Rescue contract vessel types

[peewee69]

I want to design a "one ship fits all" rescue craft that is capable of dragging the whole stranded crew capsule back down to Kerbal for a safe recovery.

My question is this; what types of crew pods am I likely to encounter? Do all crew pods spawn, or is it just a select few? And if so, which ones?

[Capt. Hunt]

9 minutes ago, peewee69 said:

I want to design a "one ship fits all" rescue craft that is capable of dragging the whole stranded crew capsule back down to Kerbal for a safe recovery.

My question is this; what types of crew pods am I likely to encounter? Do all crew pods spawn, or is it just a select few? And if so, which ones?

anything that can hold kerbals can spawn.  in fact, watch out if you have mods that include crew modules without hatches, they can spawn too.

[bewing]

I think it scales by value? It tends to be like 98% MK1 pods and MK1 crew cabins in stock.

[Kesa]

Any part that can hold a kerbal and that hasn't a flag telling "no hatch" can be used for rescue mission. I think parts that you have unlocked or are about to unlock are more likely.

If you are not asked to bring back the ship, the easiest way to rescue the kerbal is to have him exit the command pod and enter the rescue vessel. The only way I can see using the grabbing claw efficiently is to save hauling an extra pod on your way in, if you know the grabbed pod will be light (~1t). Since there's no way to tell the Pod will be light (unless you're not far advanced in the tech tree, but then, you may not even have unlocked the claw), I'd say it's a bad idea.

 

If you are asked to recover the craft, I think 7t is an extremely safe upper bound to the mass of the vessel you'll have to prepare a rescue for in the stock game :

The MK3 crew cabin weights 6.5t. the MK3 command pod and the processing lab are 3.5t, most other crewed part are under 2.5t. I would personally assume the craft is 3.5t and adjust if I encounter the normally usually rare Mk3 cabin.

 

If the pod has no hatch, it's a bug from the mod the pod comes from, and you can save the crew with a claw, but you are not supposed to be forced to. It comes from modders not putting hatch on their part and not using the "no hatch" flag.

As inelegant as I find it, there's a fix for it :

 

 And save editing for existing missions.

[mystifeid]

The contract itself tells you the mass, width, length and height of any craft that needs to be brought back .

I've played half this career in 1.41 and the other half in 1.43. So far I've rescued 101 Kerbals. Of these, about 5 have been in locked inflatable airlocks (which is a stock part). These were straight rescues - no need to bring back the airlock. So you get your rescue ship there, realize you can't dock with the airlock (well, I've never been able to) and can't eva the kerbal. You need to abort the rescue mission and bring in another ship that has a klaw. Once you snag the airlock with a klaw, you can transfer the kerbal and dump the airlock.

Whenever I've found these locked inflatable airlocks, I've brought in a ship that has an in-line clamp-o-tron behind the klaw. I bring the Kerbal to the nearest station to be picked up by the next shuttle and leave the klaw ship docked at the station in case I get another inflatable airlock rescue nearby in the future.

For some reason it has been a long time since I got one of these rescues and it's possible that this was changed in 1.43.

In addition to the above, I have two non-docking klaw ships. One has a skiff for the top stage for rescues out to Duna or Eve and another long range (eg Jool rescues) ship with a nuke in the top stage. Both are saved (like all my ships) without boosters.

I also have another two ships which are the equivalent but with a docking port and no klaw.

So that's five ships. And I'm in the process of thinking about a new design to salvage craft from the surface of planets/moons (I don't like the way I've done this in the past). I suppose I should add the two landers which are docked at my stations and which bring a lot of Kerbals back to the stations to be picked up later.

Good luck making one ship that does everything.

 

Edited May 30, 2018 by mystifeid

[bewing]

1 hour ago, mystifeid said:

Of these, about 5 have been in locked inflatable airlocks (which is a stock part). These were straight rescues - no need to bring back the airlock. So you get your rescue ship there, realize you can't dock with the airlock (well, I've never been able to) and can't eva the kerbal.

I understand why you can't dock with a deflated airlock, but why can't you EVA the Kerbal? Do you happen to have a savegame with a kerbal in an airlock? You know that you have to go through the Crew Hatch menu to EVA from an airlock?

And yes, it was changed in 1.4.3 so airlocks no longer happen in rescue contracts.

 

Edited May 30, 2018 by bewing

[mystifeid]

7 minutes ago, bewing said:

I understand why you can't dock with a deflated airlock, but why can't you EVA the Kerbal? Do you happen to have a savegame with a kerbal in an airlock? You know that you have to go through the Crew Hatch menu to EVA from an airlock?

Sorry, no saved game. And yeah, I've tried the crew hatch menu. It might be just that I'm dim-witted but I never did manage to extract one without a klaw. I do remember seeing the word "locked" on either the crew hatch menu or the part description.

Like I said it's been a while since I've seen one of these but if I ever see another I'll be sure to let you know.

[bewing]

5 minutes ago, mystifeid said:

I do remember seeing the word "locked" on either the crew hatch menu or the part description.

Yeah, well -- a status of "locked" means the same thing on an airlock as it does on a radiator panel. ie. "not moving". Doesn't mean you can't get out.

 

Edited May 30, 2018 by bewing

[mystifeid]

1 minute ago, bewing said:

Yeah, well -- a status of "locked" means the same thing on an airlock as it does on a solar panel. ie. "not moving". Doesn't mean you can't get out.

That may be but I still couldn't get them out. Could just be me.

[mystifeid]

1 hour ago, bewing said:

Do you happen to have a savegame with a kerbal in an airlock?

Oh wait, I do. But it's the backup I made of the KSP folder when I moved from 1.41 to 1.43.

So right-clicking on either side with the ship active brings up this menu - with the airlock active I only see "Aim camera"

Left-clicking only works on one side and when I hover over that side I see "crew hatch"

I left-click on the crew hatch

I click on eva and see "Hatch is obstructed, can't exit". The same thing happens irrespective of whether the ship or the airlock is active - ie switching between them makes no difference.

It might be after I grab it with a klaw that I see the word "locked" somewhere.

What's really scary is that my rep was 2% higher back then than it is now - 450 contracts later.

Edited May 30, 2018 by mystifeid

[Kesa]

I think neither the docking port nor the hacth work on a deflated air lock.

[bewing]

1 hour ago, mystifeid said:

I click on eva and see "Hatch is obstructed, can't exit".

Ah. I didn't realize it would say that.

 

[mystifeid]

So I thought this was all by design. And you had me hopeful that I'd missed something simple but again, maybe it is already fixed in 1.43. Because either way, these things are a pita.

The klaw gets there and does a capture.

Eva still doesn't work - it still shows as "Hatch is obstructed, can't exit" - but I can transfer the Kerbal

After transfer, the airlock menu now shows the options to open and close the airlock.

 

Also, why does my staging disappear sometimes?

Edited May 30, 2018 by mystifeid