Budget-conscious careers: Your preference, Asparagus, or Moar Boosters?

[NecroBones]

I just thought I'd ask how people's preferences are evolving under contract careers. I know there's a thread on how your build styles may have changed, but I'm curious as to whether people think Asparagus usage in particular is changing.

As a point of anecdotal reference, I started a new career in 0.24, and just got it to the point that I'm getting ready to hit Duna and Eve (one-way probe to the latter), and have most of the tech tree unlocked, with only landing on each of Kerbin's moons once (with some biome hopping on Minmus).

I've been building my mid-stages to be recoverable, but unless you go full SSTO, of course the lower stages are just easier to design to be disposable. With SRBs being cheaper, even in the quantities needed, I've been using those mostly for the first (and sometimes second) stages. However the lack of throttle and gimbal control makes them "less fun". So I'm considering going back to full asparagus and just eat the additional cost, since the money is rolling in faster than I'm spending it anyway. The cost difference doesn't seem that huge anyway.

What has your experience been with different (non- SSTO/spaceplane) lifters in the new cost structure? How has that influenced your preferences?

As an example, here's my Duna concept below (with a plan to land on Ike too). The SRBs fire in two stages, an outer ring of 16, then an inner bundle of 9, both of which are disposable. Everything above that is recoverable. The mid-stage is intentionally a little over-designed, because reasons.

Edited July 24, 2014 by NecroBones

[NecroBones]

As another example of something I built, that I never would have done before budgets, is this test rig for testing a bunch of engines in orbit. I made a huge profit on this one. It also uses 17 SRBs in two stages, but I managed to do it with only 2 decouplers, to also save on some costs:

[Boosterspice]

Personally, I use the DebRefund plugin, which calculates if your decoupled stages will survive the landing based on speed, which means that you basically stuff boosters and aspargus stages with chutes. Technically it only works for SRBs in real life, though.

[Godot]

DebRefund and much more chutes than before

I also do more things with unmanned spaceships, especially tests within the atmosphere ... due to the light weight of the probe CPUs, I can keep the spaceships smaller than before.

For the same reason, my first Mun mission (in order to fulfill the "Explorer Mun"-Contract) was a robotic Orbiter + Lander ... and my first manned mission (to fulfill "Plant flag on Mun") is just a lander ... in contrast to my usual procedure of sending an Apollo-Type Spaceship + Lander-Combo.

My next step will be a station with an MPL lab orbiting Mun, so that I can gather science with a reusable lander that travels between surface and station, making individual missions cheaper than before

[mstrfalco]

I have been using FMRS to recover my first stages since I have done maybe 80-100 falcon 9 style landings. So I make really high quality reliable first stages since it will have a 98% recovery rate. Then I make a cheap efficient upper stage and top it off with a very mass efficient payload.

[acc]

For my designs there is nothing much different as before contracts. I just add enough chutes on all stages and use the debRefund mod for recovery of unfocused stages. The only new thing is maybe some small rockets for atmospheric part testing contracts.

Edited July 24, 2014 by acc

[Pecan]

More asparagus drop-tanks. Fuel tanks are pretty cheap, especially empty, so there's no point in recovering them. Keep all the thrust - and expensive engines - on the core/final stage which de-orbits and lands as all my launch vehicles are designed to. As soon as docking ports are available ships are designed to stay in space be refuelled and reused anyway, so cost doesn't come into it. The worst thing is that the tech-tree is still so awful - starting with big, heavy, manned pods especially.

That and I'm playing-around with SSTO designs which just bring the whole thing back. I'm moderately happy with the 10t and 40t ones but trying to improve them. They are much easier to build and fly than spaceplanes and don't look as ridiculous as the stacks of stock wings require for that sort of payload. If FAR/NEAR, B9, procedural wings and other more aesthetic and practical spaceplane mods were stock I'd be more interested in planes but they're still more trouble than they're worth at the moment. For me anyway.

[Torquemadus]

I use a cluster of SRBs as a cheap throw-away first stage. Subsequent stages are returned to the runway.

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[magnemoe]

I pretty much use an combination of a core stage who ranges from a skipper and orange tank and upward, this returns to KSC, 2-6 of the large SRB they are adjusted to give TWR 1.7 on liftoff and seperation.

