Rocket noodling? Oh gods, not again...

[AtomicTech]

On 2/21/2023 at 8:48 AM, AlphaMensae said:

The response was "We'll think about it"

Good Lord, please no.

[dansiegel30]

A devil's response to this issue -

Noodling is one way they limit your capabilities with the current tech you have.  In KSP1 progressive plays, there are periods of time at a certain tech level where you feel you need to have to stack NUMEROUS small tanks together because a longer/wider tank is not yet available.  There are obviously inherent inefficiencies which come with stacking smaller tanks, but many times this can be compensated for by adding more engines.  This results in being able to reach certain destinations using lower tech parts than what the devs ever had in mind.  The physics realities have to come into play at some point, even though far from perfectly real or desired, its more real than having no noodling using autostrut. 

 

The bottom line is that the cargo implementation of Matt's craft was poorly designed and should have failed.  The cargo truss structures appear to be the solution to this problem, and I dont recall ANY content creator trying to use them during the ESA demo.  No blame to any of them, they only had 3 hours.  But that needs to be taken into context when complaining about their craft's performance.  As well, until we get procedural tanks from someone (devs or mods), we will always end up having craft with tanks that are far too long or narrow, still end up with far too much extra fuel for the mission and have far too much stress on the joints of the upper stages.  Until then I might dare to say this would force you to remove unneeded fuel from tanks prior to launch, to reduce cargo mass AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE (that's obviously a pretty important thing IRL).  Procedural tanks though might be a step too far for the new player - that or my tech progression limitation theory is the only reason I can think that the devs did not release procedural tanks on day one.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

I think to some degree players have become to my mind overly dependent on autostrut, buuutt it does save on part count so thats probably not a big deal.

Having to stitch tanks together again to get what feels like a correct launch is going to suck. I can't say I'm a  fan of autostrut though, being able to pin everything to the root part was kind of silly.

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

You do want some visible flex as a cue to the player that there's an issue, but it should really only happen when something is actually structurally inadequate.

If flex was purely a visual cue I'd be cool with it. The problem is that it isn't, it actually affects how the vessel holds its heading and can result in oscillations. Further, the solutions to rigidity either aren't aesthetic, are actively un-aerodynamic, or require multiplicative part counts. I should be able to assume that a given connection was actually engineered with enough rigidity to matter. I'm not against joints flexing and breaking in obvious ways (like 5m tanks on either end of a 1.25m section) but two (or even seven or eight) 5m tanks in a row shouldn't flex until the thing gets absurdly long.

[Jarin]

I really don't want to go back to having to do extensive girder scaffolding around every damn rocket I make just to keep them from falling apart.

[Jarin]

Everything old is new again. Digging out the old designs

[Klapaucius]

Matt Lowne discussed this in his video. The Friday release will not have autostruts, BUT that is a planned feature in updates.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, regex said:

If flex was purely a visual cue I'd be cool with it. The problem is that it isn't, it actually affects how the vessel holds its heading and can result in oscillations. Further, the solutions to rigidity either aren't aesthetic, are actively un-aerodynamic, or require multiplicative part counts. I should be able to assume that a given connection was actually engineered with enough rigidity to matter. I'm not against joints flexing and breaking in obvious ways (like 5m tanks on either end of a 1.25m section) but two (or even seven or eight) 5m tanks in a row shouldn't flex until the thing gets absurdly long.

Oh I totally agree. Its hard to say without using it myself but the flex seems to be too loosey-goosey in the current build. I think they could tighten that up so problems only presented when you had something that would actually present a structural issue in the real world. 

[Jarin]

1 hour ago, Jarin said:

Everything old is new again. Digging out the old designs

(yes, I'm self-quoting, shush)

Actually, snark aside... I'm still kind of proud of this design. In a time where RUD was the main enemy of rocketry, this thing was rock solid. A subassembly that I could put just about anything on top of and it would get it to orbit (and if one didn't do the trick, just add more!). Over-engineering? Sure. But it worked. That thing lifted an entire solar-system's worth of craft. It was the workhorse of an entire career. 

[TheOtherDave]

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I think to some degree players have become to my mind overly dependent on autostrut

Yeah, but only because KSP 1 uses watered-down jello to hold things together. Struts were/are about the only way to make joints useful... autostruts just make that process easier.

[J.Random]

Kerbals are devolving. Autostruts and KJR are long-lost relics of the ancient, more technologically advanced civilization.