There ought to be a part! (Debris control)

[Loren Pechtel]

A simple part.  Inline, thin, no mass, little or no cost, it comes in the various sizes that rockets come in.  If the part goes outside physics range it looks to see if there is any point of control on the rocket it's part of.  If not, the rocket is destroyed.

[Aegolius13]

This seems like more of a suggestion than gameplay question.... anyhow, sounds like an interesting concept.  A bit like the KAS/KAS explosives, but without the need for EVA to execute.  

Of course to the extent you care about realism (some people do, some people don't), it's tough to see how this would work in a story-type sense.  Would it deborit the ship?  That would take a certain amount of delta-v (i.e., fuel, even if the part still had workable engines).  Or you could assume it would blow the ship up to smithereens, like the KSP explosives.  But that option (like the explosives) raises issues about the Kessler syndrome / Gravity style effects of turning one big piece of debris into many, many small pieces of debris.  

You can also kinda, sorta get this effect by having the game keep very little debris saved.  

[Snark]

Moving to Suggestions.

Although, an alternate idea would be just lower your game debris limit from the default 250-or-whatever-it-is if you don't like debris, and it'll all just get taken care of for you automaitcally, and it's already in the game. 

 

[Dafni]

4 hours ago, Snark said:

Although, an alternate idea would be just lower your game debris limit from the default 250-or-whatever-it-is if you don't like debris, and it'll all just get taken care of for you automaitcally, and it's already in the game. 

 

I never properly understood this setting. Is it limiting debris to 250 parts? Or 250 debris craft in total? And how does it go about deleting anything (like oldest first?)??

thanks for shedding some light.

[GluttonyReaper]

7 hours ago, Dafni said:

I never properly understood this setting. Is it limiting debris to 250 parts? Or 250 debris craft in total? And how does it go about deleting anything (like oldest first?)??

thanks for shedding some light.

No, yes and yes. As soon as there are more than 250 craft marked as 'Debris', the game deletes the oldest of those craft until there are only 250 again. It's functionally the same as clicking 'Abort' in the Tracking Station for those craft.  

[Stoney3K]

On 12-7-2017 at 3:17 PM, GluttonyReaper said:

No, yes and yes. As soon as there are more than 250 craft marked as 'Debris', the game deletes the oldest of those craft until there are only 250 again. It's functionally the same as clicking 'Abort' in the Tracking Station for those craft.  

Just be careful when setting it to zero. Any object that does not have a control point gets marked as "debris" when it detaches from a craft, so if you have some kind of dumb payload module which is supposed to be carried by a tug, it gets marked as debris the minute you insert it into orbit and leave it alone (for another tug to pick it up). When you do that and switch vessels, your payload gets deleted.