Least favourite engine

[Temstar]

So what's your least favourite engine? For me it's a tight contest between the Poodle and Rockomax Mark 55 Radial Mount. The big white radial at least has the gimmick of radial mount and large gimbal angle, even though pretty much in all cases you'll just end up making your own engine nacelle and use in line engines due to Mark 55's poor Isp and lacklustre TWR.

But the Poodle. Where is the niche of the Poodle? For deep space engine LV-N's fantastic Isp makes it the preferred engine even if some engineering is required to get around its awkward shape. If a short profile engine is really needed you're still better off clustering LV-909. And if a short profile is not needed and you want to avoid LV-N (say an Apollo style service module engine) then LV-T30 is usually a much better engine. 20s less vacIsp for 1.25 ton less? That's a hard offer to turn down. Poodle's gimbal is pretty useless given that small spacecrafts that might use it tend to have plenty of maxRot from command pods and have no need for additional steering ability while burning anyway.

[rodion_herrera]

But the Poodle. Where is the niche of the Poodle? For deep space engine LV-N's fantastic Isp makes it the preferred engine even if some engineering is required to get around its awkward shape. If a short profile engine is really needed you're still better off clustering LV-909. And if a short profile is not needed and you want to avoid LV-N (say an Apollo style service module engine) then LV-T30 is usually a much better engine. 20s less vacIsp for 1.25 ton less? That's a hard offer to turn down. Poodle's gimbal is pretty useless given that small spacecrafts that might use it tend to have plenty of maxRot from command pods and have no need for additional steering ability while burning anyway.

I think the philosophy behind the poodle was born out of people wanting an interim engine for "command module" style craft that uses the 3-man capsule and same-diameter tanks, because it just looks so nice to put those together for short distance trips like Mun or Minmus. I mean the stubby look is still much better to a long LV-T30 sticking out of the CSM...so I think it's there mostly for "looks"

[Brotoro]

I've use Poodles in places i didn't think warrented a nuke...transfer stages to Minmus or Mün and landers there. Fits simple and nice on the Rockomax tanks, with less bother than clustering would have been.

I think I may have tried the Mark 55‘s once on a skycrane, but went with the 24-77 engines instead. So the 55 is certainly my least used engine.

Ion engines would have won for "least used" except that I've tried them out on rovers in the pre-electric wheel age.

[Richy teh space man]

I'll go with the ant engine, too weak for ships, too inefficient for probes.

[cpt_nosh]

I go with the guy above, for the same reason. Seriously, Who did ever use this? It's like an engine for ants! Wait a sec...

[kahlzun]

Def the poodle.

I'm getting a lot of love from the Ant and 24-77 in low-weight situations: because they're so light they fully leverage the tsilkovsky equation.

For example, in an absolute minimum setup, (OKTO2 probe, 2 OX-STAT a T200 tank and the engine/s) an Ant engine will get 5039 dV, (admittedly at 0.13 twr) while a pair of 24-77's (for balance of course) will achieve 3942 dV, and also have a TWR of 3.01 -which means its safe to land on Tylo.-

[Canopus]

How can anyone dislike the Poodle?

[Felsmak]

That would be the white, radial one. It's rather inefficient, in my experience.

However, I actually like the Poodle. I've successfully used it for interplanetary travel many times, sometimes even as far out as to Jool.

[loppnessmonsta]

Ant. I've never used it. not even once. at that point, might as well use an ion engine.

'course, slap a Throttlesteering module on there and it makes a decent attitude control rocket for medium sized ships. Or it should. I haven't tried it; still sorting out all my addons after .20

[Richy teh space man]

The Poodle is cheap though, and it may be useful for career mode in that respect.

[KevinW42]

Probably the white radial engine. I don't think I've ever actually used it.

[AmpsterMan]

The white radials. I have only ever used them on an ascent stage and that is to work around the fact that the Mainsails have such huge issues with gimbal. I would lock the gimbal and use them to steer the lowest stage.

[Godot]

I use the poodle for my ultraheavy 100t lander, therefore for me it is far from useless.

In contrast to the white radial mount engines and the LV-1 which, due to their low Isp, I have never used so far

[Stazi]

For me it would have to be the white radials. My old tug was designed using them, and it was so inefficient that I scrapped the entire ship and rebuilt it from the ground up. I use the 24-77 engines for all my landers because they have a small profile and don't get in the way of other parts very often. The ION engine is standard on all of my satellites and deep space probes, even if the burn time for maneuvers with it can get quite long.

The rest of the engines I haven't really used much so I can't really comment on them yet, but I suppose I haven't used them since other engines seem to outperform most of them as it is.

[XerZin]

The poodle, cant get the hang of it when to use this.. slow.. engine

[Akalaël]

I've voted for the ion.

