How to make Kraken Drives actually realistic

[Second Hand Rocket Science]

Hi,

I'd like to use some Kraken Drives in interstellar starship builds yet don't just want it to be "100,000,000,000 m/s. deltaV = inf". I want it to have some sort of limits or at least maybe a cooldown, like short bursts then the drive needs to rest for a few mins until firing again. I'm tired of making interstellar ships with 1.7 billion Xenon tanks and enough Dawn engines to cover planet Earth.

Thanks in advance.

[Vanamonde]

Are you asking for methods to make kraken drives? 

[StopIteration]

Kraken drives are basically unrealistic by definition.  In earlier versions of the game, linear RCS thrusters were OP, and may have fit your desire to have limitations for your kraken drive (if you even consider that to be a kraken drive), but I don't know of anything similar in the current game.  Of course you can always impose your own limitations in how you choose to use a kraken drive.

Other than that, you can use a mod to get some sort of torch drive with both high specific impulse and a lot of thrust, or you could also maybe try using less Dawn engines than "enough to cover planet Earth" and accept the lower acceleration in exchange for more delta v.  Nuclear engines might also be a good option depending on what you want.

Edited March 27, 2022 by StopIteration

[panzer1b]

If you want hard limitations then pick one of quite a few futuristic/near future mods out there that give you engines with ISPs comparable to and exceeding ions in stock (without the TWR issue), some even feature FTL capability and their own interesting mechanics which limit what you can and cant do with em (they can still use power, and to generate power you can have finite antimatter/fusion/nuke.  Aside from that, you can just impose your own limits to what is ok and what isnt with regards to kraken tech.

 

 

Myself, i recently got into them mostly because i wanted to try something new (never really tried kraken drives seriously before) and frankly got fed up with the limitations of stock with regards to making sci-fi themed stuff.  I still enjoy the challenge of fuel limits, but many things do become fairly mundane in KSP especially after doing them multiple times, and thats why for quite some time now ive used teleport to destination to transport craft under the condition that ive at least proven once or twice that i can get x ship to x location 100% legit, and that there is some sort of IRSU/fuel tanker where i want to teleport the ships to.  I personally think using kraken drives in these situations is no less of a "cheat" then simply teleporting them there which is purely cutting down on the time i need to spend doing multiple refuels using IRSU (stock IRSU in its own way is sorta a "cheat" as IRL there is no such thing as infinite resources (kethane back in the day is a great example of a realistic IRSU concept, it actually limited how much you could get fron a hex shaped grid area on each planet).  I also have started messing with them on craft that arent built according to stock aerodynamics (and using ANY of the stock engines would never go beyond 2km), and there are so many concept craft i have sitting around that are simply never gonna work under stock aero.  While i do like the 1.0+ aero, it does seriously limit the asthetics of viable craft, and sometimes i want to just build something that flies in KSP that would never work IRL for obvious reasons.

That and Ive already had plenty of craft that "hacked" their way to orbit by abusing the aero to hide things inside cargo bays, offset tool to make drag decrease, ect, but many things still arent possible to do despite being really cool (like externally transporting anything on a dropship).  At least they still require fuel, but the one above has ISRU and in theory it can land almost anywhere (ive taken it to every place but the surfaces of Tylo, Eve, Jool and Kerbol).

Speaking of which, this is prolly the pinnacle of BS i ever made that is a 100% viable SSTO SR-1 Normandy replica from ages ago (it was designed in V1.0).  It still makes orbit in 1.12, and its truly a product of a a deranged mind with nothing better to do before i had a job as this ship alone took me a whole week of nothing but KSP.  Ofc i have a life now, and i dont have the sort of time or patience to play any game that much, let alone spend all that time on a single ship (which isnt even practical in game cause its too effin laggy at 500 parts).  At least its truly an amazing feat (and the closest to a stock working SSTO sci-fi replica i think anyone has ever achieved.  Dont get me wrong, people have made some amazing replicas, but i have yet to see a SSTO of this detail/scale that has almost every internal detail down to the friggin med bay that works in stock aero and doesnt need kraken/alt-f12/whatnot, it even has a mako rover replica inside the lower bay that can drive out of the ship and land on RCS just like the one in ME did (it did have some wedging issues i never resolved which could tear the ship apart, but when i tdidnt wedge it was glorious).

My next thing i want to do in KSP is make a dropship that can carry this thing (and a few other vehicles smaller then it) 100% externally and it has to be a VTOL/SSTO that works in atmo.  This is 100% IMPOSSIBLE to do in stock while actually meeting my asthetic requirements, so i fully intend to make the dropship kraken powered as there is no other method to achieve what i want to achieve even with mods (that arent basically giving me kraken levels of technology).  So yeah, it might not be "realistic", but the kraken drives do enable a playstyle that just cant be done stock.

