DStaal

Interesting. That's not *quite* the same as how I understood it - but I don't think it would have made much if any difference to how we balanced things. I just sent a PR this morning to Nils277 with our LS-only changes, so hopefully that'll be ok. Either way, we generally tried to balance against both, and got fairly close. Of course, we were talking about farms and recyclers at this point. Refineries are still to come. This I was aware of - part of the discussion was how we wanted to do this without upsetting the balance of the parts. We knew from a pure balance standpoint that the resources weren't necessary for the mass, but we wanted some of the feel of having them. Hence a discussion on how many to use to make it feel realistic, non-trival, and yet not unbalance things. (This is part of this pack, not part of the PR I sent to Nils, as it's effectively an MKS mechanic, not a USI one. Which also means that the parts should balance fairly well either with or without the resources, as people will be using them both ways.) That's basically what he was looking for - a way to deploy something when he has all the resources 50 meters away in another ship. Having to run a pipe across is a bit odd.

I like it - although realistically the windows wouldn't be very useful, except possibly for docking maneuvers. But Kerbals like windows. It's a well-known fact.

MechJeb. But that's in the foreground, and it's very rudimentary. A better question is: What are you looking for? This doesn't just arbitrarily move the rover. The route has to be feasible, not cross water, etc. The rover has to have enough power to drive it's wheels - and I believe it will even stop during the night. So, what level of automatic driving do you want?

It doesn't fully simulate the rover in the background. It pre-computes a route when you start, and moves it's location along that route over time.

Which is why I said 'for us' - the backpack-carryable Kontainers can hold about 1000 MK, IIRC. That's plenty for deploying these parts, but a drop in the bucket for the MKS inflatables.

That's definitely something to talk to RD about. Note that for us at least the new KIS-mountable Kontainers (and the rack-mountable ones as well, though not quite as easily) mean that you can just carry the resources over.

Yep. You're getting caught up to where we are now. A large requirement of MaterialKits doesn't make sense - RoverDude uses that to balance the low mass of the inflatables, but we don't need to do that. On the other hand, this pack is to supposed to 'MKS-ize' KPBS, and under MKS it takes some effort to deploy a part - and I do want to keep that. Being able to press a button on Kerbin to have a hab deploy seems a bit silly to me - there should be someone there checking it out to make sure things work, and the very least, for any habitable parts. And for long-term use it makes sense to want something a bit more fail-safe to hold your structure in place. If it's just hydraulics or a motor - well, if they fail and something bumps your base, your base will fold back in on itself, if only by a few inches. But a few inches means wires don't line up, gaskets aren't in place, etc. Depending on your design, it might be a big problem or a small one, but it will be a problem. Better to have it deploy and then have your crew going around to secure things into place with mechanical fasteners - something that can't backtrack or release. A few strategically placed bolts, a 'weatherstrip' over the seal, and the place will be much stronger, and more damage-resistant. So it does make sense to have some small amount of MaterialKits used to deploy it. I'll admit, I hate sticking small containers on that I don't use for much. A rack is *always* an inconvenience in a base design, since I play with CLS. I was trying to think of alternatives when I remembered one of the first parts this pack added: The workbenches. They already hold as much as small storage container and are designed explicitly for this type of thing - and have use further into the life of the base. So then I don't worry about that as much, because there are two options just from this pack, as well as the more normal MKS options. 100 liters of MaterialKits actually makes sense to me - most of that would be in long 'weatherstrips' for reinforcing the seals. They aren't much, they are easy to install - but automating their install defeats their purpose, as they need to be securely and permanently attached to both sides of the seal. So we have a realistic use-case as justification for a moderate amount of MaterialKits and needing a Kerbal to deploy. Making the hoop not completely arbitrary in the end - which was the goal: To see if there was a realistic amount of something that could be what they needed to apply. There is, and we even have a good way to carry or store it to make it accessible.

Can you try with and without Angle Snap on in EEX? (And try with various angles it's snapping to?)