ISP fantastic, but in fact absolutely unusable...

Funny, I've never used the radial mainsails ones, nor the LV-1...

[Merinsan]

I voted for the Ion engine. It's too slow for anything. Even accelerating just the engine itself would be too slow. However, that big white radial engine is a close second. Too big and inefficient, the small orange ones are a much better choice.

[AndreyATGB]

Even though I don't use ion engines, I really will never use the white radial engines ever again. They use a lot of fuel for a whole lot of nothing. I'm pretty sure using 8 24-77's is more efficient than that stupid white thing.

[haltux]

I wish I would like Ion engine but I hate them. I don't understand how you are supposed to power them. They would probably be a bit more usefull if there were intermediate solar panels: bigger than the standard one and smaller than the XLs, way to big for probes.

[NASAFanboy]

My favorite is the Poodle, Mainsail, and LV-Ns. They have served me well on interplanetary, lifting, and going to the moon.

My least is the ant. I mean, who Dafuq uses it?

I'm ok with the ion engine. I dislike the white radial, uses up too much the, too little thrust.

[Stelith61]

I say the aerospike. A single one of them is unusable (without part clipping) on an upper stage, and they aren't that efficient anymore, nor powerful enough to replace an LVT-30 (which weighs less) and they don't Gymbal. They suit a niche market - SSTO's, and only certain ones, there are better options than the aerospike. Ions are too underpowered to be of any use if you don't want 35 minute burns.

The poodle however, is great. It's good for Shuttles around the LKO system. Poodle+Tank+3 Man Pod+RCS can go LKO-Mun-Minmus-LKO without refuelling. It also has the highest Gymbal range, 3.0 degrees.

The big white radials? Great for skycranes! I've built an entire Minmus base using ships that went LKO-Minmus base landing on just those engines. Two of them gives a more delta/v on a ship than q poodle does, with space to have things underneath. You could say radial mounted Nervas, but man those things are huge.

The ant? The ant can land small probes on Gilly, Ike, Minmus, Mun, Give probes enough d/v to do transfers around the joolian system, and fine tune geostationary or whateversynchronous orbits. ANY probe i deploy anywhere has this engine. unless of course, it's like kuiper-belt-orbiting, then I use an Ion for even finer tuning. The Oscar-B also gives a useful place to mount scientific equiptment or solar panels on Stayputnik orbiters.

[Splode]

I quite like the poodle, it's an excellent lander engine. NERVAs are not great for landers, as they have such crap TWR.

The Ant engine is worthless. There is never a good time to use it. You're always better off using the tiny orange radials, an ion engine, or just RCS.

The ion engine is the single best engine for station keeping, but as people have said, it's efficiency doesn't really matter if you're not prepared to use mechjeb or waste hours doing anything significant.

I quite like the white radial engines. They are inefficient, but they are often a simple, handy solution when you're designing something odd.

I never use aerospikes because I never use SSTO planes. And besides, I don't care about efficiency when I'm in the atmosphere! I can just brute force it with a massive lifter. Seriously though, I would never use a mainsail in a vacuum. Aerospikes are an excellent solution to a design requirement that doesn't exist.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Splode

[magnemoe]

I think the philosophy behind the poodle was born out of people wanting an interim engine for "command module" style craft that uses the 3-man capsule and same-diameter tanks, because it just looks so nice to put those together for short distance trips like Mun or Minmus. I mean the stubby look is still much better to a long LV-T30 sticking out of the CSM...so I think it's there mostly for "looks"

The Poodle is nice for larger landers like an kertane miner, main downside is that it's to heavy.

Newer used the aerospike much, for small rockets I tend to use jet first stage.

Never used the ant engine, however have used the radial ant from kspx many times.

Have used the 55 sometimes, but now uses the home radials however the 55 is probably easier to put on end of struts and draw pipes to.

Putting 55 on radial decoupler and pipe from fuel tank is an nice way to get an 150 ton nuclear powered ships into orbit easy. Use them to get more twr during gravity turn.

[Klajan]

The ant. If it was radial maybe I would use it, but as it is right now I don´t.

Once I started to build huge lifters I quite like the 55. I had to use it once my twr dropped below 0.5 for my last stage, so I slapped 18 of them onto my last stage and volia, i had 0.9 twr. Sadly my lifter is unusable, unless you can bear with an 30 min ascend due to lagg.

[Stazi]

The ant. If it was radial maybe I would use it, but as it is right now I don´t.

Once I started to build huge lifters I quite like the 55. I had to use it once my twr dropped below 0.5 for my last stage, so I slapped 18 of them onto my last stage and volia, i had 0.9 twr. Sadly my lifter is unusable, unless you can bear with an 30 min ascend due to lagg.

The KSPX part pack adds a radial version of the LV-1 Ant, among other very useful parts.