Rocket noodling? Oh gods, not again...

[Jarin]

One thing I deeply do not miss about early KSP1 is how floppy the part joints were. But looking at the new footage coming out of the ESA event, it looks like it's back. Hard to believe the "Slaying the Kraken" line when rockets are looking like this:

(timestamp 6:25 if the link doesn't work)

Just look at that noodle launch. Just ringing the dinner bell for the Kraken to come feed.

Edited February 20, 2023 by Jarin
why

[intelliCom]

Just use autostrut, if it still exists.

I mean it's fair given the size (and likely weight) of the rocket

[razark]

37 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

Just use autostrut, if it still exists.

I saw one video where it was pointed out that it did not exist.

[Guest]

It's me of lost KSP youtubers lost the ability to nicely place struts over the years?

Maybe it's because they all had a limited amount of time, but most of them just spammed them around with no consideration about placing or even checking if the simmetry was working correctly.

 

On the noodly rockets, missing autostruts and also on the neerfed reaction wheels I'm wondering how much of it is stull unfinished stuff Vs intentional gameplay decisions.

Despite being a serial abuser of autostruts I think there should be some more involved gameplay around the "noodlynees" of rockets and the placement of struts.

Maybe make it so that joints can fail under extreme loads and struts (either auto or visible) can to under half of that load or something like that.

It would be fun to see the rocket RUD in midair when you spin out of control during ascent at Max-q.

[MechBFP]

I am almost positive that the noodle rockets were kept in on purpose, I think it was mentioned a long time ago  by someone although I can’t remember the details. 
I am on the fence with it, as I see the benefits and downsides of both routes. 

Edited February 20, 2023 by MechBFP

[shdwlrd]

8 minutes ago, Master39 said:

It would be fun to see the rocket RUD in midair when you spin out of control during ascent at Max-q.

This is something you would expect to see in RL, so I'm game.

[Gurkonier]

Maybe there should be a Noodly Setting in the Difficulty Settings, so everyone can adjust it, how they want.

Or more serious: Joint Strength

Edited February 20, 2023 by Gurkonier

[LHACK4142]

I personally like the noodle rockets. It can be kind of overt at times, but I think it's really cool to see your massive rocket or station bend and (imaginarily) creak. I tried SimpleRockets, and found the ultra-rigid-stick rockets kind of boring to watch.

[Scarecrow71]

1 minute ago, Gurkonier said:

Maybe there should be a Noodly Setting in the Difficulty Settings, so everyone can adjust it, how they want.

Or more serious: Joint Strength

Or, you know, just use the stock option:  struts.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

I am almost positive that the noodle rockets were kept in on purpose, I think it was mentioned a long time ago  by someone although I can’t remember the details. 

Yep, and struts are the other face of that medal. A microscopic and mostly inconsequential gameplay loop.

Autostruts negates that. (Again, I'm saying this as a player that abuses autostruts)

 

Just now, Scarecrow71 said:

Or, you know, just use the stock option:  struts.

This.

5 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

This is something you would expect to see in RL, so I'm game.

I know that sometimes you can still recover you flight somehow with just a huge penalty of Delta V, but frankly most people will revert to VAB or launch anyway, so why don't use this as another opportunity to making failing a spectacular show.

[Gurkonier]

3 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Or, you know, just use the stock option:  struts.

For me the challenge was never making my rockets unwobbly, but to bring my kerbals safe to difficult planets/moons and back, also using life support. This makes ships way bigger, so i used Joint Reinforcement and added struts only to critical sections of my motherships. It makes smaller rockets also prettier for me, without all those struts. That is my playstyle. Adding a setting, that could do this, wouldn't hurt and if you don't want to change this, you can leave it as it is.

[Scarecrow71]

Just now, Gurkonier said:

For me the challenge was never making my rockets unwobbly, but to bring my kerbals safe to difficult planets/moons and back, also using life support. This makes ships way bigger, so i used Joint Reinforcement and added struts only to critical sections of my motherships. It makes smaller rockets also prettier for me, without all those struts. That is my playstyle. Adding a setting, that could do this, wouldn't hurt and if you don't want to change this, you can leave it as it is.

Well, that's what autostruts are for.  Same thing as with struts, but without the clutter.

[linuxgurugamer]

Just now, Scarecrow71 said:

Well, that's what autostruts are for.  Same thing as with struts, but without the clutter.

