Is Autostrut an in-game cheat?

[Stevie_D]

You dont get wet noodle rockets in real life (well not anymore heh). Auto-strut is there to counter that. So its not a cheat at all, really.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I'd wager real rockets and such have internal reinforcements, so auto struts are just a way to mimic that without forcing the player to clip the camera through the side of a fuel tank and place struts on the interior walls manually.

As always though in a single player game; you can't really "cheat." Since the very definition of what constitutes cheating is decided by you and only you.

Personally I love auto strut, saves me a lot of time manually placing struts and keeps my rockets looking nice and slick instead of like something out of a junkyard.

Edited August 5, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[wumpus]

On 8/2/2017 at 4:45 AM, bewing said:

KSP uses the Unity engine, and Unity uses PhysX. These libraries have bugs

I'm not sure where the bugs for removing existent struts lies, but when "auto de-strut" is always on, I can't help think that "autostrut" can't be considered a cheat.

I've had to check too many times after "revert to launch" to see if my rocket failed thanks to removed struts (and often they are missing) to have any problem with autostrut and similar kludges.  Also, any idea why "hard connection" comes off between launches, or is that a mod?

4 hours ago, Stevie_D said:

You dont get wet noodle rockets in real life (well not anymore heh). Auto-strut is there to counter that. So its not a cheat at all, really.

Ask SpaceX about CRS-7.  I'm sure they would loved to have autostrut enabled on that one.

Edited August 4, 2017 by wumpus
avoid doublepost

[KerikBalm]

Having autostrut always on is a recipe for disaster and a craft spontaneously ripping itself apart. I use it, but it must be used sparingly.

Before Autostrut, it was nearly impossible to make actual use of the cargoramp. Autostrut is a great feature that can be abused/exploited, but that doesn't mean that any use of the feature is an exploit/cheating.

Before part autostrutting, when I'd drive rovers up and dock with the cargobay, the wheels would immediately clip through the craft and the whole thing would hang down off of the 1 bendy docking port connection because parts on the same vessel don't collide with themselves (or at least they do so differently)

 

The only solution was a to use a 2nd docking port, and even if they were aligned perfectly in the vab, it was still hard to get them lined up when recovering the rover:

Now, I can drive rovers on and off as needed.

This kludge fixes a problem with the game, and isn't a cheat, but it can be exploited to avoid use of heavier, draggy struts