my feedback after about 8 month, 0.23 still leaves too many issues untouched

[NikkyD]

I've been playing the game for about 8 month and i feel its time to share my thoughts/give feedback.

8 Month ago some frieds told me about a new funny game and i started playing it. We were having a lot of fun crashing our giant

rockets onto the moon and stuff. It didnt take long before i started reading up on the math/physics behind rocket science. As a

software developer i also wrote myself some primitive tools to help me calculate stuff, i didnt know about mechjeb at that point.

My main motivation at that point was to build the most efficient rockets possible and to land them where no one has gone before

I calculated A LOT and experimented a lot... but at some point the limitations of the game became obvious. I will get to that later,

because just in time i found mechjeb and it restored my fun with the game, at least for a while.

I had two things that i wanted to accomplish. One, fly to Jool/Laythe, land there, eventually build a base there and get back. Two,

reach the moon with the smallest possible rocket. I knew there were some community challenges in the forum but i missed them by

several month so i just did it for myself.

I soon reached a point where the game limited my plans, both of them and i couldnt see why the devs wouldnt change them but, again,

as a sw-dev myself i thought i just takes a bit more time...

About five month have passed since that point and... i dont see any real issues fixes, all i see is candy for the kids (career

mode). So im disapointed and thats why i want to give you this feedback.

Let me explain what exactly crushes all my efforts in reaching my self-set goals:

- Rocket stability

I understand that struts are free, but when its possible to build something like a jumbo tank, than why should 4 tanks of the same

size, mass and content wabble around like they do ? Cylindrical objects attached to eachother to build an even longer cylinder are

extremely sturdy in real life static. Its not even hard to do. Just code it in a way that if two objects are connected with the

exact same connection shape, they are treated as one object or give that connection some ridiculous value. Its ok if something with

a really small mount-point breaks off if its really heavy, like 2 Jumbos next to eachother, but not two jumbos building a longer jumbo.

It often happens, that my spaceplanes land and when they touch down, the ENGINE, off all things, just detaches and crashes into the

ground. Imagine a fighterjet like a F18 Hornet, how could the exhaust part of the engine suddenly break off ? The whole thing is

built as nearly one piece.

Or i land on a planet, looong way from home and the engine just falls off the second i land. Im talking about a lander-capsule-

rocket kinda thing. The landing struts dont break, nothing else but the engines. Ofc that mission is a bust because without engines

you dont go nowhere.

- Drag.

I understand the entire math behind it and i can see why you chose this formula, but i think you dont see the side effects it has.

Upon reentry once the drag really sets in, the heaviest part of the rocket will face backwards. On tiny rockets with a heavy cockpit

that means the one ton cockpit will suddenly turn to the sky and the empty 0.5 ton engine + 0.1 ish fuel container will point

towards the planet. Its like throwing a dart into the air and the heavy tip will point to the sky once its falling down...

I know that calculating real air resistance "on the fly" for every possible combination of parts is a mess, but there would be some

easy-to-use tricks and simplyfications that COULD do the trick.

- In addition to the drag, on spacesplanes... the air flow

Because of the whole drag n thrust issue often enough my planes start spinning like crazy once a certain amount of fuel has been

expended. Its just NOT POSSIBLE. A plane flying with 1000 m/s cant just spin around its horizontal axis. The wings stabilize it. If

the nose would suddenly go up by 90 degrees the air would hit the entire wing-surface with maximum resistance, the plane would

explode like a firecracker. But no... its just spinning around. Once spinning, its almost impossible to catch.

Now u cant tell from the beginning of the design that it will happen. And i had it happen upon return from Laythe. A LOT of work

behind me and the last steps, the landing on Kerbin... disaster. I did reload the game 20 times, it always happened and the entire

mission was a failure, for no good reason.

All those things destroy missions once their under-way but there are things that make rocket design a pain in the back.

- Efficiency of engines

Now because the engines in the game are way too heavy in relation to the fuel, staging sometimes makes no sense. But even if it

does, if you look at the engines, they are just not balanced out.

There is just no alternative to the Mainsail. Its ISP and thrust/weight are unrivaled. But what if i need an engine with only 1k

thrust and not 1,5k ? If i have to combine two big engines with less thrust, where do i place them ?

