[0.20.2] Mission Controller v0.10 (06/24/2013) [ALPHA]

[nobody44]

I built some rockets with stock parts and some with KW Rocketry parts and adjusted the coefficients so that both rockets cost about the same. Basically: no construction costs, but everythings else costs more.

[UAL002]

Oh man, I hardly use anything but stock, KSPX expansion and B9. I liked the costs. I have other single part mods here and there but they all seem to have reasonable costs. The costs are the whole reason I LOVE this mod.

[HavinAlmassi]

What equation are you using to determine part costs?

[nobody44]

What equation are you using to determine part costs?

That depends on fuel (all kinds of fuel) and mass. For liquid engines I have another formular that uses ISP (in vacuum) and thrust.

[nobody44]

... I liked the costs...

Past tense?

[PringleMan]

Past tense?

I think some tweaks need to be made on engine costs lol.

I downloaded the NT mission package, and for the first mission made the following rocket (from top to bottom)

Basic Parachute

Okto 2 (the flat one)

TR-2V decoupler

NCS Adapter

Z100 Bat pack x4

FL-T800 fuel tank

AV R-8 winglet x4

LV-T30 Liquid fuel engine

*bat packs and winglets mounted radially on the FL-T800 fuel tank

The total cost of everything minus the engine: 4829

The total cost of everything with the engine: 32808

Cost of the engine: 27979

Seriously, 28k for a single, 1.25 meter engine? Friend that needs to be fixed!

[nobody44]

I think some tweaks need to be made on engine costs lol.

I downloaded the NT mission package, and for the first mission made the following rocket (from top to bottom)

Basic Parachute

Okto 2 (the flat one)

TR-2V decoupler

NCS Adapter

Z100 Bat pack x4

FL-T800 fuel tank

AV R-8 winglet x4

LV-T30 Liquid fuel engine

*bat packs and winglets mounted radially on the FL-T800 fuel tank

The total cost of everything minus the engine: 4829

The total cost of everything with the engine: 32808

Cost of the engine: 27979

Seriously, 28k for a single, 1.25 meter engine? Friend that needs to be fixed!

I see... I will do that tomorrow, with a fine spreadsheet. If anyone is willing to help, please send me your craft file + the mission which they should accomplish (please use the stock missions, 3 are enough). So that I can balance those things...

[White Owl]

The engine costs seem fine to me. I finished the first few stock missions with very minimalist UAV spaceplanes, in the process lost a few vehicles in unfortunate piloting error incidents, and am still making a decent profit. Liquid fuel engines are supposed to be the most expensive part of a launch vehicle. If anything needs balanced, it's the payloads that should be more expensive.

[PringleMan]

The engine costs seem fine to me. I finished the first few stock missions with very minimalist UAV spaceplanes, in the process lost a few vehicles in unfortunate piloting error incidents, and am still making a decent profit. Liquid fuel engines are supposed to be the most expensive part of a launch vehicle. If anything needs balanced, it's the payloads that should be more expensive.

Perhaps, but keep in mind that this was a rocket that had a single mission goal of reaching 75k, and parachuting to safety. If the starting budget of 50k is fine, then a simple simple rocket costing almost 33k is too much. Beyond that, a liquid fuel engine should be among the more expensive parts, certainly, but the most expensive should be the fuel. You would think that a rocket engine is a complicated piece of machinery, but in reality it is actually a fairly simple creation. The internal combustion engine in a car is vastly more complex than most rocket engines, which are basically some fuel pumps and a mixing chamber. Indeed hypergolic engines are pretty much just that.

Here is the craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zq4a094x0swzrsh/Mission%201%20rocket.craft

The mission I was accomplishing was the very first mission of the NT mission pack posted on the front page. Sure, some of the issue may be his own internal balance on pricing, but even so that amount of money for what is arguably only a step above the most basic lift engine available is pretty steep.

edit: and just double checked, that single engine is worth more than the entire payout of the first mission in the stock pack too.

Edited June 21, 2013 by PringleMan

[veryinky]

[*] added new mission field: repeatableSameVessel for client controlled and passive missions

Cool, make some missions to try it out.

[Daedalus1134]

Beyond that, a liquid fuel engine should be among the more expensive parts, certainly, but the most expensive should be the fuel.

edit: and just double checked, that single engine is worth more than the entire payout of the first mission in the stock pack too.

SpaceX launches run 49.9 million dollars a pop, and Elon has stated that fuel and oxygen accounts for $200,000 of it. It's a surprising small amount, only 4% of launch costs. There is still obviously balancing to do, but fuel really is relatively cheap.

