[1.2] Kerbal Kommander: a new way to play KSP

[John FX]

This looks interesting, saw it pop up on CKAN. Definitely worth a look IMO.

[BT Industries]

What are the requirements for a base???

I've been thinking of making a custom save-file and was wondering what the requirements are for the bases to be recognized by your mod and to be fully functional.

Edited July 24, 2016 by BT Industries

[gagarinekerman]

49 minutes ago, BT Industries said:

What are the requirements for a base???

I've been thinking of making a custom save-file and was wondering what the requirements are for the bases to be recognized by your mod and to be fully functional.

It just need to contain the "pirateStationScreen" or the "StationScreen" part but with the actual update, trading and slaves won't work :/, I can add them for the next update

[BT Industries]

6 minutes ago, gagarinekerman said:

It just need to contain the "pirateStationScreen" or the "StationScreen" part but with the actual update, trading and slaves won't work :/, I can add them for the next update

Okay thanks...

I presume I would also need to add a crewable part if I want to hire Kerbals, but does it have to be a Landercan like in your stations???

Edited July 24, 2016 by BT Industries
Stupid Autocorrect

[gagarinekerman]

2 minutes ago, BT Industries said:

Okay thanks...

I presume I would also need to add a crewable part if I want to hire Kerbals, but does it have to be a Landercan like in your stations???

You can use every crewable part you want, like in the new stations of the 0.2 update

[BT Industries]

1 minute ago, gagarinekerman said:

You can use every crewable part you want, like in the new stations of the 0.2 update

Yippee!!!

[Wjolcz]

Hey, I have a problem. When I click on the "Begin A Kerbal Kommander Game" and then "yes" nothing happens. Do I need to download the save file from the forum even though I downloaded the mod from CKAN?

EDIT: Oooooooh! OK, I got it. You have to do it in a career save.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Veeltch

[Wjolcz]

Is it my bad luck or do all of the salvageable ships spawn in retrograde orbits? If that's the case, could you perhaps make like 70-80% of them spawn in prograde orbits instead? It's really hard to get to them. Especially when someone decides to be a ship hunter from the beginning.

Edited July 26, 2016 by Veeltch

[Zamolxes77]

Ok, I followed instructions to start a new game, PRECISELY, nothing happens.

I start a new career, press KK button, start a new commander, select yes, funds get reset to 20k, all buildings but VAB and tracking station get locked, but then nothing. I go tracking station, no stations. I exit and reload, same excrements. There is a step missing somewhere regarding how to start a new game ...

Only extra mods I have left are Engineer and Docking alignment, which they shouldn't impede the process.

 

NVM, it works with a fresh install

Edited July 27, 2016 by Zamolxes77
update

[Zamolxes77]

Found a bug. Once docked to Kerbin Space station, it won't let me undock. For some reason, only station's dock port has option to undock and when you activate it, nothing happens, basically puts you in control of the space station.

[gagarinekerman]

On 26/07/2016 at 1:23 PM, Veeltch said:

Is it my bad luck or do all of the salvageable ships spawn in retrograde orbits? If that's the case, could you perhaps make like 70-80% of them spawn in prograde orbits instead? It's really hard to get to them. Especially when someone decides to be a ship hunter from the beginning.

yes, it's not normal, it will be corrected

1 hour ago, Zamolxes77 said:

Found a bug. Once docked to Kerbin Space station, it won't let me undock. For some reason, only station's dock port has option to undock and when you activate it, nothing happens, basically puts you in control of the space station.

it's a stock bug, you can fix it with this :

 

[Jetski]

Having a lot of fun with this!  Some items I noticed for new players getting started: 

You have to have an ore tank to trade (makes sense, just took me a bit to figure out).  Take a look at the sample ships!

Catching and selling a science station is very lucrative, but you have to rename it from "station" ship type to sell.

Weapons get confiscated if you fly near a non-pirate base. Oops!

Command chairs can't be boarded (bug or feature?) So no super bare bones ships. 

Station docking bug occurs if you quicksave and reload while docked. See post above for bug fix. 

If ship hunting, get the contract from Minmus Station or a similar low grav moon. It spawns in orbit of that body, so much cheaper intercepts than kerbin!  Might be worth weighting this somehow to reward high grav intercepts?

Aerobraking is helpful when you are broke, but really fuel is cheap enough compared to cargo, even at kerbin station.

Leaving Kerbin SOI next!

Edited July 29, 2016 by Jetski

[Zamolxes77]

Ship hunting sounds fun, what exactly are you suppose to do? Grab them with a klaw then sell them ?

