What is the most useless thing in KSP?

[KerikBalm]

On 2/7/2022 at 10:35 PM, magnemoe said:

The Rhino I think I only used once for the crashing stage landing an 100 ton base on Tylo. Yes I see the point of having an heavy upper stage engine I find it a bit overkill even for 200 ton. It worked well for the Tylo base however.  

At 3-4x scale, with much bigger rockets/spaceplanes needed to get to orbit, and bigger payloads needed once in orbit, the Rhino finds a lot of use with me.

Even at 1x, its useful for ejection stages for large spacecraft (reusable ejection stages that refeul from ISRU too)

On 2/7/2022 at 10:35 PM, magnemoe said:

Now the 2.5 meter probe core is probably pretty useless, yes you can put it inline below an docking port but you likely have other places to mount an 1.25 meter one who have the same features. 

Well, in a niche case, combined with Pilot kerbals, it can serve as a control point allowing multiple hops, as opposed to direct connections. So it sometimes finds it way onto my space stations/motherships/ground bases on/around other planets.

[magnemoe]

16 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

At 3-4x scale, with much bigger rockets/spaceplanes needed to get to orbit, and bigger payloads needed once in orbit, the Rhino finds a lot of use with me.

Even at 1x, its useful for ejection stages for large spacecraft (reusable ejection stages that refeul from ISRU too)

Well, in a niche case, combined with Pilot kerbals, it can serve as a control point allowing multiple hops, as opposed to direct connections. So it sometimes finds it way onto my space stations/motherships/ground bases on/around other planets.

Good point, I have done this with two pilots I think but mods might affect it? 
And I get your point about the Rhino, it might been an idea for an current design actually, but all is deployed  

[BekfastDerp13]

The stayputnik, that mini cube, the giant rover wheels (just because I only make small rovers), the ant engine, and the weirdly shaped fuel tanks (i only used them for historical crafts).

[Vl3d]

Monoliths

[Catto]

Science mode.

[Admiral Fluffy]

5 hours ago, Yi C said:

I will consider the fireworks useless.

Fair. They are fun though.

43 minutes ago, siklidkid said:

Science mode.

I play science mode, because I think sandbox is too easy, and career mode too hard.

[Catto]

25 minutes ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

 

I play science mode, because I think sandbox is too easy, and career mode too hard.

Ah, sorry i said that cause i thought nobody cared about it. 

[Admiral Fluffy]

1 hour ago, siklidkid said:

Ah, sorry i said that cause i thought nobody cared about it. 

Its fine.

The old texture parts are useless!

[adsii1970]

At times, I am the most useless thing in KSP. 

I come up with a really nifty design, try to fly it, and boom! a huge fireball explosion.

Come back an hour later, bored, and throw together some silly, stupid looking contraption, and the thing flies and handles like a dream.

[mister_goo]

Pilots. Obsoleted by probe cores.

Edited February 25, 2022 by mister_goo

[Beamer]

On 2/16/2022 at 12:02 AM, SSTO Crasher said:

I say that the xenon engine are pretty useless unless you are using a super long range probe

I often find them to be the best solution for stuff on Kerbol orbits. I have a probe design I use for setting up relay and asteroid scouting constellations at various orbits around Kerbol that run on a single engine and large Xenon tank. The low thrust is generally not a problem when you're in orbit around Kerbol. I also use 19 of them on a Kerbol science station that can get down to Kerbol surface and back up again to Kerbin orbit with plenty of spare fuel to do a fly-by of a few of the inner planets if I want to. Even if it were possible to get 12K deltaV with a nuke engine and a huge fuel tank (I'm not so sure it is in stock), your launch weight would be at insane levels, I doubt you'd even get it off the planet.

 

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

On 2/23/2022 at 5:00 PM, Yi C said:

I will consider the fireworks useless.

Yeah, but once we, console users get them, we will have BDarmory or something I don't know

[SSTO Crasher]

Those girder pieces are not very useful 

[DunaManiac]

On 2/25/2022 at 5:40 PM, SSTO Crasher said:

Those girder pieces are not very useful 

I'd tend to disagree. If you've ever built a space station and had a dedicated solar array, you'll know what I mean.

But anyway, what I think is the least useful part in the game is the CH-J3 Fly by wire avionics Hub. I have never once used it. The sad part is though, it  does look cool, and a part that extends SAS capability to non-SAS capable probes (Stayputnik, I'm looking at you) would be very useful if it was not shaped like a nose cone.