Personally, I am all for having expensive parts that can be reclaimed, it makes it that much more important that you put parachutes on your early stages and recover as much as possible.

[SchroedingersHat]

Personally, I am all for having expensive parts that can be reclaimed, it makes it that much more important that you put parachutes on your early stages and recover as much as possible.

Agreed, although the 2.25km limit on physics makes it a bit pointless most of the time. With roamfarer's plugin it works well, though.

[PringleMan]

SpaceX launches run 49.9 million dollars a pop, and Elon has stated that fuel and oxygen accounts for $200,000 of it. It's a surprising small amount, only 4% of launch costs. There is still obviously balancing to do, but fuel really is relatively cheap.

Personally, I am all for having expensive parts that can be reclaimed, it makes it that much more important that you put parachutes on your early stages and recover as much as possible.

Following this I spent some more time trying to find unit costs for various rocket engines. I had tried before my previous post, but was unable to find any verifiable data. However after my second search I was able to find some transcripts of Senators $%^@ing about the price for rocket engines that NASA commonly uses for the Delta rockets and the Centaur upper stage. Rocket engines are indeed fabulously expensive. My apologies for the failure on my part. My experience with the matter comes from my local space-science center that managed to procure one of the main engine nozzles from the Space Shuttle program while I was still working there. All of my information is from discussions among the various professors that work there and the director of the center.

At any rate, I still maintain that it is too high. From a game play perspective if the first mission in the stock pack has you reach an altitude of 70km, you really need to have a rocket engine unless you can design a good jet that will peak at 70K.. Not everyone is capable of making a well designed space plane.

In addition, I would point out that the 2003 manufacture cost for a brand new military-grade jet engine was $14.3 million according to a report published for the USAF by one of the DoD subsidiaries. Further, according to my research the high cost for rocket engines seems to be due to whether or not they restart. The price per unit for the J-2X (redesign of the J-2) was only 25 million per unit, which at the 2003 price for a jet engine would make it 1.7 times more expensive. In contrast, if the engine is restartable, such as the engines on the space shuttle, the price is more like 50 million a unit.

If we went with the proper scaling that way, then the 2,500 for the jet engine that we currently have in game would at the most scale to 8700 ish for the most basic rocket engine (calling the LV-T30 the most basic).

Edited June 21, 2013 by PringleMan

[theSpeare]

Just came on to say that the icons are beautiful. Good job bac9

[veryinky]

The new engine costs would be fine if the mission rewards were increased to match. I think it should be 2-3 times what a very well designed ship would cost. To account for failed launches and attempts to get the concept of the mission right.

As a side note, the Kerbal X (Stock) costs 422,215 now, granted it takes 3 kerbals to the Mun though not enough for a return trip. A slightly modified version I made gets the Kerbal X (title screen) lander to the Mun and lands at KSC for 468,390 it cost about 260,000 before.

Tempted to make a mission for it; get a Mk1-2 pod, XL-shute, rocko decoupler, rocko-16, 3 large landing struts, poodle engine, long ladder and 3 ladder rung units (or simply the stock Kerbal X lander) to the mun and land back at KSC. Wonder what'd be a good reward for that? 800,000? Maybe 200,000 reward for landing at a specific spot on the mun like the Niel Armstrong memorial or at the UFO crash site.

[SchroedingersHat]

At any rate, I still maintain that it is too high. From a game play perspective if the first mission in the stock pack has you reach an altitude of 70km, you really need to have a rocket engine unless you can design a good jet that will peak at 70K.. Not everyone is capable of making a well designed space plane.

If you're sending up less valuable payload once, use a solid rocket -- they're a big stick o' dynomite for things that don't worry you too much if they explode. Two small SRBs stacked vertically get the job done for 6638K Granted it's not very sputnikky, but neither is such a small planet and small budget. Replacing the upper stage with an LV-909 and fuel tank should increase the delta-V somewhat and leave you with a mostly recyclable upper stage if you care to land it (or you could use some of the radial engines for a smaller, cheaper upper stage)

[veryinky]

Replacing the upper stage with an LV-909 and fuel tank should increase the delta-V somewhat and leave you with a mostly recyclable upper stage if you care to land it

I just tried my Sputnick I-III probe design with 4983 dV, LV-909 engine with FT-200 & 400 fuel tanks, flat octo core, 3 antenna, 4 sensors, small parachute (and a remotetech antenna which isn't necessary to a stock design) it costs 11664 to launch and recycles for 8521.

Looks like to be profitable re-usable launchers are a must.

[veryinky]

Agreed, although the 2.25km limit on physics makes it a bit pointless most of the time.

