer always the case.  Entering with a sharp descent, falling onto mountains, or entering a low-pressure-at-surface atmosphere like Duna can mean that by the time the craft is low enough for the chutes to be necessary it might be going too fast for them to deploy safely.  In situations like that, even a small drogue is handy at rapidly bringing the speed down to something the main chutes can comfortably handle (below 300 m/s.)  

The extremely long aerobreak is okay if you have a craft with a lot of breaking surface-area compared to its mass, or if the parts have a large heat tolerance, but sometimes it can be safer to be a little more aggressive with the descent if only because it can more quickly slow the craft below the point it is building up a bunch of friction from atmospheric compression.  

[Parpaza]

2 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

Inversely, drogue chutes are something I use more now when I hardly used them before.  This is mostly due to the changes in the atmospheric modelling since 1.0.  In the old souposphere, by the time you were at a high enough pressure for the main chutes to be effective you were already going slow enough for them not to get ripped off.  But now that is no longer always the case.  Entering with a sharp descent, falling onto mountains, or entering a low-pressure-at-surface atmosphere like Duna can mean that by the time the craft is low enough for the chutes to be necessary it might be going too fast for them to deploy safely.  In situations like that, even a small drogue is handy at rapidly bringing the speed down to something the main chutes can comfortably handle (below 300 m/s.)  

The extremely long aerobreak is okay if you have a craft with a lot of breaking surface-area compared to its mass, or if the parts have a large heat tolerance, but sometimes it can be safer to be a little more aggressive with the descent if only because it can more quickly slow the craft below the point it is building up a bunch of friction from atmospheric compression.  

I still do use drogue chutes, however not in vast quantities like before. Before I would put 3-4 drogue chutes on probes meant to land on Kerbin. My current tourism craft has 2 drogue chutes and 3 main parachutes (due to the heavyweight) which is a big improvement from my old days where I would use lots of drogue chutes to slow down even lightweight craft.

Note: The 1.0 update coupled with some other updates made me to stop using too many drogue chutes using real-chute which allowed me to learn how to properly aero-brake to the ground.

[Fearless Son]

1 hour ago, Parpaza said:

I still do use drogue chutes, however not in vast quantities like before. Before I would put 3-4 drogue chutes on probes meant to land on Kerbin. My current tourism craft has 2 drogue chutes and 3 main parachutes (due to the heavyweight) which is a big improvement from my old days where I would use lots of drogue chutes to slow down even lightweight craft.

Note: The 1.0 update coupled with some other updates made me to stop using too many drogue chutes using real-chute which allowed me to learn how to properly aero-brake to the ground.

Oh yeah, that is definitely true.  Drogues quickly reach a point of diminishing returns as you add them.  Unless the vessel is really massive, you only need one or two.  Being able to safely deploy at higher velocity is their whole advantage, and as long as you can trigger them far enough out to get you down below the threshold to deploy main chutes comfortably, they do their job.  

[cantab]

I'm surprised I'm the first person to mention the cubic octag. I remember when if you wanted anything in a slightly unusual position, you'd use a cubic octag as the 'glue' piece. Then we got the rotate and offset gizmos and suddenly half the cubic octag's use cases are gone, and we also got the small nosecone which I think is a more aerodynamic attachment piece in the new aero model.

[Firemetal]

The Mk1 lander can. Right now for me, it is pretty useless.

Fire

[Spacetraindriver]

I used to us the old Mk3 Parts ALL the time. But...now they are gone... 

Even with KHI, all the Old Mk3 part packs are gone.. 

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, cantab said:

I'm surprised I'm the first person to mention the cubic octag. I remember when if you wanted anything in a slightly unusual position, you'd use a cubic octag as the 'glue' piece. Then we got the rotate and offset gizmos and suddenly half the cubic octag's use cases are gone, and we also got the small nosecone which I think is a more aerodynamic attachment piece in the new aero model.

I surely use it a lot less now than before but I still use it on occasion. It also helps (or hurts I guess) that it's not actually massless anymore.

[Servo]

Rocket parts.

I've been on a massive planes kick and haven't opened the VAB in weeks.

Beyond that, once autostruts were added, I haven't used many struts at all.

[purpleivan]

On 16/01/2017 at 11:22 PM, panzerknoef said:

The orange fuel tank, now I want my stuff prettier and orange just doesn't cut it anymore

Agreed.

In the first few months of playing the game I used these all the time, especially when sending up large amounts of fuel to store in Kerbin orbit for missions going further afield. But now I almost forget that they exist.

[Carl]

10 hours ago, purpleivan said:

Agreed.

In the first few months of playing the game I used these all the time, especially when sending up large amounts of fuel to store in Kerbin orbit for missions going further afield. But now I almost forget that they exist.

You never use twin boars anymore, seriously?

[purpleivan]

1 hour ago, Carl said:

You never use twin boars anymore, seriously?

Orange tanks.

[Carl]

Yeah but if your gonna use twin boars orange tanks are you know sorta required. Well assuming your not running a mostly modded game where you barely use anything stock because mods.

Edited January 21, 2017 by Carl

[Fearless Son]

On 1/20/2017 at 6:17 PM, cantab said:

I'm surprised I'm the first person to mention the cubic octag. I remember when if you wanted anything in a slightly unusual position, you'd use a cubic octag as the 'glue' piece. Then we got the rotate and offset gizmos and suddenly half the cubic octag's use cases are gone, and we also got the small nosecone which I think is a more aerodynamic attachment piece in the new aero model.

