Part Upgrades

[Riisos]

Under "Advanced" options for new games there is now this:

Part Upgrades - "Enable stats upgrades for some old parts when new technologies are researched."

This is probably a silly question, but this means previously unlocked parts will receive a bump from techs researched later, meaning all parts already deployed on missions (as well as new vehicles) will be upgraded, correct? It would be cool if old ships had out-of-date engines and needed to return to KSC and be re-deployed to get the upgrades, but it sounds like the effect is universal, and if I leave the option off, it would just mean that those bonuses from new techs would never get applied to any of the old parts across the board, meaning I would never get the benefit of newer techs applied to old parts, resulting in a game with parts with lower maximum values than a game with the option checked.

Again probably obvious, I just want to clarify. I would think it would be too much for the game to remember which versions of which parts had which stats.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Riisos

[_stilgar_]

Currently, this is just for mod support. No part is actually upgraded in the game yet. 

[Riisos]

Gotcha, thanks very much!

[Sharpy]

I wonder if parts 'in flight' could get this kind of upgrade.

The save file keeps stats of all parts on the ships, so if you obtain an alien technology version of LV-N that consumes no fuel, and mount it on your craft with KIS, that craft will have that part forever (or until crashed or recovered). That doesn't change all other LV-N's. It's in part config of that ship in that save, and apart from the rest of the world.

But then, the part config has references to game internals. Stuff not written in saves but recovered from the game defaults. These CAN change mid-flight.

So how would that work?

[eddiew]

Sounds like stock support for KR&D to me   The mod as is maintains the stats for each vessel independently, so you might have a newly enhanced nerva in the VAB today, but one that launched yesterday will still be the old one.

[magnemoe]

58 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

I wonder if parts 'in flight' could get this kind of upgrade.

The save file keeps stats of all parts on the ships, so if you obtain an alien technology version of LV-N that consumes no fuel, and mount it on your craft with KIS, that craft will have that part forever (or until crashed or recovered). That doesn't change all other LV-N's. It's in part config of that ship in that save, and apart from the rest of the world.

But then, the part config has references to game internals. Stuff not written in saves but recovered from the game defaults. These CAN change mid-flight.

So how would that work?

You could upgrade software this happens all the time, its also done on spacecrafts. 
Mechjeb modules does this as they get more capable as you unlock new nodes in tech tree. 
Have unlocked landing autopilot on Minmus jumping biomes and collecting science

14 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Sounds like stock support for KR&D to me   The mod as is maintains the stats for each vessel independently, so you might have a newly enhanced nerva in the VAB today, but one that launched yesterday will still be the old one.

Yes, its obvious you can not upgrade an engine to an lighter one in flight, but you could produce an lighter one and use on new flights. 
Yes you could also replace the existing engines. I did this once.

My issue with KR&D is that it can easy get OP then you increase both ISP and trust of engines while making other parts lighter. Say you increase ISP 10% while increasing trust and dry weight 20% this has an major effect, 

[Pecan]

There was a HUGE forum thread a few years ago pleading with Squad NOT to put this feature into the stock game.  The point was that if individual parts didn't stay the same it would be very difficult to share craft or give construction advice for specific designs, as well as make it nigh impossible to help people who were have trouble with their own vehicles.  The alternativeS ... were argued and argued about for months, without any agreement anywhere.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Pecan

[Johnny Wishbone]

1 hour ago, Pecan said:

There was a HUGE forum thread a few years ago pleading with Squad NOT to put this feature into the stock game.  The point was that if individual parts didn't stay the same it would be very difficult to share craft or give construction advice for specific designs, as well as make it nigh impossible to help people who were have trouble with their own vehicles.  The alternativeS ... were argued and argued about for months, without any agreement anywhere.

I remember that thread; the butthurt was plentiful those days...

I find it interesting that so many of the "features" added to the stock game in recent releases are either complete absorption of existing mods, or watered down versions of existing mods. Personally, I'd rather Squad focus their efforts on fixing bugs in the stock game and adding the features we were promised from the beginning or enhancing existing parts of the game that have become dull and stagnant, and let the modders continue to mod the game with extra stuff.

[Norcalplanner]

The Pork jet download with revamped engine parts gives you an idea how this is implemented in the 1.2 beta.

[JPLRepo]

The upgrade capability in stock is available for mods to leverage as described in this post:

and yes, the PorkJet revamp parts pack comes configured to use this upgade capability:
 

 

Edited September 14, 2016 by JPLRepo

[RB101]

Kerbal Research & Development

This mod has you covered for part upgrades, very well balanced too.

Just a note: Parts that have fuel / mesh / scale / size tweakables can't be upgraded (the mod author has prevented it by design due to bugs)

This means that mods such as:

• Interstellar fuel switch
• Tweakscale
• Procedural parts
• B9 procedural wings

Using these mods will prevent you from upgrading anything.

(you can fix this for all stock engines and possibly other mods by deleting the relevant tweakscale patch file)

[Snark]

Another example of a mod with upgrades in it (albeit in only one narrow spot) is Galileo's Planet Pack.

...it applies an upgrade such that when the "large unmanned" node at the top of the tree is unlocked, it gives a 10x boost to the power of the RA-100 and Communotron 88-88 antennas, making them 1000G instead of 100G.  That's the way Galileo deals with the fact that his solar system is much bigger than the stock one, so the stock antennas won't actually reach to the outermost planets.

[septemberWaves]

On 9/14/2016 at 10:46 AM, magnemoe said:

My issue with KR&D is that it can easy get OP then you increase both ISP and trust of engines while making other parts lighter. Say you increase ISP 10% while increasing trust and dry weight 20% this has an major effect,

 

KR&D works best in saves with incredibly low science returns, and with scaled-up versions of the Kerbol system. Without the upscaling it's really only worthwhile at Eve (and arguably Tylo), and the low science returns (10% is good) prevent things from getting out of hand.

[Angelo Kerman]

MOLE uses PartUpgrades heavily: