DStaal

(Mulch, not Fertilizer... ) Yay!

Looking forward to it. Beats sending Bill out to climb on top of the Buffalo to put a solar tower together.

Nice. Going to be interesting to use - can they mount on the ground as well? (KAS port?) And I'll throw in a minor bug report: My stripminer can't seem to remember what resource it's drilling - every time I come back (which might mean scene load, and might mean game load, as I haven't visited the base twice in one session in a while) it's reverted to drilling for Ore. The Golddiggers have no issue, and keep drilling for Water.

This is inaccurate. Cultivation (Aeroponics) uses Substrate, not Dirt. Ratio is 5:5:0.03->0.5, if the wiki is correct. The other thing to note in all of this is that RoverDude is planning on re-balancing all the USI parts with the 1.2 update. It might be worth taking a look at what he does then before doing anything. Your systems sound ok, with the exception of my original complaint about the Pigpen: I want to avoid the 'turn Mulch into Fertilizer and add Mulch to make supplies' path: It's inherently lossy, with no sustainable path, and logically questionable. Mulch should either be a waste product, or an input with fertilizer. If the Pigpen turned Mulch into Substrate (or Dirt) and water, and then you added Fertilizer (from ore, or gypsum, or someplace else), it would make much more sense.

Excuse the lighting (and the fact that I'm using a Buffalo - I had one mostly set up for this already), but my quick test shows KAS ports should still be able to help. (I used KAS struts, forgetting that they can't bridge separate ships in this test, but principle applies.) Attached to the inside of the cargo bay: Bill trying to attach things:

And I got confirmation from RoverDude that it's USI parts that vent dirt - not all parts if you have UKS installed. So if you have your own containers, no issue.

Thanks. There'd be more WildBlue parts, but at the time I was building it I was having issues with the hex trusses - so I used Neartea's instead, except for the one small bit at the top. Three launches to build what's shown - further expansion may happen at the top hub node, if needed. The middle hub's nodes are designated for resource supply containers, and the bottom's are the designated crew load/unload zones. Initial crew of 8 was just sent up. UKS auto-vents Dirt, apparently when you get a positive periapsis. I'm not sure if that's something someone should talk to RoverDude about (and make it more useful for others) - probably in the CRP thread - or if you don't care, or if this should be an issue you want to avoid in other ways. (And I'm not sure if that's in any container, or if it's just in a Kontainer.)

Anyway; to show off the discussed parts in-use; Here's my newly commissioned space station: We're a long way from home, people: (Though not out of Kerbin SOI.)

One thing to check: In the UKS thread, someone just posted that they can't ship Dirt off the planet. It gets auto-vented. I'm not sure what does that (or if it's intended), but it makes sense in the UKS system, but it may not in your use here. Another option would be Substrate, if that issue is confirmed.

My thought on @MunGazer's issue is to try KAS pipes or stuts: Roll in, strut down, and then fly. Basically, secure the cargo once it's in place.

EC is going to be a problem with any probe core, as they are a constant drain. Again, the exploration pack will help: It has small batteries, solar panels, and monoprop fuel cells that fit. (And I just noticed that Vorg has a demo of them up a bit on this page. )

If you can get them into the pod, it would allow you to control the escape pod - as a probe core, it could provide the control. (You'd want some of the EC parts from that mod as well, most likely.) It won't solve the EVA problem, but it would solve the control problem. (So if you don't run CLS, it's a complete solution. ) Basically, they'd become passengers in a robotic ship.

The USI exploration pack has a nifty little radial-attach probe that you could attach to the service ring.

