JamesonKerbal

WOLF is MKS industry without the part count. There are a bunch of WOLF parts that provide an analogue to the MKS industry parts (harvesters, refineries, assembly plants, power, life support), but to use them you survey WOLF-specific resources ("resource veins") in each biome, then you "deploy" the base to the biome at which point the model ceases to exist in the game and is now represented as a bunch of numbers reflecting production rates in that biome. So instead of a thousand-part industrial base that slows your frame rate to 0.3fps every time you load it into physics range and in return supplies you with a few thousand MaterialKits per day, you get empty landscape with WOLF infrastructure hiding in a table in the save file ("WOLF space" which consumes zero processor cycles). To get the industrial output back into fps-chewing MKS space, you use a WOLF Hopper and the usual MKS storage (2 parts) which can consume some level of WOLF productivity (capacity to produce at X units/s) and turn it into MKS production (actual X units every second). In addition WOLF allows for automated transfers between biomes: if you have a space station in orbit around Duna that needs propellant supplies you can produce "WOLF fuel" at Kerbin Shores, transfer it to the KSC biome, transfer from there to Kerbin Orbit biome, then to Duna Orbit biome, then on the space station itself you have a WOLF Hopper which takes the "WOLF fuel" and turns it into LF+O, monopropellant, LF, or oxidiser. This means instead of carefully planning a dozen fuel tankers to be transferred to Duna every synod you just do it once and then let WOLF take care of transfers from there. WOLF is MKS without: the giant save file the need to visit every vessel every now and then to check that production lines are actually working the surprise nuclear reactor over-heat because you dared to warp time faster than 100x for a few seconds the fps-chewing part count Hope this helps. I did start writing a tutorial some time back and I should get around to finishing it. It's only been what... three years?

MKS with Global Construction is a workable combination. You can use various modules from MKS to produce the MaterialKits that GC uses to construct things from DIY Kits. You can also create DIY kits using GC or MKS, eg: set up a craft to land a specific DIY kit at your destination, then build that craft using the MKS orbital shipyard. Then use the MKS infrastructure to deliver MaterialKits to the build site. Various MKS parts include the Workshop module that GC needs, with decent efficiency so you can build things faster. GC is my go-to option for landing large rovers because I just do not enjoy building large complicated EDL vehicles. Much easier to land a series of large boxes that can be entirely encapsulated in a fairing and protected by a 10m inflatable heat shield. One caveat is that MKS construction uses a mix of parts: MaterialKits (equal in number to the mass of the vehicle being constructed, each MK is 1kg), Specialised Part, Alloys, Electronics, Prototypes, Robotics, Synthetics (various combinations reflecting how many of what type of modules are present, the tech level of the modules, and so forth). Global Construction on the other hand just uses mountains of MaterialKits to build things from DIY kits and I never bothered to measure just how many but it felt like about twice to three times as many MaterialKits as MKS for the same vehicle. I haven't used EPL at all so I can't comment on that.

Not really integrates, but they play okay together. MKS has an orbital construction ability that magics vessels into existence in space, while Global Construction works with DIY kits that are put in the place that you want the final object to appear. Global Construction and MKS both use Material Kits resource, though MKS has more resource types and a far more complicated industry chain. There are a number of ways to produce Material Kits using MKS, including a 2.5m in-line component that converts Ore directly to Material Kits, or various sizes of assembly line that produce Material Kits from inputs of Polymers, Metals and Chemicals (which are in turn processed from the raw materials of Substrate, Metallic Ore and Minerals respectively, which are mined using MKS mining equipment while the stock drill-o-matics continue to only mine Ore).

There is a formula out there somewhere but I couldn't find it in a few minutes of searching. So I landed an extractor on the Mun, and found that in an area of 5.79% concentration of Uraninite the MEU-100-A Pulse Drill was extracting 0.046282/s while the MEU-500-A Pulse Drill was extracting 0.075787/s, giving a 60% greater extraction rate. The "-A" components are autonomous, so they harvest at a higher rate than the normal components but they get no bonuses for having crew present. Hope this helps. If you installed the addons after starting a game, you can end up with broken tech tree. Try creating a new career/science game and check the tech tree for that game. For one of my games all of the MKS industry components are available under the "Advanced Construction" node including Crush-O-Matic and the ATLAS equivalent modules. Also try using the search box in the R&D screen. If you search for "Crush" (case sensitive!) the node with that module will be highlighted with a yellow box. If the new game has the node in the expected place, it's likely your current game is broken.

MKS refining and manufacturing will work in the background but there are conditions. "Stuff" is updated when the facility comes back into physics range. If you've been away for a few minutes you'll get one update of that few minutes worth of extraction/refinement/manufacture/fabrication. If you've been away for one or more days of game time (1 Kerbal day = 6 hours), "stuff" will be updated for the days you were missing, one day at a time, then for the remaining time after that hour (the daily update is the important part, I'm not sure if the remainder comes first or last). Thus if you want to have an autonomous system you need enough storage to hold one day's worth of every output. If you want to extract metallic ore and refine it to metals you need enough electricity generation and storage, enough heat dissipation, and enough metallic ore storage to keep the extractor running for a day (six hours), then you need enough electricity and metallic ore production/storage and metals storage to last for a day. And then you need to take into account the presence of any engineers, mechanics, technicians, miners, geologists, etc as applies to your equipment. Your base might have enough storage and energy to sustain production with no crew, but then you add an engineer and suddenly production increases by 500% and now you run out of energy, overheat your radiators, blow up your reactor, etc. So for every extractor, make sure you have energy in batteries, a power supply that can deliver the sustained energy that the extractor needs, enough product storage, and make sure that this budget allows for ~200% of capacity. There are autonomous options for each extractor which are not affected by crew, they are excellent for small mining drones. I typically put a couple of the autonomous extractors and a few thousand units of storage on a "Duna" Logistics Hub (with a small nuclear reactor, radiators, Terrier engines, propellant tanks, probe core, etc) and drop those where they're useful and ignore them for the rest of the game. Make sure to turn on "Planetary Warehouse" on the storage and production from that autonomous mining drone will go into planetary inventory. Here's an example autonomous facility, you can swap out the MEU-100-A Pulse Drills for regular MEU-100 Pulse Drills and this facility with crank out more stuff than you'll know what to do with. Essential parts here are MKS "Duna" Power Distribution Unit, MKS "Ranger" Thermal Control System, MKS "Duna" Logistics Center, 4 x MEU-100-A Pulse Drill, plenty of supplementary battery, 2 x 2.5m Kontainer Tank - Flat (2.5m), with a few other parts to make it visually appealing and useful for Kerbals. You can use a much smaller reactor and only 1 extractor, but I figure if something's worth doing it's worth overdoing. Then here's a version of that with larger extractors set up as a lander with copious part clipping:

