What game scale do you most prefer?

[septemberWaves]

By far my favourite is 4x scale. Using stock-balanced or slightly-better-than-stock parts, I always end up with realistic-looking rockets because of the extended fuel costs. And it can often be quite challenging to design effective launch vehicles for 4x scale. I still have yet to create a rocket SSTO that functions at 4x scale, but I suspect that Nertea's new nuclear aerospikes (from the Kerbal Atomics mod specifically) will help with that.

[KerikBalm]

On 8/16/2017 at 8:03 PM, TheRagingIrishman said:

...I like 2.5x because you don't have to mess with any of the stock parts...

On 8/17/2017 at 0:24 AM, OhioBob said:

...Once all the bugs get worked out, I think I'll like 2.5x better than 1x.  All the stock parts work at that scale without having to SMRUFF them, and the larger rockets that the game requires have a more real life look and feel to them...

I'm using a 3x config (Sigma Dimensions + custom config) for radius/SMAs, 0.5*3x for terrain height (1.5x), and 1.2x for atmosphere height with heating set to 0.5. Stock parts still work just fine at these scales, so maybe consider increasing the scale? What is SMRUFF?

I also did some other custom edits (to Eve and Jool's moons in particular) to make them closer analogues to our solar system.

I guess my "3x config" would be very similar to a 3.2x config - should only be about a 200 to 250 m/s difference in dV to orbit. Pure stock parts work just fine. I think I'd like to go to bigger scales, but then I'd want a part overhaul because I don't think that stock parts are going to perform well enough.

With my settings, stock rockets can still SSTO with a very very low payload fraction:

Which is more or less realistic for a rocket in real life (the difference being that its much easier to recover it without it burning up in the atmosphere).

It also still allows for some "good-ol' Kerbal fun" with really powerful SSTO spaceplanes that can carry large payloads:

Spoiler

But it also does seem to "strongly encourage" some amount of orbital assembly because things are harder to get to orbit, and you need to get more tonnage to orbit... but I find that to be fun that I mostly skipped at stock scale unless I made a mission payload that had massive excesses of everything that would be needed.

An example would be this:

Which was assembled in 4 launches (one of which, the life support section with the greenhouses, is depicted previously in the spoiler section of my post).

I haven't tried larger scales yet, but I'm finding 3x to be a good balance of fun and challenge with stock parts.

I'm also finding that I just can't SSTO everything as I could in stock. In stock for example if I wanted to send a spaceplane to a place with no free oxygen in the atmosphere, I could easily just make "strap on" SSTOs and get it to orbit in a single stage. Now, even my designs for spaceplanes (and personal but IMO fairly balanced mods for air augmented rockets that don't need O2) for places that do have Free O2 normally can't SSTO to kerbin orbit either.

My Rald planet has an orbital velocity of ~2,500 m/s in low orbit, compared to Kerbin's 4,100 m/s. There was just no making up that ~2,000 m/s (because also higher drag at those speeds) to allow it to SSTO to kerbin orbit without horribly compromising the design (which needed to be able to cope with the much thinner air and resulting higher landing speeds than on Kerbin). -Not like stock Kerbin vs laythe spaceplanes, where a laythe spaceplane would only need minor tweaks to allow it to ferry itself to LKO.

Spoiler

Duna spaceplane, all stock except for the ramrocket engines, which here are seen with the model of the turboramjet, but the exhaust of the panther. It didn't come close to SSTOing on kerbin under its own power:

Even worse was the rald transport, which despite its rapiers, was harder to get to orbit because its heavy cargobay and liftjets increased its dry mass by a lot. Although in the end I ended up getting the spaceplane to orbit with its tanks about half full, so refueling it to allow it to depart for Rald-Duna was easier)

And this may have been a bit draggy given the way the game models things, but that cargobay was open with a stack of orange tanks stuck up its end. Seen here with cargodoors opened and the lower stages removed for clarity:

But with ISRU, once you've got a way to get stuff to orbit, moving around a 3x system isn't so bad, as even at 3x, most destinations are easy enough to handle (ie mun, minmus, Duna, Dres, Gilly, etc), so refueling close to a more difficult destination is still relatively easy.

