What is the least useful non-structural part?

[makinyashikino]

What Part in KSP is the worst or the most useless? I feel like the most common answer would be a structural part, like the Radial Engine Body or most of the adapters. But what I want to hear is what non-structural part do you think is the most pointless? I personally think that it's either the Place-Anywhere 7 Linear RCS port or the Rockomax Mark 55 Radial Mount Liquid Engine

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

Yep, I'll vote for this one as well. Although I did use it once in career mode to get just the amount of TWR I needed. But that's only once during the thousands of rockets I've build.

[makinyashikino]

I used to use them as well, but that was before I realised what a pile of trash they were, the only positive they have is that they can gimbal.

[Spatzimaus]

Neither of those parts is useless at all. The linear RCS port is extremely useful for many designs, although I think its mass should be quite a bit less. I've used it on several stock designs where a normal RCS array wouldn't fit well. Now that I use the B9 mod, though, I only ever use its 5-way RCS blocks so there's no longer a need for these.

And the radial engine is extremely useful for three reasons:

1> It's a 120kN engine for 0.9 tons, which is not the worst ratio.

2> It's got great thrust vectoring (3 degrees)

3> You can mount it anywhere, obviously, instead of being limited to the ends of stacks or being forced to use various girder/radial mount setups.

On my spaceplane, I used to use those engines heavily. Basically, a lot of spaceplanes use jets to build up speed and an LV-N in orbit, but getting from one to the other can be problematic since the LV-N's thrust sucks. My 25-ton spaceplane originally put two of those radials on the back as well (angled so that their nozzles were exactly inside the jets), to be used briefly to get to orbit. (Then I installed the HOME mod, which has a similar 110kN radial engine with only 0.5 tons of mass but less thrust vectoring. So now I use those, and I'll probably switch to SABERs in 0.23.) I'd also use them on my very heavy designs just to add better steering to ships relying on engines with weak vectoring, but the flywheel change makes that unnecessary now.

[makinyashikino]

And the radial engine is extremely useful for three reasons:

1> It's a 120kN engine for 0.9 tons, which is not the worst ratio.

2> It's got great thrust vectoring (3 degrees)

3> You can mount it anywhere

Yeah it has good Thrust, but the ISP on it is TRASH, it's like using a mainsail for interplanetary travel, it's incredibly inefficient. And the vectoring really only matters if you are building big, but at that point you would use the poodle, or if you are patient, an LV-N.

[timx222]

I really like the Mark 55, it saves me a lot of trouble when designing landers and it gives a really good amount of control to them as well. I think that they are pretty viable, if not good, in some situations.

I usually find the least useful part in the game that isn't structural to be the Place Anywhere 7 Linear RCS Port, because there are nearly no situations where they are useful, at least for me, being someone who never makes spaceplanes.

[ComradeGoat]

The linear RCS port is really useful for spaceplanes.

[Stargate525]

I disagree on those radials. They're excellent for heavy landers where you need to keep the bottom free for a docking port or something similar. I only wish that there was some sort of step between the and the 24-77 and it's 20kN of thrust and the 55's 120. Most of my landers fall between needing more than 80 thrust, but way less than 240. There's no engine currently in the radial setup for that.

As for non-structural parts... I'd probably go with the stayputnik. Low torque, lack of a top mounting node, impossibility to get anything pointing straight out of that orb, means that unless I'm going for a very specific aesthetic, I'll choose the OCTO every time.

[Rhomphaia]

Definitely the Inline Advanced Stabilizer.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

The linear RCS port is really useful for spaceplanes.

and low-gravity rovers

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I disagree on those radials. They're excellent for heavy landers where you need to keep the bottom free for a docking port or something similar. I only wish that there was some sort of step between the and the 24-77 and it's 20kN of thrust and the 55's 120. Most of my landers fall between needing more than 80 thrust, but way less than 240. There's no engine currently in the radial setup for that.

As for non-structural parts... I'd probably go with the stayputnik. Low torque, lack of a top mounting node, impossibility to get anything pointing straight out of that orb, means that unless I'm going for a very specific aesthetic, I'll choose the OCTO every time.

may i recommend using non-radial engines mounted onto radially attached tanks/structural parts?

