Part size

[7499275]

Hello fellow Kerbonauts! Today I bring a short clip with a question.

Now as you guys can see it is a Saturn V replica using NovaPunch parts. My question, do you think that Squad will one day implement large (5m) parts? Or stick to the 2m max right now? Also do you prefer to use larger launches with 3.75m and 5m parts because it has a higher lifting capability?

Personally I think one day squad will give us 5m parts and 2nd I like using the larger parts with the reinforcements mod of course to launch larger station pieces at a time!

[Epthelyn]

Probably.

It's just another of those features that Squad may or may not think about adding when the game is more completed; I'd rather they spend time on making the core game as good as it can be than making parts.

The fact is that right now we don't actually NEED anything bigger than the '2m' parts we already have; we don't actually need 2m parts at all, 1m are fine, but part count is much friendlier when trying to launch small craft when using 2m tanks and engines. I imagine the same thing would be the case with 3.75 and 5m parts, but oh well.

Before you say "We don't NEED <x>", I know, but half the things we don't need in KSP stock add to the gameplay more than fuel tanks and engines do.

[Tiberion]

It depends; After the game is mostly feature complete and they go back to do a hard balance pass on the actual mass/thrust/fuel numbers and try to make them apply to a uniform standard, then they should end up with a balance setup where drymass of hardware is much more punishing, so carrying around 30 small tanks versus 1 big tank of equal mass would be highly inefficient. At that point, they'd probably need to invest in bigger sizes of hardware for balance reasons. They'll also have to fix a few outstanding issues with the engine to facilitate that, which I very much would like to see.

I gravitated to modded parts pretty soon after I found KSP, mostly because I didn't enjoy the propect of making towers of tanks when building -its far less of an issue now that we have the 2.5m parts but one of the things I like least about the game are the weird, huge conglomerations of parts-as-launchers (outside of the 'wow, whoever did that is crazy' factor anyway)

Of course, if they don't ever do it, I very much like providing bigger launcher parts in my mods, and would gladly continue to do so.

[astropapi1]

They should add (at least) 3.75m parts. It doesn't make the game easier, it makes it less laggy and launchers look like actual rockets, not flat asparagus monstruosities.

[astropapi1]

Thank me later.

[7499275]

Thank me later.

Yes yes the gravity turn people have already told me about that, I waited to do so because I have FAR and I'm not 100% used to flying with FAR. In other words... If I tilted the rocket even 5 degrees before I got to around 27km up it would have spun out of control and made a terrible video.

[Spatzimaus]

They should add (at least) 3.75m parts. It doesn't make the game easier, it makes it less laggy and launchers look like actual rockets, not flat asparagus monstruosities.

Exactly. Bigger tanks and bigger engines aren't any more efficient than multiple smaller ones; in fact, they'll usually be a little LESS efficient in KSP. But they allow you to do with a small number of parts what previously would use far more, which lets us keep part counts low until Unity gets proper multithreading support.

That being said, you can still asparagus a 3.75m design for truly monstrous designs. Even without an asparagus setup, you can get tremendous lift capability by going away from a Saturn V-style candle stack. I posted this picture in another thread a few minutes ago:

That booster you see receding into the background is a set of linked 3.75m stacks (not asparagus), mass of around 5500 tons, in almost a pure SSTO design. The 700-ton station itself has some 3.75m parts, as well. And yet, the whole enchilada only has 1114 parts, with 735 on the station, so it won't completely shut down my CPU to fly. A big part of that part savings is the 3.75m tanks; it's not just that each is as big as three 2.5m tanks, it's also that I don't need as many struts to keep the parts rigid.

[The Destroyer]

Yes yes the gravity turn people have already told me about that, I waited to do so because I have FAR and I'm not 100% used to flying with FAR. In other words... If I tilted the rocket even 5 degrees before I got to around 27km up it would have spun out of control and made a terrible video.

I generally find that you should take the turn SLOWLY. If you get too far from the prograde marker, it will spin.

It is MUCH more effecient.