[0.2.0] General balancing feedback

[Guest]

There doesn't appear to be a thread for general balancing feedback (and if there is, I trust the mods will merge this message into it), so I thought I'd start one. Some of these have already come up in other threads but I'll list them here anyway to have it all in one place.

Science rewards

Suggestion: Decrease mission science rewards by half

I switched mission science rewards to 50% in preferences for my second campaign, and it feels overall better: at 100% I was barely even paying attention to the science experiments and  burning through the tech tree; at 50% I think I'm getting a pretty nice balance between them and the experiments. In my opinion something like this should be the default difficulty, with sliders to increase/reduce rewards.

Tech tree/parts balance (note, this is just my personal feelings)

• XS decouplers and docking ports are deeper/more expensive than I'd expect
• Rover wheels are deeper/more expensive than I'd expect, I'd suggest moving the smallest/most basic ones down at least
• The SWERV feels too cheap, it's really so incredibly powerful it should be deep in Tier 4 IMO
• The NERV feels just underwhelming overall, with its significant dry mass and the bulk of hydrogen, I'm just skipping it and using deep-space methalox or going straight to the SWERV
• Since all probe cores now have reaction wheels and the same capabilities, there's barely any differentiation between them, differences are basically cosmetic. No real suggestion on how to rebalance since EC and reaction wheel strength don't make much difference in practice.

Heat

• Upper atmosphere is too toasty and/or many parts are too heat-sensitive, f.ex a docking port on the nose of a rocket gets burned off in a regular ascent, and spaceplanes are really hard to get down in one piece even with heavy wings
• Heatshields are too robust, I barely use any ablator even on interplanetary re-entries

 

[NexusHelium]

15 minutes ago, Periple said:

• Heatshields are too robust, I barely use any ablator even on interplanetary re-entries

I agree with this one. I was confused on what the point of even adding charring effects was if I barely get to see them at all.

[steveman0]

I largely agree with the OP. At least the early game mission rewards drastically overwhelm science rewards such that science almost seems irrelevant. This seems to be better in the late game though. I've had science trips return  several times what my mission payouts were later on and I expect the same from the next trip I'm planning. I think this is in part because later on you can do many science collection types while early on you are quite limited and these payout poorer. Most other points seem appropriate too.

I disagree on the nuke assessment. I think NERV and SWERV are pretty well balanced with how they must be used and their cost within the tree. They both equally require the additional consideration how you'll handle their bulk. Their higher efficiency comes with the high cost of having to invest in interplanetary construction as any rocket using them will be much more unwieldy to build/launch than an equivalent with methalox.

I've built interplanetaries with both NERV and SWERV and in each case there was a huge launch or multiple launches to put them in service, sometimes with multiple attempts to deal with atmospheric effects. It would have been much easier to use methalox engines albeit with less dV for some risk in a reduced margin for the mission. This seems like a reasonable tradeoff to me. If you just want a one-shot, disposable rocket, the methalox engines are much easier/more reliable.

I'll add that I feel reaction wheels and RCS seem a bit underpowered. I find myself requiring multiple reaction wheels to get anything other than the most tedious control authority over anything I build. RCS gets consumed far too quickly by SAS to leave it turned on for general control. I'd be fine to only use it for big ship turns if it was much better than reaction wheels, but here too the RCS thrusters just aren't that strong that it's hard to justify carrying the extra fuel for this that also adds to the cumbersome turning of the ship.

I feel the larger reaction wheels don't scale up as much as they should. Ton-for-ton, they have the same torque as the smaller wheels, but the rockets you put them on are substantially heavier. Even with the bigger ones, I end up needing to use several for a reasonable turn rate.