I don't understand the fuss behind ARM

[Hyomoto]

And that's called giving feedback, every time you give feedback you're suggesting a change one way or another, even if the suggestion for a change isn't explicit. That we're trying to force players is a strawman and a cheap argument, because ANY change in the game, no matter how, is going to affect somebody play style one way or another, with that line of thought then there's nothing you can change without forcing it to somebody.

Besides balancing the engines is not reducing their lifting capability, people is going to be able to do the same things as before.

Hmm, so are you saying by simply ADDING these engines that people have had their playstyle changed? It's odd to think the people that don't want these engines to be adjusted aren't against their inclusion altogether when you put it that way!

Edited April 12, 2014 by KasperVld

[Dodgey]

Hmm, so are you saying by simply ADDING these engines that people have had their playstyle changed? It's odd to think the people that don't want these engines to be adjusted aren't against their inclusion altogether when you put it that way!

And that's where my question of, if they were stupidly powerful, 1000 ISP, 1000 Kn thrust, would they object to them as we are. Which by the way no one has answered.

[FlightSimXManiac]

They aren't OP relative to any goal, it's OP compared to the other engines that exist in the game. They aren't only superior in TWR, but also ISP. There isn't any balance with them, take the LV-N, high ISP, but low TWR. Main sail, high TWR, low ISP.

That makes sense, I didn't quite think that first part through. The stats do seem a bit godly, but I still maintain that if content for these size 3 parts was made, much of the "OP-ness" could go away. As it sits right now, they overshadow the other parts in the role as a lifter. Really, the only reason to use the other parts is for a challenge or desire to not over-engineer. I'm not using Alpha as a scapegoat, but it might be Squad has stuff lined up to utilize this increased capability. If not, a minor rebalance of the new parts would not go amiss.

Side note: I'm sure people would object to stupidly powerful parts. Parts that powerful would just be, well, stupid. However, the sls parts are nowhere near that level of performance.

Edited April 7, 2014 by FlightSimXManiac

[Liowen]

Let's do a bit of future shadowing on things we know are coming down the pipeline, at least as far as career mode goes anyways. First, as I have stated before, the new parts will most likely be moved either in.24 or a patch there after, I highly doubt their placement in the techtree is set in stone (I know this is a bit offtopic but I am sure it will come up sooner than later....again). Second is the known fact of the in game money system, for career mode, that will also be coming in a future patch. Now if you have to budget how much your lift stage and payload cost together it would serve to reason you would want a lifter that costs less, however if you have not reached it in the techtree, saying that the new parts are further in the tree than they are now of course, you might have to reconsider the payloads you are launching. Right now without any form of "budget" we can build what we want in career mode, with what we have unlocked of course. Once we, as players, no longer have that luxury we will have to build more efficiently in terms of money. If you are only looking at what we have without looking further ahead I can see where you would believe the engines are "op" to main sails, but once you factor in other items that are not, but will be, in yet you can see why they are this way.

While the new parts are better than the old parts, once they are moved higher into the tree and cost is factored in I believe you will see why they are the way they are, especially if the contract system is what pays the bills by doing; mission reward-parts cost = profit/loss for the mission (remember you will most likely have to budget how much you spend to build your rocket most likely). So while you COULD get a 100t payload in to orbit with the older setup, the cost would make it less rewarding once you can purchase the new parts. At least this is how I have been looking at it for now, since it is far from a completed product I have to keep that in the forefront. A lot of players act like every thing that is in game right now is set in stone for final release, but things can and will change but it takes time. It is fine to say it is "op" at the current state, but believing this is the final version of these, or any, parts is not helpful.

[KerbMav]

but I still maintain that if content for these size 3 parts was made

It has: the ARM pack.

As Squad did not want to maintain two different pieces of software - which would have delayed every update for both versions (think about the forum-bloodshed that would have caused ...) - and since lots of players voiced their wish to include the new parts in the standard game ... but as always: whatever you do, you can't do right (for everyone).

