What are some useful parts you don't use enough?

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, Daveroski said:

Please enlighten me. What is this trouble that I am asking for but apparently not receiving?

There's a mod somewhere that turns on autostrut for every single part and IIRC sets it to root. Those who use it love it. I imagine what it will do when I dock two gangly space stations together.

[Daveroski]

30 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

There's a mod somewhere that turns on autostrut for every single part and IIRC sets it to root. Those who use it love it. I imagine what it will do when I dock two gangly space stations together.

Sets it to root? please read my post again and then perhaps you will say something that I can reply to in the spirit of conversation.

I already know that autostrutting everything to root is bad because the root changes for parts when ships dock. The new root can be a long way from some parts and can cause problems.

[Dafni]

On 2/19/2019 at 6:23 PM, 5thHorseman said:

I have never, ever, ever had an autostrut-related kraken attack. And I use them on pretty much every craft I build.

Same here. To the letter.

 

Lets emphasize the following again, for the players that still have issues:

 

On 2/19/2019 at 6:23 PM, 5thHorseman said:

I strongly suspect there is a certain safe percentage of parts you can have autostrut on. I do it on maybe 10% of my parts. If you autostrut everything to "root" (by default, I hear some do) sure you're asking for trouble. If you autostrut side-mounted tanks to grandparent and engines on your dropped launch stages to root, you shouldn't have any problem. Even with weird crazy stations.

 Take this to heart and you should be fine.

[Loskene]

Yes I should add the caveat to my original post that autostrut typically only messes up when used excessively. I had to learn from experience to only use it where absolutely necessary, rather than on every part I thought might have wiggle issues. But again that's something only learned from experience and the game gives no indication that autostrut may cause problems if used in a manner the physics engine doesn't agree with, so it can be a source of many headaches for people trying to debug a pretzel station. What also should be made common knowledge is that pretzel'd stations will unpretzel themselves if you back away slowly, don't make any sudden moves that might frighten it, remove the strutting and reload from the tracking station. If one panics, tries to dock anything or move the station before taking these precautions, the kraken will be summoned in a most foul mood. Yes I found all this out the hard way, and not just stations, ships with autostruts and some part clipping blew themselves to pieces many times before I'd noticed what went wrong.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Daveroski said:

Sets it to root? please read my post again and then perhaps you will say something that I can reply to in the spirit of conversation.

I already know that autostrutting everything to root is bad because the root changes for parts when ships dock. The new root can be a long way from some parts and can cause problems.

Then you know what problems you're not having.

[Fraston]

TheTwin-boar. It is absurdly overpowered (Squad please don’t change it’s stats at all as a part of the revamp it will most likely get in the near future) I cannot praise this engine any more. It is the best first stage engine for a 2.5 m rocket, period.

[overkill13]

3 hours ago, Fraston said:

TheTwin-boar. It is absurdly overpowered (Squad please don’t change it’s stats at all as a part of the revamp it will most likely get in the near future) I cannot praise this engine any more. It is the best first stage engine for a 2.5 m rocket, period.

Squad NEEDED to change the Making History engines.  They were weird and didn't fit anywhere.  The Twin Boar is OG stock and exactly the way it's supposed to be.  I don't imagine Squad changing it for any reason.

As for the OP:  Any of the shielded docking ports.  To heavy and cumbersome to fit into my ships when I can just tack on a radially attached docking port.  This might change now that my Panther based SSTO spaceplanes are showing drag issues in 1.5.  I recently updated from 1.2.2 to 1.5 and had to stuff all my radially attached batteries and solar panels inside a service bay to make a couple of my low tech SSTOs usable again, with radial docking ports.

[klesh]

On 2/19/2019 at 12:23 PM, 5thHorseman said:

I have never, ever, ever had an autostrut-related kraken attack. And I use them on pretty much every craft I build.

I strongly suspect there is a certain safe percentage of parts you can have autostrut on. I do it on maybe 10% of my parts. If you autostrut everything to "root" (by default, I hear some do) sure you're asking for trouble.

 

When Steam craft sharing became a thing, I downloaded some dude's ISS replica.  It looked great, but shook and shimmied itself to pieces.  Turn on autostrut visualization in the cheat menu and sure enough it was a big spiderweb of autostruts connecting every which way.   Explained this to dude, dude redid them, re-uploaded the craft and it works just fine now.   Lemme see if I can track that down.

Bingo!  

