Add Nerfed Reaction Wheels to Difficulty Options

[The Yellow Dart]

First off, I love that there is now a panel for selecting desired difficulty. It is something that I have wanted for a long while. I think reaction wheels are good for beginners, as they will have enough problems to worry about like getting to space and staying there, without worrying how to make their ship turn while it's up there. But once you have a good grasp of KSP basics, I feel reaction wheels tend to make things a little too easy and a bit too unrealistic, and RCS thrusters get underused, strictly for docking only. For me, I only use RCS once I get very close, unless both ships are quite large.

I think it would be a nice and easy improvement to put an option on the difficulty panel to nerf all reaction wheels down to, say, 1/10th of their original values. Or, since there will soon be lots of different options for SAS and more to the SAS module, perhaps an option to limit reaction wheels to holding a particular direction only, no turning ability, which would be quite realistic. I think a lot of KSP players crave more difficulty and this is a good (and simple) way to provide it.

[Leszek]

I am fine with reaction wheels the way they are, but they should have a spin up limit just like real reaction wheels.

The reaction wheel is just a flywheel, the torque needed to spin it up has a equal and opposite reaction on the craft. As the wheel spins up its ability to impart torque is reduced until it reaches max spin. All things being equal, at this point you just have to wait until you line up and then slow the wheel down imparting the opposite torque. When the wheel stops there is no net torque. This is fine in space. Once in an atmosphere though you have a problem as countering aerodynamic forces will spin up your wheel quickly. Stopping the wheel now will not help you and you will need RCS to zero out your wheels again.

I don't know if squad will ever do that or if there will ever be a mod, but that is the way I would like to see it.

[Wanderfound]

The main effect of this would just be to force players to install multiple reaction wheels or rely upon Vernors/RCS/fins instead. Doesn't really seem worth the bother.

[The Yellow Dart]

The main effect of this would just be to force players to install multiple reaction wheels or rely upon Vernors/RCS/fins instead. Doesn't really seem worth the bother.

That's actually the exact reason I think it is a good idea, it is the difficulty panel after all. If a player wants to tax his craft with 10x the normal weight to use strong reaction wheels that is fine but it will cost him fuel and money and give him a larger craft to get into orbit. Or if he wants to use only RCS, he'd better think hard about how long his trip is and how much monopropellant he might need. Otherwise, at this point I can dock usually with less than 10 units of mono and sometimes none at all, so what is the point of all those RCS tanks. It would also be a difficulty *option* so I don't think force is the right word.

[bv1]

There's already a thread here about saturable reaction wheels: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/78170-Saturable-Reaction-Wheels

I think that Squad should get serious with difficulty options. After all, a good selection of options is essential to any good game.