Try a LV-45, rocko 16, octocore, 2 radial parachutes and a small decoupler as a re-usable launch vehicle. With a 1.25 to 1.5 ton payload it gets a dV of 3800-4100 dV which is enough to put it on a nice suborbital trajectory. Detach the payload (activating the parachutes), have the payload burn until it reaches a stable orbit, then switch back to the launcher to watch it land so you can recycle it. The chutes slow it down enough that it can land on the engine unharmed.

Edited June 21, 2013 by veryinky
error in copy/pasting.

[theSpeare]

I believe reusable launch vehicles should be encouraged - but they should be the method of cutting down costs by a large margin, not the only way to make profit. There should still be more than enough profit if you go the normal route of disposing your engines after use, but the reusable one should increase that profit by a large factor.

[maackey]

I took some time before "starting" my first campaign designing a cheap rocket to get a light probe into orbit. My result was this:

BTW I don't use KW parts because they are cheaper (stock parts were only 2,000 units more expensive in the heavy version), but because they are infinitely moar sexy:

It went through several revisions, but its so easy to use: it literally flies itself for payloads under half a ton. Just stage when needed until you reach your desired apoapsis, pop the fairings after you exit the atmosphere, and finish the burn towards orbit. It even has retro-rockets to clean up after itself (although debris in the atmosphere don't burn up ) Did I mention how cheap it is? My most expensive satellite was only 4,000 kerbits and I could have easily done every probe mission (except solar escape) using the same rocket over and over, while keeping healthy profit margins.

The payload in the above VAB picture cost 1393, which leaves the actual lifter to 12444 - 1393 = 11,051 including fairings. I was able to use this exact lifter for every mission except the solar escape and manned full-orbital missions, the only difference is an extra medium tank and instead of an LV-909, a Vesta (or LV-45 for a bit of extra oomph). The solar escape ship cost 21557. Below is the orbital manned pod, costing 2732, on top of the rocket which costs 18129-2732 = 15397. While I admit its probably not the cheapest thing, it is relatively easy to fly and a breeze to build (especially with the subassembly mod)

The prices do seem a bit odd in places, but I never found myself wanting for money. I even sent out some suicide missions to test extreme cases or just for fun (like getting double rewards from a finished mission, trying to land on my rockets instead of my perfectly good parachute, etc.)

Also, some minor nitpicks: completed missions should not display a reward amount, and need to have some indication in the mission list that they've been completed (currently you have to click on the mission to tell if it is completed or not)

Crew insurance doesn't show up in the VAB, or when launching the affected ship (money gets removed after launch, however).

In general, mission payloads are too trivial/small. A pancake probe, a toroidal tank, an ant, and a solar panel/RLA RTG can do a bunch of missions easily if you know what you're doing, or even don't know what you're doing but can use maneuver nodes. It would be nice to see missions that required more specific satellites, or even a minimum weight. Although, this could be an issue with the pricing, limiting potential lifter designs to be as frugal as possible which goes against the mantra of MOAR BOOSTERS.

Anyway, its late, I've spent far too long making this post, I hope it comes out intelligible.

[White Owl]

You discovered the same thing I did! That silly little stock SRB, which has persisted through so many versions of KSP but has always been of such limited usefulness, has a new lease on life. It's a great first stage for lightweight probes!

[nobody44]

I ... balanced the costs... again.

If anyone is willing to test the new version, please let me know, I will send them a new version with a way to configure the factors by yourself. And yes, boosters were really cheap. Were. Sorry guys, but it is impossible to balance this out in a way that resembles the reality.

In reality solid fuel is much cheaper than liquid fuel. In my plugin solid fuel is more expensive, *but* you must take the rocket engines into account as well. And those are expensive. So basically I tried to make solid rocket boosters still cheaper than the combination of liquid fuel and rocket engines, but not by much.

I also rebalanced some rewards, so let me know if you would like to help .

[theSpeare]

Crew insurance has to be configured by the player under the "configure" button. I set it to 100,000. The higher the better - then play with RemoteTech

EDIT: I'll test it out

[HavinAlmassi]

I took some time before "starting" my first campaign...

I think people are having issues with the pricing in the new version. It looks like those pics are from the old one.

[nobody44]

Here is a *DEBUG VERSION*. Do not download and use it unless you want to balance the costs:

Link to mediafire

Short explanation:

The values you see are used to determine the costs for each component.

For fuel (liquid, solid, mono, xenon, oxidizer) it is: the factor in the settings window * units of fuel

For mass it is: the factor in the settings window * weight of the vessel without fuel, in kg

The formular for liquid engines is more complicated, but you see the principle .

Edited June 21, 2013 by nobody44