Thoughts on Massless parts

[MarvinKitFox]

With .23.5 , the introduction of fully massless power systems has *seriously* skewed balance in several fields.

Being able to build an enormous truss structure (massless cubic octagonal), mount hundreds of solar panels on it (massless single-panel solar cell), and attach thousands of E worth of batteries to it (massless 100e and 400e radial batteries), *without* having to consider ANY mass/weight/balance/torque considerations other than sheer part count,

and in addition the enormous superboost of ION engine capabilities,

has led to the situation that, other than to get out of Kerbal's gravity, there is NO role that cannot be better, lighter, achieved by an ion-driven zero-mass powered speedster.

One can get to Eeloo, plant a flag and fly back, with a 5 ton vehicle!!!! Starting from KSC ground launch!

====

The fix:

All of the currently massless parts are listed as having mass, it just doesn't get included in the calculation of final mass due to being physics exempt.

Fine, I understand this exemption makes things a lot easier for both rocket designers and for the game engine.

How about simply adding the part mass for all these "exempt" parts to the ship, as a single total mass addition at center of balance?

This would still retain all the benefits of easier calcs, not worrying about trivial balance issues due to ladders, etc.. But it would correctly increase the mass, thus decrease the performance, of the ship involved.

After all, a rocket that has 857 struts on it *should* weigh more than one built from the same components, but without all those supporting cables, rods and welds added, right?

The fact that the extra parts are all very lightweight should make their absence from torque calculations to be of vanishingly small significance.

[KvickFlygarn87]

One can get to Eeloo, plant a flag and fly back, with a 5 ton vehicle

Pics or it didn't happen.

[MarvinKitFox]

Pics or it didn't happen.

Actually, i made a mistake.

Its not 5 tons, its 2.635 tons

Pics in about 1 hour, need to redo with this variant..(no more burning Kerbals for fuel)

UPDATE: Ok, here are your Pics:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/77034-See-Eeloo-on-5-a-day-%28image-heavy%29?p=1101187#post1101187

Edited April 18, 2014 by MarvinKitFox

[Superfluous J]

I don't understand how this is destroying the fun of the game for me.

[Mazon Del]

The issue is that by having some parts be exempt from the mass situation, there is nothing keeping you from ignoring all conventional rockets and just having an insane massive ion engine (that shouldn't be effective if every part involved had mass). So, if you are willing to ignore that your method of doing things is wildly inefficient when compared with the massless parts, then really nothing has changed. For me, this impacts my desire to make a massive ion-only ship, primarily because I want to have the challenge the mass helped provide previously.

[Shna_na]

So let me get this straight, the way I read this is that solar panels and batteries have no mass in the game. Is this correct?

[r4pt0r]

and some other parts

[pizzaoverhead]

I don't understand how this is destroying the fun of the game for me.

This oversight is clearly having that effect for MarvinKitFox. The game is poorer for it.

[Shna_na]

and some other parts

Really? That's a shame. So what are these parts? Is it the trusses, panels, and batteries? Or are there even more than just these? I think they should really have a mass.

[federally]

You mean I'm wasting my time trying to balance out the placement of batteries? That's annoying.

I like your suggestion OP. Parts should have mass and I think you're suggestion seems like a good way to achieve this without creating annoying gameplay by having to balance every little part for weight and not make it harder on calculations.

[Nemrav]

ya, I made a really low budget rocket today that got to gilly landed and still has enough for going home.... It was made because I heard of this exploit...

[MKI]

This is one of those things i gotta just wonder about.

It would only be an exploit if the Dev's didn't mean for the parts to be used this way. Realistically its not game breaking or anything, obviously using massless parts to make an ION drive is actually pretty cool. It's also more a bragging rights thing than of practical use.

I do wonder why they would change them to be massless, was it for better physics calculations, or game play balance?

Building things with the very small is nice and all, but again it doesn't get much done besides bragging rights. If it means the game becomes more streamlined and better performing with massless parts then im for it. Even if that means you can make an ION SSTO to Duna or what ever. (payload kerbal in chair lol)

[Invader Myk]

They are massless because "PhysicsSignificance = 1"

Why has nobody made a MM config to change that?

[Master Tao]

I imagine that sometime in the past year, someone created a module manager config just like this one:

@PART
[*]
{
    @PhysicsSignificance = 0
}

You're more likely to find answers like that in the Add-ons forums.

The suggestion here for the stock game was to add those masses to the center of mass of the ship. Since the discussion about massless parts has moved onto other, more recent threads covering different approaches, I'll close this one.