[just curious] is it possible to change part's mass "on the fly" with a plugin ?

[Justin Kerbice]

Hi,

just curious about what is possible to do with a plugin. I look at the some docs and see that part's characterics are properties which I guess are read-only, maybe I'm wrong.

I wish to know if it is possible to make a gui button to change the mass of a part, a kind of "base/twice" button.

Thanks.

[Captain Sierra]

Theoretically, you can do anything with a plugin. Now, this? Possible, but I don't know the details of how it could be done, so I'll digress to a proper coder for that.

[Faark]

Yes. Just change the part's mass field.

Ofc building a real plugin that does sth like that is more difficult, since you might have to do stuff like saving that data.

[regex]

Part.mass is a public float but it's not explicitly persistent. You can try changing that for a given part; the mass seems to be saved in the persistence file nonetheless.

[KerbMav]

Hm, make it a tank and fuel generating as well - then set the maximum capacity real high, define a mass per unit for the resource and let the generating module work with magic alone?

[Justin Kerbice]

Hm, make it a tank and fuel generating as well - then set the maximum capacity real high, define a mass per unit for the resource and let the generating module work with magic alone?

Oh looks very easy and effective, thanks for the idea, but it also be a "one way ticket", I mean there is no way to make this magic resource completely decay, unless creating also a heavy resource consumer which can be toggled anytime.

I may try that and post the result.

[Justin Kerbice]

I gave it a try and tis is the result:

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The Silladelphia experiment (Silly/Philli word play ).

I take the fuel generator idea from Daneel,

customize a thoroidal fuel tank to store a huge amount of fuel+oxy.

I've not go too far (generator was not set too crazy, only a rate of 10) but the bad thing here compare to what I have in mind is the need of both a generator + tank, mass increase is not really instant (unless KSP accept a rate of hell) and tank may have a limited max amount + it need calculation to reach a given mass (not too hard).

By the way, the generator here is just a mere 3dsmax icosphere with the template in "normal" mode.