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So, you separated a rover, or built one from scratch, or undocked your craft with the inline docking port, or messed in some other way, that root part is out of whack and your craft defaults to a wonky orientation. You must remember to switch "control from" every time you go to it, or you'll perform a burn in a totally wrong direction, or your wheels turn all wrong. tl;dr: KAS-attach the part you want to be root to a space station, go to KSC, go back, detach. note, KAS-attach, not KIS-attach. Pipe/winch. In detail though, You want the probe core to be the new root. Let us try with a rover, simulating a situation where you built it from scratch on a ground pylon, and after detaching the body is the root part. It was built on the pylon seen, by attaching the structural plate to the pylon top. Note the navball orientation and how the wheels turn. The structural plate is the root part. Normally, you'd need to pick the QBE and "control from here" every time you wanted to drive the rover. Let us reset the root part to the QBE. Mods required: KIS KAS Part list: - A Kerbal engineer - a KAS screwdriver or wrench - two KAS ports (or one port and one winch). - another craft, as minimal as you like - single a probe core, or a cockpit/cabin, or a command seat suffices (though remember small items dropped on the ground like to explode!). - Enough electricity to keep the probe core running for a moment if you go with one, and something to attach it to, if it's a smaller model. 1. Create or bring close "the other craft". Put a KAS port on it. Here I attached OKTO2, a battery and a port to the ground pylon the rover was detached from - that's perfectly sufficient. Have the port roughly facing the rover. (TAB to access engineer's inventory. Rightclick screwdriver, pick "equip". Drag part from inventory to where it's to be placed, press H, holding H leftclick to attach the part) 2. Switch to that "new craft" using [.] (if it's a command seat or a cockpit, get the kerbal on board first, if there isn't one). 3. Rightclick "probe core" and select Rename Vessel. 4, Change the vessel type to Station. 5. Switch to the vessel you want to re-root. 6, Rightclick its control device. Pick Rename, 7. Change its type to Rover or Probe or Lander. (board it first if it has no kerbal or probe core) 8. Switch back to the engineer. Rightclick the KAS port on the "station". Pick "Link" 9. Move to the vessel you want to re-root. Attach the second KAS port to the part you want to be root. Here, I'm attaching it to the QBE. (it doesn't matter where it's attached to the new root part, just that it's attached to it). 10. Rightclick the port, and select Link. 11. Press ESC and pick "Space Center" - or go to map and switch to any distant vessel (more distant than 2.5km.) 12. Through Tracking Station or map, switch back to the engineer. 13. Rightclick the KAS port and select Unlink. Right now the KAS port is the root part. I switched to the rover - note how the port is rotated 45 degrees, and how the navball is too. But you don't have to, yet. 14. Hover over the desired-as-root part. Press H, and holding it, click. That"s "Detach" which detaches the port - or more precisely, detaches the vessel from the port 15. Switch to the rover if it works. Muuuch better! 16. Clean up the mess - pick that docking port, disassemble the "base" (or change its type to more appropriate) etc.

TL;DR: I've done something perverse and now I can't re-root the vehicle for attachment to a launcher in the VAB. I built a vehicle and, behold, I saw that it was beautiful! Well, grubby and sweaty with my labor, more aptly. I afraid I am going to have to rebuild it from scratch. It had an Okto and a Sr. Dock on one end and a claw at the other. One can control from the Klaw while using it, but I particularly also wanted to relocate the root Okto away fro the Sr Dock (as it was impeding docking). In method 1, I added a new Okto and removed the first. Worked fine until I tried to attach my vehicle to a launcher in the VAB (via Merge). In method 2, I used gizmos to simply turn the whole body of the craft (except the Okto) around and then shifted it into place so that the Okto appeared at the desired end. Same problem in the VAB. I tried using a Subassembly instead. No go. Obviously a job for the Node Reroot tool! Problem is that when I select the pair of nodes (Senior Dock followed by the Okto), to reroot, the Okto gets itself the red outline that indicates it is no longer part of the ship. Actually, I notice this is present as soon as I import it to the VAB with Merge. (Thus, the fight is probably not with the evil Reroot Node tool, but with one of its minions.) I guess I will have to rebuild the vehicle from scratch; not so many parts; good practice: but I'd really like to know how to defeat (or avoid) the Reroot Node tool, next time we battle. The craft file is Gimlet

Hi everybody. Does anybody know of a mod that enables the player to change the root part in flight? I've run into a problem where USI Konstruction cannot merge two sections, because the construction port have become root part when I decoupled my vessel. I know I can send up a new section (rather expensive!) and that is what I've done so far. But changing the root part in flight would be far nicer solution.

Hi, is it possible to prevent that a part becomes root? Be it with a certain setting in the config file or (more likely) with a certain code snippet in a PartModule? I know that parts that are physicsless or don't have a stack node can't become root, but the part I need, does have stack nodes and is too big (and heavy) to be physicsless. So, is it possible to do this via code?

I was just having a play in the SPH and found that I can't build this. I want to mount the tri-wing probe on the trolley, so when it reaches takeoff speed I can separate from the trolley and fly away... I've done similar before, but I used the "SelectRoot" mod, which doesn't seem to be available any more. I can't get it to work with the stock re-root function. A couple of pics of the trolley and the aircraft: It actually flies quite nicely for a thrown-together mess. Note the front fuel tank is empty for balance, not sure how it will fly as the fuel runs out... Just for fun, I know there are much easier ways to launch a probe core.

(This is not a question; hopefully, it is an answer.) tl;dr: summary: activate the root tool it doesn't operate on anything transparent the first node you click will become the "connection" node the second node you click will become the new "root" node This tool (counter-intuitively combining two separate functions(?)) allows you to a) set the root node in an assembly of vehicles and b ) set some other part as a "connection" part, which makes it eligible (little, green, spherical marker) to have new (transparent) parts or sub-assemblies attached there. After you've operated with the root tool on an assembly, you'll likely have to save it as a sub-assembly and then manifest it in a subsequent edit to use it but then it will have the attachment point you need... -------------------- (This forum has been very helpful to me and I am very grateful. So I'd like to feed back something I've learned. Feel free to critique the above as it may be misleading or incorrect!) I had to edit a craft that is actually an assembly of several craft. You know the deal: a transfer vehicle delivers a lander into the destination orbit; the lander undocks and then deorbits to drop a rover on the surface but then land separately or re-orbit... I wanted to pull the vehicles apart to edit some and then reassemble them. (I use common components across a family of vehicles.) I needed the root tool but -- as has been remarked in this forum -- it isn't intuitive. (Which is pretty much inline with the whole "philosophy" of the VAB. ) There is some talk in this forum about cookbook step-by-step use of the root tool and some consensus that nobody knows how it works or how it is supposed to be used. Forgive me if there are some definitive articles about it, as I didn't find it. Hope this helps someone else. And, as always, I stand ready to learn from the more knowledgeable.