But its worse with the smaller engines. The LVT30 and 45 for example. Ive been over the math countless times and it never makes

sense to take the 45 unless you REALLY need the gimbal. So if you look at it, for 1 deg of gimbal it has to sacrifice almost 10% of

its thrust and gains somewhat 20% weight. What if i just want 0.5 gimbal, but therefor only gain 10% weight and lose 5% thrust ?

You can do this with so many engines. Sometimes i just need 10 kN more and i could sacrifice the gimbal for it.

Why not give every engine some sliders/bars where everyone can adjust them ? With some simple limits and rules, like for every 1%

thrust you increase the weight by 2% etc.

I know you can create ur own parts via config files but with the endless loading times of the game its annoying to always go out of

the game, create a new engine with some tiny amounts changed and the try this one out... missing 20 kN, exit game again, tweak

etc... cmon

- scalability of fuel containers

Just like the above, the rules of containers are quite simple, 1/9 emtpy weight, 8/9 fuel. Why not let the player decide how long a

container should be ? If its not possible because of the engine, well then just make em the same size but change the values. When

building really small rockets i sometimes need 1,5 small fuel containers if i take 2 it messes up my delta-v, if i take one im short

a half one... in the end calculation i 'have' to take some extra 200 kg of stuff i dont need to not return with still half a tank fuel.

Now you could say "why bother", well because in game with no real goal its my personal goal to achieve the smallest slimmest rocket

but i dont want to spend hours exiting, changing config, loading again. Especially if what i need is such a simple thing to code.

I dont like/need the career mode and i think the tech tree and all is... really bad, but i dont have to use it so i dont have a problem with it.

But the above issues made me stop playing again after 2 hours of patch 0.23 . My friends asked me "so how is the new patch, whats

new?" And all i could tell them was "still all the same issues... dont bother"

Its really sad because i do like the entire rocket thing a lot and the game CAN be fun, if only it wasnt for those annoying rocket-killing issues.

[Murph]

Cherry picking just a couple of issues, as I don't have the energy to respond to everything here.

It often happens, that my spaceplanes land and when they touch down, the ENGINE, off all things, just detaches and crashes into the

ground. Imagine a fighterjet like a F18 Hornet, how could the exhaust part of the engine suddenly break off ? The whole thing is

built as nearly one piece.

You're landing too hard. You need to have a vertical speed of less than -5 m/s (approx) at touchdown, or things will break. Either that, or it's a tail strike due to having the nose too high. Slam a F18 into the runway with high vertical speed, or at too sharp an angle, and I promise you that you'll cause serious damage to it. Ok, the damage is probably going to be quite different on the real F18, but the plane is not going to be flying again in the short term. Having been around real fighter jets stripped down to subassemblies and component parts, I can assure you that it's quite possible for bits to fall off if you put enough force into them, it just won't be quite as comical as it is in KSP.

Visualise how tall 5m is (hint, it's over twice the height of a modern home/office ceiling). How long is 1s? Combine the two. That's how quickly (and therefore how hard) the plane is hitting the runway.

- In addition to the drag, on spacesplanes... the air flow

Because of the whole drag n thrust issue often enough my planes start spinning like crazy once a certain amount of fuel has been

expended. Its just NOT POSSIBLE. A plane flying with 1000 m/s cant just spin around its horizontal axis. The wings stabilize it. If

the nose would suddenly go up by 90 degrees the air would hit the entire wing-surface with maximum resistance, the plane would

explode like a firecracker. But no... its just spinning around. Once spinning, its almost impossible to catch.

Now u cant tell from the beginning of the design that it will happen. And i had it happen upon return from Laythe. A LOT of work

behind me and the last steps, the landing on Kerbin... disaster. I did reload the game 20 times, it always happened and the entire

mission was a failure, for no good reason.

Various forms of spin are entirely possible in the real world, and can be unrecoverable. It's hard to be certain, but it's very likely that your plane's centre of mass (CoM) is ending up behind the centre of lift (CoL). When that happens, the plane loses aerodynamic stability and becomes uncontrollable. If it only happens after fuel has been used, it's quite possible that the CoM is starting out ok, but moving to an unstable position as it changes with fuel use. These are real issues from the real world. The solution is to manage the fuel weight, and/or ensure that the CoM and CoL positions prevent it happening too easily.

There is just no alternative to the Mainsail. Its ISP and thrust/weight are unrivalled.

