Weight restriction and cost effective rockets

[Jhonny007]

Hello,

I'd like to discuss the weight restriction of the launch pad.

Me personally, I don't like it. Because it doesn't allow you to build cheap rockets early on, making SRBs not useful.

In my opinion the only advantage of SRBs is the cost/thrust ratio giving you cheap, but uncontrolled access to space. Espacially when you are planning big and expansive missions. But exactly at that point, where you want to save as much as possible, because your mission is so close to you going bankrupt. you can't use the SRBs, because they are to heavy.

What do you think. I would prefer, if the launchpad would just restrict you in size.

Jhonny

Edited January 24, 2015 by Jhonny007

[Jouni]

Conflicting requirements are the essence of good game design. Without them, the game becomes just a boring optimization problem with one correct solution. You want to make the rocket not only cheap, but also small, lightweight, and low part-count. You have to make trade-offs, because you can't accomplish everything at once. Even the trade-offs are going to be different for different tasks, because the bottleneck can be in different places. Routine launches can be optimized for cost, while ambitious missions will have to use more expensive techniques, as a cheap rocket would be too heavy for the launchpad.

[Jhonny007]

Conflicting requirements are the essence of good game design. Without them, the game becomes just a boring optimization problem with one correct solution. You want to make the rocket not only cheap, but also small, lightweight, and low part-count. You have to make trade-offs, because you can't accomplish everything at once. Even the trade-offs are going to be different for different tasks, because the bottleneck can be in different places. Routine launches can be optimized for cost, while ambitious missions will have to use more expensive techniques, as a cheap rocket would be too heavy for the launchpad.

That's quite a good point you have there