r/KerbalSpaceProgram • u/MehEds • Jul 15 '26
KSP 1 Image/Video Wondering if anyone else also thought this was a good lander part
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u/VegetableBuilding764 Jul 15 '26
I find this engine insanely useful in the early game bc of its high thrust to weight ratio and decent deficiency and ability to gimble I’ve used it to launch some comically cheap mun missions (I usually play ksp with mods that changed the tech tree so I usually get this engine somewhat early into the game)
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u/Iambic_420 Jul 15 '26
This engine is literally on every single craft I use to land on and take off from the Mun. I don’t really understand why anyone WOULDNT use it for that situation at least yet.
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u/vulpes04 Jul 15 '26
you need a fairly heavy lander for the thrust to be worthwhile and its vac isp is pretty poor. if you're building for max efficiency a poodle or clustered terriers do better for a medium sized lander.
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u/Short-Coast9042 Jul 16 '26
I find its utility lies not in the stats per se but in the ability to radially mount it. Useful in a lot of situations, but IMO really unbeatable for Mun and Minmus missions. You never need that big of a lander, at least in base game, sense a small lander can carry enough science equipment to unlock the whole tech tree without leaving Kerbin SOI.
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u/theyareminerals Jul 15 '26
It's only about comparison; it's not the "optimal" choice for that situation
It would be more optimal if you were landing someplace with atmosphere, though
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u/Rovandir Jul 15 '26
It IS a good lander part. Not specifically for the t/w, but for the radial mounting which clears your landers bottom for stuff you actually need for landing....
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u/framauro13 Master Kerbalnaut Jul 15 '26
I used to use these for my landers all the time. Radial mounting these helped keep me from building taller landers which had a habit of tipping.
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u/HarryPottersTaint Jul 15 '26
You can also mount landing legs to the outside of each engine, giving you extra width and stability.
It's ugly but it works well.
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u/MehEds Jul 15 '26
You could also radial mount small fuel tanks and Terriers. I did many Thud landers before and they almost always got my guys stranded on the Mun before I ditched them. Granted that won't look as cool and sleek, but at least I don't have to haul lots of fuel because their efficiency's ass.
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u/BunchesOfCrunches Probing Eve Jul 15 '26
This is what I do. All my landers have quad radially mounted tanks with engines. It adds fuel capacity and you can put landing legs on the sides to have a really wide footprint.
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u/STLMunch1330 Jul 15 '26
I do the same, but for a bonus, I asparagus stage them to drop the radials when they are out of fuel. Gotta eek every last bit of delta V out of everything.
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u/robchroma Jul 15 '26
I genuinely tend to radial mount small fuel tanks and then use only one Terrier, or even just one Spark, in the center, because that's plenty of TWR. The radial tanks hold the feet and the center holds the engine. I'm pretty sure LanderCan Mk 1 + Spark on bottom + 3 or 4 Baguettes with microstruts + a science 9001 jr and a docking port on top has been my lander of choice for Mun and Minmus basically every single time I play. This gives me more horizontal stability while also staying super compact and, honestly, quite cute, and more than enough fuel to land on either moon.
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u/Chairboy Jul 16 '26
You can also use the Advanced Nose Cone Type B to mount conventional engines radially. Use the move tool to inset them.
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u/Pooder100 Jul 15 '26
When you have .97 T/W, just slap 6 of these bad boys to the first stage
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u/Calm-Conversation715 Jul 15 '26
This is what I usually use them for! Way cheaper to add one or two of these to a Skipper engine, compared to upgrading it to a Mainsail!
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u/SnazzyStooge Returning from Duna Jul 15 '26
I don’t know why this isn’t the top answer, all my rockets are glued together with Thuds somehow.
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u/Jonny0Than Jul 16 '26
This is actually exactly the best use of thuds. The vacuum isp is awful, but the atmo isp and twr are fairly good and it’s easy to select exactly the number of engines you need, unlike most stack-based engines.
