Mechjeb as cheating?

[Kroslev Kerman]

So this is more Opinyon on Mechjeb is cheating or not

[Rocket In My Pocket]

We've had more than enough of these threads in the past.

They never go well.

Let's not do this again people lol.

[Gargamel]

In before it's locked. 

The search bar works wonders for cases like this. 

[klgraham1013]

No and no.  Can we stop now?

[katateochi]

This question keeps coming up and really it's totally up to you, it is after all a single player game that is often heavily modded.  
My view is MJ is a suite of tools that provides information and features that are missing from the stock game.  I expanded on that in this reply to another similar thread:

 

[jpkerman]

If Mechjeb is cheating then I don't want to be right.

[Kroslev Kerman]

i see Mechjeb as a Wonderful tool to help noobs fly

StratenBlitz also uses Mechjeb for Automation and Cinematics

[razark]

Oh, are we doing this again?

 

Can we discuss something that doesn't cause such ire, instead?  Like religion, politics, and the realness of lunar landings?

OOOH!  Even better!  Let's all discuss our least favorite moderator, and explain exactly why!

 

I would like to, and I say this of my own free will, under no duress or any threat of punishment whatsoever, retract my previous statement.  Discussion of these would be a bad idea, and we should not engage in such activities on this glorious forum.

I will, however, leave this here: https://www.google.com/search?q=%2B"mechjeb"+%2B"cheating"+site%3Aforum.kerbalspaceprogram.com

Edited December 21, 2018 by razark

[Rocket In My Pocket]

6 minutes ago, razark said:

OOOH!  Even better!  Let's all discuss our least favorite moderator, and explain exactly why!

@Snark.

His profile picture just creeps me right the heck out!

Spoiler

Kidding, I love you Snark, please don't ban me. 

 

Edited December 21, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[stibbons]

My hot takes:

• It's not cheating, but the "you can't cheat in a single player game" argument is terrible because cheating yourself is still cheating.
• It's not good for learning how to fly, because you're not learning how to fly you're learning how to imitate an autopilot.
• I wish I were a waterbear.

[Superfluous J]

But is Chatterer cheating? I mean, I've never used it but my best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who says that they tell you how to fly your ship.

[Snark]

Moving to Add-on Discussions.

And folks... please be nice?

Yes, this is a topic that almost always blows up.  And those of us who have been hanging around here for years are aware of that.

But it's not at all obvious to folks who haven't been around that long, and sarcastic "oh, for heaven's sake, not this again" posts not only contribute nothing constructive to the discussion, but could also be rather off-putting to newer folks who may simply be asking an honest question-- especially when delivered in a mocking tone.

The OP here is a perfectly reasonable question to ask.  It's not the fault of the asker if they haven't seen the other threads like this that always blow up.

• If you'd like to actually answer the question in the spirit in which it was asked, feel free to offer your constructive opinions.
• If you're convinced that it's going to go down in flames and you can't wait to see the drama, then by all means feel free to sit there silently, perhaps with a bag of popcorn, and await.
• But please, don't make yourself part of the problem.  Don't jump in simply to try to diss people or put them down for asking a well-meant question.  That's off-topic, and it's also simply poor form.  Mockery of other forum users is not cool.  Got it?  Knock it off, please. 

Thank you for your understanding.

 

 

[Kerbart]

There's a grey area that is not applicable to the vast majority of players here.

It's not cheating if you just use it to play the game the way you like it. Maybe you're tired of putting a rocket in orbit for the 500th time. Maybe you get frustrated with not being able to rendez-vous or dock despite your countless attempts. Maybe landing always results in a Kerbal-spacecraft-shaped crater on the surface of Minmus and you're tired of that. Mechjeb allows you to enjoy the game and that's what it's most about.

It's cheating when you start to take credit for things Mechjeb is doing. Calling yourself "master docker" and posting videos on youtube where you make it look like you are doing the docking instead of Mechjeb. Aside from getting caught in a trivially easy way, that would be cheating. But I doubt anyone here does that.

All in all, Mechjeb isn't cheating. At least not in my opinion.

[Superfluous J]

Sorry.

To 100% truthfully answer the question. No. KSP is a single player game and nothing you do in it is cheating, from installing MechJeb to saving it to a CD and using 4 of them to make a real-life Mun rover.