[Stargate525]

may i recommend using non-radial engines mounted onto radially attached tanks/structural parts?

I've done that before among many attempts to get creative with it. Problem then becomes viability in part count. In my Jool mission I was looking to cut parts wherever I could, and using a twelve part setup to get the exact thrust I needed lost out to two radial engines, and simply dealing with the absurd TWR

[ComradeGoat]

may i recommend using non-radial engines mounted onto radially attached tanks/structural parts?

And specifically, 48-7S engines.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I've done that before among many attempts to get creative with it. Problem then becomes viability in part count. In my Jool mission I was looking to cut parts wherever I could, and using a twelve part setup to get the exact thrust I needed lost out to two radial engines, and simply dealing with the absurd TWR

a more than fair point

[alacrity]

I like the Linear RCS ports for keeping rovers on the ground, and the rockomax 55 for my bigger landers.

this useless piece of ...tech... has never been used by my space agency. The much hated LV-1 Liguid fuel engine. 1.5 thrust almost no thrust and a pain in the ass to mount non radial.

Alacrity Fitzhugh

[Spatzimaus]

Yeah it has good Thrust, but the ISP on it is TRASH

The situations you're using it for aren't things where you care about maximizing ISP. An LV-N has great ISP, but it's worthless during the boost phase of a rocket flight because its thrust (60kN) is just too low, especially given its mass. A 120kN engine that weighs less than a ton is a different story; if you're launching a Mainsail+oranges sort of design, you might need a bit of extra thrust, and a Mainsail's vectoring stinks (only 1 degree) so it'd often have a hard time steering pre-flywheel change. I used to use quite a few designs that had a Mainsail with a few of these radials surrounding it.

Besides, its ISP is 290/320, which is pretty much identical to the Mainsail (280/330). That sort of ISP range is hardly crippling for launches; sure, you won't want to use one once you're in a stable orbit, but there's plenty of work to get to that point.

[ComradeGoat]

I like the Linear RCS ports for keeping rovers on the ground, and the rockomax 55 for my bigger landers.

this useless piece of ...tech... has never been used by my space agency. The much hated LV-1 Liguid fuel engine. 1.5 thrust almost no thrust and a pain in the ass to mount non radial.

The radial version is great though.

[Landwalker]

I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any parts more useless in the stock game (perhaps they have better uses in mods like RemoteTech) than the Communtron 88-88 and the Comms DTS-M1. Faster transmission? Whoopdie-doo. They suck up such an obscene amount of electricity relative to the Communotron 16 that it's ridiculous, and you get no actually useful return for it.

[Themohawkninja]

The Delta-Deluxe winglet. I haven't found a time when it is more useful than the standard canard.

[Themohawkninja]

Or the toroidal fuel tank. I've never used that, ever.

[LethalDose]

I'd say the in-line (not axial) "engine for ants". Just me though.

[Landwalker]

Or the toroidal fuel tank. I've never used that, ever.

This here was going to be my runner-up, but I just assumed that somebody, somewhere had come up with an actual use for it.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

This here was going to be my runner-up, but I just assumed that somebody, somewhere had come up with an actual use for it.

From my mini-apollo eaglet. They're actually quite versatile and don't require fuel lines to drain into whatever they're stuck onto.

[peadar1987]

This here was going to be my runner-up, but I just assumed that somebody, somewhere had come up with an actual use for it.

I've used it and the radial ant engines on a skycrane for a small rover I dropped off to the Mun. It sorely needed either more thrust or fuel though, you had to time the burn exactly right or you'd be eating Mundust at 80m/s. I had a success rate of 1 in 4 landings before I decided my piloting skills were never going to be good enough to land it with any sort of regularity. It did make for some very cheap missions though. Almost 1000 science from the one rover that made it and pottered round the edge of the East Crater for a while, and it was able to get there on top of a horribly underpowered rocket

[ComradeGoat]

Or the toroidal fuel tank. I've never used that, ever.

Useful for ultra light landers (with the seat).