Terwin

If you just throttle down to zero, can you throttle back up after time warp? I do not know if your control scheme makes it feasible to leave the engine active but throttled to zero or not, but I believe that to be a more common approach than turning it on and off after the initial staging which turns it on.

Two previously reported causes: Did not see them: did you check all the categories? you may need to scroll down to see all of the part categories Bad install: Did you use CKAN or another tool to install? try uninstalling and installing manually, this often fixes missing parts.(even if you installed manually, it dies not hurt to delete the old folder and install it again. If it is installed correctly you should see '000_USITools' and 'UmbraSpaceIndustries' in your ksp\GameData folder) If neither of those work, try posting a picture of the contents of your GameData folder and see if anyone can spot the problem

KSP will happily strand kerbals in anything with a seat. This may help if you do not want the added difficulty of some times needing a klaw for rescues:

For an actual bug yes, but this particular scenario is something I believe to be a UI design decision('I can't find X!' 'That is because X is hidden by default but becomes visible when you click on Y')

When you are browsing the KSP add-ons forums, someone reports an unexpected behavior, and you not only know what probably caused the problem, but can provide the work-around from memory. Especially when the creator of the mod in question already responded but did not recognize the behavior.

If you and @Space Station 4 Crash have indeed submitted useful and informative bug reports as you indicate, then you have my apologies for suggesting you did not. Furthermore, my response was only taking the quoted post as a sample of nonconstructive criticism after reading a thread with plenty of complaints and little in the way of details as to what exactly is not working. (it is also likely I was over-sensitive to the subject due to spending a great deal of time in my day-job over the past week dealing with poorly worded, incomplete, or mutually contradictory requirements). In any case, providing evidence to support your position is likely to be far more persuasive than just stating an unsupported position. (for example, I would find something along the lines of 'I have only been able to play for about 20 hours so far, but I have already reported 5 new bugs and confirmed or provided additional details on 10 others that someone else reported first, and those are just the ones that crashed my PS4!' to be much more persuasive than 'This software is a steaming pile of excrement!' even if the underlying message is the same)

Without any details on when and how the game is having which problems, there is nothing that can be done to address your problems. You mentioned late-game, is it an issue when you have vessels with more than a certain part-count? More than a certain number of vessels in flight? Vessels with a total part count over x in physics range? Only when docking? Does the game slow down, crash, or one then the other? Does reaching day/year X cause your game to crash? Does something bad happen when you enter the Duna SOI? Jool SOI? any time you leave the Kerbin SOI? Are you referring to UI problems? Which control scheme? Is the problem that all of your airplanes crash or fail to take flight? Is your problem that none of your space-plane designs can get to orbit? Rockets? Are you upset that no matter how high you launch your rockets they always fall back down? Does your problem have to do with your ships always burning up in the atmosphere? Not burning up when they should? Are your land-trains having control issues? Decoupling issues? Acceleration issues? Are you upset that ground-scatter is non-physical? Have you been searching for, but unable to find the birds making noises near mission control? Has the random Kerbal name generator refused to provide a kerbal with your same first name? Have the kerbals from your rescue missions all turned out to be pilots which you do not need, or failed to be pilots which you do need? Are you upset that the game does not allow you to take advantage of the wing-in-ground effect? Some other aspect of aerodynamics? Are you upset that there is no light-weight, high-isp, high-thrust engine that would let you SSTO from Eve? Do you think the economics in KSP are too awful to stand? Are you upset about some contracts being non-senical or impossible to achieve with the funds provided? Are you upset at the lack of a 'campaign' mode or futher advancement after finishing the tech tree? Depending on your temperament and play-style, any or all of these could be the source of your complaint, but without details no one could know if it is a bug, unhappiness with design decisions, or just a lack of familiarity with the physics involved...

Drills need to be extended to change the separator in the VAB/SPH. Not sure if this is true for out in the field as well.

That seems pretty unbalanced to me, as that would let you ship out a cheap and light-weight empty DIY Container, then select the vessel once you are at your destination, making it a much larger and heavier DIY Kit with a much hither price-tag. (Some of the bases I have designed fold up into kits that are too large for me to even get into orbit without researching larger engines). With OSE Workshop, I fond that putting the largest available(but empty) storage container on a basic self-sustaining base and putting the whole thing into a DIY kit, I can then make most(all?) of the additional bits I want to add to my base using OSE Workshop.(including 3.75m Tundra parts from USI MKS, and the 3.75m nuclear reactor to be filled from the nuclear fuel processor I also built with OSE) (I admit, I did up the limits of KAS quite a bit, but mostly for convenience, as I have ~ 40 kerbals in my base(mostly kolonists) and I have yet to try to move anything more than 20t)

The regolift sifter will take dirt on your vessel and turn some of it into materials, if you do not have dirt, it cannot do anything(drills can get dirt). Resource Nodes need to be connected to your vessel to be harvested(the Klaw works well for this, I have sometimes used a rover with a klaw on each end so it can connect to both the node and the base) There are some other mods that can be used to craft on-site new parts/craft. Currently Ground construction requires a kit from Kerbin, but that is being worked on. Extra planetary launch pads is the mod that was replaced by Ground Construction, but I prefer OSE Workshop.

There were some errors on the biome maps that were fixed(no more tundra on the KSC peninsula for example), but other than fixing errors, I do not recall any biomes being added or changed since before 1.0

Automation adds complexity to a system and the more complex it is, the easier it is to damage and the harder it is to repair. While the air-force may have different priorities, the army and navy seem to be very keen on keeping things simple, easy to repair and highly manual. This means that the vehicles are more robust and require a lot more crew/maintenance. Following this methodology it would be easy to have a much larger staff of engineers and technicians on military vessels than on similarly capable civilian vessels. (compare the crew compliment of almost any naval vessel against large cargo vessels for example)

Ooh, now I have visions of an 'Activate all life support' button (perhaps on pioneer modules) that would turn on all life support, and perhaps 'Activate all habitation' and 'Activate all Supply production' (perhaps on habitation/colonization modules and Agricultural modules respectively) buttons as well... It would make things easier for those times I forget to set the action groups before launching an expansion, but not worth the effort... ... '[Suggestion] 'Start all X' buttons on appropriate modules' #1375 added to git-hub...

