Ion Power?

[boxman]

I say make some adjustments to the game code so that ion engines can run during timewarp.

They already run with physical time warp of up to 4x.

[Nuke]

I say make some adjustments to the game code so that ion engines can run during timewarp.

if you can do this then nerf. otherwise leave them where they are or buff. ultimately id like to be able to perform an orbital maneuver with ion engines in a non-masochistic way. 2 hours to make a transfer is just nuts. i can barely make room for an hour of game time a day, so they are completely unusable just because of the amount of time it takes to perform a maneuver with them. i certainly dont want to send all my available game time watching the dv gauge go down.

They already run with physical time warp of up to 4x.

that makes a 2 hour burn 30 minutes. do you really want to watch a dv gauge go down for 30 minutes? if we can get a 10-20x ion mode that would be great.

Edited February 12, 2014 by Nuke

[TimePeriod]

I only use them to shift altitude, anything outside kerbins SOI and I turn to nuclear engines.

[SSSPutnik]

A nuclear reactor would be handy...

[TMS]

A couple of points:

• Physical warp will never be increased to a point where current ion engine burn times become reasonable. Not gonna happen.
  
• Automated flight and manoeuvre node execution will not be made stock.
  
• On rails execution will not happen.
  

Thus, you can either buff the ion engines for ease of use (they'll still have comparatively long burns for role-play purposes), or leave them as-is so that long-standing players can impress others with their anecdotes of washing the dishes while mechjeb plays the game for them.

I'd vote for a buff, because SQUAD won't be overhauling the physics glitches or making an about-face on automation any time soon (read: ever).

[TranquilTempest]

I've only used them on a craft to map the sun with SCANsat where I needed something like 40~50 km/s ∆v. I would probably use them more if the mass was cut, but I don't think thrust should be increased or energy usage decreased.

Edited February 12, 2014 by TranquilTempest

[SSSPutnik]

Your father's ion engine. This is the engine of a Kerbal engineer. Not as clumsy or random as a mainsail; an elegant engine for a more civilized age.

[DunaRocketeer]

I'm using four ion engines as a return transfer stage to my sub-25 ton Duna Science Expedition spacecraft. It allows me to launch the whole expedition on one very moderate sized rocket, and really the low thrust isn't that bad. I really like using the ion engines.

[Rusty6899]

Probably about right. If they had a higher thrust (and I guess that people complaining about 30minute burns wouldn't be very happy with 10 minute burns either) they would start to be become far too OP, as they could be used for take off from small bodies and potentially, interplanetary stage for light craft by more patient users. They're probably best left as they are and used in rare cases.

[Levelord]

(and I guess that people complaining about 30minute burns wouldn't be very happy with 10 minute burns either)

I'm interested in knowing what exactly you are trying to imply with that statement. Nuke engines already take about 10 minutes (depending on the average weight of interplanetary craft) which nobody has complained about in the history of... whenever.

From what I gather from your statement, you are implying that a 30 minute burn is a good thing in terms of game play and possibly realism. I'd like you to explain to me how, waiting for 30 minutes doing nothing in a videogame is justifiable.

[peadar1987]

Some people are happy with ion engines as they are. They don't mind using MechJeb, or Remotetech's flight computer. Or else they're happy doing a 30 minute burn with Game of Thrones playing in another tab.

If you don't like them, you don't have to use them.

The "buff the ion engines" debate seems to be more of the same "you're not having fun the right way. The game must be changed to stop you"

[Levelord]

Some people are happy with ion engines as they are. They don't mind using MechJeb, or Remotetech's flight computer. Or else they're happy doing a 30 minute burn with Game of Thrones playing in another tab.

If you don't like them, you don't have to use them.

The "buff the ion engines" debate seems to be more of the same "you're not having fun the right way. The game must be changed to stop you"

I believe the point of the thread is 'what can be done (or if it's fine on it's original state) to make the ion engines a more viable choice of engine in KSP'. Ion engines are a big thing in real life where astronomers, engineers, physicists and other scientists are pushing forwards the technology to be incorporated more into spacecraft design while in KSP, the exact opposite is true, where a very small niche of players make some active use of the engine while everyone else avoids it and sees it as a curiosity.