Thanks for the detailed reply. Fertilizer wouldn't be a liquid, as far as I know. That sounds decent - 'Dirt' will mean something different between you and UKS, but it's a reasonable difference. (UKS treats Dirt as a generic ore, that you can extract everything from.) I don't believe it's explicitly stated on the wiki, although it's been discussed several times in the UKS thread. Should I add it to the wiki? (I basically wrote the UKS compatibility page...) RoverDude has repeatedly stated that Supplies is mostly water for washing and things like that, and Kerbals convert Supplies to Mulch at a 1:1 ratio. Sounds good, and yeah, I think it may have been a stock issue. I just wanted it listed so people can find it for troubleshooting. The real problem wasn’t the heat catch up, but the fact that the reactor wasn't producing power, which I think is also a stock bug. (If the reactor had been producing power, the Old Faithful's radiator would have worked and radiated the heat away.) Sounds good. I'll have to look at those parts. I do have them installed as well, though I haven't unlocked all of them yet. I thought that might have been the case with the Doc/MPL - I just wasn't sure if you'd noticed that it wasn't balanced as it was before. And glad to hear you got the fix in - I mostly was re-mentioning it here because I was doing a combined report, so it should have all the issues I've noticed. Ah, so I'm just blind here. I have those parts, I just hadn't noticed them. (Well, the Hot Springs I noticed but forgot about because I don't have any geoenergy on Minmus.) I'm going to blame Filter Extensions for not showing them in the right places. Thanks - I figured you must want/have something in between, and it just bugged me because I couldn't find it. Thanks again for your reply. As I said - I'm enjoying this playthrough, and in general everything is working well. My only real irritants so far have been power (which is largely a result of my own poor planning on this issue - I *really* miss Fusebox), and supplies - which is a semi-moving target from another mod anyway, and something that's designed to be a slight hassle to manage.

I'm obviously doing a fairly heavy WildBlue playthrough at the moment. Starting to get into real Pathfinder use, not just deployment. Some notes on things that may bug me: I'm using USI-LS. The Pigpen converts Mulch into Fertilizer. This basically breaks the resource chain for USI-LS - Fertilizer is conceptually 'what's missing from Mulch to grow food' in the USI-LS system, and the official parts basically will convert Mulch+Fertilizer into an equivalent mass of Supplies. (Which then turns into an equal mass of Mulch.) Turning Mulch into Fertilizer means you're going to run out of food - no matter what. UKS uses Gypsum to generate Fertilizer; if you don't want to add more resources, Ore wouldn't be a horrible choice. Or just require it to be shipped in from home, like base USI-LS. Also with USI-LS: Mulch (like Supplies) is 80-90% water, by USI-LS lore. Needing both Mulch and Water to grow food is somewhat redundant. It would be nice to have some sort of indicator on the greenhouses to know how far along the production cycle they are - if the next crop is in 15 days and I have 20 days of supplies, no problem. If the next crop is in 40 days and I have 15 days of supplies I need to start planning a rescue mission. I had an issue where my Old Faithful nearly overheated when I switched to my base recently. What it appears had happened is that the fusion plant was partially deactivated - it was producing heat but no electricity. When I re-activated it, there was enough EC for heat rejection and things started to cool down again. I'm not sure where the bug was and it hasn't recurred - but I thought I should mention it for troubleshooting purposes. Related to the above: What uses Coolant? Old Faithful appears to use water in it's open-cycle mode (which saved it for me in the above...), and it was what I thought was using it. I'm afraid I'm going to stumble into needing it at some point without having any. The Doc Science lab surprised me by being less powerful than the MPL. I'd expected it to be equal or better; inflated it's near the same size. Not a major issue, just a moment of surprise. What's your reasoning there? Might there be a way to get a more powerful version? I've mentioned elsewhere that the CLS support is somewhat lacking at the moment. In particular, the Mineshafts, Switchbacks, and Tunnel Extenders don't count as passable. Since that's their primary purpose, it's a bit odd. Switchbacks and Tunnel Extenders are an easy fix - I'm not sure how to get Mineshafts working. The pack could use a large solar array of some sort, or some small-scale generator. At the moment it's hard to generate enough power for a base without going into a full fusion plant. The Poncho looks nice, but it would take a lot of them to generate enough power to run even one of the modules. Part of this for me may be that I'm using it with both USI-LS and UKS - the efficiency multipliers we discussed in the MOLE thread are in operation here as well, and USI-LS needs EC as well. But at the moment I'm ignoring the Poncho as 'not worth the effort' - scaled up 5 or 10 times it might be. An RTG or a fuel cell module would also be potentially interesting; something a bit less exotic than going full Fusion. (Though I still haven't gotten the Powerpack on the Buffalo to work - I have no indication anywhere in-game that it has a generator besides the solar panel.) Anyway - I’m having fun. I like being able to re-config on the fly; I shipped up modules in a lot of different configs so I wouldn't have to, but inevitably I needed to redesign and it allowed me to do so. Setting things up is easy, and I was able to get a working base together fairly quickly. I'm a bit concerned long-term about the Supplies situation, but I'll be dealing with that as it comes up; I don't have USI-LS set on anything permanent. I've retrieved my original four from Minmus, so next up is to get the orbital construction station operating - I have it in place, it just needs to be staffed and tested out, and I need to start getting a supply line running for it. (Anyone have some good tools for planning intercepts to complicated for MechJeb? Ideally I'd like to be able to launch directly from Minmus to the spacedock - but figuring transfer windows and the like isn't something I want to do by hand.) I'll probably post pics here as I get it going.

