Do you consider ions + massless electric systems an exploit?

[Red Iron Crown]

I made a craft for a low mass SSTO challenge, and for circularization I added an ion engine, xenon tank and electrical system to supply it. By building the electrical system from cubic octagonal struts, OX-STAT panels and Z-100 battery packs, it was competely massless. This feels vaguely cheaty to me, as an ion powered craft can be made where the mass is all tank, engine and payload like a conventional rocket.

Do you think spamming massless electrical parts to drive ion engines is an exploit?

Caveat: This is a discussion of personal opinion. What is and isn't an exploit is a subjective judgement that will vary from player to player. Play how you like and don't let anyone tell you you're doing it wrong.

Edited April 17, 2014 by Red Iron Crown

[r4pt0r]

question:did the devs make some parts massless to somehow ease the burden on the cpu?

[Captain Sierra]

Considering I use NFP, which adds considerably more powerful, power hungry, and ultra-efficient ion engines, the stock ion is, for all intensive purposes, beneath me. building an ion lander is trivial. When I need ion power I grab for an MPD thruster first and don't even think about the lower thrust alternatives. I personally think those parts should add their mass to the craft overall because spamming them (or use on a small enough ship) does make a difference but their mass should be added at the CoM of the part they are attached to (chaining back to the nearest non-massless part in the tree). This prevents imperfect balancing while still avoiding the exploit and ultimately everyone wins. Then again, 'cheaty' is a personal term. I have no problem with part clipping when the game attachment rules won't cooperate but I won't clip fuel tanks or air hog (most of the time). The new SLS parts are horribly balanced and not properly supported (no 3.65m reaction wheels) so while some argue they're OP, they're a pain in the a** to use (at least I think so). They don't feel like stock and they really feel out of place. I still turn to KW rocketry for my heavy lifting.

question:did the devs make some parts massless to somehow ease the burden on the cpu?

Maybe. I'm not really sure. There's the possibility it has to do with not wanting these tiny parts to cause balance issues with crafts resulting in instability, but that is mildly hard to believe. I think you are right because can you imagine what kind of complicated math has to be done when the values are so small? When spamming the crap out of them (like can sometimes happen purely because they are needed for legitimate reasons) it would slaughter your processor.

Edited April 17, 2014 by Captain Sierra

[cantab]

To me it does feel exploity, yes. On the other hand it's usually going to be hard to avoid to some extent. Winged ion craft are pretty much always going to use the OX-STATs, though they'd be a bit unusual for an ion-powered deep-space probe. The small batteries are the natural choice for many craft though if you're spamming them it's iffy, and of course the cuboct struts have no real alternative for little stuctural stuff.

Really we just have to wait for Squad to change it, or else use a rebalance mod to sort things out.

[NecroBones]

Yes, I think it's exploity. What I think they should have done, is instead of making the parts massless, is to give them mass, but apply the mass at the Center of Mass. That would have solved the issue of balancing small radial parts (in terms of mass distribution), but still require you to accelerate that mass with everything else.

[cantab]

To be honest, I'm not sure why balance need be a problem for most of the parts that are suddenly massless in .23.5. On a small ship just add two, or else balance it with another equal-mass part. On big ships the mass is low enough to be irrelevant.

[bsalis]

Not sure I would call it an exploit. However it does seem unusual to have batteries as massless. There does not seem a need for it.

I can understand regular and octagonal struts being massless, since they are for structural glue and connection points. I think landing gear being massless is a bit dodge, but I suspect was made so to allow less than graceful landings. Batteries though? No idea why.

[Redshift OTF]

Using lot of these things can actually increase the physics load. I tried to make an infini-rocket hybrid and used about 150 cubic struts and it didn't like it much.

[Col_Jessep]

Wait, are these changes recent like for the batteries? Is this a new thing in 23.5? Did they have mass in previous versions?

[UmbralRaptor]

Wait, are these changes recent like for the batteries? Is this a new thing in 23.5? Did they have mass in previous versions?

Yes. eg: in 0.23, the Z-100, Z-400, and OX-STAT all had mass.

[cantab]

Certainly some parts, such as RCS ports, are newly massless in .23.5. (Which makes building RCS-only craft a doddle. Stick a bunch of place-anywhere's on the bottom of a big RCS tank and it goes like a bat out of hell up from Kerbin, re-entry effects on ascent.)