From a realism standpoint, it's the most unrealistic engine in the game, resembling very little of it's real counterpart in terms of thrust and ISP. From a gameplay standpoint it is an engine a very small minority of players in the community have time for. Real life ion engines run for weeks at a time and while it's fortunate that KSP players don't have to wait that long for their burns, it's still too long in the frame of the game it is in. Time paradoxically, is a luxury scientists have and people playing video games don't have. In fact KSP makes use of a lot of shortcuts in order to get us right into the concept of space travel instead of bogging us down with things like 'taking time to build a space craft', 'waiting for funds to come through', 'waiting for engine ignition times', 'waiting for the craft to be rolled out to the launchpad' and so on. Kerbin's been scaled down to save time on long orbital launches, and higher levels of static rails time warp was implemented in order to travel interplanetary. Why does SQUAD even bother optimizing the load times if everyone is comfortable bringing up Game of Thrones on another monitor while the game does it's thing?

The reason why we skip those aspects of space travel, preparation and general waiting (while arguably interesting to watch) is that the player spends the majority of their time doing absolutely nothing while waiting for things to move along.

We were even given a special physics time warp to help move us along those long nuclear engine burns. Unfortunately the time warp is insufficient for ion engine burn times (which is something I would strongly advocate changing instead, as having an ion engine buff displeases so many people).

The "If you don't like them, you don't have to use them." answer can be used for literally any argument that avoids addressing the actual points or possible flaws in a discussion and is quite frankly the cheapest of cop-out one can provide.

"Don't like that Unity doesn't use a quad core? Then don't play KSP"

"Don't like the way your monitor is colored? Then don't use your PC"

"Don't like the way education is done in schools? Then don't go to school"

"Don't like the way the ion engines are under-used because they aren't consistent with the other engines in terms of the time it demands? Don't use it"

Never ever use that line of flawed reasoning again. It drives me up the wall.

The ion engine appears to be in a corner of it's own and doesn't even serve as an educational tool like the other engines in the game. Nobody in a school is going to sit for 30 minutes in a class to see if an ion engine can take you interplanetary.

I can understand that people want to keep the ion engine the way it is, and in some ways I agree. If you'd let me elaborate:

People don't have an actual problem with the engine, people have a problem with the ridiculous wait time associated with it. Which to me, is entirely reasonable. An additional point I'd like to make is that everything around the ion engine works disproportionately against it. Science instruments are oversized and too heavy (as they were never intended to be used on craft with ion engines) which further pushes up the burn times. Small batteries contain too little charge and solar panels don't provide enough power to run the engine at max (which means using the biggest solar panel which again drives up the weight and slows everything down further).

In theory and from personal experience building minimalist craft, the ion engines are not sufficient to carry any useful scientific payload beyond Kerbin's sphere of influence, and the time spent burning despite it's high ISP still means that it will have the majority of it's xenon tanks depleted by the time the burn completes, which in all intents and purposes, means you are better off using nuke engines. Ion engines are relegated to the realm of roleplay where you pretend you are launching a probe, but it's not carrying any of the actual scientific payload.

People are against adding smaller scientific parts to fit small probes, they are against buffing the engine, and they are against anything really. The best solution would be to increase the level of physics warp allowed for the ion engines. It's the only solution I know to combat the ridiculously long wait times. I don't want to be playing a game where I spend 90% of my time not actually playing it.

Edited February 12, 2014 by Levelord

[Brischkopp]

I have to agree with Levelord. The ion engines are not under-powered, it's just that the burn times are very long. I used them once for a interplanetary probe, but after 45 minutes of burning to circularize around a planet i had enough. Now i only use them for probes/satellites in Kerbin and Mun orbits. The best solution would be to enable time warp when using ion engines, but i'm not sure if this is possible without drawbacks for the calculations done in KSP.

[peadar1987]

@Levelord:

I do understand where you're coming from, and the "if you don't like it, don't use it" argument is stupid if there are no alternatives, but there are. If you don't want to wait 20 minutes while your ion engine burns, good for you, that's how you want to play the game. Use a chemical rocket and bring more fuel with you.