I want something akin to this idea (i wont replicate the star wars ones as i got my own ideas for looks, but same concept when it comes to where the tank is and how its dropped off).  Not happening with stock aero and without kraken drive tech, at east not for ATMO capability.

Still, its a singleplayer sandbox videogame, if you think that IRSU, kraken tech, alt-f12 menu are cheats, then there is nothing stopping you from avoiding them, but if you are like me and are willing to impose plausible limitations on your use of said "cheats" (or even screw around with em just for fun on a non-serious save like i have), then there is no reason why you cant make a k-drive ship and simply say "i wont use it for more then 1 minute per burn" or something like that if you want limits.

Edited March 27, 2022 by panzer1b

[Second Hand Rocket Science]

19 hours ago, panzer1b said:

If you want hard limitations then pick one of quite a few futuristic/near future mods out there that give you engines with ISPs comparable to and exceeding ions in stock (without the TWR issue), some even feature FTL capability and their own interesting mechanics which limit what you can and cant do with em (they can still use power, and to generate power you can have finite antimatter/fusion/nuke.

I'm trying to do this relatively stock (in relation to the kraken drive itself, not the ship). I took one look at Near Future Technology and almost went into cardiac arrest seeing how complex it was.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Second Hand Rocket Science

[Gargamel]

2 hours ago, Second Hand Rocket Science said:

I'm trying to do this relatively stock (in relation to the kraken drive itself, not the ship). I took one look at Near Future Technology and almost went into cardiac arrest seeing how complex it was.

If you think Near future is complicated, wait till you actually try getting a stock Kraken Drive to work be playable.   You have to take a bug that occurs in only very specific conditions, and then build a functioning, controllable, ship.  It's not impossible, as it has been done, especially with since patched bugs.  

I think we need to define what a Kraken drive is though.   A Kraken drive is an exploit of a bug in the code of KSP, which result in some amount of thrust/propulsion without the use of fuel.  They are completely unrealistic (Standing on a ladder, banging a kerbals head on a roof will get you to orbit), and have been pretty actively hunted down and removed from the game.   Some do remain though.

I do think you are looking for something like that of the Near Future packs, which are actually based in theoretical reality, and you're going to see a lot of similar drives in stock KSP2.   The NF engines are pretty simple (relative to interstellar travel in general), find the size engine(s) you need for your ship, a little math to figure out how much EC you need to power them, then power them either through solar or nuclear.  

Edited March 28, 2022 by Gargamel

[Bej Kerman]

On 3/26/2022 at 8:20 PM, Second Hand Rocket Science said:

Hi,

I'd like to use some Kraken Drives in interstellar starship builds yet don't just want it to be "100,000,000,000 m/s. deltaV = inf". I want it to have some sort of limits or at least maybe a cooldown, like short bursts then the drive needs to rest for a few mins until firing again. I'm tired of making interstellar ships with 1.7 billion Xenon tanks and enough Dawn engines to cover planet Earth.

Thanks in advance.

1. That's all arbitrary and frankly I'm having a very hard time understanding how Kraken Drive is defined in your head or how cooldowns are supposed to make them any less broken. Interstellar Extended and Far Future do interstellar propulsion properly and realistically, and KSP 2 will all support this in stock.

2. Stop making interstellar ships with 1.7 billion Xenon tanks then - the stock game doesn't even have other star systems.

[Second Hand Rocket Science]

17 hours ago, Gargamel said:

I do think you are looking for something like that of the Near Future packs, which are actually based in theoretical reality, and you're going to see a lot of similar drives in stock KSP2.   The NF engines are pretty simple (relative to interstellar travel in general), find the size engine(s) you need for your ship, a little math to figure out how much EC you need to power them, then power them either through solar or nuclear.  

Right. I'm gonna grit my teeth and download Near Future Tech. I tried to stay away from it as much as kerbally possible, yet it seems inevitable. Wish me luck.

2 MINS LATER: Couldn't find that one pack that has them all, so just ticked all the boxes for the mods with "Near Future" in their title. I just downloaded 27 mods including dependencies, recommendations, suggestions... there goes half my hard drive space!

Edited March 29, 2022 by Second Hand Rocket Science
Updated

[Gordon Fecyk]

I find the Umbra Space Industries parts a little more manageable. You can pick and choose the part packs you want, and with a combination of the Orion pulse drive and the Alcubierre (warp) drive you can get pretty far.

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Second Hand Rocket Science]

6 minutes ago, Gordon Fecyk said:

I find the Umbra Space Industries parts a little more manageable. You can pick and choose the part packs you want, and with a combination of the Orion pulse drive and the Alcubierre (warp) drive you can get pretty far.

I've downloaded Near Future and found out how exciting new stuff is. Lots of new stuff. Pretty sure this topic is pointless now...

PS: I subsequently deleted Kerbalism after I had downloaded it accidentally. Interstellar space stuff is cool, but life support and kerbals running out of food? Nah, I'm good.