Been playing this for two days, a lot of fun, trading only so far. I have a beefy ship that can hold 3000 units of cargo, running wood from Kerbin to Minmus and bringing diamonds back. A bit tedious but I gathered up 45,000 funds, on top of my expensive 35,000 trader. I might have enough to afford a mining rig: a 4 part ship - my current transporter, a scanning satellite to look for ores and a refinery with an ascent vehicle. Satellite scans, refinery mines, ascent vehicle brings diamonds or steel to orbit and I'll pilot the trader.

6 hours ago, Jetski said:

 

Catching and selling a science station is very lucrative, but you have to rename it from "station" ship type to sell.

 

 So you suppose to intercept them and bring them to space station to sell ? Does it matter which one?

[Jetski]

1 hour ago, Zamolxes77 said:

Ship hunting sounds fun, what exactly are you suppose to do? Grab them with a klaw then sell them ?

Been playing this for two days, a lot of fun, trading only so far. I have a beefy ship that can hold 3000 units of cargo, running wood from Kerbin to Minmus and bringing diamonds back. A bit tedious but I gathered up 45,000 funds, on top of my expensive 35,000 trader. I might have enough to afford a mining rig: a 4 part ship - my current transporter, a scanning satellite to look for ores and a refinery with an ascent vehicle. Satellite scans, refinery mines, ascent vehicle brings diamonds or steel to orbit and I'll pilot the trader.

 So you suppose to intercept them and bring them to space station to sell ? Does it matter which one?

Doesn't matter, I caught a ship in a very awkward Kerbin inclination, but managed to intercept Minmus. Fly it near the station, separate your good ship from the junky one you caught, and go to the sell interface in the station. Don't sell your good ship by mistake!  

I did some trading, then caught a ship for 10k or so, used it to trade in my Terrier freighter for a LVN freighter. Used the LVN freighter to meet and bring in a science station for over 200k!  Just built a miner, and started visiting pirate bases. Diamond mining was fun for a bit, but very slow profits, almost a year of mining for 45k funds with big ISRU refining ore into diamonds, 2 drills, and a 5 star engineer. I want faster profits!

[Zamolxes77]

Fun fun, I just got to the space station, and to my horror, I discovered it has 2 senior docking ports asymmetrically and only regular docking ports along the CoM. Sadly my trade vessel has only senior ports, gonna have to revert to an earlier save. As a bonus, it has science inside, enough to give me tips where a derelict ship roams ! But no antenna !

You don't get funds anymore for transmitting science ?

Edited July 29, 2016 by Zamolxes77

[daniel l.]

Is it possible that you could give this mod automatic Kopernicus support by programming it to look for stars planets and moons that arent stock and automatically spawn stations at them? As well as perhaps making it so kopernicus modders can make exceptions for specific worlds so that players can explore and colonize each world.

Also any thoughts on using Kerbal Konstructs to make cooler looking stations and bases (Or Cities) not to mention larger ones seeing as they need not apply to part counts or render distances.

[Jetski]

Things are going well, and I installed KIS, which adds a whole dimension to this playthrough. For one thing, I can steal parts off of stations  Unfortunately I have docking kraken bug which has trapped my main freighter onto Kerbin station, and the stock bug fix mod isn't helping. Also a KIS kraken shakes apart the science ship I made from parts stolen off an abandoned science station.  Really having fun with this, though.  

Overall balance feels good. If I got to pick features to add, I would suggest a way to randomize prices just a little so some voyages could be unexpectedly lucrative (or not).  Even if it did it at game start then they were fixed after that?  Would make exploring fun, gotta go to a station to see prices, could be unlucky

Also I'm not sure what the original plan was for the science stations. I'm returning them and selling them, which so far is MUCH more profitable than any other activity in game, particularly around a low grav moon. More science missions for cash would be cool, and also land bases would be rad. Just set up the bases, let us figure out how to dock with them. Buying or landing a truck with a klaw would allow fuel transfer, for example. Maybe land science base contracts?

Great fun!

Edited July 31, 2016 by Jetski

[Zamolxes77]

Jeb has spent 408 days in space, trading, mining, capturing, smiling ... a lot.

Science stations capture missions are fun, but perhaps a bit OP, when it comes to payout. Trading is a bit underwhelming, Jeb has traded for 200-300 days, before he could upgrade his trader to mk3, which cost 36k.

Mining is profitable, but it comes with a serious drawback. Using this sleek rover/miner/tanker

in about 4 days or so, Jeb assisted by Articia the engineer, refined 3,000 diamonds on Minmus, which sold for 70,000 on Kerbin. Problem was that the operation is not autonomous. When switching away from the refinery working on the ground, refinery actually stops, only the drills work, so when you come back, tanks are filled with ore, but not refined, The only way to make this work, is to switch to it during a long transfer window, like the 8 days from Minmus to Kerbin, manually speed up time and manage the drilling operation.

