Do you consider ions + massless electric systems an exploit?

[regex]

I wouldn't really call massless parts an "exploit" because they were intentionally made massless.

A bad game design decision, sure, but "exploit" isn't really the right word for that.

[Red Iron Crown]

I may go against the flow here but I think changes in 0.23.5 did not make the game less fun than it was before. Ion engines were critically underused, most people did not even consider them for any designs, scared by excessively long burn times in case any substantial dv needed to be applied. This update made them useful.

I agree, I've been playing with the new ions a lot more than I ever did with the old ones, even if their thrust is a bit unrealistic. The thrust buff was a win, to my mind.

Massless solar panels are still limited by the ship's surface area and they don't make solar power any less intermittent than it already is.

Cubic octagonal struts are massless, too, so one can add an arbitrary number of panels to any craft up to your part count limit without any mass penalty. And massless batteries mean that the intermittent nature of solar is less of a problem than before, too.

[cantab]

I don't know if it even does affect the processing power much. The joint and deformation calculations still need running. Ditching the drag force, more so than the mass, may be the bigger benefit.

And yes, we know from mod parts that the game can handle a mass of 0. Parts that are to remain physicless - which should be limited to "glue" parts like the cubic octagonal strut - should have a mass of 0 listed.

[MrOnak]

I may go against the flow here but I think changes in 0.23.5 did not make the game less fun than it was before. Ion engines were critically underused, most people did not even consider them for any designs, scared by excessively long burn times in case any substantial dv needed to be applied. This update made them useful.

Massless solar panels are still limited by the ship's surface area and they don't make solar power any less intermittent than it already is.

Well I agree on what you're trying to say and I'm sure most people didn't build stuff around ion engines before this update - the long burn times were very painful indeed. So the idea of buffing the ion engines was a good one. However, I just flew a single Kerbal from LKO to Duna on a single Xenon tank and I landed (softly) on the surface. See gallery above. Ion engines shouldn't be able to counter gravity on any body (maybe except Gilly but I'm not even sure about that one). We have the tiny LFO engines for those stunts already.

In my 0.23.0 career I make heavy use of LV-1 engines, the Oscar-B tanks and the PB-NUK thermoelectric generators for probes and light unmanned landers. I'm 100% certain I can make a very similar lander (less solar / batteries of course) based on the LV-1 and Oscar-B with roughly the same weight that can also safely land a Kerbal on Duna after I get it there. That's the thing. The ion craft gets itself there and can go home.

So yeah. Good intentions but they went to far IMHO. Not sure how much of that stunt (the Duna landing on a single ion engine) was made possible by the now-massless electric system but the overall effect is very drastic. While fun, I'm not sure if it doesn't destroy the place the tiny liquid fuel setup has at the moment.

[Giggleplex777]

I think they should've made dry mass ratio of the xenon tanks better instead of making the batteries massless.

[MarvinKitFox]

... OX-STAT panels ... Who's covering their entire ships with these panels that Squad saw a need for the change?

Now that their use is entire "free", just about everyone!

[Temeter]

If there is no other way, the massless parts should add their mass somewhere, maybe the COM, maybe to the part theyre connected to. I would agree up to this point. But how is the possibility of using an exploit to create strange and utterly useless ships supposed to break balance or destroy fun? Those Landers are hilarious!

Also, put a bit more trust in SQUAD. The last update introduced major changes to the physics and created unexpected problems leading to its delay. It shouldnt be surprising if they made these parts massless as a workaround. Just have some patience and wait for the next patch or news.

[Jouni]

I think I have two problems with the changes. Designing small probes is now boring, because almost everything except the probe core, the fuel tanks, and the engine is massless. The new ion engines are utterly unbelievable, as they are powerful enough to be used in heavy Mun landers. When the big inefficient 2-kerbal lander can just hovers around at the Mun with a few glowing parts under it, it's closer to Star Trek than realistic spaceflight.

