AmpCat

Awesome. Thanks!

Yep, I fixed the OTAV as well. It only need a little boost. Some of the pods needed a BIG boost. I didn't check the KIS or cargo pods, really. Those could be highly variable from what I'm guessing. Had a busy day, so not been able to do a final QC check and figure out how to do all the git things. Oh, I also was able to confirm the control surface weirdness that was reported earlier. I think if I tried controlling it with just yaw and pitch it was okay, though. I didn't play with the aerodynamics too much as of yet. There is a solid propellant generator on the Cryotube that will generate enough EC to either freeze or thaw a Kerbal (but not both). The instructions aren't terribly clear, but if you start the generator it'll kinda sit idle (since power isn't being used much), then hit freeze (or thaw), and it'll consume power while the generator generates all 3000EC from the one unit of solid propellant. Worked fine, but as I mentioned, only for one shot. I thought you only needed EC for freezing, but mine wanted it for thawing too. Maybe that's a config thing. Also, as I mentioned if you use the REKT fuel cell part, it generates plenty of EC for the amount of supplies you have on board (for Snacks!, at least, not tried other mods). Also, adding just small surface solar panels on each side likewise keeps power levels fairly stable, as long as its orbit doesn't keep it in a shadow too long, orientation of the panels isn't terrible, and it's not too far from Kerbol.

Actually, B9 parts has some spotlights in enclosed aerodynamic housings, with doors that open. B9 has a couple nice light options. The range is really nice, because sometimes I don't want the beams flooding out everywhere (like the stock spotlights), and sometimes I do want them to go out a ways, for instance to illuminate landing or docking targets. Sometimes I want the beams to reach across the length of a station or ship, but neither option is good. The range lets me tweak it just right. It also allows some neat effects by making very short range, but high intensity lights of one color, say around a reactor so it sort of glows. Then another color as wash lights over the rest of the vessel.

So.. OPT and OPT Reconfig are all I need if I want all the most recent parts7. Or all three?

I've found something weird with my OPT install (and reconfig, of course); all the wings are missing. Well, not ALL, I do have these 'OPT Legacy' wings but there's only four of them, with integrated control surfaces. Not the separate ones. I've looked all through the tech tree, and they're simply not there. Before I go trying to see if there's a mod conflict, did they get removed or something, and I missed it? This is a career mode game. Not showing up in sandbox mode, either. Edit: Okay, the wings are missing from my install too. Just those OPT legacy ones in the 'Wings' directory of the parts in my OPT Legacy install. Did CKAN mess things up, or something? Or are they gone? Edit2: I have the OPT Legacy and OPT Reconfig from CKAN. When I look at the OPT main thread, the download is different (more parts, including said missing wings). I'm a bit confused. I thought I understood how these all related to each other, but now I'm not so sure. Do I need OPT instead of OPT Legacy? In addition? What's the difference?

Indeed! I have a little cfg file of my own for patching a few such things in. Just need to ponder what would make the most sense. Thanks for the feedback on all this, and the great mods!

I was thinking more of using the ISRU to also recycle soil into snacks, but that doesn't seem very.. thematically correct. Nertea has some great parts this could be added to, but mostly large ones. USI Life Support has some nice smaller parts, but it's another life support mod itself. And I'd have to look up the part license RoverDude has. Could maybe set up a stock Cupola to grow snacks. Hmm. I really need to learn how to model things for KSP. Did lots of modeling years ago.

Nice. That opens up a lot of options that come to mind. I like the simplicity, just at the moment, since it only has like, 2 parts supported in stock, it really limits what you can do with longer missions. I'll see if I can think of another part or two to give a little more flexibility. What about the ISRU modules? I liked the idea of the greenhouses from Nertea's stuff, but that would require new parts to get a smaller (1.25/1.875m) parts.

Huh. Interesting. They did it differently. I noticed when I tried to edit the Restock adjusted lights, it doesn't do anything. Now I know why. It renamed the light module. I didn't think of looking there. What are those parts though? Another mod called OrbitalTug?

