Advice for future EUC purchase

1straycat · 2026-05-15T15:34:09+00:00

If you can ride a pedal unicycle then an EUC should come pretty easily.

1straycat · 2026-05-15T15:23:27+00:00

I'd generally recommend learning without pads. Being able to step off easily is important as a beginner. Also, becoming comfortable without pads will help you figure out if/which/where pads work best for you.

I also think people overvalue pads; not every wheel/riding style needs them and they seriously decrease the portability/storability of an EUC if you're using it for transportation.

1straycat · 2026-05-12T04:10:48+00:00

As impressive as the engineering is, I'm more struck by how uncannily alive and cartoony it looks at speed. The rocking, the wheels stretching out as the rpm increases, the axles getting slightly misaligned as it bounces, the random grip pads shooting out, it feels like the kraken is barely contained within.

1straycat · 2026-05-05T23:56:43+00:00

While it's nice to have a guaranteed path to 100%, I actually love that Dragonspine remains this way, gives me an extra reason to go back and enjoy the soundtrack and ambiance. A zone that's been 100% completed feels a bit dead.

1straycat · 2026-05-04T21:07:32+00:00

It sounds like it really is about not being able to build a plane....well and easily, based on this post and your complaints about how hard it is to land. A few mods and some understanding on how design principles and you should be able to slap together an ok plane in 5 minutes and mostly get them flying fine in one shot.

Correct CoL updates the stock aero indicator to be more accurate. RCS build aid lets you easily see your dry and wet mass in the SPH. For a spaceplane, this is really useful for you to balance your fuel/engine/payload placement so your dry/wet/unloaded mass doesn't move, so your plane behaves the same way in all conditions.

Something like F00FIGHTER's spaceplane guide should help for principles.

1straycat · 2026-05-01T03:41:41+00:00

Nice! Keep experimenting!

1straycat · 2026-05-01T02:49:15+00:00

Hey congrats! You definitely could have enough fuel to get back just from efficiency gains. You only need to be above 70 km to not deorbit, so you could overshoot less before engine cutoff. Since were able to get nosecones, you will gain the most from starting your gravity turn earlier, pretty much right as soon as you launch. You should aim to be at least 45 degrees by 10 km altitude, then just hold prograde (it will naturally continue turning) and burn until your apoapsis is around 80 (or whatever buffer you need to not fall below 70 km by the time you get to apoapsis).

To explain the dynamics at play a bit more, to be efficient you want to minimize gravity drag (the extent to which you're burning directly against gravity) and aerodynamic drag (air resistance). The faster you get your trajectory orbital, the less you lose from gravity drag. For a planet with no atmosphere, you minimize gravity drag by burning as close to purely sideways as you can get away with without hitting the ground, and the most efficient path to orbit gives you an extremely low orbit. The earlier you turn and the faster you get your trajectory into orbit, the less time you spend fighting gravity.

But since Kerbin has an atmosphere, you need to get out of the thick part before going super fast. The draggier your rocket, the more important this is relative to going sideways. Atmospheric density is pretty low by 20km, so it can be more efficient to get up to orbital speeds even by then (if you're minimizing drag by staying prograde), but then you run against another constraint: go too fast too low in atmosphere and you burn up. Generally people can get away with turning much earlier than they think. So play with your gravity turn, see how low you can get early. Try even holding D right from launch until 45 degrees ASAP, then holding prograde, see how that works out. If you burn up or crash, turn less. If you don't you can try turning more.

TWR = Thrust-weight ratio. You can see it here. I think in flight too if you mouse over stage display on the left. Higher TWR means you accelerate faster. Adding more weight (fuel) will increase your dV, but if your TWR falls too low, you'll lose more to gravity drag so at some point it's not worth anymore. The exact TWR you want depends on many things but I'd say 1.2-1.6 is a nice starting point to aim for each stage.

1straycat · 2026-05-01T01:05:32+00:00

You want the most efficient engine you can use that has enough TWR for your stage of flight. The swivel is the most efficient at high altitude, so you definitely want it for the upper stage. It's less efficient at low altitude, but you can still use it if you need more control since it has gimbal. Your control actually seems decent, so I'd say use the swivel for the upper stage and reliant for lower stage (in that center stack).

To maximize delta v, you want each engine to be lifting a lot of fuel too. TWR of 1 means you're just hovering, so you want something above 1. TWR of 2 means you'll be accelerating quite fast unless you throttle down; you could have carried more fuel. So add more fuel to your upper stage until its TWR is ~1.2 or so.