Quote, delete what you don't want, Quote, delete what you don't want... Ad nausium. I'm sure you can stick a Kerbal in a workbench, EVA them from there, and deploy a module with them using the resources in the workbench. That does depend a bit on how a particular player builds bases. I tend to land out smaller pieces that may not have enough to do things on their own and join them up. It's not uncommon to have my first crew of Kerbals sit out half a night with no power... Later on, sure - I'll have added on more power and generation to handle things. But that may not have been my top priority. In RoverDude's code, yeah. It's not something in the config file however. (And honestly, if this is the type of thing you're looking for - install Pathfinder and ignore this mod. You'll get this type of behavior out of the KPBS parts.) It's not exposed to modification though. There would need to be a change in the plugins we're piggybacking on. (I'm not writing a plugin for this mod. It kinda would defeat the purpose.) No particular coding reason - but as a player, if I saw these three parts that had the same size and form factor, and deployed in the same way, I'd expect them to have the same cost to deploy. These aren't inflatables, and their IVAs show layouts that are designed to not interfere with each other in their collapsed state (and are bolted in), so I don't think we need to account for interior furnishings. I'm open to the idea of specific costs on top of that - but you'd have to really talk me into it if you want more resources, as even just playing around with both MaterialKits and SpecializedParts was easily more than twice as annoying in my opinion. I made the point earlier that there's no real gameplay difference between 1 and 100 units of any resource - either one means you can deploy multiple from one of the smallest container available. There's also no real gameplay difference between 2 units of different resources and *400* units of one resource - either way you need two of the smallest containers. You can always recover MaterialKits from discarded parts however - that's a zero-tier solution for small amounts. (And we are talking small amounts.) Water is first-tier - if you have a drill. Which is 0.9 tons of equipment that will be useless once the Greenhouse is deployed - because the Greenhouse doesn't use water. (Ok, the two planetary cultivators we add based on the greenhouse do. But the actual 'Greenhouse' doesn't. ) Oh, and of course you can't depend on water everywhere you'd want a base. So it'd become actually *easier* to ship it up. In a container. Which you'll never use again, until you expand to having a Central Hub, most likely. So it's annoying - It's a hoop that doesn't have anything to do with the part, and which doesn't add to anything that the part will be useful for down the road. It *might* be useful in a large base - but it doesn't have to be, and it's usefulness is entirely situational and dependent on your later plans. Whereas MaterialKits - you almost always have a couple of descent engines you never plan on using again. They'll provide enough MaterialKits to deploy a part or two, and then you can use what's left over to do routine maintenance on your production equipment - including your Greenhouse. If you're using a Workshop for that storage, it has enough for the initial deployment, and your Engineer can then make that their work post to keep your base in good shape. It all builds on each other, instead of being an extra piece off to the side.

I believe no license means All Rights Reserved - that's basically the default under copyright law. The BSD license is actually very open - Open it's very close to public domain, except that you retain copyright and that must be acknowledged. Two things make it less common: First off, it's open enough that people can actually take your code and use it in *non* open-source products. They have to credit you, but that's it. Secondly, 'BSD License' referrers to (as on the Wikipedia page you linked) four similar but not exactly the same licenses, some of which are incompatible with GPL for instance. Quite often people will go with other equivalent licenses just to prevent confusion. (My KPBStoMKS mod for example: The MIT license is essentially the same as a BSD license - but only one variant. So it's therefore less ambiguous.)

It's almost completely stand alone: It can receive power via local logistics. Other than that, it's just a solar-powered light source.

I'm guessing there was a force-transfer as the parts attempted to dock - and KSP just gave up on working it all out.

I think you're misunderstanding 'deployment' - it's not a noun, it's a verb. You don't produce it, it's something you do. The parts don't produce *anything* unless they are deployed, because they're in a stowed state. And the volume of a part doesn't have any direct relation to it's mass, so you can't say 'I need this much mass to gain this much volume' - some parts are denser than others.

You wouldn't happen to be using my KPBStoMKS pack by any chance, would you? It re-uses that model for a power distribution part.

Yep. Linked earlier in the thread, and I have a downloaded version. Note quite: Inflatables mass up by using MaterialKits. So to double your mass you need your mass in MaterialKits. We don't want to do that, because we're pretty set on our mass already. The productivity bonus is a separate mechanic. Nope. RD's calculations don't link mass to volume directly. (There are often linked indirectly by what you are setting up, but you don't spend mass to get volume.) 200 MK's are 0.2 tons. How many kilograms that is depends on which 'ton' you're using. It's also 200 liters of storage space, which is how we're tending to think of things. Current thought is to use ~100 MK's to deploy one module - which seems reasonable for materials to secure and seal the deployment.