Okay, think I got the floatiness figured out for each of the pods. I also noticed the CG of the pods is not on the centerline (at least the ones with RCS), so they have a tendency to rotate when RCS is used, even though the RCS is symmetric. For the Mk1n (retro-rocket variant), the rockets seem to fire based on altitude above sea level, as best I can tell, which causes it to make a very hard landing on land above sea level. Sometimes the pod survives, especially if there's a sacrificial part to take the impact on the bottom. Over water, the engine stops a bit above the surface and then the pod falls, hitting the water at over 40m/s, and destroying it. Not sure how I want to handle this one. Using the landertrons doesn't give you enough time to deploy a 'chute after the rockets fire, so may just have to not use that feature at all. Maybe see if the landertron mod can be updated to be a bit more safe with firing altitude. Need to try this on an airless body as well, to see how it works. I'm not very confident, though. Also, for all the pods, save the Cryo tube (with an RTG), the EC is a big issue. With Snacks! installed, at least, power only lasts a few minutes.Some mods require some small amount of power to keep Kerbals alive. This means the pods either need some solar panels, a fuel cell, or an RTG. There is a fuel cell part, but it's not stackable, so limited in use. Maybe I can look at adding another attachment node on the end. Even then, I'll need to see how long it'll last. Needs to be on the order of a week, at least. Any one have thoughts on these and what a good solution would be? I'll try to implement it, if it's simple. I got my github stuff setup, and I'll fork the repository and try this out. Edit: Okay, also the only pod that can survive Kerbin re-entry without extra parts is the Mk1a. The other's can barely make it with something on the bottom to help survive the heating. Edit2: The REKT Fuel Cell lasts about a week on it's 1unit of monoprop, which is pretty decent, considering the pods have a reasonable supply as well. Some initial tests of the retro-rocket pod on airless bodies seems to be pretty good. Just not so good on atmospheric planets. Chose your pod wisely. Or bring a small variety for multi-destination missions. Of course, supplies won't last more than a week for a rescue. Keep that in mind.

Nice update! I switched from USI Life-Support back to Snacks, since it was forcing me to build craft that were too huge for KSP to manage (400+ parts) for long missions. Granted, some of it is me preparing for everything, but so far, Snacks! is getting me back in the range of 150 parts. I noticed there's only a few parts to recycle soil and produce more snacks. Particularly, it doesn't automatically add snack production to other mods that add science labs. I know there's a way to generically do so, though balance may be a bit of an issue. Any thoughts on expanding these options to more parts, or perhaps some smaller, more limited parts for craft less than 2.5m?

Ug. I can't even get the AviationLights module working with the stock lights. I'm asking the author for some help. In the meantime, do you know of any other KSP light mods with other similar options?

I was looking at the REKT mod, and thought that these things really should come with some basic solar panels. Is there a way to take an existing part, say the stock small solar panel, and inside the part definition of one of the escape pods, stick this other part on the side? Without going in, making new models, adding new textures and all that stuff. The part I want is already done. Sure, I could add them on, to the escape pod, but KSP has a big problem with more parts exponentially affecting performance, and there's not much that can be done to help, aside from reduce part count. Since ships getting up to a couple hundred parts start slowing things down a lot, and aren't uncommon (especially for something needing escape pods), I figured any way to minimize part count would be best. Going from 6 parts per pod to 3 can make a difference if you have 10 pods. Anyway, mostly curious on whether or not this is even possible without changing asset models and just editing cfg files.

Hm, I see. I doubt I was going that fast. Didn't realize you needed that sort of speed. Thanks, I'll give it another try!

