SFS 1.6 What I believe they will add and what they should add.

[Altaïr]

You said yourself, that this solution changes the game only so little, that you don't see the point.

It's not what I said. I said it wouldn't fix the problem, but I didn't say it changed the game so little. It does indeed make lift off and landing more difficult, but it also multiplies by 3 the burn time that is already very long with ion engines. I know what it is to wait for your ions to burn for hours. I wouldn't call multiplying this by 3 a little change.

But it's still possible to use them for lift-off and landing. I made it with my throttle intentionally reduced to 33% to test your setting:

See, it's still very efficient, to the point it's ridiculous. That's why I said it wouldn't fix the problem. It's not as easy, but still usable in practice. And I'm pretty sure it would work in realistic too, due to how little fuel it needed.

And I do want it to be easily doable. So everyone can do it if they wish to - the more possibilities in game the better.

But if you reason that way why not leaving everybody the choice to use ion engines as they like? After all I consider them myself as cheating, but I didn't say anything when you used them to send 180 tons of payload to the Moon.

Yes, i can. There will be no downgrade.

Each mothership from current design can just take x3 times more ion drives to gain the same total power of thrust.

But this is precisely what I'm calling a downgrade. Lowering the acceleration means that you increase the burn time. The burn time is already very long in practice and it's the main reason why players spam ion engines. If it makes ion engines unplayable in practice I don't see it as a good solution.

And to not force people to change designs of their blueprints it is better then to simply increasing ion drives weight by x3 and keep the thrust at 1.5 tons.

This is not the same in the end.
If you take that ship:

By lowering its thrust by 2 thirds, you end up with a TWR of 0.16 (what I had in the test above). By adding 1 ton per ion engine you add 4 tons overall and you end up with a TWR of 0.36. If the purpose is to make that ship impractical as a lander then it doesn't work because 4 tons of additional mass would have been less of a penalty than having the throttle capped to 33%.

 

[Cresign]

I think theres an easy, already implemented a while ago solution to burn time issues: Physical timewarp, i mean even the original roadmap mentioned that timewarp when using ion engines will be added, if you multiply burn time by 3 times, using 3 times time accelaration will cause that burn to last as long as it would normally last without any timewarp, thats a somewhat acceptable solution.

 

[Catalyst_Kh]

but it also multiplies by 3 the burn time that is already very long with ion engines. I know what it is to wait for your ions to burn for hours. I wouldn't call multiplying this by 3 a little change.

You are right. I missed this drawback. But this drawback disappears if we keep 1.5t thrust. There will be no multiplying acceleration time by 3 times. We just make ion engines 3x times heavier and that is all. In comparison to all mothership weight, it will make like +5% or +10% more time for acceleration. Not +200% time.

So the goal is still achieved with no drawbacks at all, since 5% or 10% change it negligible - players can simply add +1 or +2 more ion engines to cover this and get back their original acceleration speed.

Plus my original plan presumed, that people just place x3 time more ion engines to restore their desired TWR back. I didn't plan to force them to use x3 times more time for acceleration at all - that would be a huge drawback for nothing.

But why burden them with adding more ion drives, if there is an even better solution, which you showed up.

But it's still possible to use them for lift-off and landing.

And that is very good. It should be possible. And it shoud be easy to do. So everyone could have their fun with the game. No limitations.

The goal is to keep this possible and everything else possible, while easily fixing the gameplay flaw at the same time.

I made it with my throttle intentionally reduced to 33% to test your setting:
...
See, it's still very efficient, to the point it's ridiculous.

And now it is still more efficient, than using chemical engine. But if your landing module would require at least one solar panel and at least one battery module with correct weight - then the amount of fuel spent and the total weight of landing module will put ion engines on one level with using chemical engines - game balance will be restored. While using ion engines for interplanetary movement will remain the same as it were, just 5%-10% slower, which can be easilty fixed with adding +1 or +2 ion drives to original mothership design.

I see no problems at all - only major benefits and improvements.

That's why I said it wouldn't fix the problem.

That is why i added battery module rule, solar panel rule, and mandatory ion engine's direct connection to battery module rule. All that will fix the problem without hurting anything else.

You are presenting a problem like the ability to land with ion drives - i don't recognize it as a problem, i recognize it only as a good side of the game. The problem is: the imbalance with engines.

So i just offer a simple way to restore balance and all problems goes away, and benefits come instead. When we simply can regulate balance with engines by changing battery module's sizes (like different fuel tanks sizes), shapes and weights, and changing ion engines weights, but we are keeping 1.5t of thrust for players' convenience and compatibility with their old blueprints.

I didn't made too much testing - x3 of weight seems close to best number, but maybe more than 3 or less than 3 would be better. That would depend on final settings on the shape and weight of battery modules.