Since the wiki has not been updated and I cannot look into the game right now (and do not intentionally memorize numbers in games), I cannot compare the hard numbers to form my own opinion whether the new engines have gotten only perks and no drawbacks.

But keep in mind that these parts have been created with a purpose, the ARM "addon".

As you like to make exaggerated counterarguments:

The Mainsail is very powerful compared to other smaller engines and it helps a lot to make things easier when the player finally unlocks them in career mode.

Should the Mainsail be toned down/removed in sandbox mode?

[jamille4]

I don't understand it either. The game is delivered as is and devs are making it the way they like it. You may either play it how it was meant to be played by devs, or make a mod that will change things to suit your liking.

The whole rest of the debate is about "I don't like that other people may be playing differently than I want them to play".

I sit on both sides of the argument. There really is no need to be up in arms (surely the 10⁸th time that joke has been made) about the balance of the new parts - the game will probably go through several rebalances between now and 1.0. At the same time, the "take-it-or-leave-it" attitude isn't constructive to the development of the game.

We know for a fact that the devs take at least a cursory glance at our suggestions. Most of us want Squad to make a polished product that will attract as many customers as possible. Crowd-sourcing development (which is essentially what early-access does) gives the devs a nearly limitless pool of play-testers from which to get suggestions and bug reports. To say that everyone should just shut the hell up and be content with the game as-is defeats the whole purpose of early access.

The distinction lies in the difference between constructive criticism and out-right complaining that "omg squad broke the game now everything sucks." I don't think Kasuha meant to discount truly constructive criticism, but I felt like the distinction needed to be pointed out so that the community can quit dividing itself over whether we should or shouldn't be giving feedback to Squad. We all want the same thing. Don't lose sight of that.

[Hyomoto]

Liowen, I'd wait and see on the budget. There's a fairly good chance it won't matter. Squad has said contracts will be optional so its all questionable at this point how much money will matter or if it will even be used. Besides, how does that affect sandbox? Even if you have to unlock 'cheat' parts in career mode, (I'm using that as an example, not a literal notion) it won't matter in sandbox. Plus, my big complaint is simply that KSP is skill-based, and if we start getting parts that make the game easier, so to speak, then will we just be able to grind until its easy? I think it could be done well, but it's better to have this discussion on what is, not on what might be. Squad might also put interdimensional wormholes into the game, but I don't think we should be taking that into account for the present balance.

[Red Iron Crown]

The Mainsail is very powerful compared to other smaller engines and it helps a lot to make things easier when the player finally unlocks them in career mode.

Should the Mainsail be toned down/removed in sandbox mode?

The Mainsail's high TWR is offset by its relatively low Isp. It is not strictly better than any other engine, it just lies at a different point along the TWR vs Isp curve.

When people say the new engines are overpowered, they don't mean they have too much thrust. They mean that additional thrust is not offset by greater mass or lower Isp.

[FlightSimXManiac]

KerbMav:

I honestly don't think these are all the 3.75m parts that will be in the game. Just because they were first introduced in this update doesn't mean that is all we'll get. Yeah, they are pretty powerful in sandbox right now. That is a fact. I'm still on the fence if any drastic changes should be made.

I'm not sure who that last part is directed at

EDIT: looking back, it wouldn't be unrealistic to think there won't be any more, or many, size 3 parts added.

Edited April 7, 2014 by FlightSimXManiac

[KerikBalm]

Well, I'm ambivalent about this...

On the one hand, we have small parts that were OP'd- ie the 48-7s. A cluster of those weighing as much as a mainsail was pretty OP relative to a mainsail.

Bigger shouldn't be better, but it also shouldn't be worse. It shouldn't be a matter of balancing your rocket performance, agaisnt your computer performance, because it hates the 200+ engine 48-7s cluster you used....

Larger parts that make it easier to build a rocket without a high part count are good.

