Wisq

Feature request: the option to "hold X to pay your respects" for dead Kerbals. (No, just kidding. And thanks for this cool mod.)

FYI, just in case this helps: After mulling over whether to exploit the insta-tech-respec thing, and what sort of rules to impose on myself to prevent doing it, I finally came up with this: I can put however much I want into development (including respeccing into it), but any points I put into it are permanent; if I respec, I have to immediately buff it back up to the same level it was before. That means that, sure, I could put every point into it and get instant techs … at the cost of having a VAB speed so low I can't launch a damn thing. (I might rescind that in the case of a true emergency, but that's the general case. Also, I'll allow a final respec out of it when I run out of techs to research.) A longer-term solution might just be to have players specify what configuration of upgrades they want, and slowly morph the current state to achieve that (i.e. allocation/reallocation takes time); the bigger the difference, the longer it takes. So you could respec into tech to develop everything fast, but a) it would take long enough to not be instant and put a serious dent in your other activities, and the more you put into development, the longer it takes to reach peak speed and the longer it takes to get VAB/SPH building speed back when you switch out of development again.

Hm, the "reset upgrade points" respec feature can get a bit cheaty, given that it has no permanent cost, just a minimum number of points required. For example, I had a long list of techs to unlock  I just finished my first orbit of Kerbin, got a ton of EVA reports from over various biomes, had a bunch of science to spend. I added four new techs to the research list, and I was looking at ETAs of up to 90 days for many of them. But of course, having just added four new techs, I also had four new upgrade points (22 total). I reset my points and dumped 20 points into Development, saving two for the respec back. I figured, okay, we'll have a research-a-thon  I'll spend a few days doing nothing except finishing up this research, then respec back and continue normal operations. That seems fair. Well, I didn't quite realise how exponential Development was, because we literally finished every pending tech within about 2 seconds. And then I had all those points I could throw back into VAB speed and whatnot. I don't know whether this is something worth addressing or not, nor do I really know how one might address it. I'm still a big fan of respec in every game  I don't like feeling locked in, or like I have to look at a guide on my very first playthrough to avoid ruining it by wasting points I can never get back  but the fact that I can turn 90 days into <2 seconds and then back into 90 days in an instant at zero cost seems a bit excessive. (Personally, I reloaded from before the research and I'm taking it slower this time. I may even just try to ignore the respec feature unless I really need it, e.g. shifting all resources from VAB to SPH at some point, or just putting a cap on Development speed. It's not that I can't ignore a cheaty tactic, just that I feel its availability kinda cheapens the experience.) Edit: Oof, also, bug report (dunno if fixable): If you have a parts testing contract and you start researching the tech for that part, you lose access to that part until research is complete. So I can't even go work on parts contracts while I wait for the research. In light of that, maybe "instant research via respec" isn't such a terrible thing.

Hm, nope, doesn't work for me. I had no survey stakes out at the time, so I went out, planted one, came back; the order was unchanged. Went back out, picked it up, planted it again, came back; same. Went out, picked it up, stored it in a container, came back; same. It treats the survey module itself as pad-0 (and highlights it), not the actual stakes. Since my base is also hooked together via KAS winches, I tried toggling between docked and undocked modes. If I connect everything together except the building with the survey module, I can indeed get the launchpad to be pad-0 for the main base; but as soon as I hook it back up, the survey module is pad-0 again.

Any way to change the order of the pads? I've got a ground base that has a survey module to place new "buildings" (pad-0) and a launchpad (pad-1), and it always defaults to pad-0, so I repeatedly find myself accidentally building ships using the survey module  to the point that I made and loaded a ship called "WRONG PAD DUMMY" to remind myself. Even when I remember to use pad-1, there's the annoying niggle whereby clicking "finalize" causes it to reset back to pad-0, so I have to re-select pad-1 in order to release it. Edit: I guess remembering the last pad used (even across reloads and finalizes) would work fine too, since it would default to the one I used last and not reset when I finalize.

