I figured it was well overdue that I put together a more detailed rocket building guide that covers how to maximise your rocket's performance. Using the Kerbal Engineer Plugin I assemble multiple rocket configurations and show that the way staging is used can make a significant to your rocket's capabilities. You can do all the calculations yourself using the rocket equation, but for expediency I used the excellent kerbal engineer plugin http://kerbalspaceport.com/0-18-1-kerbal-engineer-redux-v0-5/