That's not true. The Mainsail actually has a moderately poor ISP, and it's quite possible to use other combinations of engines to equal or exceed its performance (both TWR and efficiency).

Long term, KSP likely will get a broader selection of engines, tanks, and other key components. If you're willing to put a little effort into hunting them down, there's actually a massive range of parts out there as mods, many of equal or better quality than the supplied ones. A short list of mod packs I'd suggest looking at are:

B9

KW

NovaPunch

Firespitter

Taverio's

…and many more…

I don't want to claim that all of your concerns are invalid, there's still plenty of things which need to improve with KSP. I hope that the above is of some help to you.

[boomerdog2000]

Also now with the thrust limiters you can pull the mainsail down to 1k max thrust. It will weigh the same but the fuel efficiency will be higher.

EDIT: Also I believe the current aerodynamic and drag models are placeholders and a more accurate system is planned. In the meantime mods fit the bill quite nicely.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

All of these could be solved by mods

ISP Scaler

Joint Reinforcement

Aerodynamics

Stretchy Fuel Tanks

Also, if you are waiting for these to become stock. You will have to wait till 1.0. Or atleast 0.30, as for 0.22-0.29 will be Career mode updates

Edited December 19, 2013 by TheCanadianVendingMachine

[Slouch]

I'm a software dev too, unless you've seen the game code don't say "it would be easy to fix". Also you clearly haven't done your research in regards to the game engine or its physics.

The other replies have covered this better than this but here goes:

-It's your fault if you can't fly/your designs break, also the game engine doesn't work that way (look it up).

-Again your bad design, and the planes would break apart, not necessarily explode, also some planes can and have flipped like they do in KSP (it doesn't normally end well).

-Your bad design, again.

-Engines don't work that way, like, at all.

-Manufacturing does't work that way.

Also don't mess with the config file then blame the Devs. Also also the config file is not a toy, leave it be while you're playing and do your research.

[sjwt]

"There is just no alternative to the Mainsail. Its ISP and thrust/weight are unrivaled."

I would go back to the drawing board, that's just wrong.. try using 48-7s

[Champ]

Or i land on a planet, looong way from home and the engine just falls off the second i land.

This never happened to me. Like somebody else said, you may be landing with too much vertical velocity.

- Drag.

I understand the entire math behind it and i can see why you chose this formula, but i think you dont see the side effects it has.

Upon reentry once the drag really sets in, the heaviest part of the rocket will face backwards. On tiny rockets with a heavy cockpit

that means the one ton cockpit will suddenly turn to the sky and the empty 0.5 ton engine + 0.1 ish fuel container will point

towards the planet. Its like throwing a dart into the air and the heavy tip will point to the sky once its falling down...

YES, drag is really bad in KSP. Why don't you use FAR ?

I think it is a good thing that the drag is like this for now. Yes, it is less realist, and yes, your rockets need more deltav to get to orbit. But your rockets are also easier to fly. It's a good thing you can learn how to fly with this bad drag model, and then, when you master it, you can install FAR to get a better drag model.

I know that calculating real air resistance "on the fly" for every possible combination of parts is a mess, but there would be some

easy-to-use tricks and simplyfications that COULD do the trick.

Not sure it is as easy as you think.

- In addition to the drag, on spacesplanes... the air flow

Because of the whole drag n thrust issue often enough my planes start spinning like crazy once a certain amount of fuel has been

expended. Its just NOT POSSIBLE. A plane flying with 1000 m/s cant just spin around its horizontal axis. The wings stabilize it. If

the nose would suddenly go up by 90 degrees the air would hit the entire wing-surface with maximum resistance, the plane would

explode like a firecracker. But no... its just spinning around. Once spinning, its almost impossible to catch.

Now u cant tell from the beginning of the design that it will happen. And i had it happen upon return from Laythe. A LOT of work

behind me and the last steps, the landing on Kerbin... disaster. I did reload the game 20 times, it always happened and the entire

mission was a failure, for no good reason.

There WAS a good reason. Your design must be bad. I guess the problem is that when you burn a certain amount of fuel, your center of mass gets behind your center of lift. At least, that was the problem with my spinning planes. Well, not sure of it, i am clearly not good with planes (never landed a plane !).

- Efficiency of engines

Now because the engines in the game are way too heavy in relation to the fuel, staging sometimes makes no sense.

Are you serious ? use a more lightweight engine on your upper stage. As there is less weight, a less powerfull engine should be OK.

