ARM engines.

[maccollo]

Show us the math. That would help in your argument. Until then, my math says they scale great:

[stronger engines] + [bigger engines] = [Moar power] = [Top of the Awesome scale]

Graph made by stupid_chris

Personally I don't think everything in the game needs to be balanced to match each other in terms of performance.

I think a lot of players were already struggling to build heavy lifters or giant rockets, so adding these parts will help a lot of people get more out of their game. I don't really think the mainsail and skipper are going to use useless now. Once career mode is padded out they can be balanced with their cost, and the fact the mainsails will come before the new engines in the tech tree. Even when everything is unlocked, they're still going to have their uses as boosters or second stages.

The new engines could be balanced by a disproportionate increase in both thrust and mass, where the mass increase more than the thrust. The same number of engines would be able to lift pretty much the same payload, however for medium rockets the mainsail would be useful again, because of the gain in mass fraction.

This change should in no way make it more difficult to build heavy lifters.

The issue here is simply this: Do you think the game should be balanced in sandbox mode?

I think it should be, and in sandbox mode the mainsail no longer server any purpose when it comes to creating efficient rockets. Look at the graph above. The KR-2L beats the mainsail in every regard except mass where it weighs a mere half a ton more. I can single stage to mun and land with that thing!

Edited April 2, 2014 by maccollo

[Alymon]

Personally I don't think everything in the game needs to be balanced to match each other in terms of performance.

I think a lot of players were already struggling to build heavy lifters or giant rockets, so adding these parts will help a lot of people get more out of their game. I don't really think the mainsail and skipper are going to use useless now. Once career mode is padded out they can be balanced with their cost, and the fact the mainsails will come before the new engines in the tech tree. Even when everything is unlocked, they're still going to have their uses as boosters or second stages.

I agree with this. Parts do not need to be balanced to each other in terms of performance. As career mode is fleshed out more and cost becomes relevant, you balance in terms of performance and cost combined.

[Pthigrivi]

I know many may not agree, but I'm personally not too worried about balance in sandbox. The idea should really be to get the final game going, and skipping career mode and the tech tree and eventually contracts and money misses out on a lot of what they're working on at the moment. If you look at the cost of these things, which will be implemented soon, I think the reason for a "cheap" engine like the mainsail when possible will make more sense.

That's not to say new engines wont be tweaked, Im sure they will be to some degree. I think at the moment they're just encouraging us to use the new parts and test them out and the mechanism for balance will be coming soon.

[SSSPutnik]

A lot of people don't play career mode at all, only using Sandbox. In Sandbox its more critical to have balanced parts.

[Jouni]

Eventually career mode is going to be the main game. If it's going to be properly balanced, most engines are going to be obsolete in sandbox.

[Wahgineer]

A lot of people don't play career mode at all, only using Sandbox. In Sandbox its more critical to have balanced parts.

Not really, since you have more of a choice: don't like them, don't use them. Just because their not the way you want them doesn't mean we need to nerf them into uselessness. With career mode, they should be balanced through COST and the TECH TREE rather then through changes in their performance.

[Alymon]

A lot of people don't play career mode at all, only using Sandbox. In Sandbox its more critical to have balanced parts.

I may be missing the logic on this... but why does it matter if parts are balanced in sandbox? It might make some parts obsolete if your goal is always most efficient rocket design, but sandbox isn't always about most efficient. Sometimes it's about seeing what you can do with a limited number of parts, or with specific parts that might normally be awful at a task. Sandbox is about creativity and experimentation. Unbalanced parts, to me, just give you a greater range of challenges to try.

Instead of "Get to Jool", it becomes "Get to Jool using only X engine type" or some variation.

[SSSPutnik]

Agreed, though a lot of challenges do require careful juggling of part performance. Listing what engines you can and can't use would be tedious.

The ion with 4x thrust starts making it a serious lander engine on a fair few bodies.

I guess the game is not finished yet, but I like to raise this as I think it needs considering. Poll so far shows most people don't mind, but a significant portion do.

[timsfitz]

People worry about the mainsail like they own shares of rockomax stock. I think its funny. Use the new parts or don't. No one is telling you what to use. Its your sandbox, build whatever you want.

[maccollo]

Not really, since you have more of a choice: don't like them, don't use them. Just because their not the way you want them doesn't mean we need to nerf them into uselessness. With career mode, they should be balanced through COST and the TECH TREE rather then through changes in their performance.

I'll repeat for the fifth time.

They don't have to have the lifting capacity nerfed to be balanced. You could lift the same mass into orbit using the same number of engines, this can be done by increasing the thrust and decreasing TWR, so the engines would actually be more powerful, but they couldn't attain the delta V and TWR to go all the way to Mun on a single stage with one engine.

I may be missing the logic on this... but why does it matter if parts are balanced in sandbox?

This is why I think they should be balanced in sandbox.

I don't like career. I think it's boring.

The way I like to play this game is to just make up some kind of mission, perhaps just go to Duna, do some stuff, come back.

