Patupi

A query Skykooler. You (and others) have mentioned that at present you can't build a launchpad equipped craft from a launchpad. Is that going to be remedied in future? I'm curious about whether you've decided it's a design feature (limiting growth and forcing you to use the VAB for SOMETHING! ) or whether you're redesigning it so such 'staging' of construction will be possible.

Or, you could stay with 0.20.2 for a little while. Me, I sometimes keep two versions of KSP going at once (or at least two versions with different mods installed). You could keep a 0.20.2 just for the Laythe mission?

If kethane is already being converted into liquid fuel and oxidizer what is water going to be used for? Is this to mix with life support mods? Or just another way to make fuel than Kethane? Useful on Laythe. I guess you could suck air (if there is O2 in it) to make oxidizer too with the right equipment. I know, the HOME mod makes fuel and oxidizer from air, of whatever variety. That's a little OP for me, but it would be nice to make stuff from air. CO2 for life support scrubbers on Duna, refill air tanks & Oxidizer tanks on Kerbin or Laythe (does Eve have Oxygen in the air? I forget), make air, oxidizer and maybe hydrogen (for whichever mods use it) from water on Laythe and Kerbin. Keep up the good work Majiir, this mod is looking better and better all the time.

Well, cost usually refers (at least circuitously) to how difficult it is to make a part. Hence, how difficult it would be for the pad's fabricators to make it. I was just using it as a reference (I didn't mean to convert it from actual money into parts) to make more complicated components use more parts. Yes, the mass of a component would be logical for consistency, as in you have X tons of parts, this gets converted to X tons of rocket... but I was more thinking game play and how to balance the difference between, say, building a poodle rocket engine and a Nerva, ton for ton. There is also recycle, and recycle. True, for recycling back into cash that would be fine, but for recycling back into components at a remote landing pad you'd need to recycle back using a percentage of whatever formula you used to begin with for the pad to build things from parts.

Actually, it might be better (eventually) to use cost rather than mass as an evaluation. Right now the costs of parts (modded or stock) are a bit messed up, but eventually it could represent more complicated components requiring more parts and setup to build, or more wasted parts to get something working right. The latter is a bit of a stretch, but it would at least represent the difficulty with more advanced hardware, and limit EL a little in that regard. Perhaps this would not be needed if variations of rocket parts were used instead but I have no idea if Skykooler intends to persue that later or not. It's something to think about relating to KSP's eventual implementation of some kind of tech level system.

As to models for the various containers, I'd say make them visually different for ore, metal and rocket parts. Right now (I know, only placeholders) it's tricky to tell apart. I put two metal containers on one system by mistake instead of metal and ore and got to Minmus before I realized it. Try drums for ore (probably powdered or at least in small chunks), large square or hexagonal containers for metal (stored in ingots maybe?), and Something with some kind of feed mechanism for rocket parts (maybe a squarish box with some visible extension on it? Not sure. Might make it awkward to build on if it was too much. Perhaps just a small raised section to indicate a loading bay). I did consider just sending rocket parts mined from my moonbase to get my Minmus base to build a smelter of it's own, but in the end chickened out and made the whole thing as a all in one unit. *shrugs* Honestly I wanted to prove to myself it was possible to lift the whole kit and kaboodle up from Kerbin. Though it's still awkward. The damn thing had to have the smelter as the primary unit and that's on it's side. Means I have to select the probe body and click 'control from here' to avoid the thing from seeming to be on it's side via the nav ball

My earlier attempt at Laythe landing (actually successful... after a few quicksaves during landing) used jets to come down... unfortunately trying vertol landing with jets is tricky. They take too long to cycle up and down as you change throttle so I had difficulty with positioning for landing. Plus my ship was a bit imbalanced as the fuel was used up. I did get down in one piece but I think next time I'll go with rockets and parachutes... and I'm not landing on that island with the large lake on the eastern side. It's all cliffs everywhere! Didn't see much that had a gradient less than 30 degrees!

I thought the 'reattachable' plugs were for reattachment to the remote cables? *face slaps* OK, they already WERE reattachable. I'll see if I can reattach them... though it'll have to be via a kerbal on his jet pack. Tricky to do.

Good for you. Haven't tried to do a landing on Duna yet, though I did do a Laythe landing a while back. Here's my Minmus base. No Kerbal habitation. I was going to add that in as a separate facility nearby. The vehicle parked behind the pad is a Kethane refueler. I originally planned both to connect up via a KAS winch line... but stupidly put the receiver on the pad on a part that didn't have a direct connection to the pad itself! Thus even connected the pad doesn't 'see' the Kethane refueler's fuel tanks to build rockets from it. I think I'll keep this as is, build ships with minimal fuel, send the Refueler into Minmus orbit and refuel any built ships there. *shrugs* Next time I'll get it right *crosses fingers*

