Need some help choosing mods for realism

[Boonestorm]

Hi there,

after reading the forums and watching some streams, I decided to have some more realism in my KSP experience.

At the moment, I'm thinking about the following mods:

FAR

DRE

TACLS

RemoteTech

Hopefully this will not make things too hard. I don't want to use RSS (yet) because I think that would make stuff really hard.

Do I need any other mods for heat shields/fairings for DRE and FAR?

I'm currently also using KER, MJ (only for course plotting) and FinePrint and playing career on hard mode.

Thanks for the help!

[Frank_G]

Well, if you use FAR, you will need fairings to protect your payload from aerodynamic forces.

My recommendations would be:

- Procedural Fairings - for the above reasons

- ScanSat - because it adds sense to satelites and helps planing missions by delivering excellent map material

- RasterPropMonitors - For some nice IVA missions, and it works hand in hand with ScanSat, allowing you to use mapping functionality from within the cockpit.

[Cirocco]

Yeah procedural fairings is really nice. I don't use FAR or DRE and I still like to put fairings on my stuff simply because of roleplay purposes

[Red Iron Crown]

Kerbal Isp Difficulty Scaler (KIDS) for proper thrust scaling with Isp.

RealFuels if you want to get into more realistic propellants.

Advanced Jet Engines (AJE) for more realistic jet engine behavior.

Realism Overhaul if you want to get highly realistic rocket behavior (note: much more difficult than stock, you'll have to unlearn some of the things KSP has taught you).

[juanml82]

Why is it that people list RemoteTech as a realism mod? Space probes IRL are tracked from ground stations, not from satellites. As a gameplay mod, it's up to anyone to use it, but it's not realistic, nor meant to be that.

As for realism, I'd also recommend Porkjet's Habitat Pack http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/64442-0-23-5-Habitat-Pack-v0-4 (which unfortunately seems discontinued) and only send kerbonauts in long flights on the centrifuge.

And for spaceplanes, only use rapiers.

[Fenway]

Having used remote-tech, i can say that it is relatively realistic. Space probes are tracked and controlled by Mission Control in the KSP: you simply need to have an active connection to it (through relay satellites) and there is a significant signal delay between when you send a command and when the probe executes the command (30 seconds on Eve, for example). Without an active connection, your probe has no control, unless you give it autopilot commands prior to signal loss.

[regex]

Having used remote-tech, i can say that it is relatively realistic. Space probes are tracked and controlled by Mission Control in the KSP: you simply need to have an active connection to it (through relay satellites) and there is a significant signal delay between when you send a command and when the probe executes the command (30 seconds on Eve, for example). Without an active connection, your probe has no control, unless you give it autopilot commands prior to signal loss.

The mechanisms under which it operates are realistic, but the implementation is anything but. It may be interesting gameplay but in reality you'd have multiple tracking stations all over Kerbin with ranges that can talk to the entire solar system so that the only situation where a probe is "blind" is when the connection is occluded. Relay satellites would then be used for cases like the Venera landers.

OP, if you want realism, get the Realism Overhaul suite of mods and Real Solar System. There is no substitute. KSP plays at being realistic, but it is a pale shadow compared to proper mechanics. Furthermore, RO and RSS =/= "hard", once you know your way around things. It's all a matter of delta-V.

[Tex_NL]

For realism you might also consider EVE.

EVE doesn't change or add any physics but the clouds make everything LOOK a lot more real.

[tater]

Why is it that people list RemoteTech as a realism mod? Space probes IRL are tracked from ground stations, not from satellites. As a gameplay mod, it's up to anyone to use it, but it's not realistic, nor meant to be that.

As for realism, I'd also recommend Porkjet's Habitat Pack http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/64442-0-23-5-Habitat-Pack-v0-4 (which unfortunately seems discontinued) and only send kerbonauts in long flights on the centrifuge.

And for spaceplanes, only use rapiers.

I agree completely regarding RT. I was sort of expecting to to pepper Kermin with powerful ground control stations, with perhaps an LOS here and there (hard given its tiny size). The lack of that made me entirely disinterested in it.