As a quick note: Being compatible with DMagic should cover Universal Storage as well - US is one of several mods that use the DMagic science library for their experiments. (Another being the Surface Experiment Pack, I believe.) So I'd focus on DMagic when you get done looking at SCANsat.

It works! Thanks. I didn't try the config file - I'm not sure what parts you'd be hiding the menu on anyway. (The experiments aren't in physical parts - they are in modules you load into other parts.) I didn't see any menus on the MOLE or experiment containers.

Thanks, I'll take a look as soon as I can.

Yay! I'll be trying these out very soon. (I may even edit my game file to put them into the flatbed trailer already on Minmus...) If this works as well as I expect, I think NASA should be working on developing one for future space colonies.

It modifies objects (planets, parts, etc.) in the KSP simulation at game load time, dependent on various conditions.

I believe ore amounts are random in KSP (within limits) unless specified - and I don't see any specifications in the mod. At least, not for the moons. (Well, Tekto's got specified that there isn't any in it's lakes.)

In general OPM doesn't need to worry about KSP updates - it needs to worry about Kopernicus updates.

To add to what others are saying, I think part of the issue is that you really have two distinct groups who use TCA: The first is people who like flying and using VTOLs on a regular basis, and want something that can do a lot of Mechjeb-type automation for that. The second is people who occasionally need to deal with something VTOL-like for a specific mission, but don't intend to use VTOLs on a regular basis. TCA 2 was someplace in-between, but leaned more towards the latter audience, as it didn't have many functions to play with. It could be used by the first group, and helped them quite a bit, but it was lacking a lot of what they needed. Hence the feature requests that you got and implemented. TCA 3 is designed more for the first group - it has the features and abilities to really make using VTOLs in-game very useful in a lot of situations where they would be a lot of manual work before. But it's lost the simplicity that helped the latter group. This is a design decision on what audience you want to court - a really good interface could serve both groups, but it takes a really good UI designer to do that, and you will make compromises. The second group doesn't really want to be 'trained' on how to use a VTOL or TCA - they don't use them often enough to care, and it would be boring, getting into the way of what they find fun in KSP. The first group would find the time and effort well-spent, rewarding, and open them up to being able to do a lot of things they want to do. Personally, I think the likely best way to serve both groups is with two mods - and I wish I was in a position to support one of them. Unfortunately, I don't have the knowledge or time (or a computer suitable for development) at the moment, though I wish I did.

Yep - as a base. Specific parts can give extra time above that, or multiply the hab time for the entire ship by some increment.

It limits uses a bit - I can see doing things like laying a solar flatbed over the bed of a Malmute or Karibou. Also I was going to say I've never used the flatbed without a chassis - but then I realized I had an example on this very page where I had: my flatbed trailer above uses a chassis segment and an AUX navigation unit, with flatbeds on top of both. So I think keeping them separate makes sense. Combined pieces only work for the uses you plan, separate pieces allow us to come up with our own uses.