How Do You "Deploy" Breaking Ground's Surface Experiments?

[luna_cat]

When I have a Kerbal on EVA, I can click on a ship or rover part, and move the deployable science part to a different storage slot, but I can't put it down anywhere. I can right-click on them, and see some information, but that doesn't give me a control dialog, the way it would for a regular science part. After removing a part from storage the Kerbal, and places that can store the part are outlined in blue. Clicking the part on the Kerbal does nothing.

If go into the EVA build mode, I can remove the surface experiments from storage, and drop them on the ground. I get a message that they won't work, unless they're "deployed by a Kerbal".  Right-clicking on them while they're on the ground does nothing.

Trying this out near the runway, after I place the control unit on the ground, and put it back into storage a few times, I then get a message that it's too heavy for a Kerbal to handle in this gravity. Apparently it gets heavier every time it's picked up! At the same time, I can still pick up other deployed science experiment parts.

I have also tried to deploy these parts on the Mun, and see the same behavior. I have tried placing them with an engineer, and a scientist Kerbal. That doesn't change the observed behavior either, except the scientist can't use EVA build mode. So the scientist can't even place the parts on the ground.

I do have the KIS/KAS mod installed, but I'm not using it to manipulate the deployed science parts. I have a lot mods, but everything else appears to be working fine.

What am I missing? How can I deploy the surface science parts, and get them working?

Edited July 5, 2021 by luna_cat
I left off the question mark at the end.

[Rhomphaia]

When they are in a kerbals inventory, the icon for the experiment in the inventory will have a down arrow in the corner, clicking this will deploy the experiment.

[luna_cat]

1 hour ago, Rhomphaia said:

When they are in a kerbals inventory, the icon for the experiment in the inventory will have a down arrow in the corner, clicking this will deploy the experiment.

Thanks. With that info, I was able to deploy a control station. However, I had to do it with an engineer, and he had to first discard his parachute, and EVA unit. Otherwise there was no room for the kerbal to hold the control station.

There's a further problem that the RTG I brought along to power the experiments is 90 liters in volume. This exceeds the 40 liters that the kerbal is allowed to have in his backpack. So I can't "deploy" the power unit. Am I missing something else that would allow me to deploy the RTG that's bigger than the kerbal's backpack can hold?

Is carrying a parachute, and EVA unit in the kerbal's backpace a part of the stock game?

I guess that I'm going to have to install an unmodded copy of the game, and see how this works in sandbox mode.

[luna_cat]

Experimenting with KSP 1.12.1, unmodded, shows that all kerbals by default carry a parchute, and an EVA backpack. So you either need to remove them from the craft when you design it, or have extra inventory slots to hold them while you handle the deployable science, or be an engineer so that you can put the chute and EVA rig on the ground in build mode.

Allowing any kerbal to grab a deployable part, put it on the ground, click to bring up the context dialog, and then click deploy would be more intuitive. It would also be more similar to how all the other parts work.

Having the deploy arrow appear when the kerbal has the item in his personal inventory should be mentioned in KSPedia.

I can make this work, but it could be easier. I know, I know, if I wanted easy I wouldn't be playing KSP.