Missedtrashday

Ok, so the details that I couldn’t remember before... Raster Prop Monitor adds the [JSIPrimitiveExternalCamera] part. The part is still in its proper folder c:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program/GameData/JSI/RasterPropMonitor/Library/Parts/ExternalCameraPart. The file PartDatabase.cfg doesn’t have an entry for the camera anywhere, while I can easily identify parts added by other mods. I could follow the basic template and add the camera in where it should be, but I have no idea how to calculate the DRAG_CUBE numbers, or where they come from. Any help would be appreciated.

I don’t know if anyone can help, but... after the 1.7 update several of my ships can’t be loaded/launched. The common part is the camera from RPM. The part is still in its correct place (gamedata/JSI/...), but it has no entry in the parts file. First, did this happen to anyone else? Second, if I wanted to manually add the camera back into the parts file, what would I type in order to do that? So sorry to be so vague, but I am out of the house running errands at the moment and I can’t exactly remember all the details that I would normally include. If anyone can help but needs more information, let me know what you need and I will update this thread when I get home. Thanks for any assistance!

I will check it out. Thanks!

I don’t (currently) have the skills to create such a mod, but would it be theoretically possible to lock the additional launch sites and ground communication stations behind missions? I like having to earn things, and I would love to be able to pursue a mission series about discovering neglected facilities, refurbishing them, and then have missions that require the player to launch or land from the alternate sites. As for the ground communication sites, I feel that it would be rewarding if the player could open the sites gradually by exploring and funding their refurbishment and upgrades instead of them being simply on or off. Would the game support such a mod? Would anyone besides me be interested in playing that way? Thanks in advance for any advice or discussion.

Hey, Just a follow up on the issue. After two days of testing in between having to go to my IRL job, I have found that any spring setting over 0.25 combined with any damper setting will make the base fly in the air. The rover became stable just by turning off auto springs, no adjustments to settings was necessary. That being said, I am still not 100% sure of exactly the jumping comes from in the code, but I believe that it has to be somewhere in the interaction between the redrawing of the two vessels as one vessel, and the suspension under load in full gravity. There seems to be a point in the redraw where the functionality of the parts kicks in before the attributes of the vehicle. That doesn't really hold up though, because if that were the case then all vehicles would jump regardless of how low you push the settings because any spring can push null weight to infinity. So that leaves me with a new theory. It might be that there is an order to the attributes being applied to the parts, and in the case of my vehicles (or any vehicle) wherever the wheels fall in that order leaves them pushing against a weight that, at that instant, isn't there yet. So what is working in this case is lowering the spring strength to 0.25 or lower, which is just weak enough for 36 wheels to not throw the weight of all the pieces which have properly been assigned their attributes in the air before the total operation resolves. This assumes that when two vehicles dock, the engine has to remove the two separate vehicles, combine them, and then redraw them, if not completely, then at least in part. That might not be the way it actually works though, I'm just guessing. While it has been a frustrating couple of days in the game because I wanted to get something else done, the nerd in me has enjoyed working the problem with you guys. If anyone has any better insight to the way that the docking process is handled in the code, hopefully they will see this thread and chime in.

So does the auto spring set all the springs to the same parameters, or does it balance the settings to account for asymmetrical weight distribution? If it is setting all the wheels to the same parameters, then yes that is why my big base is having such a reaction to docking with a tiny rover. What would be an appropriate setting for something that weighs 2t with 13 tiny wheels (for rough terrain stability) would be WAY off on something that weighs 37 tons and has 36 wheels (for load distribution). Extra thanks to you for the in depth experimentation and analysis.

Very interesting. More data is always welcome. It will save me, and hopefully some other people a lot of headaches in the future. Thanks again

SOLVED!! Due to the extreme weight of the mobile base (37t), the redraw of the vehicle and the application of physics after docking or undocking was causing the suspension to unload before the weight of the vehicle was applied. Therefore, the suspension was exploding to maximum extension as if the full weight of the vehicle was on it, when in reality, for just a split second the weight applied was at 0. This caused the wheels, and by extension the entire vehicle, to become airborne. By the time the vehicle returned to the ground, the weight had been properly applied, and the vehicle landed appropriately. Above I said that I had tried many variations of shock and dampener settings, but I hadn't gone low enough!. I literally needed to drag the sliders all the way left (0.5) in order to make the suspension so weak that it can't even properly carry its own weight. Thanks for the help guys.

Update: I have found a way to consistently undock the rovers without destroying the mobile base. with the vehicles docked, drive forward with the mobile base to the top of a small hill. The rigidity of the docking port will mean that the rover is suspended. Park the base with the crest of the decline between the 2nd and 3rd row of wheels on the base. The weight of the rover will lift the 5th and 6th rows of wheels off the ground. Undock the rover and drop it the short distance to the ground. Since it wasn't touching the ground at the moment of undocking, the physics don't seem to affect it. Meanwhile, the loss of the mass of the rover allows the base to rock back in its suspension as the physics rebounds it into the air. Since only the front 24 wheels are in contact with the ground, these are the only ones that get the full upward force. The base rocks back in a weird wheelie, but usually comes to rest intact. The success rate of this method has been a little better than 80% so far, which is about as good as the success rate of docking the vehicles on flat ground. Now that I have a way to work around the docking/undocking problem, I am going to experiment with some lighter vehicles to see if it is a general physics bug, or something in the mobile base that is causing the issue.

All three types of autostrut make the problem worse. Not only do the vehicles fly into the air, but they almost always manage to land exactly upside down. lol I tried to dock the vehicles in the water too. They still fly. I think that the problem is somewhere in the way that the docking collars interact with the physics engine. In space you wouldn't notice because there is no ground to fall back on, but at ground level there is only one way for the engine to throw you when it detects that the multiple vessels have now joined together, and most vehicles can't withstand a 30m, end over end, uncontrolled drop.

So I have been trying to create a modular mobile ground base that would have different plug-in rovers to wander around and gather science and resources, refuel grounded craft, etc. I had a setup in 1.4.5 that worked really well, but when I attempted to rebuild the same vehicles in 1.6, every time the docking ports connect or disconnect, the vehicles fly 30 meters into the air and crash back down, invariably destroying some vital component or other. Possible solutions that I have tried: 1. Remove all mods --still happens in vanilla 2. set parking brake on larger vehicle, dock driving smaller vehicle 3. set parking brake on smaller vehicle, dock driving larger vehicle 4. park both vehicles on level ground, release all brakes move vehicles together at 0.1 m/s until docked 5. roll vehicles down gentle slope, dock with vehicles in motion 6. switch all vehicle suspension to override, try hard springs, soft springs, light dampers, and heavy dampers About the only thing I can think of that I haven't tried is to float both vehicles in water and try to dock them there, but even if that works it is of limited use because Mun, Minmus, Duna, etc. don't have water to facilitate the result. If anyone else has seen this problem and overcome it I would greatly appreciate it. Also, any suggestions of things I haven't tried yet or might have overlooked would be welcome.

I probably could have gotten the adapter cheaper, but the Best Buy is in the next parking lot from the hospital I work at. I chose convenience over frugality in this instance because the adapter was only $3 more than at Wal Mart, which is across town. Again, thanks for the redirect. I was thinking strictly in terms of file transfers instead of capabilities. I don’t know if I would have ever arrived at this solution on my own.

UPDATE The USB WiFi adapter I got from Best Buy worked like a champ. Upgrade complete. Thanks to all you guys for your help.

I am going to stop by Best Buy today on the way home to see if I can get an inexpensive wi-fi USB for my desktop. I will report back later tonight with the results.