DStaal

My guess (without looking at the log file) is that what's happened is that USI LS has attached modules to all your existing ships to track things, and now KSP doesn't know what to do with those modules. Two options (assuming you want to keep this save), if that's the case: Go through and carefully edit the persistence file to remove the USI-LS modules. Dangerous if you make a mistake, but the cleaner option in the long run. Reinstall USI-LS and disable it. (By disabling all of it's effects.) It's a bit less clean in that you're keeping the module around, but it's safer and easier.

Ok, here are logs, as promised: http://www.magehandbook.com/KSP/DSEV.KSP.log (Note that's a direct link, and my server's upload speed may not be great - I assume clicking 'save as' will be a good idea.) I didn't do much in that session - just loaded and played around in the VAB a bit - but I've got a lot of mods in there.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

The start of the KSP tech tree is 50's/60's tech, yes. The end of it is at least current tech in stock. By the time a 'pirate a ship' contract comes out, (or 'defend against pirates'), you should be near at least current tech, and a scan of the system for ships can be done in under a Kerbal day with late-90's consumer-level tech. (Minus the optics - but even there it's not that it's hard, it's just that the average consumer has no use for them, so they aren't consumer-tech.) Near-earth asteriods don't maneuver (which is going to light up a nice big beacon saying 'here I am' - which is why I called that trivially easy). The main issue with near-earth asteroids is just political willpower/funding: It's a low priority, and it doesn't get the resources it needs - which at the moment is to work out the tracks of everything in the solar system. (Because we can't say something isn't a near-earth asteroid at some point in it's future until we've worked out it's orbit.) Oh, which brings up the next point: For near-earth asteroids, we need to calculate their orbits for several decades in advance, including all things that could perturb them. Which also means we need to see where they are now even though they aren't necessarily anywhere near us now. (See below.) Plotting a ship's current trajectory is several orders of magnitude easier: You need it's position, mass, and velocity. If you spotted it's exhaust plume, you have all of that already. If they were clever enough to keep you from spotting that, it's going to take you a couple of minutes of work with a telescope. I'll leave the article to cover why stealth systems or ultra-absorptive coatings don't work, except to say that the first and second laws of thermodynamics are a poodle. But to back up a moment, the main problem really is that if you're going to run a pirate ship you need the ability to navigate yourself. If you can do that fairly safely without a government-level budget you need to be able to track asteroids (AKA: hazards to your ship) on your own path without outside help, using an affordable piece of gear. If that gear exists, a government can afford to deploy it in multiples, which is easily enough to defeat any reasonable space-stealth regime. Now, I am willing to concede that sensors on Kerbol might not be able to track a ship trying to keep from being observed around Jool very well - distance does play a factor. The site I linked to gives an equation for detection ranges - and an example of a decent-sized space ship gives a detection range of about 40,000,000km. So if they were being careful, they might be able to hide even around Duna for a while. But if we assume there's something to pirate out there, it's likely going to be another ship or a base - which should have it's own sensors, feeding back to the KSC.

That sounds like a stock behavior that's occasionally encountered. It's inherent in the tradeoffs made to make KSP work. What is saying they are incompatible? I don't believe KSP does much checking on that issue...

Unfortunately, that's actually very unrealistic: 'There ain't no stealth in space' Basically, it's trivially easy to spot anything that fires off any form of propulsion system, and not much harder to detect anything that's running such high-heat items as computers or life support. Essentially stealth is 'hiding among the background noise' - and the background noise in space is about 2.725K. If you're significantly warmer than that, you'll be easy to spot. More realistic would be to dock with one particular ship in a fleet - and have the rest of the fleet scatter (or just disappear...) if you dock with any of them. An easy version would be you know which particular ship it is, medium would be you know what type of ship it is in a mixed fleet, hard being you have to scan for some id marker. (If that last is possible.)

Is it possible in KSP to do 'dock out of line-of-sight from ____'? (Kerbin, a specific base/station, etc.)

Interesting. I look forward to seeing what this becomes. Size considerations: What size do you see this being? Would it fit in a cargo bay? (Or KPBS's garage?)

Just to clarify: You mean to downgrade WildBlueTools, right? (That's the difference I see between that link and my current install of DSEV.)

A quick note: I'm having issues with switching the configuration of the trusses. Attempting a switch gets me an exception (as noted by Exception Detector), and nothing happening. I'll try to remember to grab a log next time I see it happen.

I’ve done a couple of science-experiment autonomous rovers that fit. The basic idea being that the Karibou is a mobile base, but it's a bit big and bulky to get everywhere. So you get it to a decent central location, then send the rover platform out to run experiments and come back to the base. I’m not sure if you can build one that holds a Kerbal that will fit though.

