Starwaster

Actually I've looked at the craft data in my persistence files for a particularly tricky ship. The Transplanetary ship + 4 docked tankers from kerbalspaceprogram.com. It has a core ship with docking ports fore and aft and four tanker ships that connect to it. A serious PITA to line up but once they are docked, I checked out the docking port nodes and all eight ports were properly linked to the right targets. (even though the aft ports were off a few centimeters)

Also wanted to weigh in, it's definitely possible to do things through docking that can't be done in the editor. Another way to describe what happens in the editor is that you can have multiple branches off of a part but they can't all reconnect later. For instance if you use a three way coupler (tri-coupler? I forget) to branch down into three parts and then try to attach an inverted tri-coupler, only one connection will be sound. The craft format can't describe a situation where all three children merge back into one; only one path can continue and the others have to terminate. Making it structurally unsound and in need of strutting. But the format is different in the persistence files. (the save files). From what I can interpret of it, it doesn't depend on a root or parent/child system.

Would like to see the ability to cannibalize any craft docked at the OC for its weight in parts. (or with some loss or configurable would be better). Realistically you'd have to transport each and every piece of a planned ship to the OC but that's probably not very practical so just breaking the ship down into its tonnage in parts is fine.

omgnowai... NO WAY does this mod exist... I must be dreaming or something... must...not..pinch...self...

The link on atmosphereCurve and velocityCurve is to a post asking about those two variables and in reply is instructed to check the sticky link. It has no useful information.