I had to turn it off and back on again. There are a number of issues with WOLF that require quitting to desktop and relaunching KSP1. There were a number of janky workarounds that I explored but the only reliable one was turning it off and back on again. There are other janky issues like WOLF hoppers not staying connected/on. The WOLF resource would still be consumed in that biome, the hopper would still be producing the equivalent MKS resource, but the buttons in the Part Action Window would show "connect to depot" instead of "disconnect from depot" and "start hopper" instead of "stop hopper". This issue is relatively harmless and the workaround is to simply toggle the buttons or ignore them. Note that WOLF hoppers will also do annoying stuff like keep consuming resources from their origin biome when you move them to a new biome without disconnecting them first. Whether this is a bad thing or a good thing is up to you.

Using MKS parts you can "perform maintenance" on the nuclear fuel container that you want to move enrU into. I'm not sure about the mechanics of depleted fuel transfers. I've always had depleted uranium storage on my maintenance vehicles so it's always just worked.

Yes, same button. It doesn't care whether you're transferring between things on the ground or in space, the forklift is magic!

Yes. New ships will be spawned outside 200m, maximum transfer range is 250m. If you're spawning a new ship and don't get the ability to transfer consumables using the logistics window, there's something wrong.

The issue here is launching a vessel in KSP. I suspect there's an issue with complex vessels where some cleanup is done between the VAB/SPH and "launching" through the normal KSP means, and that cleanup isn't done when a craft is simply spawned. I've had craft explode before launch due to collisions between parts without the involvement of add-ons.

When this has happened to me I've sometimes been able to get the craft to launch by changing the root part in the VAB/SPH. Sometimes I've managed to get the issue to go away by "launching" the craft (ie: from VAB or SPH, click the launch button). On other occasions it's been a case of pruning the part tree (ie: taking off a part that has other parts attached to it) to find which part of the craft is creating the problem, then building it back piece by piece until you find which component was causing the problem. Sometimes it will be a part that was clipped or rotated, other times it will simply be a mystery that goes away just because you rebuilt that part of the craft. Hope this helps.

Which resources are you using for fund raising? Every time I try to recover vehicles containing mined resources I end up going broke because they end up being worth negative funds.

Yes, it's a bug introduced in KSP 1.11 and still present in 1.12 where KSP is calculating the value of a recovered craft based on its "PREFAB" price, which does terrible things for parts that have been modified using TweakScale, or parts that now have more resources in them than the PREFAB data says they should. The "fix" was a terrible hack packaged into KSP-Recall introducing a new resource called "refunding" which has negative value. The catch is that MKS is a resource based mod that handles resource logistics beyond just transferring stuff between docked tanks, so MKS in combination with KSP-Recall will just cause you endless problems. If you want to fund your space program by mining resources and then recovering the filled mining trucks, you need to stick with KSP 1.10 (or earlier). I addressed the issue by avoiding launching or recovering vehicles involved in resource gathering, and raising funds by carefully selecting missions.

Do you have KSP-Recall installed? That's an addon which gets around part refund costs that would send you broke if you recovered a vehicle that came back home with more mined materials than you launched it with. The "Refunding" resource is the hack used in that add-on to overcome the negative pricing of other resources in KSP 1.11+ You should find other resources being added to Planetary Logistics as the various Kontainers fill up. Note that they'll deposit to Planetary Logistics when inventory exceeds about ¾, then they'll pull from Planetary Logistics when the inventory drops below a similar amount (like ¼ or so). I don't know how the Refunding resource is represented in game, but if it's something that shows up like other resources make sure to fill it back up (and turn off Planetary Warehouse on the kontainer) before you recover the vehicle, otherwise you're in for an expensive return home. I gave up on trying to make money by mining (I found the KSP Recall add-on and read up on how it hacks around the recovered vehicle cost bug and decided not to try living with that kind of hack) and just used Ground Construction which lets me build things on the ground. MKS has orbital shipyards but they will only build things in orbit — I do have some designs for flying or rocket powered descent vehicles to drop rovers from orbit but I figured once I was in space it was cheaper to direct my industrial efforts towards Minmus. I raise cash by carefully selecting the missions that will pay me to launch the rockets I was going to launch anyway: "oh nice, you're paying me to create a new station around Minmus? I'll stick some mining equipment on it and repurpose it as a mining base after satisfying the contract terms!"

Is there any way to automatically set alarms with the "Display onscreen message if the alarm isn't for the active vessel" option? in the UI it's the button with the rocket superimposed on the top right of the envelope.