dealing with a crowded tracking station

[king of nowhere]

the good old times when i would launch one mission at a time, and do nothing else until it was done. i wouldn't even use the tracking station back then. but as missions gre longer, i started to launch more of them at the same time. and things escalated pretty fast...

now i have 14 active missions that are being pursued by some dedicated craft. 12 unmanned probes, 5 manned ships, 3 manned space stations, 2 moon bases with a third along the way, and a handful or rovers and service ships that i'm not counting because they are currently docked to something else. a total of 11 ships are scheduled to have a manuever at some point in the future, and more are simply waiting for something more long term.

and it's becoming increasingly difficult to deal with all this.

to deal with the crowding, i started by renaming every probe that finished its missions as a relay. this way, i can deactivate the relays and only see active missions. still plenty of those, though. and there's the added complication that sometimes, upon undocking, the game authomatically classifies some ship as a relay. I almost missed one, which i only found back because it was on a short-term mission that i remembered about.

I started an excel spreadsheet where i detail stuff. for every mission that i'm not going to make in one session, i write down the important details. deactivated probes are written down, along with fuel left and science equipment: i packed enough extra fuel that i may be able to recycle them some day (i already discovered one that i could squeeze some more science out of).

I make sure to have every active mission with a planned manuever. even if the manuever is 0 meters, simply a planned node to remind me that i should go check on that mission later.

and then i have to sort the manuevers, see which craft is the next one where i have to perform something. this would be rather trivial if i could sort my missions in order of planned next manuever, but if such an option exhist, i did not find it. so i have to look the big list on the tracking station to see which one is scheduled first. Hoping i don't have two critical manuevers planned at the same time. when i do, hoping that one of the two can be delayed or anticipated a bit.

and in all this, a single distraction, a single forgetting to set up a node before moving to another ship, or not noticing that the game has automatically renamed one of my ships as a relay, could cause me to miss a mission. lost. forgotten. buried in red tape.

I don't expect there to be some holy grail to fix this mess, but i'd like to hear your strategies to cope with too many missions to track

[bewing]

The game is supposed to be mentally challenging!

But the basic answer is: if there is some aspect of the base game that you don't enjoy, then there is always a mod to change it. KAC is the one most often used to deal with your issue.

[Streetwind]

Well, there is the widely famous mod Kerbal Alarm Clock, which keeps a list of events you need to deal with in order of how close in time they are, and even pulls you out of time warp and pops up remindes when you forget.

But you still have to remember to set the alert/make the maneuver node. There's no mod I know of that can read your mind and forecast our intentions for that one craft careening through interstellar space that you haven't set a node for.

 

As for your issues with filtering out old craft - don't use "relay". The game will automatically use that for probes that have a relay-type antenna on them. Instead, if you don't want to use "debris" for whatever reason, use something that pretty much never comes up. Like "base" or "rover" or "plane" or "lander" - there will typically be at least one of those you really don't ever need for anything else. Even surface bases can be tagged "station" in a pinch.

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, Streetwind said:

As for your issues with filtering out old craft - don't use "relay". The game will automatically use that for probes that have a relay-type antenna on them. Instead, if you don't want to use "debris" for whatever reason, use something that pretty much never comes up. Like "base" or "rover" or "plane" or "lander" - there will typically be at least one of those you really don't ever need for anything else. Even surface bases can be tagged "station" in a pinch.

but i did use something that pretty much never comes up. and that something is "relay"

debris, i generally explode whenever i have the opportunity. i used lander for the sky crane, and anyway the game will call some stuff a lander authomatically too. i don't use planes, but i may.

relays? even if i were to actually make a dedicated relay satellite, it would just have to park in its orbit doing nothing. hence it would not create conflict.

they should add the "inactive" category. or better yet, give you the option of creating your own categories. maybe it will be possible when they release ksp 2

[Spricigo]

As far I observed the craft type that is less likely to be randomly assigned by the game is Outpost. But whatever works for you is fine.

There is several mods that help with managing multiple mission, but be warned that yo u may end up running even more simultaneous  mission just "because you can". From the top of my head: Kerbal Alarm Clock, Flight plan and Tracking Station Evolved. That last one seem to be something in the lines of what you want but I never used it to tell for sure.

Other than that..spreadsheets and sticky notes are things that I use sometimes.

[Cavscout74]

As others have said, Kerbal Alarm Clock is the primary mod you need to keep track of upcoming maneuvers & SoI changes.  And yes, it really shouldn't be a mod at all, something like that should be an integral part of KSP.  It is the one mod that I wouldn't want to play KSP without.

Tracking Station Evolved helps to de-clutter everything by grouping all your craft by celestial body - so everything in orbit or on the surface of Kerbin is under the Kerbin tab, with sub-tabs for Mun & Minmus.  Same for every celestial body.  And when you click on a tab, in addition to opening its craft list, it also zooms the tracking station to that body.  The first page has a good image of what it does:

Also, since no one has actually given the link to KAC:

 

[king of nowhere]

i downloaded it, but there's no exe file. i don't know how to manage stuff on github. can someone give me instructions?

Edited June 18, 2020 by king of nowhere

[Entropian]

24 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

i downloaded it, but there's no exe file. i don't know how to manage stuff on github. can someone give me instructions?

 

Edited June 18, 2020 by Entropian
Kraken ate my post

[Spricigo]

Most mods just requires that you extract the files to the [gamedata] folder, some requires that a dependency is also present and some are version specific. CKkan is a mod manager, intended to err... manage mods(version, dependencies and stuff).

BTW, if get the game via steam, copy the entire ksp folder somewhere else before modding. So auto update don't overwrite your modded install. also, is a good idea to at least backup the [gamedata] folder if you plan to install many mods (which makes me wonder why i don't do that)

 

[AHHans]

9 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

i downloaded it, but there's no exe file.

As others already mentioned: you install KAC by just copying the data into your KSP GameData directory. So after installation you should have a directory: ".../path_to_your_KSP/Kerbal Space Program/GameData/TriggerTech/"

Then once you load your game, you should see the KAC window and icon.

7 hours ago, Spricigo said:

BTW, if get the game via steam, copy the entire ksp folder somewhere else before modding.

Actually KAC is very well behaved so that you can install it into your steam install directory without much problems. During an update Steam only overwrites the files that belong to the core game itself, it leaves "unknown" subdirectories untouched. KAC even survived the switch from 1.7.3 to 1.8.0 without noticeable problems.

But apart from that: copying your KSP install out from Steam is a good idea for a serious player, even when it isn't absolutely needed.

[Spricigo]

7 minutes ago, AHHans said:

Actually KAC is very well behaved so that you can install it into your steam install directory without much problems. During an update Steam only overwrites the files that belong to the core game itself, it leaves "unknown" subdirectories untouched. KAC even survived the switch from 1.7.3 to 1.8.0 without noticeable problems.

But apart from that: copying your KSP install out from Steam is a good idea for a serious player, even when it isn't absolutely needed.

In general mods are very well behaved, but let's start with good practices early because figuring which one is the troublemaker among several dozen is not fun.