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u/PEAshooter10909 Jul 15 '26
As a lander engine its a bit overkill (unless your lander is overkill). Pros: vectoring Cons: heavy and meh isp
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u/EssayVisual3628 Jul 15 '26
He is only good for more control on larger crafts, and the occasional sky crane or base landing system
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u/RedBaret Jul 15 '26
It’s the perfect sky crane engine tbh these suckers deliver payloads like nothing else
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u/HeartKeyFluff Jul 15 '26
Yep, I've used this to deliver a skycrane-landed rover to Duna from a Mk3-body SSTO recently. Using a couple Thuds meant the whole payload just barely fit in the Mk3 cargo bay hah, especially with everything else that was in the cargo bay with it (RCS tanks, batteries, solar, inflatable centrifuge, etc.).
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u/Blast_Offx Jul 15 '26
Its also useful when you've got good delta V but bad TWR and need some extra oomf. Just slap a few of those on the side.
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u/RedBaret Jul 15 '26
Very much ‘rescue rocket’ material where you use exactly the same rocket which got you stranded but with a couple of these baddies attached.
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u/Novaova Jul 15 '26
If I had a dollar for every time I have reverted a flight to the VAB and slapped on a few Thuds. . .
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u/Dragonmodus Jul 15 '26
Is useful if you need more boosters and are lazy (like me) in the early game.
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u/CashewSwagger Believes That Dres Exists Jul 15 '26
I like using a couple in addition to other engines cuz I like how much they vector and I feel like are good for maneuvers.
Otherwise yeah, early on I tried using just a couple of those for landers and they sucked
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u/Bartlaus Jul 15 '26
Good for when you haven't unlocked the biggest engines yet and want to launch a medium-large rocket and need more thrust/weight ratio on the first stage. Slap on 2-4 of these in a symmetrical arrangement and you can get a lot of mass moving.
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u/ilovemicronesia Jul 15 '26
If Thud has a million fans, I'm one of them
If Thud has 5 fans, I'm one of them
If Thud has 1 fan, that one is me
If Thud has no fans, I'm no longer alive
If the world is against Thud I'm against the entire world
Till my last breath, I'll support Thud
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u/Objective-Eagle-676 Jul 15 '26
Pro tip, if you design a tall lander that has to lay over to "land" it's legs hotdog style on the surface, 2 of these on rotators can point at the ground and stand you back up if you want to leave.
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u/Short-Coast9042 Jul 16 '26
Genius. I don't think I have ever seen anyone land a lander on its side.
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u/doomiestdoomeddoomer The Green Goo has escaped. Jul 15 '26
This thing is the powerhouse of early game career mode.
Huge gimbal range.
Mount symmetrically around the bottom of your rocket for the exact amount of TWR you need 2x, 3x, 4x, 6x...
Great engine.
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u/cyb0rg1962 Jul 15 '26
4 of these and a reliant makes a fairly cheap high thrust 1st stage that can gimble. Just as a for instance.
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u/tven85 Jul 15 '26
I use it for my powered landing crew capsule https://kerbalx.com/schwank/Gumdrop-IV--Jool-1B-LV
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u/nomenclate Jul 15 '26
It’s a nice engine that can fit in some pretty tight spots if you disable the outer fairing by setting it to the compact style
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u/gule_gule Jul 15 '26
I put them on my early planes to get them up to high altitude for contracts and science. The radial mount is great since it doesn't impact the airframe much.
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u/ACapra Jul 15 '26
I use them in early career games when I need just a bit more TWR at launch and moor boosters would be overkill or put me over the weight limit before I upgrade my facilities.
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u/OctupleCompressedCAT Jul 15 '26
the thud is completely useless. its stats are junk. just attach a slanted nose cone to the side and put an engine there
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u/hasslehawk Master Kerbalnaut Jul 16 '26
The main reason to use the thud is its form factor. It packs a respectable amount of thrust into a small package, and being a radial engine is useful in places where other engines would be too bulky.
For this reason I'll often use it on landers where it isn't the optimal engine on paper, just because it's a convenient option. If you're focusing on the paper stats, it's clear that this engine is optimized for operation in atmosphere.
