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Clipping: is it cheating?


r4pt0r

Is clipping parts cheating (if you can cheat)  

2 members have voted

  1. 1. Is clipping parts cheating (if you can cheat)

    • Yes
      44
    • No
      142


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of course its "cheating", its braking the rules of the game to get something done you otherwise couldnt. Now, does that matter in a single player game? It does for you i guess. If you don't care to bend rules to master a challenge, go for it. If you want to master a challenge with a fixed set of rules, you won't.

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I'm not going to answer because you don't have a third option. I would say that clipping fuel tanks or engines into others is cheating. But clipping parts that you could put there IRL is not. Think of it this way, if you were designing a space craft, would you leave batteries, autopilots, life support, communications, and what not hanging on the outside. I wouldn't. But part clipping to get twice the fuel capacity for the same volume, is, in my opinion, cheating.

You're so very close to my own opinion. I only clip for aesthetics. I too clip RTG's, batteries and MechJeb's into the fuselage or turn clipping on when parts just don't want to attach where I want them too. I've also clipped tanks into otherwise empty structural pieces such as nosecones. But I will not place tanks inside other tanks. I only clip when there is room inside the other object.

So my answer is both yes and no. Clipping for aesthetics is OK. Clipping to achieve 'the impossible' is not.

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Think of it this way, if you were designing a space craft, would you leave batteries, autopilots, life support, communications, and what not hanging on the outside. I wouldn't.

I use procedural fairings to protect the delicate parts of the craft in the atmosphere. Also with the procedural fuselage and the structural walls, you can create hollow places where you can stack your sensitive equipment. It adds extra weight to the craft, but so do the nosecones witch I religiously put on all my rockets and boosters. And before someone will point out the obvious, yes, yes I do know they are not actually needed right now. It's just how I roll.

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When was the last time you saw a real-world space vessel with it's batteries mounted outside the hull?

Ever look inside aircraft equipment bays? Or a modern automobile engine compartment? In reality, stuff gets packed into every available space, often components are redesigned at considerable expense to fit into available empty spaces. This makes the final package both more aerodynamic and also lighter. In some cases, the primary reason is simply weight distribution.

The reality is aircraft and even spacecraft have some structures which are mainly empty space. Why not pack components into that space if possible?

I do understand the argument that putting fuel tanks inside other fuel tanks may not be realistic. However, in real-world aircraft, fuel is stored in all kinds of unrelated components, an option not completely covered in KSP. I've flown aircraft where fuel was held in wings, nose, fuselage, tailcone, vertical stab, horizontal stab, even in bladders or tanks in the cabin.

Personally, I don't clip fuel tanks into other fuel tanks. But I don't consider that cheating, either. Rather, it's creating a vessel which tries to be as space efficient as physics will allow. In this case, physics means in game physics, which I'll admit does not exactly mirror real-world physics.

Drives me nuts mounting batteries and RCS tanks on the exteriors of ships, those should be somewhat protected by other structures like the hull if possible. Same goes for sensors. The bulk of sensor components would be mounted inside an aircraft of spacecraft, with very small pieces actually protruding from the hull. Pressure sensor? Essentially a hole in the side of the hull, the actual sensor could reside literally anywhere inside the ship.

So in many cases, in the game we end up taking a (usually small) drag hit for lots of components, which in reality would be wedged into available empty spaces causing no drag losses. I think creative part placement is a reasonable way to offset some of the limitations.

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In my opinion, clipping sometimes is and sometimes isn't cheating. What I definitely count as cheating is using clipping to overlap fuel tanks or engines. Or air intakes. But in many cases parts will clip into each other whatever you do - certain parts are even designed to clip inside the body on which they are mounted, docking ports for instance. Also lots of aircraft parts can't be reasonably placed without clipping over each other.

So I think it's largely matter of personal opinion what is and what isn't considered cheating on clipping.

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i personally never let parts clip inside other parts. might explain why i've never been past Dres. i see people putting white tanks along the sides of orange tanks, allowing for an impossible volume, and view that as cheating. thoughts?

(this is of course assuming you can cheat in a single player, alpha, basically sandbox game.)

There's no cheating because there are no rules save for these two:

It's YOUR sandbox.

Don't let anyone else tell you what you can do in your sandbox.

Don't tell anyone else what they can do in their sandbox.

If it's not in the above list then it's not a rule.

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I'm the guy who turns Bicouplers backwards, hooks it to the MK1 Cockpit, and makes fighter jets with the twin fuel tanks stuck through the decoupler because I think it looks cooler. So no, I don't believe Part Clipping to be cheating. I consider cheating to be mucking with the part configuration files to give yourself jet engines with 20000 thrust. Though I do have a few purpose-built jet engines (and an RT-10 Solid Fuel Booster that I made into a Jet Engine cause I needed a jet that could be in a stage stack...), I use semi-reasonable thrust numbers. Although, in my no-holds-barred 0.21 save, I've got a jet engine with 1200 thrust...

So realistically, answer me this: Is it possible to cheat in a Single Player Sandbox game? I don't honestly think it's possible to cheat. Either you've made a new part in the config, or you've clipped parts through one another, or you've cranked up the number of air intakes to eleventy-billion for your Single Stage to Sun airplane, no matter what you do, you did it in your game. And it doesn't affect anyone else's game unless they do it too.

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How could I make an Ares-I style first stage without clipping?

5g9hd4m.png

I had to clip some tanks into each other to get a larger diameter, but I still had to pay for the extra mass and drag they brought along. I also had to use two engines instead of one, but I had to pay extra attention because of overheating and the rocket shaking apart on the launchpad. Part clipping isn't cheating, it's just another way to do things.

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I think it depends on the extent, if you have a few tanks and things half through each other, then that's totally normal, a real ship would have tanks with cutouts to fit together, so why not, a little bit of space has fuel doubled up, but so what, it's not like it really effects it.

But if you clip zillions of air intakes onto a single attach point to make a magical dropship the size of hatchback that can zoom up to orbit with no flameouts then well, it's your game so do what you want but that's just scifi movie magic, not real space program.

I don't think it's cheating cos well, it's a sandbox game do what you want, but I'm less impressed by unrealistic craft than I am by ones that do things properly as it were.

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(this is of course assuming you can cheat in a single player, alpha, basically sandbox game.)

I personally don't believe that's possible, because the goal of such a game is simply for fun, and if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong - regardless of whether you're playing "vanilla" or modded, regardless of plugins or clipping or whatever.

If clipping is what you need to replicate an authentic design or make it work just so, then go for it. I personally don't use it that often, but I couldn't give a flying fig about what others do. Doesn't affect me in the least, and who am I to tell them how to play?

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The concept of "cheating" doesn't really apply to a game like KSP, it's not like a shooter or rts game, it'd be like "cheating" in Microsofts flight simulator series, you may deny yourself the satisfaction of achieving something in-game if you use infinite fuel but the only person you cheat is yourself.

And you can always do a flight without "cheats" if you want...

But things like part clipping, that's not artificially increasing the capabilities of your craft, you still have mass and drag to contend with, all you are doing is changing how it is shaped.

Cheating can occur though, when challenge participants are dishonest about their entries, but these tend to be easy to spot, but part clipping isn't an issue.

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