Make RTG units have halflife

[MythicalHeFF]

I’m honestly all for adding decay to RTGs. Currently, as they stand, they are a free source of power with virtually zero downsides, apart from a rather high cost in career (which even then isn’t really an issue because of how late in the game you unlock them) 

Adding such a downside to RTGs for long missions could give players more incentive to use things such as fuel cells, which I currently forget even exist most of the time because of how overshadowed they are by RTGs and solar panels.

[SiriusRocketry]

Hmmm... 

a) tailor the game to a specific bunch of players who want a challenge? 

OR

b) allow people to actually, you know. Make a choice? They can play the game how they want. 

Noobs need to play the game and have fun, not say 'oh NO the radio isotope degeneration has increased by a factor of 2.116! My game is ruined!' 

Difficulty option sounds good to me. 

Don't whack other peoples opinions without taking a good look at your own. 

Edited April 25, 2019 by SiriusRocketry

[Delay]

On 4/25/2019 at 8:42 PM, SiriusRocketry said:

Noobs need to play the game and have fun, not say 'oh NO the radio isotope degeneration has increased by a factor of 2.116! My game is ruined!'

By the point you get the RTGs ingame I sincerely hope you're not a "noob" anymore.

"Difficulty option" is a cop-out in my opinion, and a terrible one at that. Every other source of electricity has some downside - except for the RTGs which are able to produce electricity indefinitely. Without any sort of condition, mind you. No light needed, no fuel needed, you just get electricity for absolutely nothing.

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, Delay said:

By the point you get the RTGs ingame I sincerely hope you're not a "noob" anymore.

From v .17 to 1.2, I had never touched career mode, and always went into sandbox.   So yeah, theere's every chance a new player will have access to RTG on day 1. 

[Pthigrivi]

9 hours ago, Delay said:

By the point you get the RTGs ingame I sincerely hope you're not a "noob" anymore.

"Difficulty option" is a cop-out in my opinion, and a terrible one at that. Every other source of electricity has some downside - except for the RTGs which are able to produce electricity indefinitely. Without any sort of condition, mind you. No light needed, no fuel needed, you just get electricity for absolutely nothing.

The downside is they are much less mass efficient.

[Xurkitree]

RTG's are only used as a backup power source, or a source to fill up some batteries. No matter how much the electricity output degrades, time warp will always fix that. You're adding an element of time in a game where time is inconsequential and can be sped up any moment of the day. Its going to fail.

[Delay]

2 hours ago, Xurkitree said:

You're adding an element of time in a game where time is inconsequential and can be sped up any moment of the day

If the energy output is so low that one single rover wheel is able to exhaust it for a century?

In other words: Would you want to even wait a century just to move your rover by a few meters?

[SiriusRocketry]

15 hours ago, Delay said:

you just get electricity for absolutely nothing.

The RTG costs a lot and is also annoyingly heavy for its size. Plus, it's a game about little green guys building a fun space program. I don't think that calls for super-realism, unless you're modding, which goes back the original point made by many: make it optional. Don't force it down players' throats. 

The best thing about KSP is the freedom to choose. 

[Xurkitree]

1 hour ago, Delay said:

If the energy output is so low that one single rover wheel is able to exhaust it for a century?

In other words: Would you want to even wait a century just to move your rover by a few meters?

No person would drive a rover after that long period of time. Besides, most rovers have appreciable battery banks so you'd get a lot more than few meters. Alternatively... we could just keep the RTG as is, which is my point all along.

What we actually need are mid-game tiny RTGs and end-game Large RTGs - The current system of a single RTG is too restrictive for my standards.

Edited April 29, 2019 by Xurkitree

[Delay]

5 hours ago, SiriusRocketry said:

The RTG costs a lot and is also annoyingly heavy for its size.

Currency in career is sort of useless anyways. I never have to worry about that in any of my saves. And if you build a rocket with enough thrust and enough fuel you can get the RTG anywhere you want - there are literally no constraints.

4 hours ago, Xurkitree said:

No person would drive a rover after that long period of time.

If we're talking about... say, 2 years, there wouldn't be a significant drop in output anyways. For a timespan that small there'd be almost no difference. The idea is that RTGs should gradually produce less electricity over a very long period of time.

[Laie]

4 hours ago, Delay said:

The idea is that RTGs should gradually produce less electricity over a very long period of time. 

Yeah, I get that. I still don't see the point, though.

Solar panels are forever. Batteries are forever, and don't lose one bit of charge over time. The fuel to power fuel cells will never turn to gunk. Why is it necessary that RTGs have to wind down? Where's the benefit?

[linuxgurugamer]

21 minutes ago, Laie said:

Yeah, I get that. I still don't see the point, though.

Solar panels are forever. Batteries are forever, and don't lose one bit of charge over time. The fuel to power fuel cells will never turn to gunk. Why is it necessary that RTGs have to wind down? Where's the benefit?

Solar panels produce less the further away from the sun.  Fuel cells rely on fuel.  Rtgs are forever

[Pthigrivi]

10 hours ago, Delay said:

Currency in career is sort of useless anyways. I never have to worry about that in any of my saves. And if you build a rocket with enough thrust and enough fuel you can get the RTG anywhere you want - there are literally no constraints.

You can also use a really inefficient, overpowered engine if you have enough thrust and enough fuel. Cost and mass are probably the two most important constraints in the game. That they aren't functioning for you is more of a global problem than one specific to the RTG. The only compelling reason to add a half-life is to adhere more closely to reality, which I'm not entirely unsympathetic to. For me it just fits into the same category as crazy overpowered reaction wheels and unlimited start engines--simplifications made for convenience and to keep what is already a very complicated game from becoming needlessly overcomplicated.

[RocketSquid]

The question here is, why? I've seen two reasons thrown about, and neither of them hold water.

First, realism. In real life, solar panels also degrade, and so do batteries, and pretty much every part of a mission. Missions not powered by RTGs tend to fail far earlier, when a solar panel or battery fails. Satellites around earth fail far sooner,  when they run out of RCS fuel. So if we're so concerned with realism, why punish RTGs and not, say, the batteries themselves, which are more often a limitation both in space and in everyday life? Surely a battery losing energy over time would also solve the supposed "cheatyness" of an RTG.

And that's the second lie: that RTGs are somehow cheaty, or unbalanced. There's the claim that RTGs are "too good" and then the earlier claim that they're only "supposed" to be for deep space probes, not just powering whatever. First of all, RTGs aren't practical for powering anything beyond a certain size. Sure, you can add a bunch, but that makes the part count rocket up. If you want to run an ISRU rig, you're better off running fuel cells on some of the LFO you're making, like a coal mine running steam engines with coal straight from the ground. And sure, solar panels have diminishing returns, but a lot of people seem to think that the total power output doesn't matter, and that a small source of constant power is overpowered. The only reason RTGs seem overpowered is because everything else in the game is unrealistically power efficient. As for the claim that RTGs are only supposed to be for deep space, uhh, false, no, they used them in the Apollo missions, they used them in a weather satellite, and they used them on earth, in lighthouses, buoys, and monitoring stations. The response of real world governments to "Hey, we can build you a cylinder that produces electricity for free" is pretty much the same as that of KSP players, with the distinction that the real world governments are notably more squeamish about launching any radioactive material into space.