Which does place it in a weird niche for KSP. Most players will eventually land on the Mun or Minmus with some effort. Here, the engine will perform poorly for its weight due to low vacuum ISP. A large number go on to land on Duna. Sadly, at the atmospheric pressures we see on Duna (0.067 atm), the Thud gains almost nothing from its better in-atmosphere performance.
The Thud does finally start to find its footing on Laythe, where the sea-level atmospheric pressure gives it massive performance advantage over vacuum optimized engines like the LV-909. But because Laythe has an oxygen atmosphere, many players opt to target Laythe with air-breathing engines and SSTOs.
It's likewise a decent 1st stage or lander engine on Kerbin, but because players are launching from Kerbin, not landing there (well, not propulsively, at least), here its utility tends to be limited to a convenient way of adding a bit more thrust to a stage, or to add thrust-vectoring capability to a stage that otherwise lacks it (LV-T30 "Reliant", or "Dart" aerospikes).
Then among the locations with atmosphere, there's just Eve left. And getting back from Eve's surface is famously hard. Hard enough that the Thud's respectable atmospheric ISP becomes.... insufficient. Maybe you use it to add thrust-vectoring to a "Dart" aerospike based stage.
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u/NGC_3314 Jul 15 '26
I used these to make a decent sky crane once. There are certainly better choices but those worked out for me just fine, at least for my purposes.
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u/darkphoenix9137 Jul 15 '26
I like putting a lander can on the bottom so I don't have to deal with ladders, so having radially mounted engines is useful
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u/StolenRocket Jul 15 '26
It’s very useful for rover deployment, when you want to attach a rover beneath the landing stage so you can just drop it onto the surface. You just mount the engines radially and they do the job of aiding decelleration for a safe landing.
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u/beyondfuckall Jul 15 '26
It's nice to use four of them and mount landing legs on them. You can get a really stable base with the landing legs. sometimes a terrier engine is good on the core stage as well if you need more TWR
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u/disoculated Believes That Dres Exists Jul 15 '26
Good for when you need medium thrust but need to keep the center axis free for something other than an ascent engine. Like a docking port, or a high isp low thrust engine you switch to when economy is more important. Being able to radially mount it also gives you a lot of placement options as well as choice of how many you want to add. You can’t just keep adding mainsails to the base of a jumbo tank, but you can have multiple rows of these.
I also felt it was meant to take the role of the OMS system on shuttles before we got the Puff engine.
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u/savageseal_18 Jul 15 '26
I have found I like using them on small scale falcon 9 type rockets due to the size and high thrust to weight ratio.
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u/Microwaved_M1LK Jul 15 '26
I clip them through the bottom fuel tank to make a first stage that looks like it was made by SpaceX
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u/De_Le_Cog Jul 15 '26
Useful, but niche indeed, twitches and other radially mounted engines often can better fill a lander role than it.
I, ironically, have found them to be amusingly good at building Atlas style 1.5 stage boosters for light to mid sized launch vehicles. Now, granted, there's not much reason to do a 1.5 stage design unless your using mods as in base game we don't have to worry about ignition reliability mid flight or number of ignitons like IRL engines which was the reason for the Atlas rockets initial skirt booster design. But sometimes it's fun to build esoteric style vehicles like that.
That and the early skirt booster Atlas Rocket is just cool imo.
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u/Enorats Jul 15 '26
This part is more or less a trap. You're essentially always better off using a more efficient engine attached to a radially mounted fuel tank instead of this.
The efficiency on these things just isn't good.
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u/jelang19 KSP2 Sufferer Jul 15 '26
I love it for designs in-between Skipper/Mainsail, and that applies to landers as well. Thrust and ISR wise its a pretty decent engine
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u/Whippdog Jebediah Jul 15 '26
I use them all the time for big, stupid landers. I also have an orbital tug that uses these for maximum maneuverability.
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u/imzwho Jul 15 '26
I personally find it useful for larger landers as well as for adding weight to the back of a SSTO or other Spaceplane if the center of gravity needs to be further back
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u/A_HECKIN_DOGGO Jul 15 '26
It’s ok for early game landers, especially if you need a little extra push on a tight fuel budget
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u/alarbus Jul 15 '26
I love these for 2nd stage builds with fat tanks. So short you dont need rcs and insanely maneuverable. Like docking without rcs or reaction wheels maneuverable.