I'm having an issue with the Remote Guidance Unit. It seems to work fine whenever the base is within loading distance, but then the base stops being a viable command post once I'm high in orbit. I set up a base on Minmus: Ten Kerbals in four ships interlinked by (docked) KAS winches. One of those ships has the guidance unit, as well as omnis and dishes. I've been launching comsats from that base (using Extraplanetary Launchpads) and they've been operating fine. During takeoff, they maintain line-of-sight with the base, and the base is considered a command post, with the red dot on the orbital map view. But at some point while I was doing corrections with my satellite in a 2,000,000m orbit around Minmus, I realised that I was losing connection every time Mission Control went around the other side of Kerbin  I haven't set up satellites around Kerbin yet. The red dot was gone, and even though I confirmed I had an omni link to Minmus base, I wasn't getting control. Switched to the base, red dot back. Switched to the satellite, red dot gone. Is this a known limitation of remote stations, or a bug?

Awesome, thanks again.

Is it possible to have the parts workshop keep working even if ScrapMetal is full? If you're not playing with MKS and don't have anything else to do with ScrapMetal, then you can't ever let Metal and ScrapMetal both get full, because you'll end up in a deadlock  you can't turn Metal into RocketParts because your ScrapMetal is full, and you can't turn ScrapMetal into Metal because your Metal is full. Only way to fix it is to somehow reduce one of them; I've generally resorted to turning off ore smelting, quicksaving, editing my save, reducing ScrapMetal by one, and then quickloading. Bit of a pain.

New bug, fun. I accidentally dropped a survey stake instead of attaching it to the ground, so I quickly picked it back up again, I think via the hotkey. But I then found that I had a stake on my back that couldn't be dropped (no right-click options on it at all), and it seemed to affect physics (made it hard to jetpack around). I couldn't put it into containers. I decided to return to the base to see if coming back inside would get rid of it. When I tried to EVA again, I could see it spawning a Kerbal (in mid-air near the base) every time I hit the EVA button, but it wouldn't actually leave the base. Since my last autosave still had the unusable stake on my back, I just quicksaved, edited my quicksave, removed the part from my Kerbalnaut, and quickloaded. Worked fine. Logfile: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32378574/KSP.log.zip . Sorry, it's pretty long; this happened well into a play session.

FYI, there seems to be an incompatibility between ScienceAlert and Extraplanetary Launchpads (EPL). See my post in that thread. [LOG 12:06:26.700] Launchpad loaded! [LOG 12:06:26.701] []: Ready to Launch - waiting to start physics... [EXC 12:06:26.702] NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object ScienceAlert.ScienceAlertProfileManager.OnVesselCreate (.Vessel newVessel) EventData`1[Vessel].Fire (.Vessel data) Vessel.Initialize (Boolean fromShipAssembly) ExLP.ExBuildControl.getBuildCost (.ConfigNode craft) ExLP.ExBuildControl.LoadCraft (System.String filename, System.String flagname) ExLP.ExBuildWindow.craftSelectComplete (System.String filename, System.String flagname) CraftBrowser.drawList (Int32 id) UnityEngine.GUI.CallWindowDelegate (UnityEngine.WindowFunction func, Int32 id, UnityEngine.GUISkin _skin, Int32 forceRect, Single width, Single height, UnityEngine.GUIStyle style) My guess (as a programmer but not a Kerbal modder) is that EPL is briefly creating the ship in order to figure out the tonnage (and hence the required RocketParts count) and that ScienceAlert is somehow freaking out because it's a non-standard ship in some way. It only affects trying to construct ships that have a command module; subassemblies without one are okay. taniwha might have more complete/correct info about what's going on here.