There is just no alternative to the Mainsail. Its ISP and thrust/weight are unrivaled.

The mainsail is just a piece of crap, except for massive first stages (where it is the only viable solution). It's only quality is it's high thrust, it does not have a good ISP.

If i have to combine two big engines with less thrust, where do i place them ?

On a bi-coupler ?

But its worse with the smaller engines. The LVT30 and 45 for example. Ive been over the math countless times and it never makes

sense to take the 45 unless you REALLY need the gimbal.

Yes, sure. Like the mainsail only makes sense when you want high thrust and don't care about ISP. Or the nuclear engine for the exact opposite.

That's fine like it. Every engine has it's utility for different situations.

So if you look at it, for 1 deg of gimbal it has to sacrifice almost 10% of

its thrust and gains somewhat 20% weight. What if i just want 0.5 gimbal, but therefor only gain 10% weight and lose 5% thrust ?

You can do this with so many engines. Sometimes i just need 10 kN more and i could sacrifice the gimbal for it.

Why not give every engine some sliders/bars where everyone can adjust them ? With some simple limits and rules, like for every 1%

thrust you increase the weight by 2% etc.

Standard pieces, economy, realism.

Same answer for custom-size fuel tanks.

If its not possible because of the engine, well then just make em the same size but change the values.

This would be really unrealistic and would really change the game in a cheaty way. Sometimes you fail to land because your rocket is too tall and you still have a little horizontal velocity... With your suggestion, this would not happen. Too easy !

[Kerbart]

Apparently what you want is a real-to-life space simulator that takes into accounts all laws of physics including aerodynamics.

You're in luck! There is such a program that allows you to do that, and model everything the way you want it modelled. What's more, that program is available on practically any platform of choice, and it allows you to run your simulation with stunning 60fps graphics.

It's called "C++"

The rest of us like to play the game of KSP and enjoy it. Yes, there are some shortcomings that tie in with the way the game is designed, and there are some features missing because it's in development. I did get a chuckle out of your request for things to be more realistic. "But there should be the option to just have the engine power that is convenient for me." That's not how real-life engineering works, son. Engines are incredibly complex to design and a few standard designs are available, and that's what you work with. You won't see Space-X design an engine from scratch for every mission. They have a few models and work with that, and figure out a configuration that works with the mission profile.

Engineering is about finding a compromise between your objectives and what the real world offers your. In this case, "the real world" is KSP. Deal with it, others are showing that the missions you want are perfectly possible. If it's not KSP that is limiting you to achieve those goals you will have to wonder what is.

Rest assured, you're not the only one who only want realism where they think it is interesting (I didn't hear you about life support, wrecking atmospheric reentry if you're only 2° or 3° outside the re-entry window, parachutes getting ripped off when released at mach .75, etc) and demand unrealism where they think the game "is limiting" them. But keep it coming, I need the occasional chuckle.

[Sirrobert]

- Rocket stability

I understand that struts are free, but when its possible to build something like a jumbo tank, than why should 4 tanks of the same

size, mass and content wabble around like they do ? Cylindrical objects attached to eachother to build an even longer cylinder are

extremely sturdy in real life static. Its not even hard to do. Just code it in a way that if two objects are connected with the

exact same connection shape, they are treated as one object or give that connection some ridiculous value. Its ok if something with

a really small mount-point breaks off if its really heavy, like 2 Jumbos next to eachother, but not two jumbos building a longer jumbo.

It often happens, that my spaceplanes land and when they touch down, the ENGINE, off all things, just detaches and crashes into the

ground. Imagine a fighterjet like a F18 Hornet, how could the exhaust part of the engine suddenly break off ? The whole thing is

built as nearly one piece.

Or i land on a planet, looong way from home and the engine just falls off the second i land. Im talking about a lander-capsule-

rocket kinda thing. The landing struts dont break, nothing else but the engines. Ofc that mission is a bust because without engines

you dont go nowhere.

That kind of instability is caused by to much thrust. Yes, that is a thing. Throttle down and your rockets will be fine.

Or just design it properly and put droptanks on the sides. Saves weight AND stability.

If your engine breaks, that means you landed to hard. The legs compress to counter the impact, so if your impact is to hard, the legs compress so far that your engine touches the surface and breaks. Always stress test your landers on Kerbin before you take off. Just drop it from height, see at what speed something breaks. Usually anything below 10m/s should be fine.