In this aspect I like the Liquid fuel booster - same weight as a mainsail+ orange tank, half the part count, more stiffness (as the engine/tank interface could often be wobbly itself).

The problem is, it is equal in weight and fuel capacity to a mainsail+ orange tank, but its trust is much higher, and on top of that, its ISP is higher too.

Yes, I know, you can't stack anything below it.... as if it was ever a good idea to have a mainsail in an upper stage.

If that is a problem, you can just use the larger engine, its only half a ton heavier, but produces much more thrust (you can use less of them) at much higher ISP.

Mainsails are obsolete.

Its taken away part of the challenge. Sure- we could just not use them - but then we are making a decision about what is acceptable, and what is not acceptable to use.

Instead of just optimizing designs within "stock" - no mods, now its a matter of declaring certain stock parts forbidden, and a question of where to draw the line.

No mods -> No SLS parts -> no 48-7s? no ions? no nukes? No aerospikes? no fuel lines/asparagus? No reaction wheels?

By adding parts that obsolete parts... you've made the game full of obsolete parts, or you've removed the simplicity from the "all stock parts" playstyle, to various shaded of grey (as far as what parts are or are not OP'd). Some may have liked squad drawing that line, with their stock parts - but now that line drawn by squad is meaningless, when its so clear that the new parts are OPd relative to the old parts.

But then again... these parts are not outside the realms of realism as far as their stats are concerned.... the problem is simply at these scales, the lack of realism of the 1/10th scale system becomes apparent

[The Space]

It's called progression. Once you progress in a game you unlock better parts. If you don't like the way Devs intended this game to be feel free to use mods or stop playing. We are probably going to get more 3.75m parts in the future and then you'll actually be thankful to have the new parts to lift heavier payloads.

By the way the developers never said every single engine added to the game in the future would be no better than already existing engines.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

I believe the reason people are so angry about the new 3.75m parts is because they jumped straight into sandbox.

In carrer mode I would think that the skipper and other engines would both be easier to unlock and thus you would get them earlier, however. If 3.75m parts are unlocked at the same time as 2m parts. Then I can see where people are coming from.

[regex]

I get what all the fuss is about, I just don't care. When my launcher consists of ten parts, I'm pretty happy.

Personally, I think the devs should bring all the other engines in line with the new parts and them up the size of the Kerbol system (maybe two or three times the size now) so it looks more proper.

[Hyomoto]

It's called progression. Once you progress in a game you unlock better parts. If you don't like the way Devs intended this game to be feel free to use mods or stop playing. We are probably going to get more 3.75m parts in the future and then you'll actually be thankful to have the new parts to lift heavier payloads.

By the way the developers never said every single engine added to the game in the future would be no better than already existing engines.

You know, it would be less annoying if you backed up your opinion with something. KerikBalm makes a good point and provides what he feels is supporting info. Then you come back with a #dealwithit. So, let's push your 'opinion' a little further. Sandbox doesn't unlock parts. Are you implying that it would then be fine for sandbox players to have a toolbox full of comparatively useless parts? Or are you implying that we should be artificially restricted (Hi Flower Child!) in Career mode for the sake of progression? What exactly is your point? And who are you to be speaking for Squad? The developers have said the game will change, and have changed from their stated direction before.

Lastly, what Squad HAS said is they want the game to be fun. So, The Space, let me ask you this: if adjustments were made to align the parts with the tentative progression the other engines follow, how would that affect your game? Would it cease to be fun? Would you lose interest? Or could it be that you don't actually have anything useful to add to this discussion? If I were a betting man, I'd go all in on the last one. It's not bad enough that you jump into an argument without at least reading the last few pages, but that when you do its with a weak strawman and the premise that you know what the developers are doing. That's just a bit rude, don't you think?

[KerbMav]

Still no hard numbers, but one more thought:

If higher thrust has to be countered by lower ISP and more weight ... would the biggest engine have to gulp down all fuel and yet still be to heavy to lift itself? Or is there room for improvement?