Next, Jeb tried his hand at an asteroid capture mission, which went as planned. Was only a class C, which was worth only about 20,000, so the rock was used to test the new mining rig, "Rock Hound", a ship/rover/tanker/miner/refinery

Finally, with 2 employees now working for him, Articia the engineer and Sonymun the scientist, Jeb needed a versatile vessel that can serve as a mobile company headquarters, with living space and cargo hold. Introducing the Trader mk 4, a nuclear vessel with slightly better flight parameters than mk3, but much better amenities. Here is Jeb capturing his old vessel went rogue, Trader mk3 :

Next on the list is building a modest space station, that can serve as Jebediah Incorporated headquarters, with science facilities and living space.

[gagarinekerman]

On 29/7/2016 at 9:33 PM, Zamolxes77 said:

You don't get funds anymore for transmitting science ?

No, it should work, I've just changed the contract by a little plug-in. 

On 31/7/2016 at 3:35 AM, daniel l. said:

Is it possible that you could give this mod automatic Kopernicus support by programming it to look for stars planets and moons that arent stock and automatically spawn stations at them? As well as perhaps making it so kopernicus modders can make exceptions for specific worlds so that players can explore and colonize each world.

This is quite easy to do but the problem is the problem is for prices, I think that I need to change all the price system by adding a config file. So people can add resources to trade,  set the price, and add planets

On 31/7/2016 at 3:35 AM, daniel l. said:

Also any thoughts on using Kerbal Konstructs to make cooler looking stations and bases (Or Cities) not to mention larger ones seeing as they need not apply to part counts or render distances.

It should be really nice and would solve a lot of problems like the fact that we can move / destroy the stations, and it will also solve the problem of the part thief (sorry jetski xD) I just need to figure out how to dock with them and I also need to design them...

On 31/7/2016 at 6:11 AM, Jetski said:

Overall balance feels good. If I got to pick features to add, I would suggest a way to randomize prices just a little so some voyages could be unexpectedly lucrative (or not).  Even if it did it at game start then they were fixed after that?  Would make exploring fun, gotta go to a station to see prices, could be unlucky

In the future, I want to add random event like "a weapons factory explode on minmus"  so the weapons price will be higher. Or "a lot of diamond has been found on Ike " so the diamond price will be particularly low.

On 31/7/2016 at 6:11 AM, Jetski said:

Also I'm not sure what the original plan was for the science stations. I'm returning them and selling them, which so far is MUCH more profitable than any other activity in game, particularly around a low grav moon. More science missions for cash would be cool, and also land bases would be rad. Just set up the bases, let us figure out how to dock with them. Buying or landing a truck with a klaw would allow fuel transfer, for example. Maybe land science base contracts?

Great fun!

I didn't expected that you will sell the science station xD I will try to make it harder... 

For the bases, I think that I will use the mod iva transfer which seems the simplest. A problem to creating bases was the very high mass of the screen, I will reduce it a lot, at the beginning, I set it very high because I didn't want that the player can move the space station but this high mass bring a lot of bug :/ 

The next update will be the contract, so there will be science contracts too. 

Thanks for all yourfeedbacks !

[BT Industries]

Stupidly long and complicated idea I would love to see a reality...

(I put it all in a spoiler so it doesn't clutter up the rest of the thread)

Here we go...

Spoiler

Craft Tracking:

Crafts are tracked by name and have a Wanted Level. Every craft starts with a Wanted Level of zero but if you are seen stealing, transporting illegal goods or shooting an innocent craft, you're craft gets gains a Wanted Level depending on the crime (there is a delay between the person who spotted you taking action so if your quick you can destroy witnesses before they dob you in). Wanted crafts are chased down by the law and depending on how much it is wanted they could possibly open fire on you. You can't change the name of your craft unless you go to a station and get it legally renamed (if you go too the station in a wanted craft to rename it, you will be arrested). You can also go to a pirate station and pay lots of money to have your craft unmarked. 

The one other stat that is tracked is if you're a Police a Civilian or a Pirate.

You start the game as a civilian, civilians are open to pirate attacks and government patrol crafts pulling you over.

As a Police you are ignored by other government patrol vehicles and you can go and bust pirate ships in the same way as government crafts used to catch you (stay docked to them as for a certain amount of). You also get a small monthly pay and a bonus for capturing pirates. You must have a clean record (never been to jail) go be a Police, go to your nearest government base to apply for a job.

If you're  pirate the other pirates will leave you alone and even help you if you join them. Go to the nearest pirate station to join.

Becoming Wanted:

You can become wanted if a government or civilian craft see's you doing on of these things (there is a delay between the person who spotted you taking action so if your quick you can destroy witnesses before they dob you in)...

Stealing parts, attacking/pirating civilian crafts, attacking a government craft, refusing/running away from a government patrol craft when they have requested an inspection, if an inspection reveals you are smuggling illegal resources, etc, etc.

