MKS Documentation Development

[DStaal]

Per a recent discussion in the main MKS thread, I was wondering if people might be interested in working on a tutorial/walkthrough.  My idea would be to step through setting up a self-sufficient colony on Mun/Minmus using multiple base sites - and having different people work on the different base sites.  Point being both to spread out the work, and to make sure the bases aren't all built in the same style - this way we can do a better job of showing that there's more than one way to do things.

Reason to do it on Mun/Minmus is both to make it easy to work on, and to make it a 'first step' for new players - the idea being that if they walk through all the parts, they'll have a good base to work into the rest of the system, while also being close enough to 'home' to be able to recover from mistakes.

We of course would want to make sure we touch on all the main mechanics of MKS, but part of the point of doing separate bases is to show that you don't always need/want *all* the mechanics in play at every location.

As general scope, I'd think of the following progression:

• A medium/term scientific outpost.  (MPL and Ranger habitation+recyclers, supplied from Kerbin initially, grows to include a greenhouse?)
• Mining outposts - starting out unmanned, grows to manned.
• Industrial base - second-level resources, grows to third-level.
• Colony Hub - long-term colony staging and supplies; Med Bays, full-scale food production, etc.

Might want to do a dedicated mobile GC-builder and/or Lode Harvester in there as well.

 

Thoughts?  Good idea?  Bad?  Something people are interested in working on?

[notthebobo]

On 12/2/2016 at 2:46 AM, dboi88 said:

Good idea, there have been several requests. Is there any way we could frame this  k as some type of challenge on the main MKS board, or even the main KSP board?

[DStaal]

Hmm.  I can think of a couple of ways to turn it into a challenge - either issue each part as a separate section, or do a whole-list challenge and pick favorites for each section.

I'd argue for a challenge what would need to be provided would be good, well-lit photos of each stage of the base: Starting at just landed, then any/each deployment phase.  Bonus for craft files.

[SCESW]

On 5/21/2017 at 10:28 AM, DStaal said:

Per a recent discussion in the main MKS thread, I was wondering if people might be interested in working on a tutorial/walkthrough.  My idea would be to step through setting up a self-sufficient colony on Mun/Minmus using multiple base sites - and having different people work on the different base sites.  Point being both to spread out the work, and to make sure the bases aren't all built in the same style - this way we can do a better job of showing that there's more than one way to do things.

Reason to do it on Mun/Minmus is both to make it easy to work on, and to make it a 'first step' for new players - the idea being that if they walk through all the parts, they'll have a good base to work into the rest of the system, while also being close enough to 'home' to be able to recover from mistakes.

We of course would want to make sure we touch on all the main mechanics of MKS, but part of the point of doing separate bases is to show that you don't always need/want *all* the mechanics in play at every location.

As general scope, I'd think of the following progression:

• A medium/term scientific outpost.  (MPL and Ranger habitation+recyclers, supplied from Kerbin initially, grows to include a greenhouse?)
• Mining outposts - starting out unmanned, grows to manned.
• Industrial base - second-level resources, grows to third-level.
• Colony Hub - long-term colony staging and supplies; Med Bays, full-scale food production, etc.

Might want to do a dedicated mobile GC-builder and/or Lode Harvester in there as well.

 

Thoughts?  Good idea?  Bad?  Something people are interested in working on?

    I think it would be neat if there was a USI series of Contracts that lead the player through the steps necessary to build a base. 

    The first contracts would involve landing the parts on Mun/Minmus (perhaps unmanned at first) and detecting that they are within the necessary range to activate the USI features.

     A next series of missions would involve manning the outpost and having a certain amount of food/fuel stored there.

     Then, have the player build a ship/probe capable of returning to Kerbin.

     Finally there would be a mission to recover the Mun/Minmus built ship/probe back at Kerbin.

      I have no idea how to set this up, but it would be a great tutorial for KSP and USI, especially if the contract description included the necessary details required to complete the mission.

      The missions could start relatively easy with no expiration date and progress to missions on other worlds with more rigid requirements.  In fact, the very first missions might involve building a small outpost on Kerbin to practice setting up components.

Edited June 13, 2017 by SCESW

[TheRagingIrishman]

@SCESW this is on the backburner but is definitely something we want to do at some point. Could you put your suggestion on the github issue (https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/issues/119) that we have for contracts so they aren't lost in time.

[SCESW]

2 hours ago, TheRagingIrishman said:

@SCESW this is on the backburner but is definitely something we want to do at some point. Could you put your suggestion on the github issue (https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/issues/119) that we have for contracts so they aren't lost in time.

    I will write up something a bit more cohesive and add it to the github issue.  Thanks for the direction.   :-)

[notthebobo]

@RoverDude, do you have a master source for all the MKS parts that is used to create the cfg files, or are the cfgs the definitive source?

The Wiki parts section has become stale and is missing some parts.  I try to maintain a spreadsheet with all the details of the cfg files so the Wiki tables can be "automatically" created, but it's becoming a bit unwieldy. I've seen your Balance Guidelines spreadsheet, so I'm thinking there must be somewhere that you've captured the calculations for all the parts you've already created.  If that's in the individual cfgs, then I guess I'll need to brush off my programming skills and look at creating a parsable DOM to populate the Wiki.

[notthebobo]

So offline follow up with RD confirms that there is no master list of parts. I had assumed that cfgs we're generated by some developer resource.  Learn something everyday.

I guess I'll get back to updating my local spreadsheet.

[juanml82]

I've made a partial comparison table of MKS parts regarding production and habitation, I think it may be useful to make easy comparisons while choosing parts - at first glance, I had assumed Tundra parts outperformed Ranger parts, but as it turns out are in line with their Tundra counterparts.

Here's the Excel file with the partial tables if someone is interested in adding them to the wiki. Eventually, it may also be interesting to add life support and comparison with mods with MKS integration

http://www.mediafire.com/file/5xkjdm0xxh52b5j/comparacion_mks.xlsx/file

[r1chardj0n3s]

I've just discovered this thread, yay!

I've been making small edits to the MKS wiki as I find things that I feel could be explained better. I see there's some stalled efforts at other things going on here but I think I'll stick with my efforts for now unless y'all have a better suggestion?

[notthebobo]

On 7/24/2018 at 12:46 AM, r1chardj0n3s said:

I've just discovered this thread, yay!

I've been making small edits to the MKS wiki as I find things that I feel could be explained better. I see there's some stalled efforts at other things going on here but I think I'll stick with my efforts for now unless y'all have a better suggestion?

Keep up the good work! There's always something that needs tweaking,on the both the MKS and USI_LS wikis.