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STOP airborne debris/sub-vessels vanishing when 2.5km away?


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Hi everyone, apologies if this has been asked/answered but I couldn't find anything through forum or google searches!

As part of the (rather fun) career mode, I wanted to to drop little science packages under parachute from planes or rockets, and then land the original vessel before then recovering the science packages. First attempt with a plane, I inevitably then ran into the problem that anything parachuting or falling will be removed if you're more than 2.5km away! So, while I can manage when doing a low and slow flypast in a plane before going into a hard turn just after release, it does rather scupper my plans to scatter a load of parachute probes over EVE in a single grazing flyby.

So, is there any way to alter or remove this auto-remove range? Or could someone create a mod to do so? I realise it could potentially increase either game load or instability, but I don't have any particular knowledge of specifics.

(Oh, and yes I could just swap to control the probe and ride it down - but like I said, I'd like to be able to scatter probes widely from a rocket or at greater altitude and speed from a plane).

Edited by Nick Seafort
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The mod you are looking for is the Lazor system mod by Romfarer, though I don't know for certain changing distance works in 0.22 yet. You'd need to install it then on the space center screen there should be a new settings window. Bear in mind that Lazor adds a lot of other parts and windows, if you like stock it might not be for you.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/lazor-system/

The alternative is doing it from orbit and following each package down. Here is my biome mission which uses this method.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53159-Science-leads-to-wonderful-things?p=713889#post713889

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Romfarer's Lazor System does indeed allow you to increase the physics radius but that does come with a downside: Everything inside the radius will have its physics calculated possibly slowing your system down to a crawl.

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This mod will prevent ships and probes from disappearing. It's set at 300kms, but you can modify that distance to whatever you like. You need to enable it for the campaign by editing the part.cfg file, but it's not a big deal.

I had the same idea as you, but I think it's not possible to do yet. Although you can prevent your probes from despawning, parachutes stop working on nonpiloted vessels (I think the game stops simulating physics once you are X distance from something) and if you switch focus to them, you'll receive the message "cannot switch focus while in atmosphere". The only way to do what you describe so far is by deorbiting the probes and guiding them down one by one.

EDIT: Found this plugin that should do exactly what you need. No extra parts, no messy installations. It essentially prevents probes from disappearing and nonpiloted parachutes to work. Haven't tried it yet (I'm at work), but if someone can confirm it works with 0.22 I'd be very thankful.

EDIT 2: Nah, it doesn't work. I'll try and keep looking for a solution.

Edited by Ottomic
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  • 1 year later...

I think, best shot is attaching control module to parts you want to recover. = )

UPD: parts with command module disappers too! Wiki lying to me. =\

UPD1: after upgrade tracking station to lvl2, parts with unmanned control unit, disappering no more! = )

Edited by Insane1
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This is a very old thread. While the question in it is still germane, the mods suggested as remedies are likely to be things of the past. Anybody got some current suggestions?

There's a few things I think could help here. The first is Flight Manager for Reusable Stages. It doesn't stop things being deleted when they leave physics range, but it does allow you to finish flying your main plane/rocket, and then time travel back to when you released the probe/booster/whatever and finish flying that.

Then there's BD Armoury, which I believe doubles the physics load range. While 5 kilometers might not seem like a lot, it can make a big difference.

Then you have Romfarer's mods, which were mentioned earlier. Haven't played with them in a long time, so I don't know if they still increase the physics range, but I do know that they've been updated to 0.90.

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  • 8 months later...
12 minutes ago, Curiosity7907 said:

Thank you everyone for solving this problem now is there a mod which allows you to switch vessels in the atmosphere?

AFAIK you can already do that. At least, I do when I switch to my recoverable boosters.

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