Patch 3 - was the unused medium nuclear engine removed?

[Jason_25]

I have been digging into the game files since patch 3 and I can see that a lot of things have changed.  I no longer see a file that contains all of the configs for the parts in one place.  Before, even without modding this engine into place the game would recognize my vehicles with them.  Now there is an error.  This error combined with not being able to find the medium nuclear engine part anymore leads me to believe it was taken away.

I was using this engine along with modifications to 4000 ISP and 750 KN thrust as a kind of placeholder until an Interstellar mod comes along or the developers release the nuclear salt water rocket or Orion.  Now my totally cool vehicles based on it are broken.  I do not like to have only enough fuel to scrape by and this was a better alternative than using infinite fuel as 4000 ISP is the max conceivable efficiency for a nuclear fission type rocket as I understand it.

Since they have not added anything interesting since the last patch and there is apparently a big aerodynamics bug now I am disappointed.  I am having trouble coming up with the energy to restart development due to this.

[Jason_25]

I see the aerodynamic bug was fixed and I am sorry to have even mentioned it.  It does look like the unused medium nuclear engine was removed.  Maybe it will make a comeback some day.  There is even a dev blog entry for it from a while ago.

I was using the in/out animation functionality to tradeoff between the large turbofan engines and the rocket engine in my F-32 design.  So you chose one or the other.  When the engine was deployed, only it's thrust was useful, and when the engine was retracted only the turbofan thrust was useful.  So it made an interesting design where you chose one or the other instead of having the rocket supplement the jets.

I have now instead modded the small nuclear engine because it is a piece of junk and nobody uses it anyway.  Same 4000 ISP in space and 1200 ISP medium level and 750 KN thrust as the modded medium engine from before.  All the cheatbirds I made from Patch 2 will need to be stripped of the medium engines with the Patch 2 version of the game to be moved to this version because they are very bugged in Patch 3.