Oh yeah, my use of those has gone way down now that we have more options for shifting parts around.  Still, while they have gone down I do continue to use them at a less frequent rate.  The use case is when I want to mount something non-radial in a radial way, or when I need to clip some aerodynamic or structural parts together to give a craft a certain look (like when doing replicas of airplanes) and I need more attachment points from the same root to do it.  Or if I want to put a single decoupler in the middle of a multi-node adapter.  

[DancesWithSquirrels]

I used to use the tricouplers all the time in early games to build my Mun ships first/second stages (SRBs, three stacks with LV- 30s, in line decouplers, then three 909s and 400 tanks for my lander and return), but since it for moved so much later in the tech Tree I have better 2.5m solutions by that point.

[KerikBalm]

On 1/17/2017 at 10:43 PM, memes in space said:

huh

 

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

Indeed, go into sandbox mode, you'll find some pre-build stock craft designs in the SPH that are specifically meant to be seaplanes - and they work just fine:

Spoiler

 

 

There is even a proper buoyancy system, where some parts float, and others sink (most float though  ) - by using dense parts, you can make submarines:

(That one has some modded ducted electric fans for propulsion, but the rest is stock - one could use jet engines, as they work under water - but then buoyancy changes as fuel is consumed)

You can also do dynamic diving submarines that use hydroplanes to dive, and will float up when engines are stopped:

Its still a bit quirky, but its definitely improved over what it used to be:

Nearly 130 m/s surface velocity on my laythe seaplane - you wouldn't get that before version 1.0 (I think these changes came alongside the aero changes for 1.0)

[septemberWaves]

I've gotten out of the habit of using Mainsails. I used to use them rather frequently, but since I've improved at the game I've found few uses for them, as stock scale KSP is small enough that the power of a Mainsail is rarely necessary for the sort of payloads one would launch on a 2.5m rocket. However, lately I've been almost exclusively playing in scaled-up versions of the Kerbol system, where higher thrusts are important and rockets in general must be bigger, so I anticipate I'll use the Mainsail a lot more in future. It's a similar story with the Twin Boar, but it tends to be difficult to make a good-looking rocket powered by a Twin Boar because of the tank, so I don't know whether I'll be using it very much (and plus, there's a modded engine with about the same amount of thrust and I believe the same I_sp, but without the built-in tank).

[Finox]

Back in the day (18 - 23 or thereabouts), I based most of my core stages around the toroidal aerospike along with some LV-T30's for boosters.   All my rockets would be asparagus staged and the aerospike offered the best fuel burn during ascent.   After science mode came out I used it less and less, replacing it with the swivel, since 1.0 I haven't used it at all.   I suppose it's to be expected, given how OP the aerospike was in the earlier versions compared to today.

Edited January 31, 2017 by Finox

[Carl]

It's still got some solid properties, it's just unless you flat need that ISP curve the part count of using it in numbers sufficient for major payloads is too high even with the performance improvements.

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

19 hours ago, Finox said:

Back in the day (18 - 23 or thereabouts), I based most of my core stages around the toroidal aerospike along with some LV-T30's for boosters.   All my rockets would be asparagus staged and the aerospike offered the best fuel burn during ascent.   After science mode came out I used it less and less, replacing it with the swivel, since 1.0 I haven't used it at all.   I suppose it's to be expected, given how OP the aerospike was in the earlier versions compared to today.

The aerospike is still good for SSTOs, but if you're doing a staged design then specialized engines in the lower and upper stages (such as a Skipper- or Twin-boar-based lower stage and a Poodle- or Terrier-based upper) work better.

[Fearless Son]

4 hours ago, Whisky Tango Foxtrot said:

The aerospike is still good for SSTOs, but if you're doing a staged design then specialized engines in the lower and upper stages (such as a Skipper- or Twin-boar-based lower stage and a Poodle- or Terrier-based upper) work better.

What is the big advantage to the aerospike now?  Back in the day it used to be valued for having similar performance in atmosphere as it did in vacuum.  I recall the aerodynamic changes making this less of an issue and the aerospike still had pretty good ISP for its thrust, but could not be said to be the best in its size class as either a lifting or space engine.

[Carl]

I'd say EVE missions the ISP curve is the best of any engine AFAIK, so it will lose much less thrust low down.

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

37 minutes ago, Fearless Son said:

What is the big advantage to the aerospike now?  Back in the day it used to be valued for having similar performance in atmosphere as it did in vacuum.  I recall the aerodynamic changes making this less of an issue and the aerospike still had pretty good ISP for its thrust, but could not be said to be the best in its size class as either a lifting or space engine.

It provides good thrust and ISP for a lightweight 1.25m engine. The Swivel, Reliant and Vector provide more thrust but are heaver (much heavier in the Vector's case) and their vacuum ISP is lower. The Terrier is lighter and has a higher vacuum ISP but its thrust is much lower. If you're using a staged rocket with specialized atmosphere and rocket engines then you can probably find something better for any given role than the Aerospike, but if you need a single good all-around engine then it's a good choice.

[septemberWaves]

The Vector is pretty good as a first stage on Eve ascent vehicles, since they have to be so large. It's always easier with high gravity to use an engine with high thrust and just add more fuel as necessary than to use engines with higher efficiency but significantly lower thrust, and then have to significantly change your design when their thrust isn't nearly enough.

The aerospike is a great engine for a single-stage lander when you're going somewhere (or several somewheres) which have high-pressure atmospheres (high enough pressure that you can't use vacuum engines like you can on Duna).