Finally got a chance to play around with this. Fun. Two things stand out to me as could use some tweaking, if possible - and they're kinda related, in a way. First off, the capsule won't hold a bottom-first approach through the atmosphere without SAS, as far as I can tell. Not a major issue on it's own - I'll just use SAS. However, it combines with the other: The capsule's just a bit light on the EC. The result for me has been a 50% loss rate as the capsules run out of EC just as the parachute needs to be deployed. (Which I tend to do manually - I haven't wrapped my head around the auto-deploy sliders yet; it's been a low priority.) Fixing the first would probably give you enough EC - it would reduce usage by 0.01/s though reentry, which might be just enough. Or the simpler solution would just be to bump up the EC to 40 or 50. (Honestly, 35 would likely be enough for my situation - but so far I've been returning them from 200km orbits. It'd be nice to have enough to return direct from a high Kerbin orbit - anything above that and you can probably afford to stick a solar panel or something on it for the transit.)

I ran into an interesting corner case today: This mod will auto-complete experiments from a WildBlueIndustries MOLE - despite those normally being required to be loaded into a specific part, and have you spend time and resources to complete them. (I haven't tried with Station Science, but it has a similar system.) Is there a good way to exclude them from this mod? Note they do not show up directly in the right-click menu - they're only available through a custom interface.

A pic of the craft would help greatly, as would logs.

That's circular reasoning: You're saying it needs to include EL because it conflicts with EL because it includes EL. If it was distributed as a set of config files without EL it would work as an add-on. You could even include instructions on how to remove the EL parts. Now, I see why it's done the way it is (less work for the end-user), but it bugs me on how it's presented. But this has gone way to far off-topic, especially for something I tried to make an insignificant footnote. If someone wants to continue to argue with me on it, send me a PM and I'll be glad to continue the argument - but I don't think it's important enough to be taking over this thread, or any other for that matter. My opinion on the issue isn't really germane in any context.

Maybe it's just my take on it, but nothing in it's name or the main download links mention that's it's basically EL with different parts. From a cursory inspection it'd look like it's a direct competitor to EL, when really it's an alternate parts pack. I'm not even sure it's all that much lighter a mod - Simple Construction uses/requires InterstellarFuelSwitch, which EL doesn't, so there's an extra DLL vs. having a few very simple new parts with EL. But again - that bugs me, and I'm just some random KSP player. The complaint is personal feeling, and I have no real stake in it either way. I don't know why anyone should listen to me on the issue.

Close: Extraplanetary Launchpads

I tend to use those on ships produced via EL - which is the 'assembled in space' option.

I should note that while the modifiers exist, they are hard to notice. Nothing specifically points them out, so their effects can get missed in the general variations over everything else.

They already improve the values a bit, though more on the UKS side - there are some penalties if you have less than 5 Kerbals in a site/ship.

Nothing like that - and it really doesn't affect you here, but since the discussion on long-term science was happening I thought I could ask, to be polite. MOLE has a science system where you send an experiment up - not a part, just an abstract set of instructions/materials for the experiment in a special container - run it, and then return it to Kerbin for science. Running it takes time and scientists, and different experiments can require you have different parts attached to your ship, or that you have resources available, etc. Creating these experiments is just writing a config file that describes them. So all I'm planning on doing is writing some experiment setups & results that require the player to have some of the SEP pack attached to their ship. (Which is where the difficulty in setting it up comes in - you need to have set it up and figured out a way to attach it to your ship.) As an example, one I'm thinking on would have you setup a retroreflector and monitor it for a while - measuring the change in distance to Kerbin. You set it up, get the monitoring going with your scientists in the MOLE, and then after a while you get a result set you can ship back to Kerbin. (Not transmit: You need to send the same instructions/materials pack you sent out back.)

Ok. BTW: Would you guys mind if I made some extra experiments using this pack for MOLE's long term science system? (This would be an interesting set to combine with them - it'd be a difficult mission to set up.)

What I'm worried about is if the heat shield could actually shield the rest of the ship - even if it's designed with a taper. The ship design looks like it uses the shockwave and the taper to keep the rest of the ship from burning up - that's what I'm worried about working.

I was reading through the Atomic Rockets site, and came across what would be an interesting and useful engine (if it's possible) in KSP. It's on the bottom of this ship: The point from where the landing legs end down is the engine: It's a truncated areospike, with a heat-shield built on the end. The overall design is for a single-stage-to-orbit reusable craft: It can take off and do a powered landing using the areospike engine, and use the heat-shield for reentry. I'm not entirely sure if the KSP aerodynamics model could handle such a part - obviously it depends on the shockwave extending outwards from the shield itself - but it would be an interesting part (or two parts - the engine and a heat shield that's designed to fit on it), and I could see it being very useful for things like landing on Duna.

Um, DMagic was the one who chimed in with the details on the plans for longer term experiments. I assume he's qualified to make the additions to his own DLL...