[Second Hand Rocket Science]

For me it's the tiny jet engines you unlock at the start of the plane tech tree (can't remember the name). They are woefully underpowered and they have not featured in 1 of my wide collection of spacecraft and planes*.

*The term used "planes" refers to anything with wings mounted on, including the time Franco Kerman tried to make a jetpack. R.I.P.

[Admiral Fluffy]

8 hours ago, Second Hand Rocket Science said:

For me it's the tiny jet engines you unlock at the start of the plane tech tree (can't remember the name). They are woefully underpowered and they have not featured in 1 of my wide collection of spacecraft and planes*.

Juno.

Those are pretty bad, decent in pairs though.

[Frostiken]

I nominate the Soyuz capsules, the MEM, and the Escape Tower.

The Soyuz capsules are so draggy they're useless and will flip your rocket 90% of the time, and the MEM is just overbuilt and too heavy for no actual reason.

The Escape Tower could be fun if it were usable. Why don't the parachutes have a node on top to attach the tower? 

Edited March 6, 2022 by Frostiken

[Neptunium_69]

1.Mite engine (which I found a use on the Aurora 4)
2.Very small nose cone
3.Clamp-o-torn Jr.
4.Fireworks
5.I never used fuel cells

Edited March 6, 2022 by Smart Boy

[Biggen]

On 3/1/2022 at 10:27 AM, DunaManiac said:

I'd tend to disagree. If you've ever built a space station and had a dedicated solar array, you'll know what I mean.

But anyway, what I think is the least useful part in the game is the CH-J3 Fly by wire avionics Hub. I have never once used it. The sad part is though, it  does look cool, and a part that extends SAS capability to non-SAS capable probes (Stayputnik, I'm looking at you) would be very useful if it was not shaped like a nose cone.

I use the fly by wire quite a bit in mid career mode so I can just send scientists to other planets/moons alone so they can reset experiments.

[DunaManiac]

10 hours ago, Biggen said:

I use the fly by wire quite a bit in mid career mode so I can just send scientists to other planets/moons alone so they can reset experiments.

Which is why the Fly by wire would actually be useful if it wasn't shaped like a nosecone and an in-line component like a reaction wheel. That way it could have a much wider range of uses, such as making the stayputnik flyable, or useful for a wider range of craft as it would be able to be stowed in a service bay.

On 3/6/2022 at 5:54 AM, Smart Boy said:

5.I never used fuel cells

I don't use fuel cells that much, since I'm a pre 1.0 veteran. I usually just forget to turn them on and use solar panels instead. Fuel cells would actually be useful on mid-to-late career mode fuel refining outposts, as it can run off some of the fuel being refined into the tanks, with an added bonus of being able to work at night and being more cost effective than RTGs.

Edited March 7, 2022 by DunaManiac

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, DunaManiac said:

Which is why the Fly by wire would actually be useful if it wasn't shaped like a nosecone and an in-line component like a reaction wheel. That way it could have a much wider range of uses, such as making the stayputnik flyable, or useful for a wider range of craft as it would be able to be stowed in a service bay.

I don't use fuel cells that much, since I'm a pre 1.0 veteran. I usually just forget to turn them on and use solar panels instead. Fuel cells would actually be useful on mid-to-late career mode fuel refining outposts, as it can run off some of the fuel being refined into the tanks, with an added bonus of being able to work at night and being more cost effective than RTGs.

Kind of forgot the CH-J3 Fly by wire avionics Hub even existed as I have never thought of using it, making it the most useless part for me  
Fuel cells are nice as the large ones give decent with power, the small are an poor mans RTG. 

They have an realism problem in that they produce more power than creating fuel and oxidizer require to run them, now this could be an game play issue like not being nagged all the time that your mun base is out of power all the time during night and you have to turn mining and refining on and off every night and power management tend to be an issue anyway. 

[KerikBalm]

On 3/5/2022 at 8:47 PM, Second Hand Rocket Science said:

For me it's the tiny jet engines you unlock at the start of the plane tech tree (can't remember the name). They are woefully underpowered and they have not featured in 1 of my wide collection of spacecraft and planes*.

*The term used "planes" refers to anything with wings mounted on, including the time Franco Kerman tried to make a jetpack. R.I.P.

On 3/6/2022 at 5:00 AM, Admiral Fluffy said:

Juno.

Those are pretty bad, decent in pairs though.

They aren't great... but they are good for "fun" small single kerbal planes, small explorers on laythe for surface feature hunting/biome crossing. 

