What are the pros and cons of static solar panels in non-atmospheric situation?

[Skorpychan]

I seldom use that XL thing due to its awful EC-weight ratio.

Technically speaking the only pos of it is the reduction of parts count and its cooler looking

I use them extensively for Kethane miners/refineries. Nothing else will provide enough power when you're operating a few drills, and a small refinery to get fuel to get back into orbit.

[Renegrade]

Regarding reaction wheels, sure you can turn your spacecraft easily enough - when you're controlling it and paying attention. But if it's a probe and it ends up with all the panels facing away from the sun, and you didn't think to lock a battery (or that feature/exploit is stopped), you're boned.

That's hardly a serious drawback. Can also happen with rotating panels - oops, wasn't paying attention, now they're pointed directly at the sun. User error should not be a counter to the balance of a thing. Heck, you can forget to deploy deployable panels.

It's still massless craziness. Slap three on each side of the craft, with minimal offset (which I believe is about 30 degrees without #lolclipping), and you've got yourself 68.3 ec/ton that can't break off and is ACTUALLY +inf ec/ton. Still competitive with the mid-range panels, and yet holding advantages like perma-deploy and atmospheric resistance.

I'm not saying removing them, I'm just saying reduce 'em to 0.1 to 0.2 e/sec (they're 0.75 now) and remove the @PhysicsSignificance. They'd still be useful for keeping probes going and providing power while descending etc, but they'll be less attractive for festooning onto cubic octag christmas trees.

[cpast]

My medium-weight manned rover (pressurized module as the core, so I feel fine assigning crews to spend a night or two in it) has OX-STATs on the roof to provide some power while moving. It uses heavier panels to power it while stopped, but while it's rolling I often retract those to prevent them from breaking if it rolls. The roof panels aren't enough to sustain it indefinitely (it's drawing from its batteries), but they significantly increase its range before it has to stop and extend its charging panels.

[ctbram]

Everyone forgot to mention if you get the fixed one edge on to the sun in a polar orbit around the terminator they will not charge and your batteries will go flat and then you are boned because there is no way to command the probe once power is lost and it will orbit that way forever! Makes me kind of pissed as I have done it like a dozen times now. I always forget not to put the ship in a normal or anti-normal direction and by the time I realize what is happening the batteries are flat.

[Mr. Scruffy]

Nope! A science lab doesn't need folding panels either, slap on a few Z-400s and an ox-stat or two and you're good. You can run low on juice with just one ox-stat, but that's what timewarp is for. And there's nothing stopping you from slapping six (or more!) ox-stats on either side.

Ions are trickier, but you can just #lol-stat spam your way around that too..especially if you have cubic octags unlocked/available. Also you can complete maneuvers on batteries (Z-400 is also #lolmassless!) if you want.

#lolmassless has to go. But even with mass, the #lol-stat is still the best panel assuming you can arrange orientation for it (#lolreactionwheels). Down with #lol-stat!

Has there been some secret change concerning this recently, btw? I dont think i messed with my stock 0.9 install (did another for mods, though, but that wasnt stable, so i deleted it again), but could swear that the small radial batteries once were massless (in 0.9) and now they weigh 5kg, each? Was i dreaming, or did things change a bit sometime last week or so (or the week before?), without any new version number?

[moronwrocket]

What I do for cheap probes is put two 1x6's on in symmetry, with 2 ox-stats. That way if the probe happens to end up with the 1x6's pointing towards the sun, the ox-stats can still provide power.

When I just use ox-stats, I inevitably forget to put some on top or bottom of the probe, and always end up with at least one maneuver where it isn't getting power.

[michaelhester07]

I think no one mentioned the 2nd best reason to use the OX-STAT (liberally):

They can really make your vessel look snazzy.

Particularly if you lack fancy parts from fancy mod packs.

I've got a lot of satellites that look like Iridium satellites with the panels wrapping up a fuel tank.