"Auto Decouple" option for "Ring Decoupler" part from "ROTanks" mod - what is it good for?

[Kazkar]

I've started a new career on RSS-RO-RP-1 pretty recently, and it's a lot of fun to see so many explosions again

Building my first sounding rocket, I have noticed that the "Ring Decoupler" part (used in https://github.com/KSP-RO/RP-0/wiki/First-Rocket-&-Early-Career-Tutorial ) has an option "Auto Decouple" with editable time.

So I got a brilliant idea, that if I use that Auto Decouple with a delay of 1 second, then I can stage the decoupler together with the Tiny Tim Booster, and it will automatically decouple a second later, and I will not have to frantically try to count 0.7 seconds in my head.

As most of my brilliant ideas, this did not work.

So, I've checked what that option is really doing. I've found no info in the forum, but I think I have found the code in https://github.com/KSP-RO/ROLibrary/blob/master/Source/ROLib/Modules/ModuleRODecoupler.cs 

Here it looks like it will decouple the second node, after I decouple the first. (However, I'm not sure if it works correctly - what is the operator precedence in that language?  Is the line 113 correct, or does it need a pair of parentheseseses?)

I've also run a simple simulation, and it looks like indeed it is supposed to decouple a second node after that configurable delay.

 

So, my question is : in which situations may it be useful? When would I care whether it detaches from a part, which I have just dropped away - like a SRB? Or why wouldn't I just decouple both nodes at the same time (i.e. using it as a standard stack separator)?

[darthgently]

30 minutes ago, Kazkar said:

Or why wouldn't I just decouple both nodes at the same time (i.e. using it as a standard stack separator)?

Delays in decoupling and deploying , whether using the option you are referring to, via Action groups, via kOS script, or manually, are typically to help prevent collisions between separate craft/parts that recently decoupled; to give them time to get some distance before more decoupling/deploying.

Edited May 15, 2022 by darthgently