the ion engine is way too OP

[lammatt]

you can basically make a manned plane using one and it can go airborne.

this is ridiculously OP...

the previous setting was OP already, i really dont understand they have to buff it even more...

(if you bother to wiki ion thrusters, you'll see the one in KSP is about 2000 times the real ones.)

i think the original stats were good in the concern of gameplay...

pic of the plane i made with an ion engine.

(the front part is the test weight mod, for aesthetic purpose here... set to 0.1t, 0.625diameter, 1x length, torque is off)

Edited April 4, 2014 by lammatt

[Maxwell Fern]

A 40 minutes burn to the Mun might be realistic, but it's far from "good in the concern of gameplay". Ion engines now have the same Dv as before, only with 4 times the thrust. This might looks stupid compared to real life, but at least I might start using them. And this is what gameplay should be concerned about IMO.

[Thiel]

People have been making ion powered planes since they were introduced.

It may be unrealistic but it's far more enjoyable to use on probes etc. now that you don't have to burn for twenty minutes+ to get anywhere.

[Pthigrivi]

"if you bother to wiki ion thrusters, you'll see the one in KSP is about 2000 times the real ones."

And Kerbin is a 10th the size of the earth. Is it OP too?

Some things are just altered to be more fun. Staring at your computer for 20 minutes on 4x acceleration is not fun. Also someone had a great break-down not too long ago showing there was essentially no way to build an Ion probe got more deltaV for less weight than an LFO, making it basically worthless. Especially for how high they are on the tech tree and the challenge involved in burning in sunlight they really should be much more efficient than LFO engines.

[Sethnizzle]

A 40 minutes burn to the Mun might be realistic, but it's far from "good in the concern of gameplay". Ion engines now have the same Dv as before, only with 4 times the thrust. This might looks stupid compared to real life, but at least I might start using them. And this is what gameplay should be concerned about IMO.

Yes, this exactly.

*hyperbole alert* real life ion engines burn for weeks (days?) to complete a burn. That just doesnt translate to good gameplay.

[lammatt]

People have been making ion powered planes since they were introduced.

It may be unrealistic but it's far more enjoyable to use on probes etc. now that you don't have to burn for twenty minutes+ to get anywhere.

i said the previous stats are OK

500times real life stats is fine in terms of gameplay.

the current 2000times realtime thrust is just too much

[Streetwind]

Part of the problem is that in KSP, engines scale in fuel usage by atmospheric pressure, and not thrust by atmospheric pressure as it would work IRL. That simplified model works with engines where ASL Isp and vacuum Isp is relatively close together, like the typical 320-370 range for normal liquid engines. But ion engines are something else entirely, plus they consume electric power as fuel as well.

If the ion engine received the atmospheric Isp that it should have (around 10-20 at most, electric engines are utterly useless outside of a vacuum), then it would still have 2 kN of thrust. However it would also consume thousands of units of xenon per second and quite possibly tens or hundreds of thousands of Ec per second. That would mean just tapping the throttle would instantly shut down your craft completely, with no hope of ever gaining back control over it until you mercifully run out of xenon (provided you have some sort of power generation running). To avoid this kind of desaster, ion engines have the same Isp at sea level that they do in vacuum. Or in other words, they are the only engine in the game that doesn't get worse inside an atmosphere, which ironically enough is the exact opposite of how real world electric engines function.

This makes the ion engine extremely broken for in-atmosphere use if you can somehow sidestep the issue of its abysmal thrust-weight ratio. Planes are predestined for that, because they largely ignore TWR while being predominantly atmospheric fliers. However, because of the way KSP works, there is absolutely nothing that can be done to remedy that without either changing KSP's atmospheric engine scaling model (which would change it for all engines) or returning the ion engine to more "realistic" stats that are "not fun to play with" in HarvesteR's opinion.

Incidentally, Near Future Propulsion (a mod based around electric engines) sidestepped the issue by hand-coding a plugin that reads out atmospheric pressure and artificially limits the thrust based on that value, effectively making its electric engines properly thrust-scaling without affecting any of the other stock or modded engines. If you have that mod installed, you can use ModuleManager (or editing the part.cfg directly) to add that functionality to the stock ion engine as well, since it comes conveniently packaged in a standard node format. Another solution could be ferram4's Kerbal Isp Difficulty Scaler plugin, which (among other things) allows you to toggle between fuel usage scaling and thrust scaling for all engines.

Edited April 4, 2014 by Streetwind

[Thiel]

Have you ever had to sit through 20min of 4x physwarp transferburn?

Neither have I and that's the problem here. It simply takes too long to go anywhere with the old stats, so people don't use them.

[John Crichton]

I for one am disappointed KSP doesn't force me to sit in front of the computer for 2 straight weeks to make a single Mun burn like in real life

Reset your game to .23 and fly an ion drive to Duna...we'll talk after that.

[magnemoe]

Yes, this exactly.

*hyperbole alert* real life ion engines burn for weeks (days?) to complete a burn. That just doesnt translate to good gameplay.

This, in real life you don't care about the burn time, yes you might have an operator watching the probe instead of putting it in sleep mode but its not an huge part of the budget.

In the game burn too long burn times is an pain.

In my opinion they should not have reduced the power drain, its not hard put op lots of 1x6 pannels and this would avoid atmospheric use. this kind of make me wonder if you could use it on Eve.

I have used ion engines some but with this they become far more relevant.