The only way it would be cheating is if you're doing a challenge and the challenge said not to use MechJeb. Many do, but many also do not, and many more say it's totally fine.

[jwenting]

here we go again...

If Squad hasn't wanted MJ's functionality in the game, which is the only definition of cheating for a game, they'd have made it so the things MJ does are not possible to be done by mods.

[Frostiken]

rofl of course it's not cheating.

 

There's three components to Mechjeb.

 

1) Information.

2) Aids.

3) Autopilots.

 

The information isn't cheating, otherwise KER would be 'cheating' too. And Squad has slowly relented and given us more and more information in the VAB and now they're finally giving us Delta-V (after like a decade of saying 'no never!').

The aids aren't cheating, they're just frustration-relievers. There's nothing skillful about pointing at a maneuver node. There's nothing skillful about dragging manevuer node handles around until it ends up giving you the maneuver you want. MechJeb doesn't help you do things you couldn't normally do yourself. Yea I could spend literally an HOUR trying to maximize the efficiency of a Duna transfer by hand (after all, wouldn't use Protractor be cheating? As well as using information from third-party sources about phase angles, since I didn't do it myself?) OR I just push three buttons and bam, there's my maneuver node, set 4 days in the Kerbal Future.

And the autopilots aren't cheating, because frankly I don't think they're very good. The launcher melts my rockets, and the lander gives me mixed results. And docking is trivial by hand with SmartASS.

That being said, I use GravityTurn for my launches. Works way better than MechJeb with more customization, and I've launched enough rockets by now that I really don't need to sit there tapping the D key myself.

Edited December 22, 2018 by Frostiken

[Murdabenne]

SpaceX/NASA/Boeing/BlueOrigin et alia do not routinely hand-fly their rockets.  Neither do I.  So MJ isn't "cheating". 

My opinion: If anything, MJ a bit more realism depending on how you use it.  Going back to the days where "the trench" (read "Failure is not an Option" by Gene Kranz)  in the control room did the calculations and sent them to the spacecraft for the computers to execute in routine cases.

[GrandProtectorDark]

15 minutes ago, Murdabenne said:

SpaceX/NASA/Boeing/BlueOrigin et alia do not routinely hand-fly their rockets.

I would consider that Closer to Kerbal operation System than Mechjeb. The later is a fully formed pseudo AI and somehow with every rocket copatible system while actual  launch software has to be programmed for the situation first.

[Murdabenne]

20 minutes ago, GrandProtectorDark said:

I would consider that Closer to Kerbal operation System than Mechjeb. The later is a fully formed pseudo AI and somehow with every rocket copatible system while actual  launch software has to be programmed for the situation first. 

Launch Software?  Ok lets look at that. I use the same as SpaceX, et al. Like Elon Musk or an Astronaut, I don't write the software nor do I input the specific parameters of the spacecraft. I just use the software that was loaded  In this case its called MechJeb. Where do those launch software calculations come from?  A computer running a program. A human directs what they want (Elon wants to go to Mars, Cosmonaut wants to go to the ISS), but the calcs are done pre-flight, loaded and rechecked in long before. Actual implementation are done by the flight control system under ground control computer guidance. Just like Mech Jeb. The net effect is the same. I fail to see the distinction other than a matter of degree not substance. 

[Frostiken]

I will say this though - I would really like MechJeb a lot more if there were a mod that more thoroughly integrated it into Career Mode.

1) Tie flight automation degree to pilot levels and probe core technology level, not science tree unlocks. 

2) Tie information systems and flight aids to tracking station level and provide/remove those based on signal quality/strength.

I really like how Kerbal Engineer 'works' if you have an engineer kerbal onboard (though I wish it was integrated into probe cores as well so I don't have to use those stupid parts).

I think MechJeb would be a lot more fun in this regard. I like the idea of bringing an engineer along to use KER, but think it's kinda dumb that MJ isn't MM'd into probe cores or pilot kerbals.

[RandomKerbal]

Can't believe that I scroll this page too quickly that it scared off a tiny fly on my screen.

[flywlyx]

It is cheating only if there is a rule.

And the rules everyone agreed to here are Terms of service and EULA.

Does MJ violate Terms of service and EULA?

No.

So the answer is very clear.