Then, the part I really enjoy about this game is to sit in the VAB and design my ideal rocket for the mission, having to pick and choose and make compromises between different parts.

Now the thing I take issue with is when half the engines are simply not better in any situation. Should I use the 909 or... No, always use the 48-7s. Poodle? No. Never.

Should I use the Mark 55? ... No.

Now the mainsail is added to this list of "never use ever engines" because the KR-2L is simply always better. There is no situation I can think of where the mainsail would produce better results.

Anyway, the thrust of my argument is that it makes it the experience of designing and building less fun.

Edited April 2, 2014 by maccollo

[sdj64]

Yes there are some problems with the new engines, ISP's are very strange.

Each individual KS-25 engine (in the 4 cluster) has 800 thrust and weighs 2.44 tons. The most similar engine is the Skipper, with 650 thrust and weighs 4 tons, also has 10 less ISP in both atmosphere and vacuum.

The KR-1 engines in the 2 cluster booster are even more powerful, since that part can be thought of as 2 engines plus a jumbo-64 fuel tank, each engine weighs only 1 ton! and has 1000 thrust, higher than the KS-25, and the same ISP.

The KR-2L (large single engine) has a nonsensical ISP scaling, with one of the worst atmospheric ISP's and really great vacuum ISP. It weighs only .5 ton more than the mainsail but has 1000 more thrust and higher ISP than it.

The giant solid booster is balanced. Same ISP as the other solids and cool for low part count booster rockets but still not powerful enough to make an Ares 1 replica...

Though, I do think that the engine clusters are ugly. They make the bottom of the rocket look like a fat man with his belly coming out of his shirt. I would have much preferred the engines be underneath the fuel tank and not stick out wider than it. I'm going to keep using KW rocketry even if their engines aren't as good (except for the KR-2L, it's better than the lowest thrust 3.75m engine in KW in every way including appearance).

I would say that it would be cool to have the engines as singles that you could make into clusters yourself, but that would be even more OP since the engines look to be 1.25m each, you could have a 1.25m stage with 1000 thrust. In addition to that, Squad, where are the double, tri, and quad adapters for 3.75 meter?

Here's a suggestion for unbalanced parts that would work for both career and sandbox: In career you could start out with a weaker engine, but then upgrade it later, to do things like increase ISP, reduce weight, etc. Imagine you start out with an LVT-15 engine rather than LVT-30, and unlocking later techs would upgrade existing parts in addition to unlocking new ones. The fully upgraded parts would all be balanced to each other.

[StevenRS11]

I mean, SQUAD out and said that they intended the new parts to be quantitatively better than the old parts. They are, and its silly trying to say otherwise. I think they intend to balance them for career mode with cost and research, but thats a form of brute force balance. When you can have all the parts each optimally fulfilling at least one unique function, then you have elegant balance.

[godefroi]

I think a big part of the problem here is that the mainsail isn't GOOD ENOUGH.

sdj64 has some valid math points, but in general, the engines we used to have are too heavy. I don't think you can fix the scaling by making the new engines even more ridiculously heavy.

[zarakon]

That there KR-2L's a right proper Tylo lander engine if I ever seen one!

[Jouni]

If we consider the career mode as a tutorial for the sandbox, then it makes sense that all engines should be balanced in the sandbox. You start the career mode with some general-purpose engines that are reasonably good for everything. Then, as you unlock nodes in the tech tree, you gain access to engines that are better in some specialized tasks. The initial engines still remain useful in some tasks, so they are never completely outclassed.

Things change, if the career mode becomes the main game. Progress doesn't feel very rewarding, if it only makes the game more complex, without giving you access to things that are strictly superior to the old ones. You want bigger engines, and you want specialized engines, but you also want new engines that play the same role as the old engines, but with higher TWR and ISP. In Civilization, Great war infantry is no match for the WW2-era Infantry unit. In the same way, SLS-era engines should be superior to the old Apollo-era stock engines.

[NecroBones]

Things change, if the career mode becomes the main game. Progress doesn't feel very rewarding, if it only makes the game more complex, without giving you access to things that are strictly superior to the old ones. You want bigger engines, and you want specialized engines, but you also want new engines that play the same role as the old engines, but with higher TWR and ISP. In Civilization, Great war infantry is no match for the WW2-era Infantry unit. In the same way, SLS-era engines should be superior to the old Apollo-era stock engines.

That's my interpretation. I think there's a trend toward Career becoming the main game mode, and therefore it's being built with a parts progression that includes superior parts, not just MORE parts. If you look in the tech tree at the money-cost for unlocking these new parts, it's quite high. It does appear that these are meant to be expensive alternatives that open later in the game. Sandbox just lets you have everything RIGHT NOW.

[aleis]

I mean, SQUAD out and said that they intended the new parts to be quantitatively better than the old parts. They are, and its silly trying to say otherwise. I think they intend to balance them for career mode with cost and research, but thats a form of brute force balance. When you can have all the parts each optimally fulfilling at least one unique function, then you have elegant balance.