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198047171358/myworkshopfiles/?appid=220200

[StupidAndy]

parachutes

[herbal space program]

Sepratrons!

[SchwinnTropius]

On 2/24/2019 at 9:25 AM, Fraston said:

TheTwin-boar. It is absurdly overpowered (Squad please don’t change it’s stats at all as a part of the revamp it will most likely get in the near future) I cannot praise this engine any more. It is the best first stage engine for a 2.5 m rocket, period.

My favorite moment in KSP was when I discovered two Jumbo 64s on top of a Twin Boar could take 25 tons of whatever you want to orbit in one stage. It's that good.

 

On 2/24/2019 at 12:59 PM, overkill13 said:

The Twin Boar is OG stock and exactly the way it's supposed to be.  I don't imagine Squad changing it for any reason.

Please don't jinx it. I fear they will find a reason to change it now, especially with the revamps in progress.

[herbal space program]

On 2/24/2019 at 9:25 AM, Fraston said:

TheTwin-boar. It is absurdly overpowered (Squad please don’t change it’s stats at all as a part of the revamp it will most likely get in the near future) I cannot praise this engine any more. It is the best first stage engine for a 2.5 m rocket, period.

It's a great booster, especially if you're trying to save money, but if money is no object slapping multiple Vectors on a MH 2.5m engine plate is even better!

Edited February 26, 2019 by herbal space program

[farmerben]

On 2/19/2019 at 1:00 AM, Aegolius13 said:

Fuel cells.  Personally I find it hard to overcome the stigma of using up a finite resource to generate electricity.  But a lot of the time they make for an easier / cheaper / more reliable setup compared to solar panels or RTGs.  The fuel cell arrays can also do some pretty good things when combined with ions.

That is a great idea!  I have never used the fuel cell array.  I'd love to see this work.  

 

[StrandedonEarth]

Aircraft parts. I just don't have the patience to actually fly somewhere, even at high-speed, high-altitude, 4x physics warp.

[Chel]

That one way RCS jet (can't remember the name). It's really useful for having exact control and placement on my crafts

[Aegolius13]

3 hours ago, farmerben said:

That is a great idea!  I have never used the fuel cell array.  I'd love to see this work.  

 

According to the wiki, when you take into account both xenon and LFO consumption, it's got an ISP of 1293.  Don't know if that figure is still current, but it's got to be a pretty good number. 

Below is a little lander I put together for a Jool 5.  The two arrays power the four Dawns with a bit to spare.  The Spark to provide a little extra kick for landings.  This thing was capable of landing on Vall (with a couple drop tanks not pictured), as well as the little moons and return trip to Kerbin.  It would push around a little fuel refill barge in between destinations.

[OHara]

The EAS-4 strut.   

It stops just the wobbles I want to be stopped, and that's worth 0.05 tonnes.  I measure no extra drag when I add these struts.

Well, when I started playing I didn't use it enough, but I know better now.

[Capt. Hunt]

On 2/19/2019 at 3:59 PM, The_Cat_In_Space said:

Drogue chutes are really useful for me. When I'm building a high speed jet, I put them on for landing purposes

You're confusing Drogue with Drag.

Drogue chutes are designed to slow you down just enough to safely deploy the main chute during descent, not for slowing planes during rollout on a runway.

The game doesn't have stock drag chutes, although you can get them with the realchutes mod.

[klesh]

On 2/19/2019 at 3:14 AM, RealKerbal3x said:

I’d like to use the Making History structural tubes more. If only SQUAD would fix their #%$> drag problems.

 

16 votes and counting; currently tied for 11th-most popular bug.  If anyone is reading this and feels the same way you should add your upvote here:  https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/19376

Edited February 26, 2019 by klesh

[farmerben]

Another crazy part is the puff mono propellant engine.  I have only found one really good use for it, which is landing planes on Duna.  The puff engine doesn't seem to notice other parts in its exhaust stream.  It even works inside a closed cargo bay.  I eventually got this large plane to work carrying ISRU and all the science equipment to explore multiple biomes on Duna.  Ventral engines and reverse engines are very helpful for landing.  

 

What I have yet to discover is any good reason to carry the large mono propellant tanks... MK3 monopropellant... really?

Edited February 26, 2019 by farmerben

[herbal space program]

10 hours ago, Capt. Hunt said:

You're confusing Drogue with Drag.

Drogue chutes are designed to slow you down just enough to safely deploy the main chute during descent, not for slowing planes during rollout on a runway.