I'm running into an issue using Beyond Home (which relies on KK), and when I launch from the base on the moon that has been placed there with KK, everything is fine, but when I go back to the Space Center, it puts me in the ground at the last launch site, only none of the KSC buildings or buttons are visible, and I can't get back to KSC. If I quit the game and reload, then go into the VAB and hit the KK button, I can select the normal KSC as the launch site again, and everything is fixed. But the moment I launch from that moon, this happens again. Also had a similar problem where I landed at that moon base, and I couldn't recover the ship. When I went to the space center, a pop-up came up like I could recover it, but none of the buttons worked. It was just stuck again, and I had to kill the game once again, then load back up and reset the launchsite to KSC. I've unchecked the option in the settings to 'Use last launchsite'. Any thoughts?

@JadeOfMaar, playing with this again and trying out Career mode, with having to purchase tech upgrades with cash as well as unlock them. When I got up to unlock the Mill Power and LOX Distiller on the Voyager Mk2 Intake, it complains that it's missing Mill Power, and indeed, none seems to be getting generated. I tried the normal inline Mk 2 Mill Power Generator, and it works fine, but the Mill Power doesn't transfer to the other part. Any ideas on what might be wrong?

Yeah, I figured I'd need to fiddle with offset and rotation, but right now I can't even get the right click interface to come up. In fact, the standard right click interface is also gone now. I've been looking around for other light mods, but not found very many lately. Do you have some examples? I could also send you the code I tried out, see what you think. I was trying to add it to the SurfaceLights mod.

Yep, found it. Seems there's 3 localization strings simply not present in it for one of the pods. I added these to REKT_en-us.cfg. They were simply not there, but referenced from the DeepFreeze cryo pod one. Probably needs added in the other languages as well. #autoLOC_REKT_0015 = Cryo Generator #autoLOC_REKT_0016 = Start Generator #autoLOC_REKT_0017 = Stop Generator I also added a few tags like 'REKT' and 'OTAV' to all the parts (as applicable). I'm also going through and tweaking bouyancies so all the pods float. Seems like that would be designed into escape pods in some fashion. I'll get a pull request setup for some of these changes which seem like bug fixes. I also might look into the retro-rockets on the Mk1n. Either there's something not quite right with the landertron landing code, or they don't have quite enough fuel/thrust to safely land on Kerbin, at least, on rockets alone. There's some other balance sort of things which seem off for these to be very useful, especially when considering a basic life support mod like Snacks!. These might be more up to personal preference, though. Once I fiddle with this, I'll do a separate pull request.

Also in REKT, I noticed one of the buttons (I think to activate engine, I'll look again) said #autoLOC_5012 (the number might not be right). What do those mean, and how would I go about fixing it? I see the numbers under ActionNames, but I don't know what each number means. Think I figured it out. It's a localization string. I'll pin it down and see if I can fix it.

Okay. I don't see one listed, so I'll add it in and try. I'll also fix the tags while I'm at it. The parts seem to be missing some obvious ones. I should probably figure out how to submit code to github for people too. I think I tried that once, and yeah, might as well have started over.

Ah. No way to just reload one mod, while the game is running? Also, for this particular mod, I've found that all the pods seem to sink pretty fast if you hit the water. I know I had this problem with one of Nertea's pods, and he fixed it, so should be a way to tweak something. But I don't know what that would be. I know you maintain a bazillion mods here and might not have time to fix little things, but thought I'd let you know.

Thanks for the links. I do software for a living, so it shouldn't be too bad. Just need to learn the syntax and ins and outs of how MM works. One question I do have though, when testing a change for a patch file, is there an easier way than reloading the whole game? I have a lot of mods (and even with none) it takes a long time to load.

Looks like I really need to learn some MM skills here. Lots of mods I'd like to help improve, but most people are busy. I'll see what I can figure out. Thanks!

Also, any chance the cargo could support B9 Part Switcher and the community resource pack? Not sure if it's easy to have it use both that and the other one, but seems like a lot of the new mods are going to B9's solution. At least, the ones I use.

Love this mod. I've always been a fan of having lifeboats on stations, but sometimes making my own can add up to a lot of parts (and KSP does not play well with my 500 part stations as it is). However, I'm just starting to use it, so I'm trying to figure out exactly what configurations are used on the pods for landing, returning from orbit, etc. Is there a document file somewhere?