But 3x with stock parts makes getting to orbit feel like an accomplishment again. Indeed getting payload to orbit takes a dV about equal to what it would take a payload to the surface of Mun, and then back to Mun orbit again, starting from the launchpad in stock KSP. 

I'm still doing stuff like this in 3x rescale:

(Also, I changed Duna's surface gravity to 0.376 G instead of 0.3 G)

Except for the non-stock planet, and the surface base modules, all this was done in 3x without modded parts or any cheating (hyper edit, set orbit, etc)

Spoiler

Ok in this last one, the spaceplane on the right has modded engines that are inferior to Rapiers when the atmosphere contains O2, the one on the left is all stock. The one on the right was not involved in construction of this surface base - it just ferried the first crew from the surface of Duna to the surface of Rald - since I determined it could SSTO from Rald as well, and the one on the left was overbuilt and seems to retain elements from when I was trying to make it capable of SSTOing itself to LKO)

 

Edited August 18, 2017 by KerikBalm

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

Which is more or less realistic for a rocket in real life (the difference being that its much easier to recover it without it burning up in the atmosphere).

It also still allows for some "good-ol' Kerbal fun" with really powerful SSTO spaceplanes that can carry large payloads:

I'm also finding that I just can't SSTO everything as I could in stock. In stock for example if I wanted to send a spaceplane to a place with no free oxygen in the atmosphere, I could easily just make "strap on" SSTOs and get it to orbit in a single stage. Now, even my designs for spaceplanes (and personal but IMO fairly balanced mods for air augmented rockets that don't need O2) for places that do have Free O2 normally can't SSTO to kerbin orbit either.

My Rald planet has an orbital velocity of ~2,500 m/s in low orbit, compared to Kerbin's 4,100 m/s. There was just no making up that ~2,000 m/s (because also higher drag at those speeds) to allow it to SSTO to kerbin orbit without horribly compromising the design (which needed to be able to cope with the much thinner air and resulting higher landing speeds than on Kerbin). -Not like stock Kerbin vs laythe spaceplanes, where a laythe spaceplane would only need minor tweaks to allow it to ferry itself to LKO.

How fast does the spaceplane go on your Kerbin?  I think it would be possible to get 4km/s delta-v (plus drag/gravity losses) with current Earth tech in a SSTO (1km/s jets are "known", 2km/s have "been done experimentally"), but it would be close. 

It also makes you wonder about "Goldilocks planets", they apparently need a heavy iron core to achieve 1g if you need to go up and down very often.  Scaling a x5 Earth would likely mean a ~20km/s orbital delta-v: not an issue for an star-traveling civilization colonizing the planet, but if anything happened to the civilization they aren't getting back up.

[KerikBalm]

The spaceplane gets to about 1,550 m/s surface velocity on airbreathers, but then it drops back down to about 1,500 m/s as it gets higher and thrust gets weaker (and as it nears the Ap from its airbreathing trajectory), I normally switch to closed cycle around 1515 m/s, and have less than a 10 degree AoA as it accelerates to nearly 3.5km/s surface velocity. It loses a lot more dV to drag than in stock because:

* The velocity in the atmosphere is much higher, if drag is proportional to V^2, and the velocity is about 1.7x, then thats nearly 3x as much drag at higher altitudes.

* The atmosphere is higher (25% higher in my version)

* The wings need to make a lot more lift at high altitude. In stock when plane is going 1500 m/s surface, its around 1650 m/s orbital, and for LKO you need about 2350m/s. Its nearly to orbit and "centrifugal force" means that the wings only need to provide a relatively small amount of lift to keep it up.

So, it has to go much faster, and when its not going so much faster, it has to fly at a higher AoA. The drag is particularly brutal when first switching from airbreathers to closed cycle, - when its still relatively low in the atmosphere (but no so low), and moving slow enough relative to orbital velocity that the wings still need to produce a lot of lift (and therefore a lot of drag)

I think with FAR, a design could be made that suffers less from drag losses. While real life scramjets may be able to accelerate to 4km/s while airbreathing, they won't be doing it at 3200 Isp.

If we look at the combination overall: the concept for Skylon was looking at a 5% payload fraction, and in my 3x config I get about a 10% payload fraction. Granted skylon doesnt intend to use scramjets, but its drymass penalty for the airbreathing equipment is also lower.