Planes for testing and delivering kerbals to orbit, rescue if some is in orbit at the time.

Waiting for mods so I can make the large B9 planes, that combine with orbital construction might make rockest pretty rare

[Skorpychan]

I just use SRBs instead of asparagus/onion staged liquid fuel boosters.

And make a LOT of test flights to gain funds.

[SkyRender]

Rule #1 of contracts: it's not about the cost of the rocket, it's about how much you accomplish on the mission. As long as you can get it where it needs to go and make back the cost of the rocket plus enough to cover your next mission, there's no reason to skimp on your ability to control the rocket by adding solid rocket boosters. After all, if it doesn't even make it to space, would you say you actually saved anything over the more expensive liquid boosters that would assuredly let you get it into orbit?

[LethalDose]

Honestly, it's not having a huge effect on my play style, in part because I never used asparagus staging (IMO it just makes big, ugly rockets, effective as they may be). I've always tried to be efficient with my designs and payloads, instead of building giant lifters to put up inefficient payloads.

In my new career, I've only unlocked the first 4 tiers or so (fuel lines are visible, but not unlocked), so I haven't gotten to where I'd use LFBs, but I expect to be swapping them out for SRB's in many instances. I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with my Delta Heavy style lifter. I may keep using it, or I may not, it's gonna depend on how expensive it is to operate.

I think the budgets are actually nudging me further into the direction of standardization. In my last save, I started using VOID, so I had much more information about TWR, mass, and dV, so I was able to be somewhat objective about my lifters' payload capacities. This time around, I'm paying even more attention payload mass and saving even my small lifters as sub-assemblies. I expect to have a small fleet of expendable lifting rockets and variants, somewhat in parallel to IRL space programs (e.g. Titan I - IV, Atlas I - V)

[Sky_walker]

In my new career, I've only unlocked the first 4 tiers or so (fuel lines are visible, but not unlocked)

You didn't play much, did you?

I went past first nodes in 15 minutes.

With all the science points you get from contracts - it's ridiculously easy.

[SlyReaper]

I'm still asparagussing. Money is so easy to come by, I haven't seen much need to modify my usual designs.

[Pecan]

...I never used asparagus staging (IMO it just makes big, ugly rockets, effective as they may be).

No, it makes small rockets because it's efficient. It only makes ugly rockets if people design that way.

[Sylandro]

Realistic.

[Godot]

...

I think the budgets are actually nudging me further into the direction of standardization. ...

For me it is quite the contrary ...

in past versions of KSP I worked a lot with Standardization,

in KSP 0.24 on the other hand, almost each rocket is individualized, because on almost every mission I combine the primary mission goal with several test contracts, making an individual rocket design necessary.

The only design I have used more than once in 0.24 is the design for my Kerbal rescue ship.

When there are longer missions (that require some hours of flight in between, for exaple Mun missions) I love it to go back to KSC and do some missions for the time where the other mission flies to target ... often these are test misions, some times however, these are orbital rescue contracts with no other test missions combined ...

and my design has been proven time and again to be ideally suited for this task (and allows me to get a lot of the ship back to Kerbin for Recovery, despite me using Deadly reentry)

[LethalDose]

You didn't play much, did you?

I went past first nodes in 15 minutes.

With all the science points you get from contracts - it's ridiculously easy.

Well, I haven't played much since 0.24 dropped, as my dissertation is kinda screaming in my face for attention. Overall, I've logged around 600 hrs on KSP according to Steam in over about 9 months, so I think I play enough.

I also tend to take a bit more... measured (?) approach to my missions in career. I don't play "how fast can I get whole tree unlocked", it's more "what Mission do I feel like doing next" and I put a fair number of restrictions on how I play the game, as well, to increase the challenge and fun for me. I also added RT2 back to my mods, so some launches have been more about creating infrastructure than achieving missions (though I have doubled up on some).

It may be that we've had different contracts as well. In the contracts I've taken, I feel like I haven't seen many that give substantial science rewards.

I'm going assume that your post wasn't meant to be belittling or insulting, but you really should understand how what you said could very easily be interpreted as condescension. We've had reasonable conversations on these boards before, so I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. That being said, I find your boast about how quickly you can get nodes unlocked and how easy you find the game is in rather bad taste, especially since the thread is about how styles have changed, not how fast you can complete the tree.

