Biff Space

If you are playing a career or science mode game, then you need to research the Space Exploration tech tree node before you can use Biomatic. This applies to the part (which is unavailable until then) and to Biomatic functionality applied to command pods by Module Manager (until researched, the button is greyed-out and does nothing). However, I have never tested Biomatic with RO and RSS. I assume that they use stock-alike biomes, in which case there should be no problem. Can anyone confirm whether they have used Biomatic successfully with RO/RSS? If you have researched Space Exploration and the problem remains, there is something wrong. Are there any messages from Biomatic in the log file?

I used to just delete the debris from the tracking station (slow computer, so large save files slowed down scene changes). In my current game, I've been doing the same as Stibbons describes above - matching stages to the flight path has been an extra consideration when designing vessels, and I've found that a fun challenge to modify my existing designs. I have also launched a ship into LKO with a bunch of KIS explosives to catch any debris that gets left in stable orbits. BOOM!

I prefer the old behaviour, so I wrote a tiny mod to restore it, here: Battery Activator. If the active vessel has no available electric charge, but a charged, locked battery on board, a button appears which unlocks the battery.

No problem, I've been meaning to release the new version with sound for a while, and you just hurried me up on it. Cheers!

OK, I have uploaded a new version to Spacedock. This just has all the debug log code stripped out, so it should solve the problem for this mod at least. What puzzles me is that the debug log code should only be called in debug mode, and if my code is running in debug mode, other mods may be too. I would keep an eye on your log file to see if other excessive comments turn up. There is also a new feature in this release: sound. There is now a button which cycles between three options: no sound, beep on entering an unticked biome, and beep on any biome change.

So long and thanks for all the fish...

There was a change in the last version released about when Biomatic would work. It now requires that the Space Exploration tech node is researched before it works, and until this is researched the toolbar button is greyed out and does nothing. (Previous versions made the part unavailable until the node was researched, but Biomatic still worked if it was added to command pods by Module Manager.) I think that this is probably what is happening here. If you have researched the space exploration node and the button is still greyed out, there is a problem - please let me know If you want Biomatic functionality available from the start of the game, you can edit the part config file: (KSP folder)\GameData\Biomatic\Parts\Biomatic\part.cfg Change the line reading TechRequired = spaceExploration to TechRequired = start

The config file is (Your KSP folder)\GameData\Biomatic\Plugins\PluginData\Biomatic\config.xml Note that it isn't included in the download, it is generated when the game runs. (I think it is saved when you exit flight mode, to be precise.) To change to Blizzy's toolbar, the line <string name="Toolbar">stock</string> should be changed to <string name="Toolbar">blizzy</string>

The change in orbit sounds like the phantom forces that other people have described, but the wobbling may not be. If you are joining together large (high mass) units with the medium-sized docking port, you can get increasing wobbling, building up to proper thrashing about. (I don't know how bad this is now the switch to unity 5 has happened, I have modded the problem away, see below). It seemed worse if the parts are at right angles, so if you use a hub to connect two orange tanks at right angles with medium ports, it will wobble and start to thrash. The solutions are: 1) short term, warp and de-warp. Like rotation, wobbling is stopped by non-physics warping. 2) long term, unlock bigger docking ports, and stick to small station modules until you have 3) (my favorite) install Kerbal Joint reinforcement, for sensibly rigid space stations. HTH

OK, the To Do list is now a Ta Daa! list. Both of these features are in today's release: F2 shows/hides the GUI, and if the cfg file is edited to move the part to a different tech tree node, it will behave as expected.

I have landed on all the solid bodies, and returned from all except Eve, but most of the missions I do are within Kerbins SOI. There are a few reasons for this: I don't like time-warping through interplanetary flight. It feels less like a space program and more like a sequence of unrelated missions if I warp. I keep checking the contracts offered, and take tempting ones in the Kerbin system to make funds. I prefer to rotate crews on bases and orbital stations, for role-play reasons. I like going back to finish a mission which I might have started weeks ago, because it gives a sense of years passing to cross great distances, which also helps the feeling of realism/immersion. It also varies with what mods I am using. In 1.0.5 I started using KIS (awesome!), which meant that I was able to do new stuff on familiar moons, so I concentrated more on Minmus, where it is fun to EVA. I then did another 1.0.5 career game with the Outer Planets mod (awesome!), and just did some long range exploring - this time I did warp through long periods of time (which confirmed to me that I don't like doing it.) Just recently I have started using the Planetary Base parts pack (awesome!), so again the focus has been back to Mun/Minmus. But the lack of stock support was a barrier to interplanetary travel when I first started. (I was OK with googling for tutorials and transfer window calculators, so it wasn't a major problem, but I do think it is odd that there is so little support for it in the stock game. KER, KAC, and the transfer window planner make interplanetary missions fun IMHO.)

Glad you found a way to get it to work the way you want. I have changed the way it checks for available tech, and in the next release, it will be possible to move the part to any tech tree node and have it behave as you would expect (ie adding itself to command pods and probe cores when the appropriate tech tree node is unlocked). I want to do a little further testing, but I will release a new version in the next couple of days. This will also include the hide-GUI-on-F2 feature.

At the moment biomatic is dependent on having the spaceExploration tech tree node unlocked (and the part bought in career mode), so just changing the techRequired field in the cfg file (to 'start' in this case) won't work. I should have time in the next few days to find a better way to examine the tech tree. I would like to make it so that moving the part to a different node will make part availability and command pod functionality dependent on that node being available.