But if you reason that way why not leaving everybody the choice to use ion engines as they like? After all I consider them myself as cheating, but I didn't say anything when you used them to send 180 tons of payload to the Moon.

When my 70 tons ship visited all 8 Saturn's moons with landing on each one in one flight at realistic level of game difficutly - i understood this all myself. One landing and take off from Moon eats only 1-2 tons of fuel totally, even much less than 1t if moon is small. And we are carrying big astronaut module!

I understand if in real life some small probe of 3-20 kilograms can land and take off with ion engines - but carrying 4 tons of astronaut's module plus several tons of fuel with it? That is totally different story.

So if somebody wants to have a lander with ion engines - it would be fair to have it loaded with battery module and solar panel, that will require to burn more fuel for landing itself (remember - ion engines are also x3 times heavier), but still the amount of used fuel will be less than with chemical engines. But the entire landing module with ions, battery and solar panel will be much heavier now, than module with chemical engine - and moving that more heavier module between moons or between planets will require more fuel again - and here we will finally reach full balance in efficiency between entire systems with ion engines landing module and chemical engines landing module, and between entirely different game strategies. So - i see only benefits here, i see no problems.

And then once again - i just did launcher from Earth ground, which has only ion engines and it brought almost 1000 tons to orbit without even been optimized between stages - and that is at Realistic level of difficulty. That is totally botched gameplay.

But this is precisely what I'm calling a downgrade. Lowering the acceleration means that you increase the burn time. The burn time is already very long in practice and it's the main reason why players spam ion engines. If it makes ion engines unplayable in practice I don't see it as a good solution.

You are correct here, so i propose to keep full thrust of ions as it is then, and reaching the balancing goal from another direction.

By lowering its thrust by 2 thirds, you end up with a TWR of 0.16 (what I had in the test above). By adding 1 ton per ion engine you add 4 tons overall and you end up with a TWR of 0.36. If the purpose is to make that ship impractical as a lander then it doesn't work because 4 tons of additional mass would have been less of a penalty than having the throttle capped to 33%.

You are totally correct here too. And that is when battery module rule and solar panel rule comes into play and totally fixes this imbalance.

 

[Catalyst_Kh]

But if you reason that way why not leaving everybody the choice to use ion engines as they like?

Because it results in banning ion engines from any challenge. Which means we are simply losing part of the game for nothing.

For example, imagine that Kolibri engines had ISP of 5000. Right immediately in blueprint editor it was his default setting in game. And you would sad then - why not leave it to everybody to use this Kolibri or not use it as they like?

But in result, all challenges would have Kolibri banned entirely and we would lose another part of the game - all challenges have no small engines to use, only big ones, no smaller than Valiant.

Imagine then, that in new version of the game Valiant becomes having 8000 IPS. Then what? Again leaving it to everybody's choice and banning Valiant from each challenge.

So now all challenges can be made with only huge engines, no less than hawk engine. Even for small lander.

This illustrates the tendency of how the gameplay would degrade in this way. Simply because parts of the game are lost, not used at all. Or using those parts feels like using cheats and doesn't bring any fun from the gameplay. No win here, only losses.

Why should we allow that to happen with any part of the game at all? Especially if there is such an easy way to fix this for ion engines and "unban them".

 

[astromax24]

Very funny

Did you even read his message!?

Yeah, I was making a joke

 

[Hermes]

Yeah, I was making a joke

Kinda hard to tell if people are joking over text online

 

[SHΔRD Aerospace]

lol, both of those are just me shitposting. i created an "sfs 2" discord rich presence along with a "stef vs. goku story mode" description just to fuck with people, i also put my own name in the snek pek message because i thought it would be funny. nothing more to it
View attachment 98737
i am the ultimate shitposter

sfs 2!!!111!!!!111

 

[astromax24]

sfs 2!!!111!!!!111

OMG YAY

 

[brioche]

Kinda hard to tell if people are joking over text online

i mean, i put the text as "stef morojna vs goku" and had the buttons redirect to my yt and discord i think it was obvious enough

 

[brioche]

i mean, i put the text as "stef morojna vs goku" and had the buttons redirect to my yt and discord i think it was obvious enough

brioche is dumb, my apologies

Because it results in banning ion engines from any challenge. Which means we are simply losing part of the game for nothing.

For example, imagine that Kolibri engines had ISP of 5000. Right immediately in blueprint editor it was his default setting in game. And you would sad then - why not leave it to everybody to use this Kolibri or not use it as they like?

But in result, all challenges would have Kolibri banned entirely and we would lose another part of the game - all challenges have no small engines to use, only big ones, no smaller than Valiant.