If you prefer building lighter spacecraft, and don't mind longer burn times, the ion engine is for you. Plenty of people think that way. Enough to at least keep the ion engine in the game.

If you add more thrust to the ion engine, you either make it totally overpowered, in which case, why ever use anything else? Or else you have to increase the mass, or reduce the fuel efficiency, in which case, it's just another rocket engine with a fancy blue light.

I agree with you on adding a higher physics warp though, if the calculations can handle it, it's totally the way to go.

[Captain Sierra]

So, I'd like to throw out a few things.

First, the ion actually got a hard nerf in .23, having it's thrust reduced from 2, to .5. Pre-nerf, the engine was not so bad, I used it a bunch myself. Post-nerf, the amount of hate I've seen has sykrocketed.

Now, Levelord makes some good points and there are some solutions like:

make smaller probe versions of certain science parts

increase ways to power the engine

Allow higher physical time warps in orbit under thrust (up to 6 default, 8 for nukes, and 10 for ions; all numbers subject to developer opinion)

Now, with the new nerfed ion, I use them like this: use a chemical rocket kick stage to achieve kerbin escape; do not circularize, just fly by lots of places. For that, it's great.

As for more powerful engines, more ways to power it, better probe-sized power stuff etc, I'll recommend Near Future Propulsion. Now, I'm not throwing the 'Don't like it? Get a mod.' card, I'm pointing out ways to achieve immediate gratification. The stock ion is certainly in need of TLC, not heartless nerfs and Squad should look into that, but until they do, we have mods.

For probe-sized science, there's a mod that has smaller, repeatable versions of the materials lab and goo canister. There's also DMagic orbital science with orbital science and a rover laser experiment.

[SSSPutnik]

@Levelord, the reason scientists etc are using them in real life is because computers are running the burns, for hours, days, or potentially weeks.

Also, the cost of boosting enough fuel into space to go to Jupiter etc.

You cannot compare real life to KSP.

I bet more people would use them in KSP if there was no LV-N option...

And yes I have seen people complain about long LV-N burns.

Personally I don't mind long burns as long as they can be accomplished before leaving SoI's etc.

Edited February 12, 2014 by SSSPutnik

[WafflesToo]

@Levelord

You are being an ass. You are not smarter than everyone else. And your argument is flawed because there are plenty of perfectly good alternatives to the ion engine. I cannot understand all this ill-will towards one tiny niche item in the game. It's almost as if people are jealous of those who accomplish things with it. Its as if they see the stunts some have pulled off with it, try it themselves, find the bar to entry too high and instead of moving on stand there and demand the bar be moved to accommodate them.

I just don't get it.

[Brapness]

@levelord: You regularly claim that only a very small minority of players have time for the engine, yet the poll on this thread indicates that just less than 2/3rds believe it should remain the way it is, so where exactly are you drawing that conclusion from?

I also disagree with your statement that an ion probe can carry no significant science payload. I launched 3 ion probes as part of my shuttle program equipped with the small science parts (so no goo or materials bay). 1 flew by Dres and then went to Moho, 1 went to the sun and one equipped with wheels, parachutes, atmospheric, presmat and seismic science parts went to Duna. The burn times for each were about 12 minutes or less at 4x phys-warp (including time spent lifting them from a 120km orbit to a circular 4.5Mm orbit) as none of them weighed more than about 1.5 to 2 tonnes. They returned plenty of science for me and that was just by transmission.

[spinomonkey]

@levelord: I'm going to agree with you. Nailed it as far as I'm concerned.

[SSSPutnik]

I sent Kethane and scansats around all of Jool moons using ion engines.

[Mike the Mechanic]

I don't wanna brag, but Ions are pretty useful as far as I am concerned - just check out this challenge http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/63311-EXTREME-ION-ing-because-it-s-not-covalent-or-very-punny

Ion engines, as they are now, add an additional dimension in building your spacecraft and allow further customization of your spacecraft into certain tasks that require high delta v or a lightweight craft (and other scopes I did not mention now). Imagine going into close solar orbit with liquid fuel engines only(you have to take a bunch of orange tanks with you and burn them using one LVN).

