In a scale of 1 through 6, how efficient are you?

[kenbobo]

3. I try my hardest to land at KSC, i land about 0-60 km away each time my plane flies suborbital.

[Thorium]

I voted 3. I am planning my delta-v for every mission, but is not rare I find myself in orbit with the ascent stage (mostly becuase I am a huge fan of LV-Ns, but they have poor lifting capabilities)

[kujuman]

Can I be a negative number?

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/22838132252200085/6D121C6CAD9C05EF1F3ACDB7FCE3B13D87813F62/

Are you launching a grain silo?

I'm a 3. Part of that is that I like to spend less time building and more time flying/crashing. Unless I'm building airplanes. I love building airplanes

[Duban]

Hands down 6 here. It's normal for me to finish missions with less than 5 liters of fuel left.

Edited October 12, 2014 by Duban

[GoSlash27]

Pretty much 6. The 6 and 1 levels can extend way further than they are described at. So there's no neccesity for a Level 7 or 0.

Aye. Six it is, then.

Best,

-Slashy

[MGCJerry]

Can I be a negative number?

When I seen the title, I thought that as well... If I can rate myself. -60.

[Cuky]

I am about 2-3 as I am still learning how to optimize more complex machinery to get to other planets outside of Kerbin's system. I try to build my probes/satelites/landers as compact as possible without clipping the parts but I don't always succeed in that plan. Even if I manage to build something compact it ends up being pretty heavy and I need large boosters to get it into the space. That being said, I rarely have a complete failure of a mission. Usually when I start series of missions with same basic design of cargo (be it probe or lander or satelite) I tend to have large amount of fuel left unused in both lower and upper stages of my rocket, but with every mission I try to use less and less fuel to start with as I am getting more and more efficient in launching that design. So halfway through a program I might even change a lifter rocket with one that has smaller boosters (liquid or solid) or even build completely new rocket that is smaller, ligher and uses less fuel.

[xrayfishx]

I try to make my satellites/rockets only slightly overpowered. I prefer to have a little bit of room for error. I should be able to get to orbit with about 9700 dV, but I want to be sure so I give it at least 10000 and use the leftover to deorbit the last stage. Since I play RO, I don't really use spaceplanes, but then again I also only play sandbox so costs aren't a problem.

When I design my rockets, I usually design them for a certain mass, not a certain payload. When I do design for a payload, I won't redesign/nerf it just to use a J-2 instead of an RS-25 in the lifter, but I will try all options with the J-2 before choosing the RS-25.

For these reasons I rated myself as 4.

[Sirrobert]

I try to make my satellites/rockets only slightly overpowered. I prefer to have a little bit of room for error. I should be able to get to orbit with about 9700 dV, but I want to be sure so I give it at least 10000 and use the leftover to deorbit the last stage. Since I play RO, I don't really use spaceplanes, but then again I also only play sandbox so costs aren't a problem.

When I design my rockets, I usually design them for a certain mass, not a certain payload. When I do design for a payload, I won't redesign/nerf it just to use a J-2 instead of an RS-25 in the lifter, but I will try all options with the J-2 before choosing the RS-25.

For these reasons I rated myself as 4.

Eehm, you only need 4500m/s deltaV. Or do you have RSS? I don't know the numbers there

[cantab]

RO = Realism Overhaul. Which I assume includes RSS.

[Red Iron Crown]

Of the options, I'd call myself a four. I know how to measure efficiency and pay attention to it, but it's not the overall goal most of the time and I definitely carry a reserve for pilot skill factor and other corrections.

Spaceplanes I'm on the fence about. They're fun, efficient, and a different challenge to build and fly, but I have difficulty building larger ones and their part count is around 5x the equivalent payload rocket. I very rarely use them beyond LKO. I get similar reusability to spaceplanes in my manned orbital vessels, they just never get recovered.

I've never properly played career. For my sandbox play, does this answer the question?

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3848/14910831157_c2ac5c8da5_o.png

Your ship is a cue ball about to break the Jool system like a billiard rack!

[arrowhen]

I can't get a plane to roll five meters down the runway before it flips over and explodes, so by the scale presented, I'm about a 2.

[Alias72]

(FAR,DRE,KIDS,RT2,Stockalike)

I built a rocket family to get my budding space program into... well... space!

The first got a command pod into High sub-orbit

The second into actual orbit

so I had a rocket series that could do that, but the tech I was getting was insufficient so I decided to go to the mun.

not only did I want to be efficient in fuel, I wanted to be efficient in design.

so I designed a comm-sat science lander combo that could be launched using the smaller of my two designs, fit within a 1.25m fairing (entirely). and cost about 50k funds.

here's how I kept the mass down...

Parachutes? no. Solar panels? Just one. Lading Gear? It's called rocket engine. RCS? Reaction wheel in probe. Sat body? just use the fairing base.

Turns out rocket science is easy when your munar mission weighs as much as a pop machine with fuel.