Because there's a big difference between 'I can fit the screws we'll need in my pocket' and 'we need to be able to refit the entire interior when we get there'. The main question is: How *many* resources do you need? A Workbench can hold ~200. Is that enough for one module's deployment? Two? Twenty? Or do you need more than that?

I haven't had any trouble with it.

Yep, all of the above discussion only applies if MKS is installed. And if you have this mod (and MKS) you have both the Workbench - a part with a seat and MaterialKits storage, among other things - and several sizes of Kontainers that can hold all of the MKS resources, just like USI's Kontainers - except in KPBS form. That includes both sizes of rack-mount container, as well as two larger sizes in the full KPBS form factor. All of the above is dependent on having MKS and this mod installed. So we've got that covered.

The gas turbine is basically a generator, right? Could you just run using ModuleGenerator or ModuleResourceConverter instead of making it an engine?

Sounds good. I've started a feature branch for stage 3, if you want to start playing around. Yeah, I don't think several Kerbals is possible. (I suspect requiring EVA is a bit of a hack in that making it 'EVA-only' means you can require there to be a Kerbal there to do EVA...) Would still like to have some concept of what '1 EC' is though.

Thanks, @Hofelinger. It's good to get some ideas bounced around. If nothing else, it helps make sure you don't overlook something. I believe so. I may do a test run a bit later this afternoon before pushing it, just to make sure I didn't mess anything up with merging. Sounds decent to me. It wouldn't get to the problem we have with the main greenhouse: That's because we wanted one USI module (the habitation) to stay constant while we switch the others. USI's switchable converters apparently can't do that - they just allow you to switch between any USI modules present. I haven't looked to closely at the efficiency part mechanic myself, but we should have one in that size at the very least. Likely swapping that part is a good way to do it. Point... I'd forgotten about that. I was thinking about them running around inside securing everything - which would be a drill or electric screwdriver - but the actual expansion is probably the biggest user of EC. (You probably *could* make it possible to do by hand, with clever engineering and leverage, but putting it on a motor is likely easier.)

I believe the KPBS part recycler should work exactly the same as EL's - It's just a different part which uses the same part modules behind the scenes. (Basically: It *is* an EL recycler. It just looks different.)

Actually... Take a look at this fork I just made: https://github.com/DanStaal/KerbalPlanetaryBaseSystems and check to see if there's anything wrong. You can take a look through my commits and see my writeups, and if you have comments just post them here. Then I can copy things over and do a PR. Well, several of the parts themselves have EC storage as well. You can get a couple of hundred just by putting in a science lab and a couple of probe cores. (And I'm not sure I want to *force* people to have a rack-mounted battery. I like the idea of the racks, but I find them very limiting in terms of base design.) But yeah, the only dedicated battery is the container rack one. I'm for something reachable with normal storage and a few z-100s in general - but 1000 might be that. How much EC is 1 EC anyway? Is there any good baseline for realism here? I mean, it probably shouldn't take more power than a couple of removable batteries for your drill, right? I figured a CO2 scubber was basically closest thing to it. (And something they included even fairly early on, and are in use even outside spaceflight today.)

I'm not sure that 'Scrap Part for Equipment' is from EL. I believe that's from Pathfinder. (And it should be getting you 'Equipment', as it says.) To recycle using EL, you typically need to have a recycler part on your main ship, and 'dock' the ship to be recycled into it.

Specific is nice. I tend to be lazy. But it should at least include every new part this pack is adding - and the greenhouses should be highlighted, as it's an oddity. I don't think we should document the changes we push upstream - at least not it our changelog. It's not a change in this pack. (I suspect if someone were to write up a detailed list of changes to send to Nils he would be very appreciative - and that should go into the merge-commit anyway.) I'm starting to like that. Especially with the mental model of reinforcing gaskets - 100 liters of material could get used up pretty quickly if you need a one-inch-wide strip around the whole deployment area.