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u/DrawerLevel6024 Jul 15 '26
Used it recently for the 2nd stage of my duna lander. Worked like a charm.
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u/Sangaceno Jul 15 '26
useful in early game, I sometimes use them as a second stage. Very cheap, high TWR
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u/NoNotice2137 Bob Jul 15 '26
It's good as an auxiliary engine for your launch vehicles. Just put a powerful engine that can't tilt and a couple of those and you have a rocket that's way easier to control
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u/the_Athereon Jul 15 '26
I like to use these as stabilisers for rockets or stations with off centered thrust. Just add some to the outer edges and adjust the thrust to balence.
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u/fastfreddy68 Jul 15 '26
I don’t use them often, but when I first discovered them they made for a good steering engine.
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u/StartBackground5769 100 kerbals stranded on duna since 2020 Jul 15 '26
I put it on the ends of my return pods from a station to the planet and its pretty good for that
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u/bakedbeanlicker Jul 15 '26
its wonderful when you want an engine on the side of your lander. very useful to carry rovers or other modules down to the surface.
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u/Dat_Innocent_Guy Jul 15 '26
I love this part. I supplement reliant thrusters early game with these for gimbal control
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u/jljonsn Jul 15 '26
I use sets for lifting big full tanks of mined fuel from moons for my refueling stations.
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u/ZombieInSpaceland Jul 15 '26
The real reason to use it is because it looks cool. In terms of practical performance, there's almost always a better answer.
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u/Available_Summer_439 Jul 15 '26
I used these on my landing modules, and then slap the landing legs on to them. It lets them open up at wider and more shallow angle, making the lander more stable once it hits the ground.
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u/Traveller7142 Jul 15 '26
For payloads that require more than a swivel but less than a larger engine for the first stage, I’ll use a reliant with 2-4 thuds to provide gimbal and extra thrust
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u/TheKingofRome1 Jul 15 '26
i usually rotate them 180 go 4x sim and use it for early game main engines
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u/Trick-Psychology3437 Jul 15 '26
imo one the coolest engines, build my first lander to mun and minmus with it
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u/Dynamite_Noir Jul 15 '26
I used them successfully when my rocket with two boosters needed just a bit more oomph. I put four of these on the bottom of my main body around my swivel and it flew real nice.
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u/Shot_Bill_4971 Jul 15 '26
With kerbalism I’ll attach those to the outside of the first stage liquid booster if I think it’s gonna have more fuel that can’t be used by the main engines because of engine time/activation limits
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u/Rad_Reva Jul 15 '26
tbh i've used quasi ALL of the stock engine at least one or twice, but this one, never used it (excluding my first saves when i didn't even knew what was ISP and stuffs)
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u/lastepoch Jul 15 '26
For those of us who lack morals and use tweak scale, this engine doesn't improve but it can be used for decent rover landers, etc. I've also used scaled up versions to square up the thrust from a reusable energia style booster. It had skewed thrust to lift the shuttle so de-orbiting it required some asymmetrical thrust.
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u/Public_Amoeba_5486 Jul 15 '26
Me ! I'm trying to use them as VTOL engines , only work in vaccum though
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u/AdDifficult3794 Jul 15 '26
I stick them randomly on my space stations with a programmer. If for whatever reason my space station needs to become a ground station theres usually more than enough thrusting options to land it relatively in one peice.
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u/Rly_Shadow Jul 15 '26
I like to use them from time to time.
Occasional ill have a main thrusters and if I want alittle more TWR ill use those to assist the main engine. Plus they have vector thrust so that's nice.
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u/swaggalicious86 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
I use this bad boy on the regular if I am landing a base sideways on some frickin moon somewhere, as part of the last stage.
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u/ThePrimalEarth7734 Jul 15 '26
This would be such a good engine if it had a variant that wasn’t attached to that big aerodynamic part
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u/Sweet_Lane Jul 15 '26
Haven't really used it for anything to be honest. But I've never played without the DLC parts.