Never forget the cost. Unless you are in a post-scarcity universe, the total value and upkeep of your military has a limit, and you will almost never be able to have as much as you want of the latest and greatest toys. Larger systems have larger costs, and a fighter that can be used for 100 missions, is much cheaper than 100 missiles of equivalent function. Perhaps fighter drives are very very expensive and that is why you do not put them on missiles: you would go broke in short order Also, just because you have a very large energy budget, does not mean you want to squander it, effective lasers may be very power-hungry compared to other systems, especially if you use some sort of low-energy gravity drive on your capitol ships. Long range lasers require huge mirrors that are easy to target, otherwise they are too diffuse to be useful by the time they get to the target.(and any damage/smudging to the mirror means your next laser-blast will destroy the weapon, not the target) Lasers probably also require a great deal of cooling which is much harder in space than it is in an atmosphere.

I think it was my 1.2 game that was MKS + R&D, and while it is possible I had to delete a config file at some point, I do not recall any substantial changes being needed for them to work well together. (obviously R&D could not improve the switchable containers and such, but it worked fine on engines, SRBs, fuel tanks, and the stock ISRU) I remember having self-sustaining colonies(bases with > 10 kolonists on board) on Moho, Duna, Minmus, and the Mun before I upgraded to 1.3 and started a new game. (I also used the Nuclear light-bulb engine, so between that and ISRU being upgraded, a full tank of ore gave ma a large amount of dv, even let me return from Lathe and Tylo for the first time) I would recommend against trying to mix tweakscale and R&D however, as that was much more of a head-ache(until I gave up and uninstalled tweakscale)

As far as I am aware, Efficiency settings are to keep your earlier game parts still relevant once they have been superseded. The calculation is based on the mass of the part, so if you have 5t of refining capacity set to smelter(ie efficiency) and your only other refinery has a mass of 5t, you should double your production, but if you have 3 5t refineries, then that same 5t of efficiency parts will only net you an extra 1/3 for each refinery(aka 5t of efficiency parts / 15t of refinery parts for 33% boost for each refinery part. Note: smaller/early refinery parts can only do basic refining(metals, polymers, minerals, fertilizer), so setting them to efficiency lets them help with things like Silicon and refined exotics. I was told that machinery usage for efficiency parts is adjusted to make them act like just a % increase to the larger parts, but I never bothered to look at electricity usage differences(I like to have enough of a safety margin in generation that I don't track exact usage very closely)

I was visiting the southern ice shelf yesterday(the smooth part of the white polar region), and it covers the entire pole, the ice cap is just a smallish part over by the side(the white part that is not perfectly flat) near the tundra(a non-white part that is not flat) I also noticed that if you follow the runway, you get to the water before switching from KSC to Shore, but if you turn north, you get plenty of shore biome before hitting the water. If you have an advanced autopilot, you should be able to look at kerbnet to find a biome if you are close to it, but for planning I find that the SCANsat mod is invaluble(at least once you have put a scanning satellite in orbit to generate the maps)

To use planetary logistics you need: Supply facility: a USI storage module for the resource you want to share(Probably LFO, look for the 'enable planetary logistics' button which will need to be enabled) + Logistics enabled module(Duna Logistics module, Tundra pioneer+logistics module, or any of the unmanned refining modules) Delivery vehicle: A Duna or Tundra logistics module, a USI storage module(look for the planetary logistics button, which will need to be enabled), a pilot or quartermaster(which may be on the visiting ship if you connect with a klaw/docking port/flexi-tube/etc. getting within 150 meters may be sufficient) Then visit your supply facility every now and again to do the catch-up processing and dump the excess LFO into the planetary stores and you should be able to just transfer from you planetary logistics enabled LFO container to the fuel tanks of the vessel(using either tank to tank pumping or local logistics)

I am pretty sure the orca command pod is in a different Rover Dude mod, perhaps Malemute Rover or USI Exploration pack?

Yea, probably less atmospheric drag and more gravity losses. Both horizontal velocity and altitude would reduce gravity losses, but I am not sure how to calculate that. Would you even want to have the same launch trajectory with a constant acceleration vehicle?

If you had a reactionless lift system that could provide ~12m/s/s (or 1.2g if the math is easier) continuous thrust, how long would it need to run to get to orbit? How much would these numbers change if the constant thrust was 2g or 1.1g instead of 1.2 g? (hmm, 1 hour of 1.2g thrust at each end gets you to mars in ~ 15 days from LEO...)

@TachyonGMZ If you just want a self-sustaining base, USI-LS adds a Fertilizer mode to the small ISRU module. It is slow and eats a lot of ore, but it can make fertilizer with no other mods.

My standard set: 3) toggle solar panels/antennas 6) start LS 7) shut down LS 8) start drills(harvest resources) 9) toggle heat management 10) toggle drills(extend/retract) My standard set. 1-3 and 4-5 generally have mission specific actions(start manufacturing, run experiments, gather research, etc)

All fertilizer converts at 1fert+10 mulch=>11 supplies, so if you have supplies and mulch the converter does not matter.(it may not even check for one)

For eve, you could always try the reverse approach: If the explodium sea is actually a combustible fuel, there must be plenty of it in the atmosphere, so you could just bring your own oxidizer.