Disable staging on EVERYTHING that can be staged

[Zosma Procyon]

For the first time since the parts were introduced I have designed a vehicle using one of the service modules, in this case the largest one which is just large enough to conceal two of the large drills at either end. With the shroud in place the drills seem to "magically" protrude through the underside of the craft. Hey if the game allows it, a little magic is fine. But there is a problem with these components: The explosive doors are staged and therefore at some point have to be jettisoned, which makes attaching parts to them a bit tricky. In fact I just attached said parts (radiators and structural wings in this case) to other parts adjacent to the service module. And the doors are jettisoned in the first stage and the holes covered up by large panel radiators. But I shouldn't have to be tricky. If fairings can have their staging disabled via advanced tweakables, why can the service modules? And engines should be unstagable too!

In fact every single part that can be staged should have the option to be not staged with advanced tweakabled engaged! That is the Kerbal way!

Edited December 11, 2018 by Zosma Procyon

[panzer1b]

I strongly supported this from day 1 of my time playing the game, but from what ive heard around the years its not quite as easy as it sounds, since apparently adding any sort of right click features to any part is rather complex code wise (probably the reason we still dont have this).

 

But yeah, id love to disable staging on engines, since i have enough VTOLs and craft that have aux engines that id never ever use stage to turn on but rather action group it (or just do it manually via right click in case of emergency use backup engines after the main ones have been shot apart).

[Superfluous J]

Doesn't need a right-click in-flight, just in the VAB. Though adding it in either place actually isn't too hard. It's one of the few things I was able to learn my own self

Now as far as actually enabling and disabling staging, I don't know. I checked docking ports and they don't have a module that enables toggling staging so I assume it's packed in with ModuleDockingPort or something like that, so it'd be code, which means writing code and ick.

 

[lunardog15]

yes please

 

[Zosma Procyon]

19 hours ago, panzer1b said:

I strongly supported this from day 1 of my time playing the game, but from what ive heard around the years its not quite as easy as it sounds, since apparently adding any sort of right click features to any part is rather complex code wise (probably the reason we still dont have this).

 

But yeah, id love to disable staging on engines, since i have enough VTOLs and craft that have aux engines that id never ever use stage to turn on but rather action group it (or just do it manually via right click in case of emergency use backup engines after the main ones have been shot apart).

I don't see why it would. I don't know how the game is coded, but the lines of code that enable staging shouldn't be too dissimilar between every class of part, if not identical. That''s how I, as an engineer that can't seem to learn coding, would do it. So it should only be a matter of copying the code sections that allow certain parts that can be de-staged into every other staged part. And even if it isn't as simple is my ignorant notions say it should be, this is still a better use of the programmers time than changing the color schemes of older parts. No offense to Squad intended.

[IncongruousGoat]

6 minutes ago, Zosma Procyon said:

I don't know how the game is coded, but the lines of code that enable staging shouldn't be too dissimilar between every class of part, if not identical.

Software 'should' be built in a reasonable way, but it often isn't, and things that seem like they'd be simple often turn out to be messy and complex under the hood. Don't ever assume something is easy to add unless A: the devs have explicitly said so, or B: you've looked at the source code yourself.

[lunardog15]

time to go and dig in a (posible) mess of code  welp that's what I'm going to do for my weekend

[ZooNamedGames]

I get around decoupling issues right now by putting the actual staging icon at the very top (or very end) of the staging list so that it effectively never stages off, but I agree that this should be implemented.