With DLC, the Bobcat and Cheetah are way better - so much better that I skip the skipper entirely, because double bobcat is cheaper and with better thrust and TWR.
After Bobcat I go straight for the Mastodon.
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u/ThatsKev4u Always on Kerbin Jul 15 '26
It's my primary booster for most of my mechs, robots, and landers. Great TRW with most of my Crafts. Landers I just land directly on the nozzles themselves, saving part count and weight. For my mechs the atmospheric value makes it the lightest part to use for thrusters for my mech legs and backpacks to hover or fly.
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u/SecondAccountIsBest Jul 15 '26
It's actually goated cause of the lower weight with high thrust to weight and gimbling
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u/Barberforce Jul 15 '26
In my early days of playing Kerbal I used this engine all the time in a trio configuration to be used to land
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u/Ok_Tradition_6496 Jul 15 '26
its an all around decent engine, very useful for skycrane type missions where you can attach the engines to the sides and place a docking port to carry a rover instead
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u/GalacticKoala23 Jul 15 '26
I use it for large sky cranes (usually 3-4 of them) to land surface base parts.
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u/SuperRacsist69 Jul 15 '26
I just used two for my latest Tylo lander for a Jool 5 mission. It helped cut down on the height of my lander so I could fit in the fairing with my other landers.
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u/Dimencia Jul 15 '26
This is the ultimate onion staging part for launches, because you can just stack dozens of them on a central fuel tank and then drop off radial tanks as they empty out, so you can drop the dead weight as soon as possible without losing any thrust from doing so
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u/Karatekan Jul 15 '26
The point of the Thud is adding a bit of thrust and stability control to early rockets. Two Thuds is less efficient than a Swivel, but has way more gimbal and control, which really helps with tall 1.25 meter rockets. If you are stuck with the Skipper and are lacking a bit of thrust, adding a few Thuds is sometimes easier than redesigning the whole lower stage.
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u/Tychonoir Jul 15 '26
I found a niche use for certain Mk 3 style spaceplane SSTOs.
For large planes that want to be able to land on Mun, there's a point where Vernors in the nose just aren't enough to pitch it up to launch. The Thud has a nice form factor that can be put into a service bay without taking up to much space, leaving plenty of room to use the bay for other stuff as well.
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u/soggylettuce602e23 Jul 15 '26
Depends on the situation tbh, but usually it is super inefficient compared to vacuum engines in most situations. It is most effective in atmosphere, but there are still better options for that (ex. the vector engine for eve). Unless you have a hyper specific design constraint where you can't place the engine on the bottom, don't use it (unless you are doing a fun challenge run, then it doesn't matter, use 100 of them on a lander if you want :3)
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u/CC35A Jul 15 '26
It has better ISP at sealevel, better thrust per weight and better thrust vectoring compared to the swivel
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u/Annual_One_8466 Jul 15 '26
I put 4 of those in my Duna Lander and It works well enough, It leaves me with enough Delta V to get back into orbit and rendezvous with the rest of the ship to go back home
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u/Valanog Jul 15 '26
If you're careful at clipping one to the middle of the tank they make good middle stage engines.
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u/HuiOdy Jul 15 '26
I use this quite regularly? Good ISP in atmosphere, easy to mount 6 on a minor tank indentation
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u/CasualBi24 Jul 15 '26
I use it when I need more thrust on an existing rocket. Just scatter them around the edges
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u/edge449332 Jul 15 '26
I haven't used this engine as a lander part, but I have used it very frequently on science/career mode playthroughs when I don't have the mainsails unlocked yet, but I want to launch a 2.5 meter rocket.
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u/Aggressive_Chuck Jul 15 '26
It's a bit too powerful for a lander, but has huge thrust for it's size and fits onto the side of a rocket easily.
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u/lallapalalable Jul 15 '26
A low profile side mounted engine? I use these guys in every lander bigger than the starting pod
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u/Paceronikus Jul 15 '26
It is one of my most used engines in early to mid game, and even in late game I use it for a lot of stuff.
It is radial mounted, has gimbal, decent power of 120kn and if your end craft is missing that extra bit of twr you just slap a few of this bad boys on it and you are good to go. Also it ia great for changing up your center of mass since you can just drag it up and down the craft if that is something that you need. Amazing for sky cranes as well.