[Riftmann]

I hated the Ion engine, it was pointless. I tried using it a couple of times and gave up. It couldn't push the mass of all the damn energy it took to fly the damn thing. I'm with John Crichton. It's not OP. This isn't reality, this is a game, and games are meant to be enjoyable. Maybe now I'll actually use the stupid ion engine. (I don't know how people used it before, I must have been doing something wrong...)

[Thiel]

I hated the Ion engine, it was pointless. I tried using it a couple of times and gave up. It couldn't push the mass of all the damn energy it took to fly the damn thing. I'm with John Crichton. It's not OP. This isn't reality, this is a game, and games are meant to be enjoyable. Maybe now I'll actually use the stupid ion engine. (I don't know how people used it before, I must have been doing something wrong...)

Very, very light payloads and/or an egg timer and a book.

[Streetwind]

Very, very light payloads and/or an egg timer and a book.

Also 4x physics time warp. And knowing that gigantor solar panels have a terrible energy to weight ratio and therefore shouldn't be used.

[AbhChallenger]

KSP does not yet have the tools to even remotely simulate a realistic ion mission. Real life missions have massive computing and mission design. Not a maneuver node and mechjeb.

[CaptainArchmage]

Normally, ion engines work for a few weeks, months, or years before the spacecraft reaches the target, so the ballistic trajectory is continuously changing. KSP doesn’t model this; when the spacecraft is accelerating you need to have it in focus. This is unlike conventional spacecraft where you can just run a high time acceleration or launch other rockets while it gets to its target. Because of this, the ion engines need to provide a lot more thrust to make the game reasonably playable.

[Albert VDS]

Ion engines should be useless in the atmosphere, that's the only change it should need.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you change do the following you can do just that:

Open GameData/Squad/Parts/Engine/ionEngine/part.cfg

find "key = 0 4200" and add "key = 1 0" bellow it.

That should change it's thrust at sea-level to 0.

[Xeldrak]

Well, I like the new Ion-Engines at least they are a viable option now. However, making them more or less useless in atmosphere seems like a reasonable idea to me.

[xcorps]

Yeah, it's way to0 OP.

So many people are using it rack up insanely high scores.

In this one game, I capped in like 15 seconds lol. All the rail guns missed me cuz I was going to fast. Then I quit and uninstalled cuz I rocket jumped into the exhaust and I got ion killed. There's no way that could happen IRL. LOL.

[Streetwind]

Ion engines should be useless in the atmosphere, that's the only change it should need.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you change do the following you can do just that:

Open GameData/Squad/Parts/Engine/ionEngine/part.cfg

find "key = 0 4200" and add "key = 1 0" bellow it.

That should change it's thrust at sea-level to 0.

I'll have to correct you - or rather, I already did before you even posted. Up in post #7, go check it out

[Albert VDS]

I'll have to correct you - or rather, I already did before you even posted. Up in post #7, go check it out

Actually I was revering to the changes in the part.cfg.

Though your post doesn't say anything about why they shouldn't be useless in atmosphere, you only give a reason why they have the same ISP.

My point is that we don't use ion engines on planes in real life because that just doesn't work, their TWR is just too low for that.

To mimic the use of a real life ion engine the game should follow that rule and combine it with fun gameplay.

Which means no (or a minuscule) thrust in the atmosphere and the current thrust in space.

[Accelerando]

this isn't just a sandbox game where all parts have to be balanced against one another anymore. there's a career mode. there's supposed to be tech progression and goals beyond just getting to the place and back.

tl;dr get over it

[Red Iron Crown]

Maybe it's OP compared to real life ion thrusters, but I find the new ions to be reasonably balanced against other engines in game (i.e. it's not so overpowered it's foolish to use anything else, nor so underpowered as to be useless).

The reduced burn times are a big boon for playability. Quartering the burn times changes ions from "interesting but no fun" to "let's see what we can do with them" for me.

[SSSPutnik]

Ion engines are NOT supposed to be for putting ships to the moon.

The unbuffed ions were fine for what ions should be used for, which is satellites and probes. (In fact they are fantastic for this).

You should not be able to use them to launch a hundred ton payload to Jool from LKO...

Yes its a cartoon space game but the engines in this release are getting a little too cartoony.

Edited April 4, 2014 by SSSPutnik

[biohazard15]

Another "let's nerf it to oblivion" thread...

"I don't like the new SLS parts, they're OP, nerf it!"

"I don't like new PB-ION, it's OP, nerf it!"

"I don't like that other people have fun, it's OP, nerf it!"

Folks, they (the devs) just watch and note our wishes.

There is NovaPunch and KW with their "OP" big parts, many people use these mods - so they decided to add big parts to stock. There is Near Future pack and other mods that add more capable electric engines, and many people use these - so they decided to make ions more powerful. There is packs that add tiny engines - they decided to make LV-1s more powerful. It's just what players want!

Sure, some people are fine with old balance - that's totally OK. But why do you want to force it to others? Why don't just make a mod? I've seen many "Nerf it" threads - but it seems there is NO "Make a 0.23-balance mod" thread. Or just don't use it - it's easy.

Really, people, stop these "nerf" demands. This is so multiplayer-ish - and not in a good meaning. At least wait until KSP get multiplayer - then go to dedicated forum and ask for "nerf" here, and leave us the Guys-Who-Just-Wanna-To-Have-Fun-In-The-Game alone.

[SSSPutnik]

Novapunch engines and KW rocketry engines at least scale closer to .23 engines.