Alternative is that your lander is simply to heavy with only a few lander legs. Than the legs will simply compress so far that the engine touches the ground. Add more legs. Again, this can be fixed if you test it before you launch it

- Drag.

I understand the entire math behind it and i can see why you chose this formula, but i think you dont see the side effects it has.

Upon reentry once the drag really sets in, the heaviest part of the rocket will face backwards. On tiny rockets with a heavy cockpit

that means the one ton cockpit will suddenly turn to the sky and the empty 0.5 ton engine + 0.1 ish fuel container will point

towards the planet. Its like throwing a dart into the air and the heavy tip will point to the sky once its falling down...

I know that calculating real air resistance "on the fly" for every possible combination of parts is a mess, but there would be some

easy-to-use tricks and simplyfications that COULD do the trick.

Airodinamics is a placeholder for now. Download FAR if you want them to be realistic

- In addition to the drag, on spacesplanes... the air flow

Because of the whole drag n thrust issue often enough my planes start spinning like crazy once a certain amount of fuel has been

expended. Its just NOT POSSIBLE. A plane flying with 1000 m/s cant just spin around its horizontal axis. The wings stabilize it. If

the nose would suddenly go up by 90 degrees the air would hit the entire wing-surface with maximum resistance, the plane would

explode like a firecracker. But no... its just spinning around. Once spinning, its almost impossible to catch.

Now u cant tell from the beginning of the design that it will happen. And i had it happen upon return from Laythe. A LOT of work

behind me and the last steps, the landing on Kerbin... disaster. I did reload the game 20 times, it always happened and the entire

mission was a failure, for no good reason.

It's not possible if you design it the center of lift and everything properly. Again, did you TEST it before you send it out to Laythe?

- Efficiency of engines

Now because the engines in the game are way too heavy in relation to the fuel, staging sometimes makes no sense. But even if it

does, if you look at the engines, they are just not balanced out.

There is just no alternative to the Mainsail. Its ISP and thrust/weight are unrivaled. But what if i need an engine with only 1k

thrust and not 1,5k ? If i have to combine two big engines with less thrust, where do i place them ?

But its worse with the smaller engines. The LVT30 and 45 for example. Ive been over the math countless times and it never makes

sense to take the 45 unless you REALLY need the gimbal. So if you look at it, for 1 deg of gimbal it has to sacrifice almost 10% of

its thrust and gains somewhat 20% weight. What if i just want 0.5 gimbal, but therefor only gain 10% weight and lose 5% thrust ?

You can do this with so many engines. Sometimes i just need 10 kN more and i could sacrifice the gimbal for it.

Why not give every engine some sliders/bars where everyone can adjust them ? With some simple limits and rules, like for every 1%

thrust you increase the weight by 2% etc.

I know you can create ur own parts via config files but with the endless loading times of the game its annoying to always go out of

the game, create a new engine with some tiny amounts changed and the try this one out... missing 20 kN, exit game again, tweak

etc... cmon

Engines are fine. Use any of the couplers instead of the mainsail if you want a combo of smaller engines. Or just run the mainsail at 2/3th thrust if you want it to produce 1k thrust.

Gimbal is a pritty big deal if you want good stability during takeoff. I use it alot. Many people do. When clustering those engines, put 1 45 in the center for gimbal, and the outer rockets put 30s.

But if you don't want to, noones forcing you. Just stick with the 30.

You don't get sliders on engines because the gimbal and weight is a hard design. You can't adjust how much gimbal an engine has on the fly. Well you can limit the gimbal range, but that wouldn't remove half the parts that make it gimbal

- scalability of fuel containers

Just like the above, the rules of containers are quite simple, 1/9 emtpy weight, 8/9 fuel. Why not let the player decide how long a

container should be ? If its not possible because of the engine, well then just make em the same size but change the values. When

building really small rockets i sometimes need 1,5 small fuel containers if i take 2 it messes up my delta-v, if i take one im short

a half one... in the end calculation i 'have' to take some extra 200 kg of stuff i dont need to not return with still half a tank fuel.

Now you could say "why bother", well because in game with no real goal its my personal goal to achieve the smallest slimmest rocket

but i dont want to spend hours exiting, changing config, loading again. Especially if what i need is such a simple thing to code.

