Starstrider42

In the Settings menu, under the Input/Other tab, there's a button labeled "EVAs auto-rotate to camera". Is that it?

Agreed. If you're not fond of mods, go with Kerbal Engineer. It's very easy to use (slap a part on your ship, and click buttons until you get the screen you want). MechJeb is much more powerful, but also much more complex, and it sounds like all you want is a way to calculate rocket specs without having to add up all the parts by hand.

Yes, it's a mod, RemoteTech 2 (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/56399-0-23-RemoteTech-2-v1-3-3-Late-Christmas-Edition) Be aware, though, that launching your first unmanned rocket with this mod will be a bit of a challenge. Once you have at least one communications satellite in orbit, though, things get much easier.

Sure, but once you have the infrastructure in place, you don't pay anything for manufacturing rockets with lots of fancy components (the "labor", so to speak). That seems a little odd. And, I don't know how others do things, but in my current game I can get all the RocketParts I need just from salvaging orbital debris. So the only thing I still need to lift from Kerbin is the fuel. And once I get some kethane mining facilities set up, that will go away too. So after the startup costs are taken care of, you really can build ships for free.

Yes. Click the middle mouse button and drag. I have no idea why they picked different controls for the VAB vs. the rest of the game. You can get a full list of key bindings, some pretty obscure, here: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Key_bindings

Hi, I'm a little confused about how this mod works when a vessel is inactive. Specifically, the status window says that my space station has enough electricity to keep the crew alive for only 20 hours, and it counts down the time as I do other things. However, in reality the station has a basically unlimited supply of electricity, even with a full crew and all recyclers, etc. running. Do I still need to focus on the station once every 20 hours to reset the clock, or will the game avoid killing them even if it claims (incorrectly) that the power's run out?

It allows both orbital construction and construction on bases in other planets. And yes, the basic procedure is to create a vehicle as usual in the VAB, then get some of the RocketParts resource up to the construction site (either by launching the parts from Kerbin, or by manufacturing them on-site). Once you have a vehicle design and an adequate supply of RocketParts, you can create the new spacecraft from the construction part.

This part shouldn't matter. Yes, you want to escape the Mun in a retrograde direction relative to the Mun's orbit around Kerbin, but the delta-V required to do that shouldn't depend on whether your orbit around the Mun is prograde or retrograde -- you just start your burn on the opposite side of the Mun in one case vs. the other.

The only bugs I've noticed (which I haven't formally reported because I'm still trying to get them reproducible) involve the flight computer you use to schedule actions once comm lag becomes significant. Fortunately, they tend to be more annoying than fatal unless you need either precise scheduling or a long sequence of commands.

Hi, Do you think you can add support for Extraplanetary Launchpads to the mod at some point? I looked into how new ships are treated after reading your earlier comment and ships made by the orbital dock, at least, are never considered "pre-launch". They're treated like a docked ship until they're released (and I've double-checked this by looking at the save file, there's really no difference), at which point they go straight to orbiting status. This sounds like a great mod, but given how much my current space program relies on orbital construction I'd rather not install a mod where using it gives me an unfair advantage.

Tex_NL's method is really the best, because you can change it mid-flight (e.g., if you screw up a burn, you can use the "cargo" as an emergency reserve by re-enabling the tanks). It's how I do my tankers. Also, this trick works with any resource. For example, if you have a detachable lander you can disable its battery to keep it from getting drained by the rest of the ship on the planet's night side.

I'd be happy to help out if nobody with more seniority wants to. I haven't been playing with RemoteTech 2 for too long, but I've really enjoyed it so far -- even the mishap when my far side Munar relay crashed into a polar crater . And really, if there's anything KSP and its mods need more of, it's clear documentation.

I understand. I myself lie on the "let me play my way" end of the spectrum; I only posted my question about the landers because I thought those were a lot less debatable than any of my other tweaks. I have no objections to a docking port on the top (given that many of the stock KSP parts seem Apollo-inspired, that was almost certainly the developers' intent), but a docking port on the otherwise featureless bottom would look pretty weird to me. On the other hand, I know my spaceship designs are a lot less original than some of the screenshots I've seen on the forums, so maybe people have designs with bottom-accessed lander cans that still look "natural". I'm quite happy to go along with it if the community agrees it's a feature, not a bug. As for pack configs, I'd love to help, but the only part-heavy mods I have installed are Dmagic Orbital Science, Extraplanetary Launch Pads, Kethane, Procedural Fairings, and ScanSat. None of those really have anything that screams "crew space" to me.

I had a similar problem launching space station parts. It sounds like your navball is centered on the docking port (which, if I understood your description, is facing backwards). This is very useful for docking, and not at all useful for other flight modes. Just right click on your command pod (or whatever is supposed to be flying your rocket) and choose "control from here", and that should fix things.

First, thank you for creating this mod/API. The lack of any believability in which transfers don't require EVA is the main thing that's kept me from downloading any crew transfer mods -- hopefully they'll incorporate CLS soon! However, I do have one question about the default settings. I noticed you've made the two lander cans passable from all directions, but I don't see anything that looks like a hatch on the bottom. Was there a reason for doing things that way?