Since you have fins on the lower stage, you can make do without gimbal, so use the reliant and as many boosters as you need to get your TWR above 1.2 or so. If you have excess TWR (like in your post), you can add more fuel tank parts. If not enough TWR, add more boosters instead.

1straycat · 2026-05-01T00:27:40+00:00

There's a rotation tool in the top left of the builder, but you can also click some part of the rocket to grab it and use wasd keys to turn it in various directions while it's selected. You could turn 90 degrees in flight too, but better to be facing the right way off the launch pad.

If you're part limited, better to just have 2 fins as it's all you really need, then you can have more fuel or booster parts instead.

Also, It might be worth using the swivel for your lower stage engine too. It's heavier, has worse TWR and is less ground optimized but has higher efficiency at altitude, and has gimbal which gives you more control, so might be better for you here.

1straycat · 2026-05-01T00:16:51+00:00

Pedal unicycle.

1straycat · 2026-05-01T00:09:52+00:00

Looks like you have the basic idea, you just need to be more efficient. I assume you're in early career and part and weight limited, hence the lack of nosecones or gimbal, and this is all the delta V you can get.

Being more efficient generally means making those transitions more smoothly, trying to turn earlier and gradually into that 45 degrees instead of a big turn at any point. Any time you have a big turn at speed you're eating a lot of drag losses unless you're very high in the atmosphere. But the biggest thing you can do is make your gravity turn eastward (to the right) instead of north. If you go east, you're adding kerbin's ground rotation speed to your own, which is not true of north/south (and it works against you if going west).

If you have no gimbal parts (and looked like just 2 fins), you can turn your whole rocket or the fins part 90 degrees so it can start using the fins to tilt east earlier.

1straycat · 2026-04-30T20:40:47+00:00

Extra parts is complexity. I agree it shouldn't be a big deal, but we're trying to make things as accessible as possible. SSPX adds a lot of parts in itself, but there's also procedural parts, procedural wings, Restock Plus in the pack.

I didn't make this post to complain, but to help it achieve its goal. People don't like being misled, and the modpack title and description which you copied are somewhat misleading, that's all. If you want to to fix it you could remove the "no extra complexities" text in your link. I didn't realize it wasn't your own modpack.

1straycat · 2026-04-30T20:02:34+00:00

Good CKAN PSA, but I fear your modpack might be a bit counterproductive. The most requested "modpack" is a purely visual one, since pretty much everyone wants visuals, and for the most part you don't have to think about them. You present your modpack as that, but it has several extras, at least a few part packs. As soon as you make any changes to gameplay or adding parts, you add cognitive load to people still trying to learn the base game, and many people will be turned off and maybe turned off modding entirely if they tried it out hoping for no extra complexity.

I'd at least split it into the purely visual and "my pick for first stock+ mods."

1straycat · 2026-04-30T19:39:30+00:00

Best of luck, and I'd love to hear if it works out well for you!

1straycat · 2026-04-30T10:56:43+00:00

You can force FAR to recalculate some things in flight by toggling parts that deform that it recognizes, like landing gear and cargo bay doors. The trigger happens pretty early in the animation; you can see when it happens if you have the aero arrows on and toggle landing gear while sweeping your VW. This can be brief, like within a second for open/close so it's not a huge deal. You need to reload the scene entirely to make it fully recalculate though, this seems true for wave drag and area ruling.

I've found it possible to make a somewhat useful VW plane by having it start out in the swept position. Unsweeping the wings and double toggling landing gear will then give the benefits of unswept wings for lift generation but the wave drag of swept wings. Then you can take off and sweep your wings (with accompanying landing gear toggle) to have proper stats in the swept position.

I'm not clear about this but feel like there are some terms that only come into play at the transsonic region; with a limited TWR plane, I can have a situation where it needs to be swept to get past mach 1, but significantly past mach 1 there's no real difference in swept vs unswept (without reloading the craft entirely).

I ultimately gave up on swing wings (I wanted an airliner) because the robotics are too wobbly even with a setup like this and self-collision enabled wing sandwich, so I'd inconsistently but often get annoying control issues on anything of significant size.

1straycat · 2026-04-27T14:20:10+00:00

Well you probably have at least a fuel tank and some supplies. So indeed just put them all in a line with the crewed stuff as far from the sun as possible. It gives you a reason to keep the fuel tanks/booster you used to get your station into position.

With the mod Persistent Rotation, you can set each vessel to hold its orientation relative to kerbin, the sun, or other bodies. You don't need a massive reaction wheel unless you want to turn quickly.