[Caelib]

To the OP, if you're going to bring up a topic for discussion ... define "fuss" ... what are people talking about specifically and how many people?

[ScottyDoesKnow]

Still no hard numbers, but one more thought:

If higher thrust has to be countered by lower ISP and more weight ... would the biggest engine have to gulp down all fuel and yet still be to heavy to lift itself? Or is there room for improvement?

I guess in the case of an infinitely large engine, yes? I don't see your point though.

[KerbMav]

I guess in the case of an infinitely large engine, yes? I don't see your point though.

It was said that the new engines' thrust was not sufficiently offset by ISP and weight.

My questions aims at: Can there be only linear improvement? 8 x 1m engines = 4x 2m = 2x 3m = ... ?

[Hyomoto]

It was said that the new engines' thrust was not sufficiently offset by ISP and weight.

My questions aims at: Can there be only linear improvement? 8 x 1m engines = 4x 2m = 2x 3m = ... ?

The linear improvement is only tentative anyways, the major argument has simply been they they are completely outside the curve. These are the only parts like that, but I think it stands to set a dangerous precedent where KSP relies on having the best parts rather than using the best parts for the job. So far Squad hasn't shown that they intend to pursue that sort of mentality but career progression is (maybe) far from finished and may adopt that strategy. Take, for instance, KW Rocketry. Every engine in that pack outperforms the stock engines. Because of that, I quickly found I wasn't using any of the stock pieces, and not just for appearances. It's dangerous to fill the part bin up with obsolete parts and that's the bulk of the pro-change argument. Right now they are 3.75, but what if they introduce a superior 1.25 variant? That's where the discussion is.

[maccollo]

Still no hard numbers, but one more thought:

If higher thrust has to be countered by lower ISP and more weight ... would the biggest engine have to gulp down all fuel and yet still be to heavy to lift itself? Or is there room for improvement?

No. The added weight wouldn't have much impact early on. The engine would be able to carry a few tons less, which would be countered by more thrust (stupid_chris boosted the quad to 4000, I would go even higher). The difference is in the fuel fraction, which determines how much delta V you can extract at a certain TWR, so by decreasing the TWR and increasing the thrust you can launch the same gross mass to orbit with the same number of engines and stages, although each stage would require slightly more fuel.

[NASAFanboy]

I request thread be closed.

I was proposing a simple solution and had created this thread to discuss it and present any possible shortcomings or concerns, not to argue over ARM again. There are other threads for that.

[UberFuber]

ISP doesn't have to be balanced purely against TWR.

In real-life, rockets are designed to operate at certain altitude. For example, a large bell rocket designed to "catch" most of the expanding gas in the exhaust works best in vacuum but will have serious issue if you fire it at low altitude (best case scenario, the bell adds too much drag, worst case, the bell collapses).

A rocket designed to operate at sea level will may work best at operate in atmosphere by be horribly inefficient in vacuum.

So base on this, we have 3 different possible Isp curves to balance each rockets.

High sea-level Isp, Low vacuum Isp - Currently no engine, I believe, operates like that. But lifter engines (such as Mainsail and the SLS engine) are candidates to have Isp curves like that.

Consistent Isp - Aerospike

Low sea-level Isp, High vacuum Isp - Most non-Mainsail engines, nukes.

The balance between Mainsail and SLS could be that both engine have similar sea-level Isp, but SLS lifter engine have much worse vacuum Isp than Mainsail.

[The Space]

You know, it would be less annoying if you backed up your opinion with something. KerikBalm makes a good point and provides what he feels is supporting info. Then you come back with a #dealwithit. So, let's push your 'opinion' a little further. Sandbox doesn't unlock parts. Are you implying that it would then be fine for sandbox players to have a toolbox full of comparatively useless parts? Or are you implying that we should be artificially restricted (Hi Flower Child!) in Career mode for the sake of progression? What exactly is your point? And who are you to be speaking for Squad? The developers have said the game will change, and have changed from their stated direction before.

