walaykin

Gulp. Sounds like my playthrough was a real dice-roll then. But IIUC it's fixed in the code now? I like the new stuff BTW - doing a non-KSPI-E playthrough at the moment, am sorely missing the thermal engines!

But I've *done* exactly that - launched a crew section with a molten salt/thermal generator, then separately launched a drive section with a fusion/DT-Vista, docked them together, boosted, shut the fusion down, then later used the molten salt to power the fusion restart. It definitely worked fine. This was in 1.2.6 I think? It was my entire orbital assembly build strategy.

Can you expand on what you think is problematic here? It surely can't be the case that all KSPI-E reactors/generator pairs must be in the same vessel section with no docking ports between them, or docking a KSPI-E ship would be problematic?

Has anyone come across an issue where you inadvertently attach a part - in this case, a container mount - to a kerbal on EVA (in orbit). I just had this happen, and it was not recoverable - I could not grab, drop, detach or otherwise remove the mount from the kerbal (stuck to her feet!) and the game burned all their EVA propellant constantly rotating them while I desperately tried to get them back in the ship. Gave up and reloaded in the end, but seems odd to be able to attach parts to a kerbal; I had a container mounted on my back when I did it, then dropped the container - maybe it was attached to the container first, then "glued" to the kerbal once I dropped the container (from the menu).

I really like KSPI. It's a fun mod but is not easy - the parts are balanced about right to make it challenging. A good example is that when driving the DT Vista with fusion reactors on a long journey, it makes sense to shut down the fusions between burns. But to do that, you need enough power on hand to bring them back up, which in my case meant an MSR powering an Omega, the Omega powering the big fusion. Later you can skip the intermediate - antimatter reactors having no maintenance power - but it was cool working that out. A whole bunch of experimentation to learn the new mechanics. One thing on that - it's hard to experiment in sandbox, because AFAICT you can't "downgrade" a part to the earlier version. Maybe useful for testing before deciding whether to purchase an upgrade node in a science/career game (think of the sandbox mode as a simulation being run by Chuck Kermin before he tries to break the lightspeed barrier ;o) I wish I'd had more reason to use microwave power on my playthrough, because it's such an interesting mechanic, but it feels pretty well balanced. I had some odd thermal bugs with the one probe I tried, but I think they were unrelated to KSPI. I've mentioned my issues with ISRU a couple of posts earlier, won't bother to repeat them. A very minor issue - I've had occasions where I've wanted KSPI fuel types in tank formats which are missing e.g. stock Mk3 form to match up with spaceplane designs. I like the science lab once it's upgraded; nice that it does fuel reprocess/AM generation, but I haven't really needed it. Atmo scoops and plasma engines make a great combo once you can power them. Wish I'd played with the scoops earlier than I did. This is all on 1.2.4 - I'll probably avoid upgrading, I have ships in-flight whose characteristics I don't want to change, but I'm looking forward to trying the vasimir and similar. Many thanks for your and everyone else work on the mod - I'd encourage you to take a little while off coding and enjoy a playthrough, you've earned it!

I tend to agree - the ISRU components are too awkward to use in most of my ship designs, especially the weird frisbee. At the moment, quite late in my playthrough, I've basically ignored the KSPI ISRU and used stock ISRU to mine liquidfuel to run in a thermal nozzle; even with the soot mechanic, it works just fine, and the ability to downscale the stock ISRU to 1.25 means you can side-mount two of them, and avoid really tall (and easy to topple) lander designs. This is kind of a shame, as I've totally ignores the methalox and hybrid rockets. The KSPI 2.5m stack part is really only useful with scoops, and once you have thermal nozzles, you can just run off the scooped gas directly. I would definitely like to see the KSP stock drills able to feed the 2.5m part for use on vacuum worlds. The ability to downsize the 2.5m part might be nice, but was not a big problem for me because it's height is reasonable; then again as noted, I frequently downsize the stock part to 2x 1.25m. The KSPI 3.75m part is too big. I don't have a use for it personally, given the type of craft I build. The ability to vent tanks in KSPI without another mod would be handy; when doing ISRU, a few of those empty tanks are handy for intermediate products that you then discard (leftovers from differing reaction rates). The stock ore carrier can be vented, I note.