Anyway, 3x rescale still allows for spaceplanes made of stock parts with about a 10% payload fraction, which is still pretty good IMO and allows for a lot of fun, and a good balance of fun and challenge.

Edited August 18, 2017 by KerikBalm

[LordOfMinecraft99]

I used to play  RO, but my puter' couldn't handle it and I got busier. So I went down to  6.4 scale, with Real  Fuels,  SMURFF, FAR, etc.

[OhioBob]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

What is SMRUFF?

I misspelling it, it should be SMURFF.  It is a mod that modifies rocket parts (tanks and engines) to improve their mass ratios and TWR.  When you get up to the larger scales, like 6.4x and 10x, the ratios of the stock parts are so poor it is near impossible to get anything done.  SMURFF is used to give parts real life ratios and performance.

 

[White Owl]

Having sampled many many scales, I've gradually developed a custom config with multiple mixed scales. It's based on OPM, with all planetary distances at 6.4x. Kerbin and most rocky bodies are 3.2x, since I find that works very well with stock and stockalike parts; rockets look very rocket-like, SSTOs are just tricky enough, piloting a spaceplane through reentry takes just long enough to be interesting, it's reasonable to fly a mach 6 plane to the other side of Kerbin in one sitting, and there's an absolute minimum of fussing with part configurations.

Itty bitty potato moons are typically left at stock size. Some other moons are 2x.

Gas giants are 6.4x, so they appear reasonably bigger than the moons.

Kerbin's day is 24 hours, and the sun's gravity is tuned to make Kerbin's year 365 days long.

The whole system has RSS-like inclined orbits.

I relocated KSC to a coastline in the southern hemisphere, just close enough to the equator to make launches direct to either the Mün's or Minmus' inclination.

It's a lot of fun.

[Tyko]

I have games in both Stock and 2.5x.

I like 2.5x because the rockets required look and perform a lot more like real world rockets using stock parts and mods balanced for stock. I've gotten to really push designs and make hard choices on weight to achieve missions.

I like Stock because I can "play" a lot, build really large, complex designs and launch them relatively easily. I also prefer Stock for the shorter launch and re-entry periods. I feel like so much time is spent (especially early game) on launches and watching re-entries. With scaled up solar systems it take a lot longer to complete those tasks meaning I'm spending  LOT of time watching craft launch and re-entering.

[OhioBob]

On ‎8‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 10:35 AM, Tyko said:

I like Stock because I can "play" a lot, build really large, complex designs and launch them relatively easily. I also prefer Stock for the shorter launch and re-entry periods. I feel like so much time is spent (especially early game) on launches and watching re-entries. With scaled up solar systems it take a lot longer to complete those tasks meaning I'm spending  LOT of time watching craft launch and re-entering.

That's the reason I'll probably never play anything larger than 2.5x.  1x is a lot of fun, and 2.5x makes it feel more realistic, but the large scales just drags the game out too much for my taste.
 

Edited August 22, 2017 by OhioBob

[A_name]

For those wanting to try 6.4x or even 10x/RSS but not wanting to bother with all the part overhaul, consider the SMURF mod which rebalances the stock parts to be usable in larger scales. It's what I use and I love it.

[septemberWaves]

1 minute ago, A_name said:

For those wanting to try 6.4x or even 10x/RSS but not wanting to bother with all the part overhaul, consider the SMURF mod which rebalances the stock parts to be usable in larger scales. It's what I use and I love it.

It's not exactly necessary for 6.4x scale. I've played some 6.4x scale with stock-balanced parts and no rebalancing before, and although it generally required four-stage rockets with incredibly complex staging patterns to get to orbit without using asparagus staging, it's still possible to do. I still prefer 4x scale though, it's more fun.

[Norcalplanner]

I voted for 10x, but my answer is more complicated. 10.6x is my favorite, but as others have noted, it can take a long time to get things done. I've spent the most time playing 3x and 3.2x, which strikes a good balance between epic grandeur and RL time limitations. I've also spent a good chunk of time at 6.4x. And right now I'm enjoying a 2.5x GPP career using BDB and SSTU - initial indications are promising.