[1.1.2] Take Command - Launch Kerbals in External Command Seats [v1.4.1 - May 6, 2016]

[inigma]

Just a note to inform you and your thread that I released 1.0 beta of a custom-developed Contract Pack that specifically works with Take Command in mind:

Giving Aircraft a Purpose (GAP):

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/129208-contract-pack-giving-aircraft-a-purpose-gap-10-beta-air-flights-tours-coast-guard-sts-105jan-4-2016/

[theredkerbal]

I can't seem to get the mod working. I don't know if it is a bug, or if I installed incorrectly, but the game will not allow me to pick the External Seat unless I have a pod to start with. I put everything into the GameData folder, and restarted the game a couple of times. I have the latest version of KSP. What do I do? http://puu.sh/mDBQ8/a1403c7dcc.png

[greydragon70]

10 hours ago, theredkerbal said:

I can't seem to get the mod working. I don't know if it is a bug, or if I installed incorrectly, but the game will not allow me to pick the External Seat unless I have a pod to start with. I put everything into the GameData folder, and restarted the game a couple of times. I have the latest version of KSP. What do I do? http://puu.sh/mDBQ8/a1403c7dcc.png

You can't have a command chair as the first part, this mod doesn't change that. Start with an I-beam, cubic strut, fuel tank, ect. Then put your command seat on that. From there you should be able to assign a Kerbal to the seat from the Astronaut selection tab. For example, I built most of this rover before putting seats in it. http://imgur.com/eBKyBgK On loading it looks like this. http://imgur.com/CLW6PSu I use TextureReplacer with various head packs so the helmets are off in atmosphere.

[selfish_meme]

Any idea why Take Command forces a reboot of the physics at launch and causes stock bearings to fail (usually wheels clipped around fairing and tanks with a decoupler). If you need an example I can send you a craft file for a tank, if you don't populate the seats it's fine, but if you do the turret falls through the parts below.

[theredkerbal]

Thanks Greydragon. That was the problem. 

[greydragon70]

1 hour ago, selfish_meme said:

Any idea why Take Command forces a reboot of the physics at launch and causes stock bearings to fail (usually wheels clipped around fairing and tanks with a decoupler). If you need an example I can send you a craft file for a tank, if you don't populate the seats it's fine, but if you do the turret falls through the parts below.

Can you post a screencap of before and after? or link the craft file? I am not the creator of this mod but have been using it a long time and can probably help you.

 

1 hour ago, theredkerbal said:

Thanks Greydragon. That was the problem. 

You are very welcome! Glad I could help.

[selfish_meme]

On 21 January 2016 at 10:55 AM, greydragon70 said:

Can you post a screencap of before and after? or link the craft file? I am not the creator of this mod but have been using it a long time and can probably help you.

 

You are very welcome! Glad I could help.

Sorry for the delay replying, I did a bit of research and the issue seems to be colliders, but I don't now think that Take Command is at fault. Someone else mentioned it once, and I admit I just accepted it. The problem seems to stem from seating a Kerbal in a command seat, it does something wonky to wheel colliders. So on a craft with no Kerbals when separating a part balanced on wheels against the main part it works correctly. Put a command seat somewhere and seat a Kerbal and then suddenly the wheel colliders are sinking through. it does this regardless of whether you seat the Kerbal using Take Command or EVA them and walk over to the seat.

[Spheniscine]

Hm there seems to be a side-effect of this mod, where rescue contracts can sometimes spawn with Kerbals in command seats. I even got one to claw it; I'm not exactly sure if that will break anything. Will update once I find out.

Guess if things do break there might be the workaround of EVAing the kerbal into a proper command pod, then clawing the seat.

Edited January 25, 2016 by Spheniscine

[Kron]

On 1/25/2016 at 8:02 PM, Spheniscine said:

Hm there seems to be a side-effect of this mod, where rescue contracts can sometimes spawn with Kerbals in command seats. I even got one to claw it; I'm not exactly sure if that will break anything. Will update once I find out.

Guess if things do break there might be the workaround of EVAing the kerbal into a proper command pod, then clawing the seat.

I just ran into this situation. It actually seems to cause some serious problems. When I get close enough to the derelict command seat to take control of the kerbal, Take Command switches control from the rescue ship to the derelict command seat. The first time I encountered this I was in the middle of a burn and when I switched back to the rescue ship it had gone from almost being in orbit to a steep suborbital trajectory.  I did manage to rescue one kerbal from a command seat. The focus still shifted to the command seat, but I think having the rescue ship coasting when it happened prevented the sudden trajectory change.

[Rodger]

I had the same issue as Kron, and after that I had another rescue contract with the kerbal in a command seat, but with the 2nd contract the kerbal just disappeared, and is listed as MIA in the KSC. The 2nd time there wasn't any camera focus changes, just when I got within range, and switched to the seat, there was no kerbal to be found.

Perhaps is there some way to blacklist the command seat from rescue contracts? I'd guess that would be the simplest way to avoid these issues, if it is possible anyway.

[Technologicat]

Hi,

A question - have you considered applying Take Command also to external seat parts added by mods? There's at least the EAS-2 Heavy Duty Command Seat in the classic Kerbonov pack, and the ATV Command Seat in Buffalo (0.2.5 and later).

I think these could all be caught automatically by filtering for the KerbalSeat module in TakeCommand.cfg:

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[KerbalSeat]]:FOR[TakeCommand]
{
	CrewCapacity = 1
	MODULE
	{
		name = TakeCommand
		minimumCrew = 1
	}
	INTERNAL
	{
		name = GenericSpace1
	}
}

(At least by a quick test this seems to work.)