Was waiting to see how long it took for someone to mention this. For all the original posters proof and math, the argument is invalid because they are as intended. .... better. .... Just better. Because squad wants them to be so that career mode is cooler than just getting bigger parts, but better (note I said BETTER) parts.

Listen to some of the dev posts and interviews they explain everything

[WhatGravitas]

Things change, if the career mode becomes the main game. Progress doesn't feel very rewarding, if it only makes the game more complex, without giving you access to things that are strictly superior to the old ones. You want bigger engines, and you want specialized engines, but you also want new engines that play the same role as the old engines, but with higher TWR and ISP. In Civilization, Great war infantry is no match for the WW2-era Infantry unit. In the same way, SLS-era engines should be superior to the old Apollo-era stock engines.

You could also say it's the other way round. By having strictly better parts, you don't have any genuine rewards, it's the same as before, just better. With more choice of options, however, the game becomes more rewarding because it gives you more ways to solve the "puzzle". If the bigger engines are always better, there's no puzzle to solve. It's boring, there are no trade-offs to manage, no efficiency considerations to make, no room for stylistic/personal preference. It becomes "pick the biggest thing, it will work".

Basically, the people who want "balanced" engines want to unlock flexibility. They want to get more tools to flex their engineering muscles and create the perfect rocket by having (effectively) bespoke parts. They get a kick out of the engineering part of the game. The people who want plain better engines want to play it more like, let's say an RPG, where your reward is the loot and having plain better things. They get a kick out of the "mission accomplished!" part of the game.

I think the solution to that is: have both, in the end. Have parts obsoleting other parts and have parts that reward you by opening up more avenues (3.75m parts, the choice of ISP vs. TWR vs. time trade offs, manned vs. unmanned etc.). But to do that, KSP needs a better UI - one that allows you to filter parts in sensible manner and replaces "obsolete" parts (much like in Civ where an upgraded unit completely replaces the previous one).

[ArmchairGravy]

I think they are great, but then again I like to make pigs fly!

[Franklin]

Graph made by stupid_chris

http://i.imgur.com/m3aqgU2.png

The new engines could be balanced by a disproportionate increase in both thrust and mass, where the mass increase more than the thrust. The same number of engines would be able to lift pretty much the same payload, however for medium rockets the mainsail would be useful again, because of the gain in mass fraction.

This change should in no way make it more difficult to build heavy lifters.

The issue here is simply this: Do you think the game should be balanced in sandbox mode?

I think it should be, and in sandbox mode the mainsail no longer server any purpose when it comes to creating efficient rockets. Look at the graph above. The KR-2L beats the mainsail in every regard except mass where it weighs a mere half a ton more. I can single stage to mun and land with that thing!

this graph is beautiful, is there a regularly updated version of it somewhere?

[Killerdude8]

They're fine as they are, They've allowed me to put up so many different designs as of late that would normally require an Orange Tank Orgy, which in turn would kill my parts count, Leaving very little for my actual craft I'm trying to launch.

Not to mention, That SQUAD has implemented these parts as Significantly better alternatives to the existing array of parts, That said, I have a strong feeling they won't be changing anytime soon, So if it bothers you so much, You don't have to use them.

[Jouni]

You could also say it's the other way round. By having strictly better parts, you don't have any genuine rewards, it's the same as before, just better. With more choice of options, however, the game becomes more rewarding because it gives you more ways to solve the "puzzle". If the bigger engines are always better, there's no puzzle to solve. It's boring, there are no trade-offs to manage, no efficiency considerations to make, no room for stylistic/personal preference. It becomes "pick the biggest thing, it will work".

I think we have the difference between craftsmanship and engineering here. A craftsman works in a closed system, where all materials, tools, and techniques are already known, and all of them have their uses. He/she strives to learn the materials, tools, and techniques as well as possible, and uses them to build products that are as good as possible.

The engineer, on the other hand, works in an open system that is constantly changing. New materials, tools, and techniques are introduced all the time, while old ones become obsolete. The job of the engineer is to create order from chaos: he/she uses a principled approach to make sense of the new situation, and builds products that are good enough for their purposes or better than the existing ones.

Ultimately, craftsmanship is about perfection, while engineering is about progress. You can make a good game based on either of the approaches, but if we have a game about rocketry and space exploration, progress seems to make more sense.

Being able to filter the parts based on tech level or some similar criteria is a good idea.

[softweir]

The poll is still a bit too polarised to represent my opinion, so here goes the long answer:

There should be no hard and fast rule for Squad to follow. Apart from anything else, it is quite acceptable for some engines to have an overpowered thrust/weight ratio so long as they are more expensive than clunkier, less efficient parts. Life's like that: pay more, get "better", one way or another.

However, I would hope and expect that they will go through a rebalancing process when we get closer to final release date.

[SSSPutnik]

More expensive how? Are you talking when money is introduced or?

[Moar Boosters]

Personally I like them. Now we can build working space shuttles that don't need engines on the fuel tank.

It also appears I used a couple of Mk 55 engines that apparently don't have any use at all.