For me, it boils down to is this: the fact that they cannot push a huge interstellar dreadnought out of kerbins orbit in 3 minutes does not make ion engines less useful in SOI's of smaller bodies (On Gilly, Pol and Minmus you get a nice TWR for main propulsion). What should be done though is to add a bigger (scaled) engine, bigger (scaled) tanks and an appropriately scaled big solar panel - the Gigantor is very inefficient when compared with the OX - because of the part count.

Someone mentioned that in KSP you wait most of the time - yeah, it's a (simplified) simulation of real space travel, and in real space travel, waiting is part of the experience

[Levelord]

@Levelord

You are being an ass. You are not smarter than everyone else. And your argument is flawed because there are plenty of perfectly good alternatives to the ion engine. I cannot understand all this ill-will towards one tiny niche item in the game. It's almost as if people are jealous of those who accomplish things with it. Its as if they see the stunts some have pulled off with it, try it themselves, find the bar to entry too high and instead of moving on stand there and demand the bar be moved to accommodate them.

I just don't get it.

I'm not following.

Where in my post did you get the impression that I said I am smarter than everyone else? I simply laid out objective points to explain my thoughts on the issue and called out a logical fallacy that had no contribution in a discussion. I'd rather you counter the individual points about the ion engine than resort to calling someone an ass.

Because:

1. It's trivial name-calling that adds nothing to the discussion

2. You make no valid objective points than saying people are jealous, which says nothing about the build of the engine itself or how it relates to the game.

3. You ignored the points made in my post which lays out a practical reason the engine doesn't seem to be popular and a possible solution. Which mind you, has nothing to do with changing the actual engine itself, so I don't see why you are all defensive about it.

As what peadar1987 said in response to my post, there is always an alternative to the ion engine, which I agree. The point to take into consideration is that not all choices are made equal, and that choices have incentives built into them. For example, I have a choice to go watch TV or watch shows online. Both are choices, but I have a better incentive to watch shows online because I can avoid ads, save videos, multitask, and more. The same applies for ion engines when put side by side with other engines they really don't add up unless you are a hardcore realism simulator. The ion engine offers the least incentive to be chosen into craft designs when you factor in practicality, time management, and payload carrying capacity.

People think that if you buff the ion engine (which is not what I'm arguing for) that people will choose the ion engine exclusively, because, "why ever use anything else?". Well, the opposite is true when the ion engine has a very long burn time with few advantages other than it's ISP, then people will say, "why ever use the ion engine?".

This to me is something that is misbalanced. Over-using an engine is unbalanced and under-using an engine is equally unbalanced. Compare this to the RAPIER and the Ramjet engines, these two engines are almost perfectly balanced in terms of having equal incentives while still performing their own specific roles differently. I've yet to see a majority choose one engine over another as each provide vastly different benefits and drawbacks. The ion engine's apparent benefits are overshadowed by the lack of specific parts for it's size and the long burn times.

At least if the time warp issues were addressed, the ion engine could have been a strong contender against the nuclear engine and people would begin considering it for other craft designs.

@levelord: You regularly claim that only a very small minority of players have time for the engine, yet the poll on this thread indicates that just less than 2/3rds believe it should remain the way it is, so where exactly are you drawing that conclusion from?

I also disagree with your statement that an ion probe can carry no significant science payload. I launched 3 ion probes as part of my shuttle program equipped with the small science parts (so no goo or materials bay). 1 flew by Dres and then went to Moho, 1 went to the sun and one equipped with wheels, parachutes, atmospheric, presmat and seismic science parts went to Duna. The burn times for each were about 12 minutes or less at 4x phys-warp (including time spent lifting them from a 120km orbit to a circular 4.5Mm orbit) as none of them weighed more than about 1.5 to 2 tonnes. They returned plenty of science for me and that was just by transmission.

You are reading the poll incorrectly. The poll says nothing about how many people actually use the ion engine, it just records people's opinions on if the engine should be changed. I don't use the ion engine, but I voted to keep it the same, because I opted to have time warp upgraded to allow higher levels of warp.