You can, with teakables. Just adjust the amount of fuel you take with you. Being able to ajust the size of the container itself would mean an infinite amount of models for said containers. Not very practical

[Slouch]

Apparently what you want is a real-to-life space simulator that takes into accounts all laws of physics including aerodynamics.

You're in luck! There is such a program that allows you to do that, and model everything the way you want it modelled. What's more, that program is available on practically any platform of choice, and it allows you to run your simulation with stunning 60fps graphics.

It's called "C++"

The rest of us like to play the game of KSP and enjoy it. Yes, there are some shortcomings that tie in with the way the game is designed, and there are some features missing because it's in development. I did get a chuckle out of your request for things to be more realistic. "But there should be the option to just have the engine power that is convenient for me." That's not how real-life engineering works, son. Engines are incredibly complex to design and a few standard designs are available, and that's what you work with. You won't see Space-X design an engine from scratch for every mission. They have a few models and work with that, and figure out a configuration that works with the mission profile.

Engineering is about finding a compromise between your objectives and what the real world offers your. In this case, "the real world" is KSP. Deal with it, others are showing that the missions you want are perfectly possible. If it's not KSP that is limiting you to achieve those goals you will have to wonder what is.

Rest assured, you're not the only one who only want realism where they think it is interesting (I didn't hear you about life support, wrecking atmospheric reentry if you're only 2° or 3° outside the re-entry window, parachutes getting ripped off when released at mach .75, etc) and demand unrealism where they think the game "is limiting" them. But keep it coming, I need the occasional chuckle.

^^ This.

[Monkeh]

Mainsail's ISP is unrivalled?

You've been playing for 8 months?

May I suggest you get a clue before posting on here and giving your friends false information?

[vexx32]

Heeey, play nice

Seriously, though, if you want a more brutally realistic game, you could have a look at Orbiter. Less cute green men, though :/

And yes, KSP is still very much in development and there's a lot that needs to be touched up, tweaked, balanced and fixed.

[Sirrobert]

Mainsail's ISP is unrivalled?

You've been playing for 8 months?

May I suggest you get a clue before posting on here and giving your friends false information?

It is quite unrivalled in being horrible. Working from memory here, but only solid boosters are worse

[Monkeh]

All stock engines and their ISP's in ascending order for atmosphere.

Part__________________________________________ISP atmos ISP Vacuum

Sepratron I______________________________________100.............100

LV-1R Liquid Fuel Engine___________________________220.............290

LV-1 Liquid Fuel Engine____________________________220.............290

LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor_________________________220..............800

RT-10 Solid Fuel Booster___________________________225.............240

Rockomax BACC Solid Fuel Booster___________________230.............250

Rockomax 24-77__________________________________250.............300

Rockomax "Poodle" Liquid Engine_____________________270.............390

Rockomax "Mainsail" Liquid Engine______________280.............330

Rockomax Mark 55 Radial Mount Liquid Engine__________290.............320

Rockomax "Skipper" Liquid Engine____________________300..............350

Rockomax 48-7S__________________________________300............350

LV-909 Liquid Fuel Engine__________________________300.............390

LV-T30 Liquid Fuel Engine__________________________320.............370

LV-T45 Liquid Fuel Engine__________________________320.............370

Toroidal Aerospike Rocket__________________________388.............390

All taken from: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Parts

[Smidge204]

- Rocket stability

I understand that struts are free, but when its possible to build something like a jumbo tank, than why should 4 tanks of the same

size, mass and content wabble around like they do ? Cylindrical objects attached to eachother to build an even longer cylinder are

extremely sturdy in real life static.

Not entirely true. There's this thing called column buckling you might want to learn more about...

You have a column of fuel tanks with a load on one end (whatever you're launching) and a load on the other end (the engine's thrust). It's quite realistic that the column would bend and flex, and since the joints are elastic it will oscillate.

The only two non-realistic things about the way the game does it is 1) the tanks themselves do not flex at all, leaving all of the flexing to occur at the joints, and 2) The joints are far too strong and can actually flex to the point that they appear separated but it doesn't break. Both of these non-realistic behaviors are in your favor.

So this is not a problem with the game, but a problem with your own understanding/expectations.

It often happens, that my spaceplanes land and when they touch down, the ENGINE, off all things, just detaches and crashes into the

ground. Imagine a fighterjet like a F18 Hornet, how could the exhaust part of the engine suddenly break off ? The whole thing is

built as nearly one piece.

