What is the most useless thing in KSP?

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

Dres

Thud

The strategy building

I guess its the Mk2 drone core? Never saw anyone use it.

 

Edited January 20, 2022 by Aerodynamic Kerbal
hwey gyus luk niew peg

[miklkit]

The ground.  It is made of ice so everything slides around.  Completely useless.

[Beamer]

Anything with a lifting surface. I love rockets, it's vector math and orbital mechanics, it's physics, it's beautiful. Heat Shields, retro burns and Parachutes are fine for landing in atmospheres. Aerodynamics on the other hand is some sort of evil Harry Potter witchery that is outlawed in my Kerbal universe. The runway is meant for rover tests.

 

[Lt_Duckweed]

On 1/6/2022 at 1:34 PM, king of nowhere said:

I just realized, I nominate the engine plates.

The engine plates only apparent function is to allow you to put a small engine in a large rocket without changing the size of the rocket, avoiding aerodinamic problems. Great! Very useful, actually.

Except that those damn things are so heavy, you may as well put in a bigger engine instead. They end up gaining nothing. It's not like you can get rid of them afterwards either.

 

1. You can change the number of engines the engine plate can hold, up to 8+1.
2. Any engines attached directly to the plate nodes are shielded from drag while the engine plate shroud is still attached.
3. The engine plate is a decoupler.

It's a multiadaptor, interstage fairing, and decoupler rolled into one part.  If you need to mount a cluster of engines, for example nervs, they save on part count, and can save on mass as well, depending on what exactly they are replacing

[Fraktal]

What if the engines are large enough relative to the engine plate that they clip into each other? Can their thrust vectors overheat and destroy each other at high gimbal?

[Rakete]

As for the discussed drain valve. It has its place.

I use it to drain remaining oxidizer of my SSTOs after ascent, before switching to the nervas. Also it is useful for planes to jetison excess fuel before landing to easy the impact of touchdown, like RL-planes do if they have to land unexpectly and are to heavy.

 

Most useless part? The not-rockomax cube. Never had any use for it.

[Robin Patenall]

My head canon is that the Not-Rockomax Micronode was made the wrong size, if it was double the size it would be perfect to connect the modular girder segments together.  I've been working on a personal mod that creates (among other scaled parts) modular girders that are the same length but half the size in the other dimensions and the micronode fits them beautifully. In fact, I added a double sized  micronode (a mininode if you will) just to be used with the normal sided girders.

My vote for the most useless part is anything to do with planes. I still think that the ability to build, fly  and land a plane without blowing up in KSP is actually some in-joke that experienced players keep telling the newbies and any purported sightings of planes (spaceplanes or otherwise) around  the KSC are actually UFOs.

 

[BekfastDerp13]

90% of the 'structural' section of parts in the VAB

Edited February 4, 2022 by BekfastDerp13

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, Rakete said:

As for the discussed drain valve. It has its place.

I use it to drain remaining oxidizer of my SSTOs after ascent, before switching to the nervas. Also it is useful for planes to jetison excess fuel before landing to easy the impact of touchdown, like RL-planes do if they have to land unexpectly and are to heavy.

Most useless part? The not-rockomax cube. Never had any use for it.

Yes the drain value is useful for dumping oxidizer on an spaceplane to lighten it then returning. Also nice to dump ore or other resources if you need more dV jumping to repair another rover on the Mun  
The not-rockomax cube, has used it on robotic arms a few times but yes its very niche, it would be way more useful if it could surface attach like an stronger cubical octagonal strut. 

Now does the Rockomax brand adaptor 2 had any use cases outside of look? has used it for that on bases but. 
Not sure if I ever used the Rockomax HubMax Multi-Point Connector, the 1.25 docking ports surface attach so just use anything. 

[magnemoe]

18 hours ago, Lt_Duckweed said:

1. You can change the number of engines the engine plate can hold, up to 8+1.
2. Any engines attached directly to the plate nodes are shielded from drag while the engine plate shroud is still attached.
3. The engine plate is a decoupler.

It's a multiadaptor, interstage fairing, and decoupler rolled into one part.  If you need to mount a cluster of engines, for example nervs, they save on part count, and can save on mass as well, depending on what exactly they are replacing

This, I use it plenty from groups of ion engines, the 9 LV-N or you simply want two spark on an eve accent craft upper stage. 

[Whackjob]

On 2/3/2022 at 11:21 AM, Beamer said:

Anything with a lifting surface. I love rockets, it's vector math and orbital mechanics, it's physics, it's beautiful. Heat Shields, retro burns and Parachutes are fine for landing in atmospheres. Aerodynamics on the other hand is some sort of evil Harry Potter witchery that is outlawed in my Kerbal universe. The runway is meant for rover tests.