I finally managed to get a one piece assemblage of pad, kethane converter, smelter, and both drills. The only way I could get the Smelter to work laying flat was to START using the Smelter as the first piece, then tip it on it's side and work from there. That way all attachments work. Don't know why. Of course, I had to design the ship with the Smelter in it's tall configuration because if I did it after I lay it flat anything attached to it would have the radial symmetry rotated on it's side too. Then at the end remove everything from the smelter, tip it over, then re-attach. Tricky to build rockets with radial connectors when they want to link in a circle top to bottom, rather than left to right! The thing is down on Minmus and working. Haven't built anything with it yet, but got down in one piece. The only spot with both Kethane and ore was at 50 degrees South, so going to be some inclination correction from anything launched from there, but there'd have to be anyway for things launched from Minmus. Had to fine tune the landing site a little, the sliver of Kethane and ore was mostly on the side of a hill! Got to the crater floor and just still got both resources.

I think he was meaning the way the transport containers make things wobble with the high density making rover transit difficult, especially at warp. Though of course you could either just half fill the tanks, or mod the tanks to have half capacity/full mass. Oh, and although in my experience it IS rare, kethane and ore do appear on the same spots on occasion. I've found a sliver on Minmus in the same game I found an overlap on Mun. They are tricky to spot with the switching minimap, but they seem to be there. ( I mean, it seems to be possible they can be there)

I actually managed to get the auger and smelter combo onto the Mun in one piece, then used a mobile rover to connect it to the launch pad. It's awkward, bounces when you go from time warp to normal, but otherwise works. I actually thought the mun had no overlapping resources, but found a tiny strip of land that had both Kethane and Ore on it. Haven't explored to find out how many kilometers wide it is, but it's about one pixel on the minimap The smelter I had a hell of a time with, but for some reason I couldn't get it to connect on the sides, but for me top and bottom worked. So it got stacked long ways up making it wobble like heck... especially on landing on the Mun! But now at least I'm there. I'm thinking about a Minmus base... but there doesn't appear to be much resource overlap and the resources spots are awfully small. Weird. I thought Minmus was supposed to be full of Kethane?

How are the deposit densities showing? As in the earlier build, with varying from green to white in each hex? Are the Hexes roughly corresponding to a pixel in the current minimap? My guess is it's fairly close as with the rounding at the poles that would give quite a lot of hexes in one map. It looks like the hexes are bigger than the old pixels, but I'm betting they aren't.

Yeah, it took me a long while to get the right configuration to get the launchpad... and the smelter for that matter, up to the Mun. Finally managed it, two rovers, two landers. I originally tried to put too much on one lander. One word. Try to minimize the height of your over all rocket and number of vertical stages. With such mass and wide area it seems to wobble more than usual. With the smelter in one configuration I had as soon as you tried to angle over at 10,000m the craft would bend, then the rockets at the bottom were no longer pointed through the center of mass... and it kept on tilting over and no amount of stabilizer fins, SAS or extra drone bodies would correct it. I eventually cut a vertical stage out and spread the rockets more sideways and got it up... eventually. Landing it was a git too. Had to cancel Mechjeb and land it manually as Mechjeb tended to wobble in an ever widening circle just before touchdown!

Thanks, I guess I was just unlucky in the many times I ran, reran, reinstalled various versions of Kethane and EL. Thanks for letting me know.

OK, Since it seems my questions are getting missed in the EL thread I'll ask this here. With the ore and Kethane deposits under Kethane system, is it possible at present for there to be ore and Kethane on one spot? So far every time I've restarted the maps I've seen no spots with both on, but this might be just coincidence. I just wondered if such 'sweet spots' are possible at present, or might be possible in future or if this is a limitation of the system to only have one or the other at any given spot. Even if you have to use separate mining systems, not having to use rovers and/or hoppers to ship one or other of the materials in would be nice.

A while back I asked a question about the resources, ore and Kethane. I understand I had a long post so probably easy to miss. Can both ore and Kethane spawn on the same spot or are they mutually exclusive normally? I know something is up with the kethane debug tool that spawns kethane under a vehicle it's on if EL mod is working so I can't test it that way. I'm just curious if that will be possible in future... or even now and it just has been incredibly unlucky for me as I've never seen ore and Kethane spawn on the same spot yet.

I like the idea of certain parts of a ship needing more of certain material... but that would mean you'd have to use just materials in construction, rather than the intermediary of 'parts', whether seperated into components, structure, electronics and doodads or not. I like the way it is now, ie constructing the parts first, especially as you can just ship the parts rather than using mining. I suppose you could simplify it and have one or two construction part types, PLUS some rare materials added in for certain types of ship parts. (OK, this is confusing talking about 'construction parts' and 'ship parts', ie the fuel tanks, engines etc. Too many 'parts!) If we go that way how about having an automatic rating for a part? Say, the cost per unit weight as well as the tab it's under? So if a part costs a lot for it's weight it'll need rare materials (or more of the advanced construction parts if we just go with several types of constuction parts and no added materials), and it the cost is low per unit weight it'll need just basic construction parts for that ship part. It'd be automatic enough to deal with any mod as long as they rate the cost of the ship part well enough and put it in the right tab for that part.