As was already said, you're landing way too hard. I can promise you that if you belly flop an F18 Hornet (or anything else really) it will disassemble itself.

Consider that a typical real-world landing might have a vertical speed of -2 m/s or less... but in KSP you can build aircraft that can survive landings up to -50m/s. The game is very forgiving.

- Drag.

I understand the entire math behind it and i can see why you chose this formula, but i think you dont see the side effects it has.

Upon reentry once the drag really sets in, the heaviest part of the rocket will face backwards.

Weight has nothing to do with drag, though. A very heavy part with a high drag coefficient will end up "on top" every time, unless you manage to very carefully balance the object such that the drag force vector passes through the center of mass - which is possible in KSP.

Again, the only non-realistic thing the stock game does in this regard is assign each part a drag value that is largely (sometimes completely) independent of its shape, where in reality the shape is pretty much everything. Some parts like wings and control surfaces so have variable drag depending on their angle to the prevailing wind, but not everything. This approximation also works to your advantage.

- In addition to the drag, on spacesplanes... the air flow

Because of the whole drag n thrust issue often enough my planes start spinning like crazy once a certain amount of fuel has been

expended. Its just NOT POSSIBLE. A plane flying with 1000 m/s cant just spin around its horizontal axis.

It absolutely can. It's called a flat spin and the reason you don't see it too often in real life is because plane designs that are especially prone to it tend to disassemble/crash and not be built that way anymore. Still happens though.

Again as was said, your design needs work.

There is just no alternative to the Mainsail. Its ISP and thrust/weight are unrivaled.

The Mainsail's ISP is fairly poor. If I have heavy lifting to do I always consider the Skipper first because it's more efficient, meaning I can get better delta-V for a given amount of fuel.

Failing that, you can cluster seven LV-T30s on the bottom of a "Large" radius tank to get the same thrust and ~14% better efficiency at the loss of gimbal control.

But what if i need an engine with only 1k thrust and not 1,5k?

Limit your throttle to 60%.

If i have to combine two big engines with less thrust, where do i place them ?

Be creative.

But its worse with the smaller engines. The LVT30 and 45 for example. Ive been over the math countless times and it never makes

sense to take the 45 unless you REALLY need the gimbal. So if you look at it, for 1 deg of gimbal it has to sacrifice almost 10% of

its thrust and gains somewhat 20% weight. What if i just want 0.5 gimbal, but therefor only gain 10% weight and lose 5% thrust ?

There is no reasonably conceivable scenario where you would want to do that. If you really want to tweak your control, use fins, reaction wheels and/or RCS... or press Capslock to activate fine control. In games this is called "balance" because it forces players to weigh consequences of their choices more carefully for each specific situation.

- scalability of fuel containers

Just like the above, the rules of containers are quite simple, 1/9 emtpy weight, 8/9 fuel. Why not let the player decide how long a

container should be ?

Such is life. With the new tweakables in 0.23, though, you can reduce the amount of fuel/oxidizer in each tank prior to launch. This reduces the extra fuel weight if you don't need it. It's also worth mentioning that all tanks (except the Oscar B and Round-8) have the same Structural Mass:Fuel ratio, so a tank that has twice the fuel has twice the empty mass.

You could also, again, design better rockets. As long as your TWR is above 1.0 adding fuel should always increase your delta-V unless you messed something up.

tl;dr: Seems to be a PICNIC.

=Smidge=

[NikkyD]

I dont understand why so many ppl feel the need to answer so aggressively but i want to thank the ones who gave me some contructive answers.

I will try out some of the plugins mentioned and get into some points later on because i think i have been misunderstood in some issues.

[Alchemist]

About scaling tanks and overall stability of long stacks - in real life any such modification to the rocket requires recalculation and tweaking of the structural elements. You can't just make it a bit longer or attach new stage because it can result in resonance effects that will tear the rocket apart.

Just look at Vostok launch vehicle (or its early version Vostok-L / Luna) - its first 2 stages were fully tested as R-7 ICBM / Sputnik launch vehicle and the third stage was fully tested as second stage of R-9 ICBM. But when they put that together there were quite a few crashes just because of these vibrations (that they couldn't fully predict at the time).

So if your rocket vibrates itself apart - it's quite natural phenomena. Add or remove some struts and it will be OK. Yes, sometimes extra struts just make it worse.