[juanml82]

Tracking probes outside LKO could be abstracted by destroying the tracking station at the start of the game. While realistically the proper procedure would be to build ground stations all over kerbin instead of just one at the KSC, the gameplay procedure would be the same: ie, pay funds to track things. You'd have to pretend that, when you're (re)building the tracking station, you're also building several tracking stations across Kerbin

[Jouni]

The main realism mods are FAR, DRE, and RSS, which don't change the casual KSP style too much. The first two make the atmospheres behave in a reasonable way, while RSS makes the engineering challenges you face more similar to the real world.

Then there are realism mods that change the gameplay significantly. The engine throttling and restarting restrictions in Realism Overhaul and the signal delays in RemoteTech change the way you fly your ships, while TAC Life Support adds new design constraints for long-term missions.

Mods that make a class of parts behave in a more realistic (and usually more complex) way are a class of their own. Advanced Jet Engine, RealChutes, and Real Fuels are some examples of them.

[NathanKell]

Good thing RemoteTech supports groundstations then.

You can *definitely* add the DSN to it. The one issue is that IRL you never really lose communication due to distance, just bitrate.

Suggestion: if you want orbit to be not just a hop-skip away, try 6.4x Kerbin. You can still use stock parts (and with stock parts, it takes nearly as much rocket to get a payload to orbit as RSS does with Realism Overhaul).

[Red Iron Crown]

Furthermore, RO and RSS =/= "hard", once you know your way around things. It's all a matter of delta-V.

I dunno, non-throttleable engines and limited restarts do make things a tad more difficult. Judging by how difficult many players find an Eve ascent in stock, more delta-V is a challenge in itself.

[tater]

Good thing RemoteTech supports groundstations then.

You can *definitely* add the DSN to it. The one issue is that IRL you never really lose communication due to distance, just bitrate.

I guess the "add DSN in" is the operative bit. I don't want to have to make some contraption to fly an antenna someplace (is there some other way?) when it should already be there. I agree with the bitrate issue, too, obviously---I used to spend some time at the VLA back in the day (it was better when people had to come out to NM to do runs, we had better colloquia with all the visiting profs ). I was always more of an optical guy, though. Anyway, they'd often have a telescope or two helping out with probe commo (or VLBI).

[sp1989]

Dang it or any mod that simulates failures. Such as engines not firing or solar panels not deploying.

[NathanKell]

Oh goodness no, I mean define more GroundStations in the RT settings file. You can give lat, long, altitude, and range (give it something obscene for range). That's how you have red dots on the planet, for reference. Also, in the RO thread, next to where RT is linked, there's a link to CerberusRCAF's config that adds a small groundstation by every possible space center location. That'll show you how it's done.

Very cool work you were doing!

Edited October 31, 2014 by NathanKell

[Boonestorm]

Thanks for all the good suggestions.

I'll be going with FAR and DRE for now; after looking through all the mods I found out what I really want at the moment is a little higher difficulty (and aerodynamics !), and not realism. I have still land and return missions on most of the kerbol system on my agenda, so delta-v is still a problem for me (but I'm learning).

Edit: I just had a closer look at KW Rocketry, it looks very nice. Is it balanced with stock or will it make things easier?

Edited October 31, 2014 by Boonestorm

[Starman4308]

Thanks for all the good suggestions.

I'll be going with FAR and DRE for now; after looking through all the mods I found out what I really want at the moment is a little higher difficulty (and aerodynamics !), and not realism. I have still land and return missions on most of the kerbol system on my agenda, so delta-v is still a problem for me (but I'm learning).

Edit: I just had a closer look at KW Rocketry, it looks very nice. Is it balanced with stock or will it make things easier?

It seems roughly balanced, but by definition, it'll make stuff easier, because there might be a KW Rocketry part which fills a niche better than a stock part. An analogy: if you need a 5x1 Lego piece to connect something, you could stick together a few 2x1 and 3x1 Legos together, but if you have a 5x1 handy, why, use the 5x1.

One thing you'll notice with FAR is that, once you figure out how to not explode, ascents require much less delta-V. Regex has a 1.7x Kerbin config somewhere as a "FAR fixer", and if you ever get sick of tiny ascent rockets, I suggest using 6.4x Kerbin, and to help with the increased scale, Real Fuels with the stockalike config (which makes fuel tank/engine weights more in line with reality).