Imagine then, that in new version of the game Valiant becomes having 8000 IPS. Then what? Again leaving it to everybody's choice and banning Valiant from each challenge.

So now all challenges can be made with only huge engines, no less than hawk engine. Even for small lander.

This illustrates the tendency of how the gameplay would degrade in this way. Simply because parts of the game are lost, not used at all. Or using those parts feels like using cheats and doesn't bring any fun from the gameplay. No win here, only losses.

Why should we allow that to happen with any part of the game at all? Especially if there is such an easy way to fix this for ion engines and "unban them".

The ban of ion engines is completely justified, they make missions essentially challengeless as basically half their balancing was gone. Using the argument "It's in the game, though" isn't really valid here as the challenges are meant to be a display of skill.

 

[Catalyst_Kh]

brioche is dumb, my apologies
The ban of ion engines is completely justified, they make missions essentially challengeless as basically half their balancing was gone. Using the argument "It's in the game, though" isn't really valid here as the challenges are meant to be a display of skill.

That is very good point and that is what i propose to fix with simple changes in internal game settings. I don't know how it was balanced before, but probably not good enough, if it was discarded in the end.

 

[brioche]

That is very good point and that is what i propose to fix with simple changes in internal game settings. I don't know how it was balanced before, but probably not good enough, if it was discarded in the end.

The original balancing was done via the electricity system. Due to the system being pretty terrible, the system was scrapped. Due to community pressure, Stef re-implemented the ions (iirc)

 

[Cresign]

The original balancing was done via the electricity system. Due to the system being pretty terrible, the system was scrapped. Due to community pressure, Stef re-implemented the ions (iirc)

Reimplemented them? They were never gone as far as i remember

 

[Mr.Dude]

hol up so 1.6 is canceled and will be put into SFS 2 how does that make any sense if ur making another SFS it has to have a different Solar System or more updated planet textures and physics I don't think SFS 2 will be a legit thing for awhile.

 

[Hermes]

hol up so 1.6 is canceled and will be put into SFS 2 how does that make any sense if ur making another SFS it has to have a different Solar System or more updated planet textures and physics I don't think SFS 2 will be a legit thing for awhile.

Read the messages. Brioche pulled a prank on everyone. SFS 2 is a shitpost.

 

[SHΔRD Aerospace]

hol up so 1.6 is canceled and will be put into SFS 2 how does that make any sense if ur making another SFS it has to have a different Solar System or more updated planet textures and physics I don't think SFS 2 will be a legit thing for awhile.

stef will make ksp 1 and sfs 2 the same game

 

[Mr.Dude]

this game needs advanced lighting so like there is a dark side on the moon were u need flash lights and with mars, there can be storms and dark sides.

basically, this game needs a night and day system for all planets that have a night and day system I think it would be cool.

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

Reimplemented them? They were never gone as far as i remember

They got yeeted back to void (includin ions) as far as I remember then as brioche said got pressured and just back the ions instead of the whole system.

Because some of my build which has electric installed gone crap after electric gone (includin ions) but hey it's back and more totally broken.

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

night and day system for all planets that have a night and day system I think it would be cool.

Use custom planets with day and night cycle.

 

[Cresign]

Use custom planets with day and night cycle.

Thats a similar argument to outer planets not being added, having it stock just kinda feels better

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

Thats a similar argument to outer planets not being added, having it stock just kinda feels better

Still better stef to add those cause they're major part of the system

It's no brainer if he didn't add em, it's like maps of the nations which has overseas territories and didn't put it on map because it's far from mainland.

Anyways it's up to stef if he does but community has custom day and night but I think use the custom until he push with it either way it's just a visual effects.

 

[SpaceMoon]

I wonder if they will add water. We have not heard anything about it in months and in the last sneak peek of it, we saw it looked almost done. Did you also notice how they removed the live development and beta channels from the discord? I think they are either very close to being finished or have had some major setbacks. I also saw Brioche playing a game called "SFS 2" on discord. Stef also put "Brioche" in the reactons for the latest sneak peek.

Water will be in 1.7 not 1.6

 

[Mr.Dude]

Dude I think there should be space debri but u know like no orbital lines they go were ever they please it would make space travel more dangerous but I think it would be cool.

 

[Hermes]

Dude I think there should be space debri but u know like no orbital lines they go were ever they please it would make space travel more dangerous but I think it would be cool.

Like asteroids that are not on the map? If so it would be cool if they appear on the map after you encounter them. Like the map is incomplete and you have to find all the space debris.

 

[Cresign]

Not space debris in that case, free floating parts sound like a cool concept but a very unrealistic one to be added. Asteroids that you could actually move though would be great.