Lastly, what Squad HAS said is they want the game to be fun. So, The Space, let me ask you this: if adjustments were made to align the parts with the tentative progression the other engines follow, how would that affect your game? Would it cease to be fun? Would you lose interest? Or could it be that you don't actually have anything useful to add to this discussion? If I were a betting man, I'd go all in on the last one. It's not bad enough that you jump into an argument without at least reading the last few pages, but that when you do its with a weak strawman and the premise that you know what the developers are doing. That's just a bit rude, don't you think?

No, I don't think it's rude to express my opinion on the original poster's issue. I don't really get your argument about comparatively useless parts in sandbox. You are the only one limiting yourself from using certain parts in sandbox.

We are already "artificially restricted" in career mode because of the tech tree and I personally like that because in my opinion progression brings a nice element into KSP by giving the player a sense of accomplishment and technical progression in their own space program.

I also believe that Squad intends career mode to be the so-called main game because career offers more gameplay features than sandbox and everything that can be done in sandbox can also be done in career but there are many features unique to career mode. I think it's perfectly fine for some parts to be primarily designed for career even if it means some people will start using them instead of some older parts in the sandbox. I don't believe sandbox can be completely balanced in terms of parts while maintaining progression (which already exists) in career. In my opinion sandbox is all about having fun and testing some crazy designs and not about strict balancing of parts.

I don't have inside knowledge from Squad but I believe they have a reason to make the new engines more powerful and wouldn't just randomly pick stats for the engines. It was also said in one of the past Squadcasts (unfortunately I can't remember which one it was) that Devs wanted the new parts to be end-game content and a reward for experienced players. Based on that I don't see the need to change the new parts as I believe that's how Squad wanted those parts to be.

[Themohawkninja]

The issue behind it (from what I can tell) is that people are only looking at the numbers and not actually playing with the parts. They look at the numbers, plot it on a graph and go "WOW, this is way imbalanced" without actually building a rocket with it.

[Hyomoto]

I don't have inside knowledge from Squad but I believe they have a reason to make the new engines more powerful and wouldn't just randomly pick stats for the engines. It was also said in one of the past Squadcasts (unfortunately I can't remember which one it was) that Devs wanted the new parts to be end-game content and a reward for experienced players. Based on that I don't see the need to change the new parts as I believe that's how Squad wanted those parts to be.

Hence my position, none of us know what Squad will do so its not a foundation for an argument. Case in point, resources. What Squad has said and done has changed, so even based on what they've said we can only take it with a grain of salt. As far as 'artificial restrictions' I agree, that was vague. In Flower Child's mod, progression is reduced to attempt to force you into implicit missions in a specific order. No trying to go to Duna with the first segment of the tech tree, you better do a dozen sub-orbital missions. I simply dislike the idea that KSP could be reduced to a game where succeeding is simply a process of achieving a certain technological advancement, and it seems like a lot of the charm of the game is reduced. Case in point: MechJeb. It could be a career unlock, but you can bet many folks would be upset that a 'I win' button was being added to the game. I don't think the new engines are that, but the arguments for and against would be frighteningly similar.

I appreciate that you added some meat to your opinion, even if I still disagree with it. Squad also made three different SAS objects with the same stats. They've been slow to balance the game, and I think that is intended. I don't think we'll see that for a while.

So NASAFanboy, that's why I think maintaining two versions of the game is silly and pointless. For all the work they'd spend doing that, people could just download a mod and have whatever flavor they want. It is wholly up to them to decide what the 'stock' flavor is going to be, whether or not we add our own additional seasonings to taste. Since stock is the only version which binds our accomplishments, they will most assuredly balance it eventually, but two versions is not only a bad compromise, it's a lot of work that would only serve to waste Squad's resources and further divide the community.