 

On 2/4/2022 at 9:42 AM, BekfastDerp13 said:

90% of the 'structural' section of parts in the VAB

I use a lot of those!  Not that I'd say they were NECESSARY, mind you...

[king of nowhere]

On 2/3/2022 at 11:06 PM, Lt_Duckweed said:

1. You can change the number of engines the engine plate can hold, up to 8+1.
2. Any engines attached directly to the plate nodes are shielded from drag while the engine plate shroud is still attached.
3. The engine plate is a decoupler.

It's a multiadaptor, interstage fairing, and decoupler rolled into one part.  If you need to mount a cluster of engines, for example nervs, they save on part count, and can save on mass as well, depending on what exactly they are replacing

I'm not saying the part is useless per se. I'm saying it is so heavy, everything you gain from it you lose for the weight, and you generally have more mass-efficient ways of accomplishing the same task.

On 2/4/2022 at 5:49 PM, magnemoe said:

Now does the Rockomax brand adaptor 2 had any use cases outside of look? has used it for that on bases but. 
 

i used it in caveman as an impromptu aerodinamic connector, because I lacked better parts to perform the task.

[asap1]

the poodle engine, it's completely outclassed by the wolfhound in pretty much ever possible way

it's only useful if you don't have making history.

[linuxgurugamer]

1 hour ago, asap1 said:

the poodle engine, it's completely outclassed by the wolfhound in pretty much ever possible way

it's only useful if you don't have making history.

Except that the Poodle is available at least one technode earlier than the Wolfhound.  If the Wolfhound isn't available, the Poodle is a decent engine

Poodle is also about 1.5 ton lighter than the Wolfhound

Depending on the mission, the Poodle might be the right choice.

[Admiral Fluffy]

4 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Except that the Poodle is available at least one technode earlier than the Wolfhound.  If the Wolfhound isn't available, the Poodle is a decent engine

 Its available two nodes earlier.

[king of nowhere]

the poodle also has a far better TWR than the wolfhound. I'd say a sane space program (as in, a space program that does not try to make extended life support grand tours with kiloton ships like I do) should have a lot more use for the poodle than for the wolfhound, because it shouldn't have many ships big enough to justify a wolfhound in the first place

[magnemoe]

20 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

the poodle also has a far better TWR than the wolfhound. I'd say a sane space program (as in, a space program that does not try to make extended life support grand tours with kiloton ships like I do) should have a lot more use for the poodle than for the wolfhound, because it shouldn't have many ships big enough to justify a wolfhound in the first place

Poodle is also shorter in the two bell setup who is nice for lander. larger landers. 
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.  

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. 
 

Edited February 7, 2022 by magnemoe

[Watermel00n]

The puff.

btw, i am  making a mod to fix some of these useless things (QBE, MultiHub, etc...)

[Akagi]

I came here to vent about the tiny drill

So useless!

why would you NEED it?

[AtomicTech]

54 minutes ago, Akagi said:

I came here to vent about the tiny drill

So useless!

why would you NEED it?

I'd partially concur!

It's pretty crappy for a niche that needs something decent!

[king of nowhere]

On 2/11/2022 at 4:04 PM, Watermel00n said:

The puff.

btw, i am  making a mod to fix some of these useless things (QBE, MultiHub, etc...)

the puff is indeed useless in the core game, excepting challenge purposes.

It finds a niche use in kerbalism, though, because it's the only engine - including rcs systems - with no failure chance whatsoever. a puff is guaranteed to never, ever break and leave your ship stranded.

granted, it's still crappy enough you generally prefer to carry a few redundant engines

1 hour ago, Akagi said:

I came here to vent about the tiny drill

So useless!

why would you NEED it?

to save 1 ton of weight.

my dancing porcupine rover had 2 tiny drills and one tiny convert-o-tron and it could refuel in 50 days, and still keep 3300 m/s of deltaV and the capacity to move nimbly on the ground in mid-gravity planets. it wouldn't have been possible with large drills and large convert-o-trons.

[Akagi]

1 hour ago, AtomicTech said:

I'd partially concur!

It's pretty crappy for a niche that needs something decent!

i agree!

[SSTO Crasher]

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

[Admiral Fluffy]

32 minutes ago, SSTO Crasher said:

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

Yep. Useless in most other cases. Really good on the Minmus flats though!

3 hours ago, Akagi said:

I came here to vent about the tiny drill

Good for small ISRU operations. Nothing else.

[Yi C]

On 11/28/2020 at 6:39 AM, Miss.Toolong said:

For me is the escape towel, I have not use it on purpose

My escape towel is the ‘Revert’ button lol.

I will consider the fireworks useless.