EDIT: ah, I got beaten to it by ThatGuyWithALongUsername. Don't know how I missed that. Anyway, it would be nice to have the updated .cfg packaged officially, since at least two people have now come up with this improvement

Edited February 2, 2016 by Technologicat
Oops, duplicate suggestion

[DStaal]

I've put in a pull request making the change, to help push the idea along. 

[Kyrt Malthorn]

As much as I love this mod, it's giving me a headache right now.  I too am having kerbals to rescue spawn in command chairs, but my exact symptoms don't quite line up with what the others describe.  Three, four times now it's happened and the kerbal has actually appeared in the chair in orbit, that's fine.

The moment it's in range the command chair Takes Command and becomes my currently selected ship, period.  (As described prior.)  The first thing I notice is the chair is spinning like a crazy thing.  Then shortly after I manage to click the Leave Seat button on a wildly oscillating rclick menu, I realize my rescue ship is hurtling away from me at over 2km/s.  After a double take I look at the map screen and realize what really happened...

 

BEFORE the close encounter:

 

AFTER the close encounter:

 

How the heck?

There was no engine engition while I was away.  Quickloaded to just after I made the close encounter and this happened again and again.  I had to use infinite fuel cheat just to AVOID a close encounter.

[seanmcdougall]

Hello all.  Sorry for not being very active in here lately - I'm afraid work and family commitments haven't left much time for Kerbal these days!  I would like to respond to a few recent issues though:

1) Adding Take Command to all external command seats

I had considered doing this, and there's actually a discussion back on page 1 of this thread about that.  Here's the working config we had settled on at the time:

@PART
[*]:HAS[@MODULE[KerbalSeat]]:FOR[TakeCommand]
{
    CrewCapacity = 1
    MODULE
    {
        name = TakeCommand
        minimumCrew = 1
    }
}

I haven't made this the default yet since this was originally designed and tested only with the stock command seat, and I wasn't sure if adding it to other modded seats would cause issues.  I probably will make this the default for future versions, provided I find a fix for the next issue:

2) Rescue contracts spawning Kerbals in command seats in orbit

This odd behavior is the result of a recent-ish update to KSP itself - I forget the exact one.  It used to be that rescue contracts would just spawn a lone Kerbal in an EVA suit, but then this was changed so they would spawn in a command pod (which makes sense - how else would they get to orbit?).  The way Take Command works is that it basically turns the external seat into a command pod.  The problem arises because the contract generator code just randomly picks any available command pod that has seats (which now includes external command chairs).

I've taken a quick look and I'm not quite sure yet how to fix this.  Ideally I'd like to make KSP ignore command seats altogether when generating contracts, but I don't know if the contracts API will let me control that.  I'll keep digging and see what I can come up with.

[TheSpaceManiac]

I've encountered a slightly annoying issue of sorts, which is that clicking on the "Leave Seat" button on a Kerbal spawned in with TakeCommand does not do anything. Is this fixable?

[Wercho]

First, this is a really valuable mod.

Second, I seem to have found an incompatibility with KCT. Specifically, I find that when I Take Command spawns Kerbals in a seat, that craft has a problem. When it goes over about 2.5 m/s (across the ground, like a rover; up like a rocket, doesn't matter) the game resets it to the ground, rotated 90 degrees (so lying flat if a rocket) and then KCT spawns a ton of exceptions. Sometimes the game recovers (from the exceptions, and sometimes not). This only happens after KCT builds something over time. It does not happen if using KCT's simulation feature.

It does not happen with normal command pods, unmanned craft. It does not happen if I spawn a kerbal in a normal pod then move him over to the seat. This is happening on an install with only KCT, Take Command, and GCMonitor.

Logs: KSP.log, player.log

Has anyone else encountered this?

I'm gonna crosspost on the KCT thread also.

Playing on Linux x64

EDIT: Turns out Take Command isn't the problem, Take Command just makes it easy to get command seat only vehicles that don't move at all before a Kerbal is in the command seat, which seems to trigger the problem. Carry on

Edited March 6, 2016 by Wercho

[inigma]

On 2/27/2016 at 8:18 AM, TheSpaceManiac said:

I've encountered a slightly annoying issue of sorts, which is that clicking on the "Leave Seat" button on a Kerbal spawned in with TakeCommand does not do anything. Is this fixable?

I'm running into this same issue as well. Are you running Contract Configurator contracts too?

[TheSpaceManiac]

8 hours ago, inigma said:

I'm running into this same issue as well. Are you running Contract Configurator contracts too?

Currently I'm not, but it still seems to do that anyways...

[Guest]

Hey Creator of this mod, as of this you making this, KerbalStuff has shutdown.. You can upload this mod to spacedock which is spacedock.info! Thanks..

 

[Treble Sketch]

Not sure if you know, but Kerbal Stuff was shut down early this year.

https://spacedock.info is the replacement site, feel free to post it there.

[JEF_300]

1.1 ?

spacedock ?

[seanmcdougall]

Hey folks.  Sorry for not being terribly active around here lately.  Unfortunately I don't have a lot of spare time to devote to KSP these days.  I had been waiting for 1.1 before jumping back in, so now that the pre-release is finally out I'll have to check it out and figure out what I need to update to get my mods working again.  I'll also see about fixing some of the odd bugs that people have been reporting.  Once I have something ready I'll post it up on SpaceDock. 

[run1235]

just want to report that Take command still has some functionality in 1.1 BUT it puts the kerbals "into" the ECS as if it were a command pod and since the ECS doesnt have an escape hatch, you cannot eva the kerbal out to put them in the seat.

[million_lights]

This mod is as essential as kerbal engineer to me D:

Looking forward to see it work in 1.1!

[Guest]

Thanks @seanmcdougall