[zarakon]

-deleted- Somehow editing this post created a new one instead? Or maybe it's too early in the morning and I made an oops

Edited April 17, 2014 by zarakon

[borisvolodnikov]

Making these things massless was a silly change. I hope they reverse the decision at some point.

[zarakon]

I can see some things like ladders, lights, and small science instruments being massless so that you wouldn't need to counterbalance them.

Plane landing gear might just be a convenience thing too. If it had mass it would be a pain to balance SSTOs properly to get the center of mass in line with the rocket thrust

Batteries and solar panels don't feel right being massless though, since they actually provide resources.

I don't think it gives the physics system any relief. Those parts still have to move around, and they're still connected to things. Put tons of them on a craft and it will lag as much as anything else

[MarvinKitFox]

Massless Solar panels and batteries is not overpowered, at all!

Why, it is downright convenient.

It allows my 2.6ton SSTO to fly to Eeloo and back.

Actually, yes, that does sound like the very essence of the definition of "overpowered"

[Madrias]

I didn't even realize they were massless. I could swear they had a mass of something like 0.05 and such... Then again, I only ever really looked at them in 0.22 when I considered building electric assisted SSTO's. (Firespitter pack, using a prop to gain a reasonable amount of speed and altitude for a one-kerbal-in-seat aircraft. Couldn't ever exactly run SSTO, but I had a wicked 3STO at one point.)

If they've been made massless, we'll find out soon enough if it was intentional.

[Joonatan1998]

I think that it is an exploit. (like using the landing gears for landers (that are not planes))

I don't like that squad has started using part count as the major balancing method.

[LethalDose]

Since this is all predicated on opinion...

Yes, it's an exploit. In fact, IMO, If you have to ask if it's an exploit, then yes, it's an exploit.

Do you think spamming massless electrical parts to drive ion engines is an exploit?

So, yes. Exploit.

[Col_Jessep]

Yes. eg: in 0.23, the Z-100, Z-400, and OX-STAT all had mass.

Ah, that explains why one of my planes suddenly pulls to one side again. I used the small batteries to balance it out. Thanks!

[Hans Dorn]

Since the xenon tanks have such a bad mass fraction of fuel, I guess it's not nearly as exploity as it could be...

Cheers

[Redshift OTF]

I'm guessing they did this to help buff the Ion engines.

[-Velocity-]

Anything that allows an ion lander or an ion aircraft is an exploit, or at best, horribly unrealistic, since neither of those are even remotely possible IRL (well, maybe an ion lander would work on a 500 m diameter asteroid).

As I said before, the solution to making ion engines viable was not to overbuff them to the point absurdity; no, the solution was to give us a nuclear reactor and high capacity xenon tanks. With nuclear reactors and larger xenon tanks, the stock ion engine from before the latest patch was fine, though a larger, scaled version(s) would have been nice as well.

[SSSPutnik]

Let's face it, 0.23.5 is rather unbalanced.

[MKI]

Why where they made massless?

I didn't even know they were changed until now. The dev's never mentioned it and i haven't noticed it. Reasons could extend from

balance, to cpu related issues to an accidental change.

Depending on why they were changed matters if you want to know if this is an exploit. I feel the new parts were changed to massless for cpu related reasons. Yes it creates odd things such as the ability to make ion SSTOs with these, but it also means the CPU isn't tied up with calculating these tiny parts. Regardless of realism, the fact it makes the game faster is always a good thing.

It does affect balance, but again it makes the game faster.

Such things are tough to deal with, but it also goes back to why they were changed. If they were accidental, yes its exploitative. If they were changed for decreased lag, then its a toss up. Finally if they were changed for "balance" i have yet to understand why they were unbalanced before.

[boxman]

So on top of the unrealistic overpowered nasa parts, the recent tweaks to ion engines they decide to even remove the mass entirely from things like batteries??

It is getting tempting to just stick with old verisons.. It is hard to know which parts are somewhat realistic these days...

I really wonder why they decided to do this when there was no issue with the mass of those small parts in the past.

If i were to make for example a power plant for a base with a bunch of batteries and solar panels/rtgs it would make a significant difference when the parts have no mass.

I really dont like where KSP is heading as of lately and hope they change it back.

Makes me wonder what else they changed and will change down the line..