No, it makes small rockets because it's efficient. It only makes ugly rockets if people design that way.

I meant "large" as in rockets fat, wide diameters and short heights. IMO, rockets qualify as ugly if they look more like pancakes instead of, well, actual rockets. We're also looking at different definitions of "efficient" now. Asparagus staging may be efficient in terms of payload fraction, but it looks like it's economic efficiency in terms of expense to put a ton of payload into LKO is pretty poor.

For me it is quite the contrary ...

in past versions of KSP I worked a lot with Standardization,

in KSP 0.24 on the other hand, almost each rocket is individualized, because on almost every mission I combine the primary mission goal with several test contracts, making an individual rocket design necessary.

To be sure, in 0.24 I've built some little sounding rockets that are frankly quite stupid to do nothing other than testing parts on or around Kerbin. But for actually doing anything in LKO or beyond, the few lifters I've built have been pretty standard. It works well for me because it lets me ball park costs and performance without much tweaking. I admit this may be more of function of increased time spent with the game more than due to budgets. But, either way, it's cool;

Different players, different play styles.

[problemecium]

My preference isn't either - it's Bigger Launch Stage. That way I can put 785 parachutes on it and recover it afterwards for money back.

[Threadsinger]

For me it is quite the contrary ...

in past versions of KSP I worked a lot with Standardization,

in KSP 0.24 on the other hand, almost each rocket is individualized, because on almost every mission I combine the primary mission goal with several test contracts, making an individual rocket design necessary.

I'm the same way. I'm trying to make standardized payload transports, but the funny combination of side missions (and trying to save some money) means I'm having to tailor my craft a lot more than I used to. As I get better at it, and more used to REALLY having to stick to a budget, I'm certain I'll develop some customisable standard craft.

As for how my gameplay style has changed - I've always been big on a 'clean' space program, so all my stages have chutes, probe cores, and enough fuel to quasi-VTOL. I also try to reduce the use of disposal containers, although I accept that it's needed sometimes. (For personal challenge, my rule was I needed to "recover" a test stage/booster in career mode at least once, and then I can consider all other events as succesful de-orbits and be allowed to not manually de-orbit them properly on future missions). One challenge I am running into, however, is the fact i use Kerbal Interstellar, which is reasonably balanced for cost at the start, but the more exotic propulsion systems are exorbitant (as they should be). I nearly always VTOL my fission/fusion/AP-drive equipped craft, but those lost percentage points add up in lost cost recovery. Not to mention putting reactors into orbit and building remote fueling bases adds costs that aren't easily recouped by the Contracts system, except through grinding.

(Note: That's not a complaint about the Contracts system, it's awesome and designed for Stock KSP. I'm just describing my challenges to fund and fuel antiproton-powered fusion engines using the new system (lol!!), and it's fun as hell. One future I'd hope to see would be some procedural generation stuff which can scan mod part lists for cool things to test, but I know nothing of programming and have no expectations otherwise. Yay for 64 bit!!)

[Pecan]

...I meant "large" as in rockets fat, wide diameters and short heights. IMO, rockets qualify as ugly if they look more like pancakes instead of, well, actual rockets. We're also looking at different definitions of "efficient" now. Asparagus staging may be efficient in terms of payload fraction, but it looks like it's economic efficiency in terms of expense to put a ton of payload into LKO is pretty poor...

Ho hum, same argument, same response -

Asparagus:

The only difference between parallel and asparagus is the fuel lines and you can't really see them. Therefore, if parallel isn't necessarily ugly neither is asparagus. In contrast, if parallel IS ugly, then asparagus isn't what's making the vehicle ugly. Either way, the ugliness does not derive from asparagus staging. Hence, it is wrong to say, as have many other people who haven't thought about it, "asparagus is ugly".

If you want to say "any rocket that isn't a single stack is ugly" then that's an entirely different matter - and still nothing to do with asparagus.

Yes; I was talking about asparagus staging's mass ratio as 'efficiency' because that's what dictates how large or small the rocket has to be. Defining 'large' as short and wide is a novel usage which seems a bit Humpty-Dumpty but we'll let that go. This whole thread is about whether asparagus is cost-effective.

Good luck with the dissertation - what's it on?