Types of Crafts:

Government Crafts,

Government crafts are all the bases, stations and those pesky crafts that come after you with guns and try and catch you. Patrol crafts can randomly request an inspection, this just involves them docking to you to check for illegal resources.

Small patrol vehicles spawn randomly.

Civilian Crafts,

Other crafts that are not government crafts, like science stations, freighters, etc, etc.

Player Crafts,

These are your crafts that are bought legally they are marked by the government.

Unmarked Crafts,

This means that the government will still go after you as Unmarked Crafts are illegal, however if you are caught they can only charge you for the crime you were in the middle of committing as the government has no way to keep a history of past crimes that were committed In it

Pirate Crafts,

Pirate Crafts are illegal and hunted down by the government. Small random ships spawn in various locations and try steal things from you if you are not a pirate yourself.

Getting Caught:

To be caught you must be found in a wanted craft by a government craft. This happens if a government craft manages to stay docked with you're craft for certain amount of time (giving you a couple of seconds to hope into an escape pod) You can also be caught if a inspection reveals you are smuggling illegal resources.

When You're Caught:

Depending on the offense (and previous offenses were you weren't caught) you get fined a some money and the game fast forwards until your jail sentence is over. Depending on  how long the member's of your crew have been with you and and how long your sentence is, it's possible that they could leave you (if they have not been caught too).

BDA Teams:

Government

All government crafts when attacked are on this team. That includes you if you are a police.

Pirate

All Pirate crafts when attacked are on this team. That includes you if you are a Pirate.

Hostile

If a craft that doesn't belong with the police or the pirates attacks another that did not attack it first it is on this team. If you attack a government craft even out of self defense you are on the hostile team.

Self Defense

If a craft is attacked by another it goes on this team. Government crafts will not attack crafts who are fighting out of self defense. If you attack a government craft even out of self defense you are on the hostile team.

The end of my stupidly long and complicated idea.

Hopefully you find something helpful or inspiring amongst all my ramblings and brainstorming. I can only imagine how hard some of my ideas would be to code so feel free to stuff them in the bin. Just please tell us why it's not possible so that I can understand and hopefully learn something so my next ideas are more feasible.

If you have any questions on some I didn't explain well enough then go ahead.

(Sorry if there are any typos a wrote this all on my phone)

You have seriously changed KSP, so thank you once again for all the time and effort you have out into this mod.

(You should consider a donation link so people can at the very least buy you a drink)

-Cheers Ben

Edited August 1, 2016 by BT Industries

[Zamolxes77]

5 hours ago, gagarinekerman said:

No, it should work, I've just changed the contract by a little plug-in. 

Not sure what that suppose to mean, anytime I capture a space station and transmit the existing science, it gets transmitted, but I don't receive any cash for it. Same with experiments, I can add them as data into my research lab, or transmit them directly, but I don't get any cash for it. So far science is useless, only thing I can do with it its research projects that show me other abandoned space stations or abandoned ships. Did my mod maybe not installed correctly, or is it a bug?

[m4ti140]

This needs BDArmory based combat.

Then I can die in peace

[Zamolxes77]

When you play this, I think it needs a made up rule: you always need a pilot to pilot any craft. It gets a bit too easy to make everything into probes and pilots lose their roles.

[KiefferDK]

On 31/7/2016 at 6:11 AM, Jetski said:

...Unfortunately I have docking kraken bug which has trapped my main freighter onto Kerbin station, and the stock bug fix mod isn't helping...

I have this as well and have investigated it: 

When loading a game or changing scene (like from space to space center), docking ports that are docked, changes to a different state than the one they were in when the involved .sfs  was written (happens when saving game or switching scene).

In this new state the undock action does not work correctly.

When I look at any craft in the .sfs files, all its parts have uids set to 0.This seems to cause some issues with docking ports as they apparently need to reference connected parts/root parts correctly to function.

I don't know how gagarinekerman creates the craft, or if it's possible to change this so part uids are registered correctly, but my apparently functioning workaround is to not have anything docked when saving game or switching scene.

I don't think it's possible to edit the current .sfs files to repair this without knowing how make up uids, that can be used to configure the docked ports correctly, which I don't, unfortunately.

Hope this post is useful  

[blub01]

I really like the concept of this mod, but I have a weird issue - from reading the other posts, I understand that ore tanks are used to store wood, steel, and diamonds, but it appears that some mod I am using overrides that. I'm running a number of mods, but the only ones that are really changing the way tanks work are interstellar and USI kolonization. can somebody tell me how to fix this/point me to the actual tanks if I am wrong?

EDIT: so apparently there's nothing wrong, I'm just too dumb to figure out how to store it.

 

EDIT: OK, so NOW I am confused, because the information thingy when browsing over the ore tank in the editor says it can hold wood, diamonds, etc., but if I add one to my craft, the tanks don't show up.

Edited August 4, 2016 by blub01