Communutron16 vs Comms DTS-M1

[Tobyz28]

Just curious if there is any advantage of using the comms DTS-M1 over the communotron? It weighs more, takes up more space, transmits less data per packet and uses more electricity to transmit each packet, yet it's further down the tree in career mode. Only benefit its a 0.8 vs 0.7 crash tolerance...

[R0cketC0der]

Currently the antennas are highly unbalanced, the only thing the big one has better than the small one is transmit speed. There may be antenna range added in future versions of the game, which would balance things out a bit more.

[Barklight]

Pretty much correct AFAIK. Up until ARM, I'd been using RemoteTech2 - in which scenario all the different antennas have functional ranges and purpose.

[Eric S]

The DTS-M1 is slightly faster overall than the -16. Other than that, no benefit unless you have one of the communications mods (RT2 being the main one but not only one) or just like the way the M1 looks better.

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

Pretty much correct AFAIK. Up until ARM, I'd been using RemoteTech2 - in which scenario all the different antennas have functional ranges and purpose.

I really hope that Remote Tech will be stock some day. It adds SO much to the game play.

[lazarus1024]

It would be nice if they antennas were made a bit more useful, or difference made them more useful I should say.

Options I can think of are...

Limited ranges, so the "better" the antenna, the further away it'll work

Reduced power consumption for bigger antennas

My personal favorite, increased science for the better antennas. Lets not make it much different, but in the real world, higher gain antennas allow you to transmit at a higher bandwidth, so more data in the same period of time.

Anyway, it would be nice if there was SOMETHING to make the bigger antennas nicer (other than transmits faster).

[EtherDragon]

@lazarus1024

I really like the idea that "higher tech" antennas could give a smaller transmit penalty.

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

@lazarus1024

I really like the idea that "higher tech" antennas could give a smaller transmit penalty.

Basically what RT does. Only RT does it a whole lot better

[Starstrider42]

Are you talking about RT1? Because RT2 does not vary transmission efficiency. In fact, what you're describing would be pretty hard to do in a mod, because KSP makes the transmission fraction a property of the experiment, not the antenna.

My personal favorite, increased science for the better antennas. Lets not make it much different, but in the real world, higher gain antennas allow you to transmit at a higher bandwidth, so more data in the same period of time.

Anyway, it would be nice if there was SOMETHING to make the bigger antennas nicer (other than transmits faster).

You realize "more data in the same period of time" and "transmits faster" are the exact same thing, right?

Edited April 4, 2014 by Starstrider42