If you want to get a feel of how under-used the engine is, go to the spacecraft exchange (and the mission reports section if you want more data) and tally the number of interplanetary crafts people post and then count how many of them use ion engines and how many use nuclear engines or other. Then calculate the fraction/percentage over the total and you can see that there are very, very, very few crafts that utilizes the ion engine. I've only seen ion drives used on ultra light SSTOs twice, and on a small orbital bike with a chair once (that orbital bike is arguably not interplanetary but I'll give it a pass for argument's sake) out of the few hundreds of interplanetary crafts posted monthly.

If you want to be really accurate, you could make a separate poll asking people specifically if they use the ion engine and how regularly they use it. I'll readily accept the data you provide me.

Now, consider that the smaller science equipment usually gathers less science. They can only be activated in certain areas, for example the Double-C Seismic Accelerometer can only be activated on a planetary surface, or a GRAVMAX Negative Gravioli Detector which can only be used on the surface or in deep space but never in atmosphere, while a SC-9001 Science Jr. or Mystery Goo Containment Unit can record data at all altitudes high/low, on the ground, low orbit and high orbit, deep space, enabling you to choose the area which provides the highest amount of science points. All things being equal, gathering arguably less science negates the advantages the ion engines offers. Which brings me around to my previous point where I feel that there needs to be specific small probe parts that can/cannot carry science in order to make small probes worthwhile, especially ion powered ones.

The apparent lack of science returns for the smaller units could probably be compensated by part spamming the small science modules, but there is only ever so much real estate on a small probe to place them. Now, given that there's no money in the game yet, people can accomplish the same thing you did with your ion engines in under half of that time without time warp and still get back more science.

Possibly when money gets implemented the ion engines might be a viable cheap alternative to using the nuclear engines, but one could argue that within the 12 to 30 (however long it takes) to burn the ion engines to save money, someone could have done 3 missions to earn the money back using conventional means. But I'm crossing into pure speculation here, so I won't put so much weight on what is being said about the money side of things until it gets implemented and tested.

To summarize, I firmly believe that allowing higher levels of time warp and more probe specific parts (possible electricity rebalancing) can be a good start. There was a mod where it had solar sails, and it could function well (thrust) under the static time warp, because its thrust was so gentle. I believe the same could be done to ion engines, place it on rails and allow higher time warp levels.

Edited February 12, 2014 by Levelord
spelling + something about polls + summary of sorts

[Shna_na]

While it's irritating to have to wait for hours per burn, that's all part of the balance. If an engine as efficient as this had a somewhat high thrust it would be truly overpowered. It think it's in a good place as it is, it's not something you can abuse but it's not underpowered.

[WafflesToo]

@levelord

And yet you launch yourself into multiple page tirades about why you're right and everyone else is wrong. But only over this one little niche' engine. I don't see this kind of vitriol spewed over the Mark-55 (another engine that almost nobody uses). Nor do I see a new post every other day about how broken the 48-7S is (an engine that outperforms every other engine in its category; to the point that I've seen it replace the Mainsail as a heavy-lift engine). ONLY about the ion engine.

Why?

Why is this one thing so important to change? To the point of anger and insults and wanting to see it removed from the game or altered in a way that destroys the charm for those who DO like to play with it. I say jealousy because it's the only thing I can think of that fits the pattern.

Why do you NEED it changed? I want an answer to that one question; not an essay, an answer. Why?

[Red Iron Crown]

@levelord

And yet you launch yourself into multiple page tirades about why you're right and everyone else is wrong. But only over this one little niche' engine. I don't see this kind of vitriol spewed over the Mark-55 (another engine that almost nobody uses). Nor do I see a new post every other day about how broken the 48-7S is (an engine that outperforms every other engine in its category; to the point that I've seen it replace the Mainsail as a heavy-lift engine). ONLY about the ion engine.

Why?

Why is this one thing so important to change? To the point of anger and insults and wanting to see it removed from the game or altered in a way that destroys the charm for those who DO like to play with it. I say jealousy because it's the only thing I can think of that fits the pattern.

Why do you NEED it changed? I want an answer to that one question; not an essay, an answer. Why?

If you read his posts, he quite clearly says he *doesn't* want it changed. He just points out why it's not enjoyable for many to use. And, personally, I think he hit the nail on the head.