How much Delta-v to do an orbit with FAR?

[O Nerd]

In one of Scott Manley's videos, he said that with FAR (Ferram Aerospace Research), you use less delta-v to make an orbit. Is that true? If yes, how much Delta-v i need?

Edited December 15, 2013 by O Nerd

[Rhomphaia]

In one of Scott Manley's videos, he said that with FAR (Ferram Aerospace Research), you use less delta-v to make an orbit. Is that true? If yes, how much Delta-v i need?

Depends on the craft, could be less for a properly designed craft, could be more.

[TechnicalK3rbal]

You need the same amount of dV, it's just that it's harder/easier to get dV depending on your crafts' aerodynamis.

[Eric S]

Depends on the craft, could be less for a properly designed craft, could be more.

Using the default FAR settings, a craft would have to be pretty poorly designed to take more delta-v. My typical launches take about 3200-3500 delta-v, and that includes asparagus staged launchers. I've put landers/rovers on top of rockets that were by far the widest point of the craft, and never had one take more than it would in stock KSP.

That said, it's very easy to create craft that are a royal pain to get into orbit with FAR, though they still probably won't take more delta-v than they would in stock. I'm talking about craft that inherently want to point retrograde or that you just can't convince to start the gravity turn below 20 km.

[Guest]

My typical launches take about 3200-3500 delta-v

This is accurate. The stock KSP atmospheric model is basically pea soup so you lose a lot more delta-V to drag than you would using a sane atmospheric model (FAR). If you build rockets in a relatively aerodynamic matter FAR makes launches so much easier.

[Hodo]

FAR typical launch using a rocket is around 3200-3500m/s.

FAR Asparagus nightmare launch, around 5000-9000m/s.

FAR Space plane SSTO, around 2200-2500m/s

FAR makes somethings easier, if you have any idea what a plane looks like. But will make other things considerably harder, like those massive asparagus launchers.

[O Nerd]

FAR typical launch using a rocket is around 3200-3500m/s.

FAR Asparagus nightmare launch, around 5000-9000m/s.

As a typical rocket you mean a "line-ish" rocket, like Saturn V and as a monstruous Asparagus you mean these crazy 300 thousand stages asparagus, right? Anyway, thanks for the answer, i was waiting for a simple answer that was not THAT simple.

Edited December 16, 2013 by O Nerd

[Soda Popinski]

To mitigate these issues, Ferram released "Kerbal ISP Difficulty Scaler" or KIDS. This lets you change the default ISP to keep the difficulty about the same. If gives you several options, including the ability to scale down all rocket ISP across the board, or what I did, scale only in atmosphere (vacuum ISP remain default).

FAM will push you to build more realistic, vertically oriented craft, as oppose to horizontal / overly asparagus/onion stacked ships. As such, Ferram also released Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, so you can build a realistic vertical rocket, without it breaking in half all the time. You'll still get some wobble, and struts will still be needed, just toned down a bit.