At least in the initial release, there aren't any autostruts

[MechBFP]

Autostrutting everything like the KJR mod has its own set of problems. Not as easily as simply making it a toggle. 

[Gurkonier]

3 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Well, that's what autostruts are for.  Same thing as with struts, but without the clutter.

Point for you. I hope they will implement it. It was a suggestion, because the rockets in the current footage are a bit too wobbly for me. I wouldn't expect much wobble for three stages stacked on top of each other. The engineers at Kerbin would design decouplers to withstand those loads.

[jacksawild]

It seems strange that they haven't built autostruts in to the game when it is such an easy win for performance. Same goes for fuel lines, which could just be internal plumbing crossfeed in the part settings. Two easy wins to keep on top of part counts. Stacking multiple modules of the same width could just be geometry merged, again reducing these big part counts, especially when it comes to symmetry.

A lot of this has already been solved with KSP1, we've seen all of these problems before, so I'd imagine they're not going to struggle with them in quite the same way. I assume they have a plan for all of this, time will tell.

[Drakenred65]

I think 2/3 of the problem that I saw was the lack of struts + the added physics load caused by extra struts, or a n one case overcompensating and useing way too many struts.

[TheOtherDave]

1 hour ago, LHACK4142 said:

I personally like the noodle rockets. It can be kind of overt at times, but I think it's really cool to see your massive rocket or station bend and (imaginarily) creak. I tried SimpleRockets, and found the ultra-rigid-stick rockets kind of boring to watch.

If a rocket (or space station) is noticeably bending, it’s probably already cracked and a complete failure is at most seconds away. At least for stuff early in the tech tree. The composite wings on some newer airplanes can bend an absolutely shocking amount without being damaged, but they’re made from really advanced stuff that wasn’t available until relatively recently.

[regex]

43 minutes ago, TheOtherDave said:

If a rocket (or space station) is noticeably bending, it’s probably already cracked and a complete failure is at most seconds away. At least for stuff early in the tech tree. The composite wings on some newer airplanes can bend an absolutely shocking amount without being damaged, but they’re made from really advanced stuff that wasn’t available until relatively recently.

This. We should expect a certain amount of flex (AFAIK) but nothing near the ... rubbery joints we can fight through for a successful launch.

Noodle rockets are not realistic and there are much better ways to get inflight "RUD"s than sloppy material physics.

[Bej Kerman]

4 hours ago, Jarin said:

Hard to believe the "Slaying the Kraken" line when rockets are looking like this:

I think when they said "slaying the Kraken" they meant docking ports not welding themselves together whenever the part tree changes. You know, the most common thing that happens in KSP besides rockets exploding. And the rest.

But yeah, any kind of flex should generally result in stuff snapping instantly.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

6 hours ago, Jarin said:

One thing I deeply do not miss about early KSP1 is how floppy the part joints were. But looking at the new footage coming out of the ESA event, it looks like it's back. Hard to believe the "Slaying the Kraken" line when rockets are looking like this:

(timestamp 6:25 if the link doesn't work)

Just look at that noodle launch. Just ringing the dinner bell for the Kraken to come feed.

Half the fun of KSP1’s years of EA was learning to surf the jank in style.  Wobbly rockets were hard, but they were part of the charm.

[TheOtherDave]

11 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Half the fun of KSP1’s years of EA was learning to surf the jank in style.  Wobbly rockets were hard, but they were part of the charm.

Disagree… for me the wobbly rockets/airplanes were pure frustration.

[Strawberry]

Wobbly rockets just arent fun to deal with, the counterplay was adding struts which was just tedious 

[dansiegel30]

Having gotten into KSP1 RP-1 recently, I was overjoyed to see that everything was autostrutted by default - I never saw any wobble.  That being said, up until the point of my moon landing, I made only one rocket that was too long and too narrow (I was trying be cheap, and added an extra tooled fuel tank to get my jupiter probe LV to Saturn).  IMO it would be best if the wobble can be set by the user.  Some people like it, some people hate it.  Me on the other hand, I just think its far too sensitive.  Ive seen rockets that wobble that are shaped like real ones.   {erhaps some VAB tool to show stresses on the design to let you KNOW there is going to be wobble as well.

[Jarin]

I'm not going to complain too hard about super-tall rockets getting noodly without some structural support, but that's like... a 6-part stack, not even remotely out of normal scale, and it's flopping around like it's trying to get censored by the youtube algorithm.