[ArmchairGravy]

Gave myself a 3 for my current save (those new spaceplane parts are just fun to work with). My overall score would probably be a 2. I hate mission failures and generally over-engineer, especially for interplanetary missions. On the other hand, I refill and reuse those interplanetary drives, and recover the entire lander as close to KSC as I can. I would rather spend a little more money and fuel to make sure the mission succeeds than cut it as fine as possible and risk losing a ship and crew.

[Cirocco]

somewhere around 3. I pack extra delta-V for emergencies, but I do use kerbal engineer to try and optimise my stages to keep costs down. I'm also a complete spaceplane nut, but I don't have all the required parts for good (read: cargo-hauling) spaceplanes unlocked yet. That being said, when I'm not flying a spaceplane I don't really care where my return vehicles end up upon kerbin return. Spaceplanes land on the runway, parachuted landers land wherever.

Edited October 13, 2014 by Cirocco

[DunaRocketeer]

I put myself down as a 3, although I'm a 4 in places.

In my current game I've got myself a Kerbin > Mun transportation system, and haven't yet travelled further. My LKO transport is a rocket plane (it has relatively small wings but takes off and lands vertically) and has very little fuel margin for its designed mission of crew transfer to the space station. The same basic vehicle handles the launches for interplanetary probes, which are all small ion powered spacecraft. My Mun ferry is a utilitarian LV-N powered craft, all reuseable and cable of refuelling my Mun lander that shuttles between a small station and my Munbase.

Where I fall down is heavy lifting, where I use a Delta IV Heavy lookalike that is completely disposable

[Random Tank]

I'd call myself a 5, due to my love of the rocket SSTO; and all of my SSTO's are recoverable, landed at KSC. I do use staged rockets (usually for heavier payloads or early in the tech tree), but they will usually have only 2 stages, both recovered (top stage at KSC). Every launch stage I have will only ever have 3.5-3.7k dV (3500 maximum for orbit with FAR, 200 for de-orbit burn). My latest Mothership-class ship that has come back from Duna had its engines mounted on docking ports so I can just attach new engines when I unlock them rather than sending a new Mothership up. I use aero braking in every case I can, and when I can't I will use gravity assists to slow me down.

I suppose the only ways I'm not 100% efficient is that I do use disposable transfer stages and satellites, but on the other hand there is a point where adding the extra fuel to bring the satellite/transfer stages back to Kerbin for recovery costs more money than you would waste dumping them... But I do ditch all debris, either by repurposing it, recovering it on Kerbin, or crashing it into a planet.

[impwarhamer]

I'm normally a 4 or 5, but if I at first fail I normally do an all out number 1.

Cus if it don't work, add moar boosters!

[chuangatronic]

I say I'm a 4 with 3-ish tendencies. I use cheap disposable stages while I develop more SSTOs or self recovering launchers. Definitely use KER to monitor d/v and part mass efficiency. I've been a big fan of solid stages recently and I'm currently remapping the 2nd stage of my Gray Dart for solid engines to save more funds. It's expensive launching my gray dart at 32000 funds so I've been trying to cut down the liquid fuel stages and struts.

[Duke23]

I chose 3 for the sake of argument. I do tend to blast off rockets that are way bigger than they need to be at times (and upwards of 100,000 funds) and usually for aesthetic reasons, and sometimes leave large partially fueled tanks in orbit. And half the time I don't bother trying to land at KSC because such a small part of the ship is coming back that it doesn't really matter. But I try to make up for that habit by completing new "explore x" contracts unmanned with small lifters and ion drives, and using SSTOs to toss up contract satellites. Sometimes... *looks around* I even take the SSTO up to recover the more expensive satellites after the contract is complete instead of crashing or terminating them. If I can say one thing about these last couple updates it's that they've really made me rethink my efficiency. Rethink it right up until the point where I still end up wasting a crap ton of hardware and funds.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Gave myself a 3 for my current save (those new spaceplane parts are just fun to work with). My overall score would probably be a 2. I hate mission failures and generally over-engineer, especially for interplanetary missions. On the other hand, I refill and reuse those interplanetary drives, and recover the entire lander as close to KSC as I can. I would rather spend a little more money and fuel to make sure the mission succeeds than cut it as fine as possible and risk losing a ship and crew.

That's exactly my KSP "Philosophy".

[wasmic]

I'm somewhere between 3 and 4. I generally go for a "realistic" style, which means that role-play wins over efficiency. However, I have build my share of spaceplanes and I also make reusable interplanetary spacecrafts.

Damn, nothing beats an old-fashioned rocket staging event. That's why I'll never move away from rockets completely.

[Franklin]

I'll asparagus my tanks and watch maximum velocity but anything else and I'm just gonna build something amusing even if it performs worse.

Efficiency to me is "doing what I built it to do". Anything beyond is just bonus.

[Jas1126]

Depends, really. Once in a while I'll focus solely on efficiency as a personal challenge. Other times I go all out lunatic. More often than not I put only a little thought in it and tend to surprise myself with having just enough fuel to carry out my current goal. Countless times I'll find myself using my little remaining fuel just for kicks.

[Roflcopterkklol]

What is this efficiency you people talk of?