Parts Action Menu: Some explanations needed

[Kim Hanson]

Although most of the possible actions for a part are fairly obvious or at least easy to figure out, a few are so opaque that I'm gonna need some guidance.  Here they are:

1. Same vessel interaction.  This occurs on almost all parts and it is complete puzzle to me.
2. Rigid attachment.  Again, most parts and baffling.
3. First hop distance.  This is seen on communication devices and is informational only.  Doesn't seem too important but it would be nice to know what it means.
4. Deploy shielded.  Appears on landing struts.  Sounds interesting but I see no difference when I toggle the setting.

These last 4 have to do with fairings and once again nothing seems to happen when I toggle them.

1. Sides.  Can be varied from 2 to 6.
2. Clamshell deploy
3. Truss structure.  I assume this makes them stronger.
4. Interstage nodes. 

If any of the vets could fill me in on these, I would be appreciative.

[Geonovast]

Same Vessel Interaction: By default, parts of the same ship cannot interact with each other.  As far as I'm aware, this was done so that clipping parts into one another during assembly didn't cause 'splody issues in flight.  Now, however, all parts with this setting on will interact with each other.  This can be quite handy if you're doing stuff with the newish robotic pieces.

Rigid Attachment: Something about the strength of the attachment between the part and its parent.  Can make it stronger, but can also make it more brittle in certain situations.

First Hop Distance: I'm not sure why that's there, actually.  I don't think it's much use for anything.

Deploy Shielded: Parts, like struts and landing gear, by default will not deploy if the game believes they are within a cargo bay.  This is troublesome, especially on large planes, because sometimes the game considers them inside the bay even when they're attached to the outside.  If you need to make sure the gear will always deploy when there's a chance it's partially inside a cargo bay, turn this on.

 

Fairings:

Sides: Exactly as it seems, sets the number of sides, or slices of the fairing.  This, in my experience, is mostly and aesthetic thing, although upping the number of sides can be helpful if the fairing pieces hit your payload on deploy.

Clamshell Deploy: With this off, all the sides of your fairing will deploy into multiple pieces, like confetti.  With this on, each side will remain one piece when deployed, like real fairings.  I like to put this on, but it can cause issues if the fairing is too close to the payload near the fairing base.

Next two I'll do in reverse order:

Interstage Nodes: When you turn this on, you'll see that there are now multiple stack attach nodes above the fairing base.  This allows you to stack multiple payloads in a fairing without them touching.

Truss Structure: When you have Interstage Nodes on, and attach something to one of the new nodes, a plate and side supports will appear between the base and the node you used.  These are strictly for looks and don't actually do anything.  You can turn the visual-only supports off with this option.

[HvP]

Hello @Kim Hanson

Since @Geonovast already gave a great breakdown of these functions, I'll only add a couple of things.

Same vessel interaction: In the stock game, by default, parts on the same ship do not collide with each other and can pass through one another if they happen come into contact. Enabling "same vessel interaction" on two parts that you want to interact with each other will cause them to physically collide if they come into contact. It was introduced primarily to allow players to create articulated assemblies of gears, manipulating arms, etc. with the robotic parts in the Breaking Ground DLC without having to split them up into decoupled craft linked together.

First hop distance: In a communications network, it shows you the distance between your ship and the first comm-net relay being used to make a path between you and Kerbin. It's not terribly useful in flight, but since the strength of your connection depends on what antenna you are using and how far you are from the next relay or ground station it gives you more exact numerical information about the capable range of your current antenna combination.

Edited February 23, 2020 by HvP

[AHHans]

I don't have much to add, but here are my 0.05€ to this topic:

5 hours ago, Geonovast said:

Rigid Attachment: Something about the strength of the attachment between the part and its parent.  Can make it stronger, but can also make it more brittle in certain situations.

Normal connections between two parts are a bit "bendy", i.e. they can move against each other when the forces become large before breaking off. If you set this to true, then the connection to its parent part will not move but will just break when the force becomes too large. As in real life, this movement acts like a spring during an impact (e.g. a plane landing) and usually reduces the maximum force between two parts by spreading out the acceleration over a longer time. So rigidly attached parts tend to break apart on even lesser impacts. But they don't shift around during lower accelerations.
(I never use that option in my craft.)

5 hours ago, Geonovast said:

Sides: Exactly as it seems, sets the number of sides, or slices of the fairing.  This, in my experience, is mostly and aesthetic thing, although upping the number of sides can be helpful if the fairing pieces hit your payload on deploy.

Two things about the sides of a fairing: one is that the number of sides only actually gets changed if you edit (or create) the fairing after changing the number of sides in the PAW. (So, yes, if you just change it in the PAW nothing will happen immediately.) The other is that the fairing pieces can collide with your payload after deploying the fairing. (This is even more of a problem when you use "clamshell deploy".) If your payload is not cylindrical but e.g. has a 4-way symmetry then setting the fairing up so that the pieces are on the sides and not the corners - and thus are ejected away from the corners - can keep your payload safe from collision. (I figured that out the hard way when a fairing kept damaging two tires on one of my rovers when it had three sides.)