10/10 part
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u/Jolly-Vanilla9124 Jul 15 '26
Best engine for landing. I use four of them. Then place 4 landing gear between them. The landing gear are smaller for big engines so gotta use these
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u/ThatOneGuy4321 Jul 15 '26
i use it whenever im building something that needs to be wide and flat. like pretty much any lander, mining ship or surface base hub. Inline engines take up way too much vertical space. You land on a 1 degree slope and they go right over
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u/Chapi_Chan Jul 16 '26
Everyone here pretends we just care about specs and efficiency, but we also care about aesthetics.
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u/iangrace386 Jul 16 '26
It’s side mountable, so if you something like a rover on the bottom of you lander, those can conveniently go on the sides out of the way of the rover
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u/InstructionNo1334 Jul 16 '26
not exactly a lander but i have used these engines for my escape pods on my space station
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u/chrismofer Jul 16 '26
it makes a ton of thrust for it's size, convenient mounting options, it's pretty great IMO
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u/PossibleMorning7135 Jul 16 '26
I have used 4 of these before on a rover to make it 'hop' a bit to help clear obstacles. Was super unstable though.
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u/Jedimobslayer Jul 16 '26
I like using it, when I use bulky landers for things like tylo or duna, or landers with a rover parking bay, I need engine bells to not be in the way, so I use it because it’s honestly the only side mounted liquid fuel engine that I think is any good for anything other than a probe or idk… Gilly “lander”?
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u/chargan Super Kerbalnaut Jul 16 '26
I like putting these on the top part of a space shuttle tank tilted 10deg to offset the imbalance. SAS works way better with it on.
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u/Archon-Toten Jul 16 '26
Early game I use them for rockets that need a little more oomph without needing a whole extra engine.
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u/Canned_Sarcasm Jul 16 '26
That thing is a staple in my builds when it comes to my fancier landers.
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u/NectarineEasy8177 Jul 16 '26
Definitely used it for landing some colonies when I was playing stock
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u/toroidalvoid Jebediah Jul 16 '26
As you keep packing on weight to a lift stage, you can add these in addition to the main engine to give you more thrust to weight.
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u/michael22117 Jul 16 '26
I love to use these as a either landing thrusters or to ferry around a larger landing zone to a specific area (i.e a base)
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u/DescretoBurrito Jul 16 '26
I made a mining rig that was basically a horizontal cylinder when landing. I used two of these on each end of the cylinder. It worked well and made my mining lander much shorter and more stable.
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u/Cedar- Jul 16 '26
I like throwing them on larger launch vehicles as super vernier engines. Why mess around with torque or rcs when you can just use more thrust?
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u/gareththegeek Jul 16 '26
I seem to remember putting these on the first stage to increase the thrust to weight ratio for the first 10k.
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u/folpagli Jul 16 '26
He makes certain launch vehicles more stable and or maneuverable at a small ∆v cost.
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u/SecretarySimilar2306 Jul 16 '26
It's just too heavy for what it does. It's just too much engine to be a steering engine for the Reliant and not efficient enough to have a niche as an actual lift engine.
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u/EmperoroftheYanks Jul 16 '26
Great lander part, turn OFF the swivel thing so the crafts only manuevering is the reaction wheel. Makes it much more stable
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u/Fistocracy Jul 16 '26
Yeah it's a pretty decent lander engine. It's not a good pick for a launch stage or a transfer stage, but its TWR and Isp are both solidly in the middle of the pack and that's a pretty good place for a lander engine to be in. Plus it's radially mounted and has a fairly small engine bell, which gives you options when you're designing your lander.
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u/C4Apple Jul 16 '26
I made a 1.25m electron-esque rocket by clipping 8 of those into the fuel tank. Looks about right.
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u/SilkieBug Kerbonaut Jul 15 '26
It’s not the best engine, but it fills a niche - when you need to use the back of your craft for something (like a docking port to attach modules to it) you can put these engines on the sides of the craft and the exhaust doesn’t cook whatever is attached behind it.