Thanks for this. I will track it down for the next release. There will probably be a KSP 1.1.3 along fairly soon, and I doubt I will release the mod again before that. The NullReferenceException isn't a serious enough problem to make a patch for on its own.

Hmm. If the toolbar button has installed itself and is hiding some of the settings, it is doing its job correctly. Is it possible that you aren't turning the sensor off in the settings part of the panel? (The button at the very bottom right. The red-on-grey text was probably a poor choice on my part, it isn't very readable.) I guess that the way the different bits of the GUI work together is not very intuitive, so here is how it should work. There are (at most) two things displayed in the one-and-only Biomatic window. The settings buttons, and the biome/situations list. The biome/situations list is the useful stuff, displayed in one to five lines at the top. This will (should) disappear when the 'switch off' button in the bottom right of the Biomatic window is clicked. The button text changes to 'switch on' and the text in the bottom left changes to 'Biomatic OFF'. The green blob on the toolbar button icon also turns from green to red. The settings part of the window is shown or hidden when the toolbar button is used. This changes the appearance of the toolbar button, going from colourful, if the settings are hidden, to greyed, if they are shown. To get the window to disappear altogether, you need to switch off the sensor (bottom right of settings in the actual Biomatic window), and then close the settings panel using the toolbar button. The toolbar icon should then be colourful, with a little red blip in the bottom right, and the window (having nothing to display) should not draw itself at all. If something else is going on I would like to know about it. Is there a title-bar-only window which flickers? That has happened when two or more windows both have the same ID.

When you click the toolbar button it doesn't work? Is this the stock toolbar (along with the buttons to show resources, funds, and missions in the vertical strip to the right) or are you using blizzy's floating toolbar mod? There isn't a button in the control panel itself to remove the whole thing, the On/Off toggle just affects whether the biome list is diplayed - if it isn't you still see the settings controls in the window. The whole thing should be toggled with the separate toolbar button. I am not surprised that the F2 toggle doesn't work, I overlooked that (I don't use it much) and will have to look into that for next release. I will put that on the To Do list.

Having text files (readmes, licence, source etc.) in the mod's GameData subfolder isn't harmful. KSP doesn't try to load it. You can unzip the download file as-is into GameData and it will run fine. The source is not necessary, but it isn't harmful either - it is treated just like any other text file.

I believe that they are like balloon animals, and when they go back to the Astronaut Complex they are just deflated and hung on a peg. That's why there is so little infrastructure on Kerbin.

Now updated for 1.1.2. The images and youtube clip above are of the old version, and the new one looks slightly different, but not much.

There is a lot of good information in this post on drill and ISRU use: And a detailed tutorial on finding good ore deposits here: HTH

New version out on SpaceDock for 1.1.2.

That would be a much better way to do this, but I am not familiar enough with Unity to know how to re-code an event (button click) that is already handled in KSP. It is presumably possible, but the mods I have released recently are all intended to be very simple, tiny, and low-maintenance. In the next day or two I hope to release updates for my two medium-sized mods, and then I want to work on another larger mod. Since the functionality intended is available in this mod, I'm not going to put effort into altering the GUI details. I hope Squad make this behavior configurable.

I wasn't aware of that mod when I published mine. Having done some quick testing, the differences seem to be: - mine does not jettison electric charge, solid fuel, or ablator, the linked one does. - for parts with multiple resources (eg liquid fuel & oxidizer tanks, command capsules containing electric charge and monoprop) the linked mod jettisons everything on the one click. Mine jettisons one resource per click. If one of the resources is liquid fuel, it is jettisoned last, so that you can dump oxidizer if you have some in a tank fuelling nuclear engines. - The behind-the-scenes difference is that the linked mod is a Module Manager cfg file only, adding the stock ModuleFuelJettison functionality to any part with resources, (and also any part with ProceduralPart or InterstellarFuelSwitch) that doesn't already have it. Mine uses Module Manager to implement a new PartModule functionality, Jettison, which allows the hard-coded exemption of electricCharge and the multiple clicks for multiple resources behaviour.

I've just done something which takes a different approach to this problem: Battery Activator I liked the old (pre 1.1) functionality where you could switch the batteries' flowstates off, and then switch them back on, even on unmanned vessels. This changed recently so that you can't switch the batteries on if there is no available power. My mod puts up a tiny GUI with one button to turn on all batteries, if the vessel is unmanned and has no available power but some electrical charge in locked batteries. Think of it as the probe being programmed to go dormant until it arrives or something. I also did a mod to jettison resources: Jettison It provides a right-click menu button to dump some kinds of resource (monoprop,liquid fuel, oxidizer, xenon, and (it should work for) resources from other mods.

It updates all the time. This allows you to switch off the batteries in order to warp to a manoeuver node, and then switch on the batteries to turn the ship to the right orientation. It would be cumbersome to have to go back to the tracking centre and back to the ship to do this. However, I don't think that the mod is particularly computationally intensive. Each update, it looks for crew, and quits immediately on finding them. It then has to look through the ships parts for electric charge (available and locked) and then if there is no charge available and charge locked away, it activates a minimal GUI. There is no complex (physics or graphics) stuff, it just walks the parts tree once counting resources.