tl;dr: Solved; conflict with ScienceAlerts. See bottom. I wrote the rest of this as I debugged it. Okay, cool, happy to help debug this. Started out by loading up Kerbal, loading my game, not touching the survey stakes, and trying to create the launchpad. The stakes are set up as 2x origin, same name. Result: the instant I hit "load", instead of making me spend parts, it spawns a floating launchpad. I alt-F4ed. Here's the KSP.log: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32378574/KSP.log Looking through the log, I notice that it seems like an exception is being caused on vessel create by the Science Alert mod. I removed that mod and everything works fine now. It's unfortunate; that's a pretty handy mod. But, it makes sense  now that I think about it, the only vehicles that worked were subassemblies that lacked any sort of command module (the launchpad counting as one). And where there's a command module, there's science alerts. Anyway, mystery solved. It turns out this wasn't anything special about the survey system, it was just that my only prior experience with EPL was in a previous savegame where I was building many ships successfully using the orbital construction dock (so I knew what to expect), and this game I decided to go straight for a land base on Minmus, but I also installed more mods and created the conflict. I should have tried more stuff before assuming surveys were the problem; now that I know the issue, I realise I can't even VAB a launchpad or orbital dock and try to create ships on it right on the KSC launchpad if ScienceAlert is installed. Edit: I've reported it in the ScienceAlert thread.

I'm getting some really weird results with the survey site. I landed a ship on the flat lakes on Minmus with a survey unit, seven Kerbals, two Karbonite drills using the EPL-Karbonite conversion, and a rocket workshop from said conversion (so I could mine for ore, turn ore into metal, turn metal into rocketparts). I set down two survey stakes with the same name, both set to Origin, hoping the launchpad I was going to build would appear inbetween them. So far, I've gotten all but the correct results: Trying to load a simple launchpad + solar + antenna (need the antenna for RemoteTech)  sometimes it appears next to my ship, nowhere near the survey stakes, and it's at a 45 degree angle and high in the air, and it flops to the ground. It's uncontrollable, and in fact, it completely breaks my ability to switch between ships with the square brackets until I go back to the space center and come back. When I come back, it's gone. Also, it doesn't require that I spend time building it, and doesn't cost me rocketparts  it skips the build dialog entirely and just spawns the instant I say "load". Other times, it seems to maybe appear underground; not sure. In any case, it blows up instantly. Also doesn't prompt me to make it, or cost me parts. Trying to load a very simple clampotron + fuselage + recycling bin (an attachment I made for my old space station)  seems to work fine, except that it spawns directly on top of only one of the stakes, and ends up floating into the air due to the collision. Prompts me for rocketparts and takes time to build, as normal. Trying to load a big subassembly of stock parts (a three stage heavy lifter base)  tells me I need 44k rocketparts, which I don't have, but at least this is normal. Various other ships  I've stopped trying these, since they also blow up like the launchpad, but unlike the launchpad, they have a ton of parts and totally kill the game. The last time I tried, they blew things up so bad that the screen went black (except for the UI elements), and even loading my game or returning to the space center wouldn't fix the black screen.

Hmm, I must be doing something wrong with this mod, because I can't get ore hotspots to show up with the scanners. I sent a craft to Minmus with the Karbonite detector. It had both "show karbonite hotspot" and "show ore hotspot" options. I would see plenty of dots with the karbonite hotspot option, but nothing with the ore one. So, just in case Minmus didn't have ore, I cheated and sent an infinite fuel probe to Duna. Nothing there either. So, I wondered if maybe ore was supplied by MKS, which I didn't have installed. Installed that. Now the "show ore hotspots" option has disappeared from my karbonite detector. I happened to include an EL magnometer on my Duna probe, and it still has the "show ore hotspots" option, but it's still showing nothing when I enable it. Any thoughts as to what's up? I've got Karbonite 0.4.2, EPL 4.3.1, the latest version of this EPL conversion, and (now) MKS 0.21.2. Edit: Oh, never mind, ore extraction seems to work anyway. I guess there just aren't any hotspots? Or are they just not visible? I can't seem to get them to show up via the SCANsat resource overlay either. But then, Karbonite doesn't show up on SCANsat either, so … *shrug* Edit 2: Okay, ore extraction only seems to work with the MKS pulse drill. The stock Auger and Baha's drill both offer zero options when I right click them, and the Karbonite drill only offers to drill karbonite. I guess I can either install all of MKS, or maybe just pick out only the drill and use that. Edit 3: Aha, needed to change those ORS* modules to ORSX_*, as per Nori's config file above. Seems to work fine now, aside from the missing ore hotspots. Edit: Never mind, using Nori's config file from above made everything work right.