[MrOnak]

Thats a very good point Jouni, virtually every part on small probes except the control & propulsion systems is now irrelevant in terms of weight, that trivializes small probe design and delivery to a point where... well... it's trivial *duh*.

I like KSP to a large extend because it is not easy and hence, it is very rewarding. Sure once you figure out a probe design that works you save it as subassembly and re-use it in good engineering stick-with-what-you-know-works spirit but getting there now is really easy.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, an ion engine that counters the gravity of Duna or Mun is over the top. I'm all for a general buff to the ion engine to make it more interesting but with the addition of the massless energy system it went too far.

[Esme]

I haven't got to a point yet where I can build ion-engined probes (and solar-sailing ones, using KSP Interstellar!), but I was looking forward to doing so - and I'm dismayed if ion engines have been made so over-powered. However, perhaps this kind of issue (and one or two others I;ve seen discussed in the forums) could be dealt with by a 'realism' switch amongst the game options? So that those who want things as realistic as possible get realistically low-powered ion engines, and those who don;t (for whatever reason) can select an 'easy' mode and pootle around with fun, but unrealistic stuff to their hearts content?

[Jas1126]

I tried a few designs with the ion engines well before this update and never once used them again. Before this update they may as well have removed them completely, in my opinion. Now, I have even more things to do because of all the changes. Overpowered? Sure. But, something new to try nonetheless.

I look at it this way:

Once a person has mastered a craft, they'll stick with it forever (unless they want to try new things for fun). All this change does is give us yet another same-same build that, again, we'll keep using over and over again.

There is no difference!

We go from using one constant ship design to another.

[Esme]

I understand your point, Jas1126, but that's if you look at it simply as a game without reference to what it represents and how that makes some folk feel about it. I want realistic engines because, having been interested in astronomy since before Apollo 11 and having expected that one day I could well be knocking lumps off rocks on Mars, I feel cheated by how things actually turned out. So for me, yes, KSP is a game, and I enjoy the silly and pure fun side of it as much as anyone. But it also gives me a lot of pleasure trying to do things (reasonably) realistically, because, durn it, KSP is (aside from my participation in Zooniverse) the nearest I'm ever going to get to living that childhood dream. So ion engines you can travel to Duna, land on Duna and return from Duna with? No, thank you.

[Jas1126]

Up until two hours ago I hadn't touched the ion engines (since four months ago). I must be experiencing some kind of glitch or missing a file update because these things are still awful. 2.0 thrust. <- Is that correct? Am I missing something?

23.5.464 is the version I'm seeing on the main screen.

I'm looking at the wiki and it states:

"Because it uses only about 0.485 units of xenon per second, one PB-X50R Xenon Container with 400 units of xenon can supply the engine for almost 14 minutes. The other larger tank PB-X150 Xenon Container with 700 units of xenon has enough to supply the engine more than 24 minutes."

How are people getting to distant planets and back with that low efficiency? I popped a few onto a nearly mass-less ship and the burn to Jool was just over an hour from high Kerbin orbit. What the heck am I missing?

Edited April 26, 2014 by Jas1126

[Red Iron Crown]

How are people getting to distant planets and back with that low efficiency? I popped a few onto a nearly mass-less ship and the burn to Jool was just over an hour from high Kerbin orbit. What the heck am I missing?

Check out its Isp, it's tremendously efficient, just not high TWR. So you get a lot of delta-V for a given fuel fraction with the penalty of long burn times.

[Jas1126]

Check out its Isp, it's tremendously efficient, just not high TWR. So you get a lot of delta-V for a given fuel fraction with the penalty of long burn times.

So essentially they're still completely useless when those trips are easily achievable otherwise. Spend an hour with ion engines or get the exact same job done in 5 minutes with a proper ship. I'm honestly starting to wonder why they even bothered putting these ion engines in the game. Aesthetics or role-playing, I suppose. Sure, they can be used for probes or lander's.. But so can normal engines with much less wait times overall.

Sorry if I sound frustrated but this all just seems rather ridiculous to me.

