antennas and satellites: help needed with technical terms and which one to use

[PhanThom]

So everything seems relatively straightforward, I'm not noticing much significant difference between the antennas I have now except the amount of power they cost when transmitting. The newer (more recently unlocked in the tech tree) antennas use more power and the transmission interval is shorter which I think is good (?) but there's also something called total throughput. That decreases with every tier of antenna. Isn't more throughput positive or is having a smaller number for throughput better? And what does this even do? I thought it meant that an antenna with higher throughput would be able to send more complete data packets so that you get the most possible science points but no matter what antenna I put on my ship, it always gives the same percentages in that little popup window you get after doing science.

Could someone explain all this to me?

[running]

Transmission times decrease and electricity usage increases with the "better" antenna's.

So if you have the battery power, you are doing a rapid decend in an atmosphere and you are doing science, a "Faster" antenna could be worth it.

Time acceleration doesn't speed up transmission times, if you are doing a lot of science you also like to have a "faster" antenna.

[DrMonte]

..., if you are doing a lot of science you also like to have a "faster" antenna.

I would say - not "doing a lot of science" but have a huge amount of electric power. But even then you might just use two or more low consumption "Communotron 16". So that's a design issue not a performance (note that even mass is not competitive).

[allmhuran]

I wouldn't bother with the big ones even for their supposed "faster transmissions", because they won't be faster.

Right now there seems to be a bug where the game thinks you don't have enough electric charge to transmit. When I take a ship with multiple instruments and attempt to transmit with the largest, fastest antenna, my "science log" is absolutely spammed with the message "not enough electric charge". This despite the fact that I have 8000 electric charge available at the time.

I have no idea what causes this. I made a thread about it once before but none of the supposed solutions worked, so you might as well take a small antenna.

[larsmaehlum]

Whenever I do a science spamming mission, I just use 4 or more Communotron 16s, as that seems faster when doing parallel transmissions compared to doing serial transmission with the "faster" antennae.

[PhanThom]

Transmission times decrease and electricity usage increases with the "better" antenna's.

So if you have the battery power, you are doing a rapid decend in an atmosphere and you are doing science, a "Faster" antenna could be worth it.

Time acceleration doesn't speed up transmission times, if you are doing a lot of science you also like to have a "faster" antenna.

ok, but what does throughput mean then?

[PhanThom]

I never get that glitch, every antenna seems to work fine for me so far. Do you know what throughput is and if it even has any effect in the game?

[Murph]

I never get that glitch, every antenna seems to work fine for me so far. Do you know what throughput is and if it even has any effect in the game?

Think of the data as water in a tank. Throughput is the size of the pipe draining that tank (when it's active).

[DrMonte]

Think of the data as water in a tank. Throughput is the size of the pipe draining that tank (when it's active).

I thought it's an age of IT and it's written quite clear - Mits/s. Ok you can add 'b' to be more clear - Mbits/s. Maybe it's not a bit in Kerbal Universe but definitely an it. So once more - antennas through-output is calculated in mega its per second.

[Murph]

I thought it's an age of IT and it's written quite clear - Mits/s. Ok you can add 'b' to be more clear - Mbits/s. Maybe it's not a bit in Kerbal Universe but definitely an it. So once more - antennas through-output is calculated in mega its per second.

Yeah, it is quite clear for someone who has a reasonable basic understanding of data networks, transmission, etc. The water pipe analogy is just often a good way to explain bandwidth/throughput to the layperson.

[Seret]

Time acceleration doesn't speed up transmission times, if you are doing a lot of science you also like to have a "faster" antenna.

Er, pretty sure it does.

[Murph]

Er, pretty sure it does.

No, it doesn't. A simple test you can try to prove it is to queue up a bunch of data so that you're going to be transmitting constantly, from a craft where the solar panels don't produce enough power to sustain continuous transmission. At 1x time, the battery will steadily drop to 0. At a faster time rate (might be 5x, 10x, 50x, depends on your craft, sun angle, etc), the battery will basically hold steady. At an even faster time rate, the battery will recharge.

Easier is, of course, to use a stop watch to just time transmission of a large volume of data, the transmission rate remains unchanged for all time warp settings, takes the same real world time regardless.

[kurja]

No, it doesn't. A simple test you can try to prove it is to queue up a bunch of data so that you're going to be transmitting constantly, from a craft where the solar panels don't produce enough power to sustain continuous transmission. At 1x time, the battery will steadily drop to 0. At a faster time rate (might be 5x, 10x, 50x, depends on your craft, sun angle, etc), the battery will basically hold steady. At an even faster time rate, the battery will recharge.

Easier is, of course, to use a stop watch to just time transmission of a large volume of data, the transmission rate remains unchanged for all time warp settings, takes the same real world time regardless.

Physics warp speeds up transmissions. Ordinary warp afaik doesn't.

[PhanThom]

Think of the data as water in a tank. Throughput is the size of the pipe draining that tank (when it's active).

So then a higher number <i>is</i> better. Kind of weird then that the older tier antenna has better throughput

[PhanThom]

So a higher number for throughput is better? that would mean that the older antennas are better in terms of throughput, seems kinda illogical to me

[monophonic]

So a higher number for throughput is better? that would mean that the older antennas are better in terms of throughput, seems kinda illogical to me

The displayed number is wrong. Actual throughput is one per the displayed value. It's a bug in the UI.

[Anton P. Nym]

Right now there seems to be a bug where the game thinks you don't have enough electric charge to transmit. When I take a ship with multiple instruments and attempt to transmit with the largest, fastest antenna, my "science log" is absolutely spammed with the message "not enough electric charge". This despite the fact that I have 8000 electric charge available at the time.

I ran into that once; the antenna was preferentially draining the probe "brain" battery over the main battery array. Hitting the "off" button on the controller battery forced the antenna to use the big ones, but I've heard that bad things can happen if you drain the other batteries while the controller's battery's off... so I don't recommend it unless you know the solar panels will top things up.

-- Steve

[Ascension Islander]

I wouldn't bother with the big ones even for their supposed "faster transmissions", because they won't be faster.

Right now there seems to be a bug where the game thinks you don't have enough electric charge to transmit. When I take a ship with multiple instruments and attempt to transmit with the largest, fastest antenna, my "science log" is absolutely spammed with the message "not enough electric charge". This despite the fact that I have 8000 electric charge available at the time.

I have no idea what causes this. I made a thread about it once before but none of the supposed solutions worked, so you might as well take a small antenna.

I've seen this too, and what I've seen is that when electric charge is drained for whatever reason, KSP tends to use the smallest power supplies first. Usually these are your engines that have 0.02 electric charge and such, and your pods that'll have 50 or 100 or whatever. When the transmission is activated, these may drain first, causing the game to think that you've run out of charge when you're really just switching sources. It'll probably get fixed in later updates.