[Anyone ever built a base on Bop?]

Well, alright, thanks for the suggestions everyone, & 1greywind, that's an interesting base! I could barely function with a limit on parts, sandbox mode with hangar extender and editor extensions makes it so easy to build massive crafts. You should see the tugs I made for going to Jool.

Anyways, I'll let you all know how it goes and hopefully post some screenshots. Tonight I mostly finished getting the recycler set up on my Minimus base, the workshop hasn't been producing rocketparts even though there are kerbals inside and metal to work with, don't know what that's about, but considering I have enough spare rocketparts to build a small craft, and I'm collecting plenty of metal (from ore) and karbonite, I think it's high time I did some exploring past Kerbin's SOI.

[Anyone ever built a base on Bop?]

I thought of KAS grappling hooks and ground pylons, just recently figured how to use them right. Luckily on Minimus I picked a nice flat plateau to build on, with only a couple degree slope. Problem is, on Bop, flat area is much tougher to find.

That being said, I imagine magic lift rams would be useful, only that those, along with Infernal Robotics haven't been working for me for some reason despite having the right versions of both IR and toolbar installed. But that's not a problem I need solved in this thread.

What my main concern is is the distance. I play with a semi-RP mindset, and that being said, I don't like keeping my Kerbals onsite for long durations of time. I don't play with any life support focused mods, but it's still something I have fun focusing on. Minimus has been easy, it only takes a short time to get there and I can send a two way shuttle to bring new Kerbals and take the old ones back. With the Joolian System though, it's a lot different. It takes about a year for an efficient trip, one way. Once there, sending them supplies won't be easy, so I'll have to try and do everything on site.

I didn't have that barrier with Minimus, it took me I think 6 flights to get the base set up and self-sufficient. With Joolian satelites, I have to do it all in one go.

I have a plan though, I created a large cargo tug with over 20k m/s of interplanetary delta-v, an OKS hab ring for artificial gravity, and two Extraplanetary Launchpads workshops,filled with rockeparts, complete with de-orbiting and landing gear, side mounted ore and karbonite drills, a recycler for repurposing debris, metal smelters, and an orbital construction dock for building stuff.

Along with that, I'm going to be doing a concurrent launch of a similar cargo tug with payload of twelve scan satellites to determine where the various ore and karbonite on each terrestrial body is.

My main fear is simply that things won't work out in some way, that my workshops won't be able to get ore, that they won't be able to land safely, any number of things could go wrong even with quicksaves to help me out, and I'd have to launch a rescue or support mission which would take another year to get there. I don't even like having my kerbals out for a month, let alone a year, it scares me. I just want to make sure the mission goes exactly as planned.

I must say, playing this game has really given me a new found appreciation of what space agencies do. It's really amazing stuff.

[Anyone ever built a base on Bop?]

So, I have this long term plan for my KSP playthrough, I play with Extraplanetary Launchpads, so it involves setting up launch bases on other terrestrial bodies. Anyways, phase one of my plan is to have a base set up on Minimus, which I've gotten to a self-sufficient state now. The reason I wanted to do Minimus is because of it's low gravity, low escape velocity, and close proximity to the edge of Kerbin's SOI.

That being said, Bop shares a lot of these same characteristics, making it a prime candidate for another launch base. Thing is, I've looked through Youtube, read about other people's bases, and I have yet to hear from anyone who's set up a permanent base on Bop, Laythe? Sure, plenty of those, in fact, I plan to make one myself, but Bop? Nada.

So has anyone built a base on Bop before? What are the challenges to overcome there? I imagine the uneven terrain must be difficult to work with, but I'm fairly new to the game and have only ever been in the Joolian System once, so I don't really know what to expect going there.

I don't mind if you don't play with the same mods or even mods at all, I'd just love to hear from anyone who's attempted or done this.

[Some Questions about part.cfgs and modding (making duplicates of existing parts, etc.)]

Thanks everyone! Crzyrndm, your example was very helpful, I was able to change the NFPropulsion patch for the LV-N atomic rocket motor to make it create a duplicate of it that uses LiquidHydrogen rather than an LFO mix. I do plan on making some interplanetary vessels propelled by LiquidHydrogen, but I've grown fond of the LFO rocket motors, since I can repurpose the LFO for new rockets when doing extraplanetary bases.

I have another question, where can I find the meshes/textures for the buildings/launchpad/runway at KSC? They don't seem to be in the squad folder as far as I can tell, but I'm interested in taking a look at them so I can make something based on them. I'm interested in making some full-sized stuff for extraplanetary launchpads for establishing big bases capable of launching huge heavy rockets. I still have to figure out how to make parts from scratch, and I figured looking at some assets from the game would be as good a place as any to start.

[Some Questions about part.cfgs and modding (making duplicates of existing parts, etc.)]

Hey all! I haven't posted here yet, figured here would be a good place to start.

Anyways, I've been fiddling with parts a little, I figured out the workings of the .cfg format pretty quickly, it shares a lot of similarities with the JSON notation Starbound uses. What I was wondering was, how do I make a new part based on an existing part? For example, if I wanted to take the Quad Nuke Engine from ModularRocketSystems and create a duplicate version of it that uses LiquidHydrogen from NearFuturePropulsion, how would I go about this? Is there a way I can have the .cfg for the new part be in a new folder as if it was a part created from scratch and simply point to the model and texture from the original part?

I imagine another solution would be to use modulemanager to make the Rocket be switchable between LFO and LiquidHydrogen, if anyone knows how I can do that, I'd love to hear it, I'd still like to know how to make duplicate parts though!

Lastly, I would like to learn how to make parts from scratch, I've modded for 3d games before, so I'm already familiar with the modeling & texturing aspect, but I've never done anything in Unity before. I've read over the "Making an asset from start to finish" tutorial on the ksp wiki a number of times, and have seen a couple on Youtube, but I'm interested in knowing if there's a good tutorial more focused on the unity aspect of modding for people who already have *gotten their feet wet* in the modeling&texturing area.

Let me know!