[Dooz]

Define Massless.

[regex]

Define Massless.

Having no mass.

[Red Iron Crown]

So essentially they're still completely useless when those trips are easily achievable otherwise. Spend an hour with ion engines or get the exact same job done in 5 minutes with a proper ship. I'm honestly starting to wonder why they even bothered putting these ion engines in the game. Aesthetics or role-playing, I suppose. Sure, they can be used for probes or lander's.. But so can normal engines with much less wait times overall.

Sorry if I sound frustrated but this all just seems rather ridiculous to me.

That's fair, I felt the same way about them before they got the thrust boost in 0.23.5. They do make some things practical that aren't with conventional rockets (try to make a 15km/s delta-V chemical rocket and then try to do the same with ions), but the long burns can be painfully dull.

Define Massless.

Parts for which the physics engine ignores their mass. Off the top of my head: Z100 & Z400 battery packs, OX-STAT solar panels, all lights, all ladders, cubic and regular octagonal struts, aircraft landing gear, the 3.75m decoupler (WTF?), and some science parts (not sure on those, and I may have forgotten some others). Even though the part description shows a mass for each of these parts, the game engine does not add their mass to the ship during simulation.

Edit: LOL at regex's more concise explanation.

Edited April 26, 2014 by Red Iron Crown

[Jas1126]

24 ion engines on an absolute bare minimum design (as mass-less as possible) made for a more reasonable burn time.

[Jouni]

So essentially they're still completely useless when those trips are easily achievable otherwise. Spend an hour with ion engines or get the exact same job done in 5 minutes with a proper ship. I'm honestly starting to wonder why they even bothered putting these ion engines in the game. Aesthetics or role-playing, I suppose. Sure, they can be used for probes or lander's.. But so can normal engines with much less wait times overall.

Sorry if I sound frustrated but this all just seems rather ridiculous to me.

You don't really need any other engines than the LV-T30. It's powerful enough for first stages, efficient enough for vacuum, and light enough for landers. The other engines just do something a bit better, but they're not really necessary for anything. Ion engines are good for small probes and repeated landings. If you just go there and back again, you don't need to be that fuel efficient, so ion engines are usually the wrong choice.

I've had three serious designs using ion engines. Back in 0.23, I used some lightweight kethane probes in the Jool system. With any other choice of engines, the probes would have been so heavy that they would have reduced the performance of the mothership carrying them significantly. The next was a Mun lander a few weeks ago. Low-TWR landings need a bit of practice, but the fuel efficiency of the design makes it quite practical, if you want to explore the Mun for an extended period of time. There was also an interplanetary ship I built for a Moho challenge where nuclear engines were forbidden. It had something like 75% of the mass and a bit over 50% of the TWR of a nuclear powered ship with the same amount of delta-v.

[cantab]

How are people getting to distant planets and back with that low efficiency? I popped a few onto a nearly mass-less ship and the burn to Jool was just over an hour from high Kerbin orbit. What the heck am I missing?

The big two are not enough elecricity and not using physics warp. If you can't keep the ions fully powered you'll get even less thrust so it'll take even longer, and of course physics warp would cut that hour long burn down to a more practical 15 minutes.

Another factor could be still not being light enough. A 2-ton probe with one ion engine would make the Jool ejection in about 30 minutes.

Also a high orbit does increase delta-V requirements, but not by all that much. Going from Alexmoon's planner, even leaving from a completely silly 80,000 km orbit (well beyond Minmus and practically on the edge of Kerbin's SOI) only takes 30% or so more delta-V than a 100 km orbit.

Finally, patience. Some people tolerate long burns, others don't. If you can put some TV on another window or screen supervising a long burn isn't so bad.

[Jas1126]

I can see how these could be viable in the future, but for now I just build massive ships that can do anything I want. My last build needed no refueling. The stages were absolutely massive though.

Severe sleep deprivation leads to stupidity (for me anyway, it seems), what can I say. Thanks for not holding it against me and remaining civil.