Heh, I stay away from the forum for a couple of days, come up with something to add and find someone already did a couple of pages back. *sigh* Ah well, My two cents on possible future resources (surprisingly similar to SchroedingersHat's... Promise I thought of it before I saw that!) I know Kethane is currently only configured for one resource at a time, and for one in and one out, but I was considering what would be needed and what would be good game playing work when multi resource is available. There certainly should be some variation in parts used for construction. 1) 'Structure' for plates, fuel tanks, and kerbal carrying modules. 2) 'Components' for engines and miscellaneous mechanical stuff (ie damn robotics stuff) 3) 'Electronics' for ion drives, control systems and flight capsules (and maybe damn robotics stuff) 4) and 'Doodads' for kerbal containers... ie anything that Kerbals need like seats, manual controls, fuzzy dice etc. OK, then what to make these from? Well, I think there should be some variance in availability, and I'm not just talking about what's common on certain worlds. For example the main resources should be metal and minerals, and those you'd likely need in fairly large quantities. They'd also be fairly common on most worlds and be easy and quick to mine. You could also have gold for electronics. It's rare, takes a LONG time to mine, but you wouldn't need much to build anything, just make sure you have some on hand. Similarly for structure you might need Titanium in addition to metal (light weight construction) but again, tricky to mine and you wouldn't need much of it (alloying with metal? *shrugs* just need an excuse to make some kind of rare material for that component. True you'd need more Titanium for structure and fuel tankage on most rockets, just thinking more game-play dynamics here). People have mentioned plastics and I admit I didn't think of that, but it'd be good for Doodads. You'd end up with a construction facility with large tankage for Metal and Minerals, with small tanks for Gold, Minerals and Plastic. Probably Mine mainly for Metal ore and Minerals (would it be processed minerals finally? Or go with Minerals and mineral ore? *shrugs*) On site or nearby, then ship in the others from nearby mining sites... assuming you aren't near enough to Kerbin to ship parts directly from home rather than making them. Overall I think this would make things difficult enough to make making a base challenging, but not overly difficult. You don't want TOO many parts required, but you need some variation. On the same thought, I've noticed on every game I've played with this and Kethane that the ore and Kethane patches don't overlap. Is this hard coded or just coincidence? In the future could there be a 'sweet spot' on a planet where two or three resources could be mined on the same spot? That would make finding a site for manufacturing more interesting, finding a place where at least the main ores are present on site, then just have small mining outposts in rover or SSTO range to ship materials in.

Additional additional. Also tried pasting in the mod again ontop of the original... no luck, so it isn't from corrupted data it looks like. At least in the mod data. Probably bad save file... which is really annoying.

Additional. I've noticed on the pad that won't bring up the 'load ship' UI that the rocket parts building system isn't working. It used to, and they were building away, but no even with metals available (50 units) nothing is being built. On the right click menu it comes up with 'stop manufacturing' but it isn't doing anything. I've reloaded the game, restarted KSP but it isn't working. I don't want to delete the mod and reload incase it messes with the base I finally managed to get set up. It had three separate launches to get a miner, pad and a rover that shuttled the metal across between them. I really don't want to go through the hassle of getting all of them up again in one piece and close enough to function.

1st off... great mod! Love it, much improves depth of play and what you can achieve... but I've encountered a few bugs. Most have already been displayed above. My first launch with a pad attached was a bit wobbly so I restarted... and got the 'space scene' on trying to launch the rocket from the VAB. The throttle was up and slowed to zero and it wouldn't let you do anything except go back to the space center. Eventually I got that working by deleting the Kethane cfg file as mentioned earlier and repasting the DLL to replace Kethane. Not sure why it worked at first then didn't *shrugs* I did paste in this mods version of the kethane dll but it just... lost it. Weird. Recently I've been having difficulty with doing anything with a pad after launching something. I DLed the new UI and now that UI pops up when ANY vessel gets within 2.2Km of the landed and set up pad. Also can't get rid of the UI. Annoying. Then, after I launched a vessel from the pad the UI disappeared... and the 'load ship' from right clicking on the pad doesn't work to bring it back. Just nothing, no way to make any more ships. Now I did 'end' the ship I just made because I didn't have enough fuel in it to get it off the pad (it was a rover and I just wanted it off the pad) does 'ending' the vessel before it's launched have anything to do with that? Also a suggestion. Will there be any way to recycle ships on the pad into rocket parts in a future version? Even with inefficiencies meaning you lose parts in the process it would help in operations on distant worlds. With the new Kethane map with ores and kethane I noticed (only on the Mun so far, haven't extended this to my base on Lathe yet) that the two deposits are sometimes close, but didn't seem to overlap. Is such an overlap possible in the system? Can you find that sweet spot to set up mining that lets you mine both Kethane and ore without moving? Patupi