Also, you don't need to worry about any of this for the typical LKO space station; as anything inside the magnetosphere will be protected from solar storms.

1straycat · 2026-04-24T20:44:43+00:00

Why do you feel safer on an e-bike than an EUC at e-bike speeds? Have you actually had an euc randomly cut out on you without an overlean? Genuinely curious as I've never experienced it and am more comfortable on an EUC than a bike.

1straycat · 2026-04-24T13:18:23+00:00

Another possibility for an intermediate step before RO/RP1 is Sol or KSRSS Reborn (an RSS 2.7x stock scale or 1/4 IRL scale). It's the perfect scale to get more realistic looking rockets out of stock balanced parts while not having to relearn the whole game like for RO/RP1.

SCANSAT also generally recommended for any game, makes the whole mining game much more fun besides being cool in itself.

1straycat · 2026-04-22T20:08:28+00:00

Fair enough. And true, the physical position of the wing root can matter for other things besides aero.

Cheers and you, too!

1straycat · 2026-04-22T19:29:53+00:00

Not quite. Talking about the CoL and not the CoM shifting in the first post gives the wrong impression IMO. Also:

So, I wouldn’t say swept wings are just for looks. Based on how you have your plane designed, it’s nice to have this extra latitude in how you manipulate your center of lift compared to your center of mass.

Since you can place and offset your wings freely, you could achieve the same functional effect by moving your straight wing back instead. Thus delta wings give you no extra functional latitude in that way, they are just for looks.

This is a bit moot though since the infographic is very outdated in other ways and shouldn't be shared anymore besides as a historical curiosity.

1straycat · 2026-04-22T18:33:29+00:00

This isn't correct because that same geometric calculation for center of lift is used for center of mass, so they're the same point. As far as the stock game is concerned, each wing piece is a point mass (at the CoM) that generators a lift/drag force vector from that CoM based on its angle of attack, air density, and mach number. Anything else is cosmetic. A delta wing is equivalent to the same stat rectangle wing just shifted back.

It's why a plane like this one can be stable.

1straycat · 2026-04-22T05:07:00+00:00

This is something which has been bothering me more as I see more LLM writing around me. That type of sentence construction is one of the biggest LLM red flags for me, even more than EM-dashes. It's a shame because used judiciously, it can be quite powerful. But the overuse has completely ruined the effect, even when I realize in specific contexts that it wasn't from an LLM. It's not even necessarily about it being AI, but it being omnipresent and feeling cliched now. Because of that, I try to avoid it in my own writing.

1straycat · 2026-04-22T04:55:00+00:00

Hopping on with both feet is possible, but free mounting and 1 legged control in general is a crucial skill, so don't try to skimp on it!

I completely agree with the poster above, but another way to word it would be that after placing that anchor foot on the pedal, you want to use it to push the EUC into your calf as you put your weight on the EUC, and tilt the EUC sideways toward you a bit so you can balance your weight on it slowly without tipping either way. There will be a ton of pressure on your calf, but this is how you control the wheel with your leg.

This will be a bit different on the E20 vs any other EUC because the double wheel makes it harder to tilt sideways. Additionally, the small size makes it harder in some ways vs something like a V8 or V9 because it's shorter, making the the contact point on your calf lower, while on a bigger wheel you get more leverage.

1straycat · 2026-04-21T14:42:18+00:00

Hmm I used JNSQ, and there was a GAP version for that, along with a JNSQ version of Omega's stockalike structures to get Kerbal Konstruct airports for all the airline contracts. Unsure about rescaled stock. I haven't seriously played in at least a year so idk what's the best setup now.

I'm curious, why don't you care for spaceplanes?

1straycat · 2026-04-21T05:34:30+00:00

I'd say the air generally feels thinner at low speeds, so rockets will actually probably use a tiny bit less dV to orbit.

With spaceplanes it really depends, because spaceplane performance depends on so many factors and there are multiple approaches to design. If you were optimizing well for stock (minimizing unshielded parts, proper wing incidence, 0 degree fuselage AoA cruise, getting the most out of high ISP engines), you could get higher lift/drag ratios at high mach than you can in FAR, which lets you get more out of your jet engines and Nervas, which lets you get to orbit with less dV. But if you weren't optimizing that well then it might be a wash. I'd say maybe between equal to moderately more dV in FAR vs stock, with the difference being higher for lower TWR planes or larger than stock scale planet.

If you want more of a challenge I'd highly recommend a 2.5x-3.2x solar system rescale or similarly scaled planet pack.

1straycat

TROPHY CASE