The game doesn't have stock drag chutes, although you can get them with the realchutes mod.

Drogue, drag, all I know is they work pretty well for that purpose and if you don't have them on your Duna spaceplane, good luck landing it! I'd say they're more critical to keep you pointed in the right direction than to slow you down per se, but they do that too.

5 hours ago, klesh said:

 

16 votes and counting; currently tied for 11th-most popular bug.  If anyone is reading this and feels the same way you should add your upvote here:  https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/19376

Since you seem knowledgeable about current bugs, is multiple Sepratrons causing everything to Kraken out on the launchpad a known thing? I was trying to build a demonstration ship consisting of a wad of Sepratrons mounted on octagonal struts behind a 2.5m fairing, by way of demonstrating their breathtaking TWR, and the second the craft went live on the launchpad there were loud explosions and it went twirling through the air, before anything had even been staged. The Sepratrons were not clipped into each other AFAICT, and making it so none of them were resting on the ground didn't help. Does this sound familiar to you or anybody else?

Edited February 26, 2019 by herbal space program

[Espatie]

50 minutes ago, farmerben said:

What I have yet to discover is any good reason to carry the large mono propellant tanks... MK3 monopropellant... really?

The 2.5m version is useful as a holding tank on a base or station.

[Capt. Hunt]

3 hours ago, farmerben said:

Another crazy part is the puff mono propellant engine.  I have only found one really good use for it, which is landing planes on Duna.  The puff engine doesn't seem to notice other parts in its exhaust stream.  It even works inside a closed cargo bay.  I eventually got this large plane to work carrying ISRU and all the science equipment to explore multiple biomes on Duna.  Ventral engines and reverse engines are very helpful for landing.  

 

What I have yet to discover is any good reason to carry the large mono propellant tanks... MK3 monopropellant... really?

Puff OMS engines are very useful for orbital maneuvering, especially if you need RCS but don't want the added bulk of an LFO engine and tankage.  They're handy for spaceplanes, since they allow you to only need to carry enough Oxidizer for the ascent.  I've also found them useful for light weight minmus landers.  The heavier tanks are also pretty useful for bigger landers and applications where lots of RCS maneuvering is needed, like multiple tricky dockings.  I use those all the time.

3 hours ago, herbal space program said:

Drogue, drag, all I know is they work pretty well for that purpose and if you don't have them on your Duna spaceplane, good luck landing it! I'd say they're more critical to keep you pointed in the right direction than to slow you down per se, but they do that too.

don't they still despawn when your wheels touch down?

[farmerben]

43 minutes ago, Capt. Hunt said:

Puff OMS engines are very useful for orbital maneuvering, especially if you need RCS but don't want the added bulk of an LFO engine and tankage.  They're handy for spaceplanes, since they allow you to only need to carry enough Oxidizer for the ascent.  I've also found them useful for light weight minmus landers.  The heavier tanks are also pretty useful for bigger landers and applications where lots of RCS maneuvering is needed, like multiple tricky dockings.  I use those all the time.

 

Could you post some pictures of good examples and explain the mission objectives?  

I'll grant that someone could have a huge fuel depot in orbit if they want one.  But I do lots of rendevous using thrusters  on the final 200m of approach and it doesn't take that much.  I really want to love on mono propellant more.  But other people have basically proved to me that LF/OX engines and reaction wheels can nearly always do more with less mass.  About the only case I can really justify is for long range surface rovers that flip over multiple times.  I'm not poo-pooing what you're saying.  I really want to see examples where lots of mono propellant is truly justified.

 

[Aegolius13]

1 hour ago, Capt. Hunt said:

Puff OMS engines are very useful for orbital maneuvering, especially if you need RCS but don't want the added bulk of an LFO engine and tankage.  They're handy for spaceplanes, since they allow you to only need to carry enough Oxidizer for the ascent.  I've also found them useful for light weight minmus landers.  The heavier tanks are also pretty useful for bigger landers and applications where lots of RCS maneuvering is needed, like multiple tricky dockings.  I use those all the time.

I've got to generally disagree with this one.  Monopropellant tanks have a worse dry mass fraction than LFO tanks, and the Puff has substantially worse ISP.  If I need to do more than dock, I'd rather just respect to reserve a little LFO and use a small engine or even a Vernor thruster.   

I've had a few cases (like escape pods) where a command pod's onboard monoprop storage met my delta-v needs, so I used that.  But in those cases the  Puff would be too big and heavy; the one-way thruster was a better fit.