They can even be used to make 0.625m SSTOs, but just barely. You can send up small SSTOs with a Juno engine to gather missing grav data, or to funtion as a quick relay... but yea... they aren't great.

They are niche, rather like Panther engines. The panther is generally inferior to the whiplash, and only has a niche for "fun" designs"... but you can then make the argument that all the jets that aren't rapiers are useless, because they are all inferior when it comes to getting things to space.

On 3/7/2022 at 1:07 PM, Biggen said:

I use the fly by wire quite a bit in mid career mode so I can just send scientists to other planets/moons alone so they can reset experiments.

Yea,  I use it to make pilots obsolete. Probe cores have issues with plasma blackout and signal loss.

On 3/7/2022 at 5:40 PM, DunaManiac said:

Which is why the Fly by wire would actually be useful if it wasn't shaped like a nosecone and an in-line component like a reaction wheel. That way it could have a much wider range of uses, such as making the stayputnik flyable, or useful for a wider range of craft as it would be able to be stowed in a service bay.

I forget what happens when you have a kerbal and a probe with SAS but no signal. I think you retain control and SAS function, no?

On 3/7/2022 at 5:40 PM, DunaManiac said:

I don't use fuel cells that much, since I'm a pre 1.0 veteran. I usually just forget to turn them on and use solar panels instead. Fuel cells would actually be useful on mid-to-late career mode fuel refining outposts, as it can run off some of the fuel being refined into the tanks, with an added bonus of being able to work at night and being more cost effective than RTGs.

I don't use them for the perpetual mining machine thing... but they are more mass efficient than batteries and RTGs. I have used them with robotics on some Eve ascent vehicles that eat up a lot of power climbing through the atmosphere. Solar panels break off, or overheat on reentry (or just don't face the right way). I use many batteries as a buffer (since their output is instnataneous, but RTGs can only supply so much power per unit time), but they start to add to much mass. RTGs just don't put out enough power. Fuel cell arrays fit the bill.

This particular design is a fully stock reusable Eve cargo shuttle. The prop+rocket carrier goes on a suborbital trajectory, the 2nd stage carries the payload to orbit:

Spoiler

I can switch back to the 1st stage before it falls too far into the atmosphere, and fly it back to its launch poing, to be refilled by ISRU

Of course, the fuel cell arrays didn't produce enough power at the end of the climb (power consumption increased as I got higher and the blades had to spin faster to keep it in the air in the thinner air). Yes, it had a lot of batteries (it also needed mass upfront to balance when fuel tanks were empty), yes, when fuel is gone, they stop supplying EC. Yes, they cannot be "recharged" by a solar panel like batteries. However, that's all fine.

This design has a large battery buffer, but not large enough when the plane is fully loaded. With fuel cells, it has enough power to reach its maximum altitude. When EC is gone, it lights rocket engines, whose laternators refil the batteries. It can also land and slowly recharge batteries. That means it can fly back to its launch point, where an ISRU miner waits to refuel it... allowing the fuel cells to do their job again (after the orbiter comes down and redocks with the 1st stage).

Without the robotics though, the fuel cells didn't have much use.... the only designs I remember using them on, were rovers like this:

(although the fuel cell is not visible there, the LFO tanks for it are). Similar designs:

that went along with a mining base, but also fit in a mk3 bay so the rover could be transported by dropexcrements (the rover is 2 parts, docks inline for transport, side by side for more stability when roving).

I admit, solar panels are adequate, but like that, it could also rove around at night, using headlights, transmitting data rapidly, etc.

Fuel cells get my stamp of approval, I actually use them.

[Sentient Mop]

Safety/humane practices. 

I know, I know, kerbals and all that and that's normal but not for me. When I started I was dead set not to loose any kerbals I didn't need to, it was fun trying to design escape systems. But I barely could lesrn how to get to orbit after bout 15 hours. So I decided to not care and bam everything became easier.

[Wizard Kerbal]

The ant and spider engines.

[TheFlyingKerman]

On 3/6/2022 at 12:00 PM, Admiral Fluffy said:

Juno.

Those are pretty bad, decent in pairs though.

Juno's are very useful in career / science games. A basic Juno plane can do temperature scans and crew reports flying over several biomes, that gives a lot of early science. The same vessel can also to observation and part test contracts at very low cost. The Juno can even power rovers for moar science.

18 hours ago, Wizard Kerbal said:

The ant and spider engines.

??? The Ant is sufficient to land a small craft on a small moon -- often at the lowest launch cost / mass possible

https://imgpile.com/images/wRgWbC.png

I also use the Ant / Spider in place of RCS.