AHHans

[Cue Adam Savage from the Mythbusters:] "Ah, theeere's your problem!" You don't land on Gilly, you dock to Gilly. O.K. Jokes aside: what works for me is to: a) "land" at really low speed (< 1 m/s). For the last few meter I indeed use RCS to slow down, and try to get to a zero-zero landing. (Well, try to...) And b) once I'm more ore less down and wobble around on the landing legs, I use RCS to push me downwards to the ground to dampen the oscillations. I.e. burn downwards when the navball shows the prograde marker.

Indeed! I used to add extra (radial-)decouplers with only some (manual-)struts to the movable parts to my crafts to tie down everything for launch. But that is not needed anymore. And autostruts being what they are, this now also works on my craft already in space. Happy times!

I just made a quick test, and it seems that which port is the "primary docking node" (i.e. has the "undock" PAW action) doesn't have an effect. With the latest version you can change the primary docking node (i.e. you either have the "undock" or an "Make Primary Docking Node" PAW action on a docked port), but not matter which port was the primary: in both cases after undocking the active vessel was the same and had the (test-)maneuver node.

Yes, locking a movable part does make it more rigid. Even better, the autostruts can traverse a locked part. So if you have an autostrut to root on a part behind a robotic part, then that autostrut will end at the robotic part if the robotic part is not locked, but will actually go to the root part of the vessel if said robotic part is locked.

Sounds like a nice idea, I like it.

Yup, that's what they're there for.

No, I haven't tried the KerboKatz mod. But what I do is to turn down the "science rewards" slider in the difficulty settings for my career games down to 50% (standard for "hard" is 60%), after I unlocked the full tech-tree in my very first playthrough even before leaving the Kerbin system. I enjoy the challenge of designing missions with limited technological resources. (But I also enjoy playing with fancy toys, that's what I use a sandbox save for. Right now in my current career save I wait to unlock all the stuff needed for my Eve-ascend-plane.) And, no, I didn't do a scientific study on how people prefer to play KSP. But looking around on the forums I see more people commenting on how easy it is to unlock the tech tree than there are complaining that it is impossible to convert funds to science.

Why is using a mod that can convert funds to science not cheating, and using the Alt-F12 menu cheating? It depends on how you use it. If you only add science points when you also subtract the corresponding amount of funds, then I don't see why this is cheating. It is uncomfortable. Sure. But IMHO not cheating. You want to play the game in a way that is different than how most people want to play it. That's fine! But to do so may require some unconventional / inconvenient methods.

A somewhat late, but still heartfelt welcome from me @bootsam AH, yes, the good old times. When I did my very first Minmus mission, collected science from several biomes on Minmus, get back to Kerbin, aero-braked at Kerbin without burning up, hit <space>, aaaand ... nothing happened. Someone forgot to mount parachutes... (Yes, I did only notice that when the parachutes didn't want to deploy...) Luckily the Kerbals have personal parachutes, and with Valentina holding the capsule steady and using the remaining fuel to slow down, Bob managed to hold onto the capsule long enough to pick up all the science. An exercise in formation flying later both were safely on the ground. Don't worry, that still happens when you have a few hundred hours of gameplay under your belt... My latest Eve-Gilly utility spaceship now has an ugly adapter on its forward docking port. But being powered by terrier engines (that don't have alternators to generate electricity) I didn't want to rely solely on the internal battery in the MK1-3 capsule. Finally I would like to submit to the list of rites of passage: "unintentionally playing lawn-darts with Kerbals". Although I'd guess that you already passed this one.

IIRC there are only two instantaneous, one-time exchange strategies in the stock game: to sell science for funds and to sell reputation for funds. I guess the canonical way to convert funds to science is to - *drumroll* - use the funds to build a rocket (or plane, or whatever) and perform some experiments. P.S. And, yes, for what @Wjolcz wants I'd also suggest the Alt+F12 menu.

Are you using a KAL-1000 controller? Its settings overwrite anything you set in the VAB. (Well, technically "update" not "overwrite"...)

O.K. Then I will most emphatically NOT mention strategies! P.S. SCNR

Quick answer: I don't know why the parts in your vessel behave so strange. In particular why some parts don't seem to move at all, even though they should... Are you using any mods that interfere with the working of the robotic parts?

Well, it was built by Kerbals. What do you expect?

Well, the problem is that they tend to vanish in a cloud of smoke when you start cutting.

It is also my experience that setting the lock has a high chance to fail because "the part is moving". So using the "toggle locked" is next to useless because you don't really know which state it actually has afterwards. (And if you try to control more than one part, then the status gets out of sync almost immediately.) So for "classic" action groups I don't use "toggle lock" but one group to set the locks and another one to release them. So that when I want to set the locks I can hit the "set locks" button as often as needed to get all parts locked. My suggestion is to use the same method with the KAL-1000: don't use "Toggle Locked", but use "Engage Servo Lock" and "Disengage Servo Lock", and to be on the safe (well, "somewhat safer") side put more than one "Engage Servo Lock" actions into the timeline, in case the first didn't work. But I haven't tried that myself yet. Edit: My suggested timeline would be: some time with no movement but a few "set lock" actions one "release lock" action the actual movement one "release lock" action some time with no movement but a few "set lock" actions That way you can play the sequence in both directions. The superfluous set- or release-lock actions should just be ignored.

[...] I just noticed that the OP is already a few days old. Is this still an open question? Short version: if you don't just want to "flip a switch" but to "adjust a slider", then you need to use an axis control group. If you also want to "flip a switch" when "slider > 0" then you can do that with the new KAL-1000.

A quote from the documentation of the Kerbalism mod: "Contrary to popular belief, the observable universe is not a sphere of a 3km radius centered around the active vessel." (here) But in KSP that is exactly the case! Everything further than 3km from the active vessel doesn't really exist, or you could say, that they exist in a state of non-existence. But before I get too philosophical, back to the gameplay consequences: in stock KSP no electricity is ever added or drained to unloaded (= not simulated, i.e. far from the current vessel) vessels. So if you leave a vessel on low ECs because you just made a bunch of maneuvers and drained the batteries, it will not have recharged even if it spent ages with its solar panels in the sun and nothing running that drains ECs. But also if you have a vessel with a continuous power drain - like the research lab, or and ISRU system - and not enough power generation to fulfill that need, as long as it had some ECs left in the batteries when it is unloaded (e.g. because you go back to the space center) it will "keep working"(*) until the vessel is loaded the next time. Which is considered a kind of cheat by most people. From this follows, that: no, relays don't need electricity to relay science. P.S. (*) They don't really work while they are not loaded. But when they are loaded the next time then the system computes how much it would have done (science generated for the lab, or ore mined/converted for an ISRU) since the last time they were visited.

Well, for the launch from Kerbin I just set them to locked in the VAB. Once in orbit I can unlock, set to new position, wait till the wiggling has died down, and finally can lock them. Sometimes the locking doesn't work on the first try, but it does work after a few tries. If you are in free-fall with no other forces working on your vessel, then all movement should die down after a while. For my folding-wing Eve plane - that needs to unfold its wings in Eve's atmosphere - I set it up so that the unfolded position of the wings is at the stop (180 degrees) of the hinges and that the lift forces will push the hinges into the stop. That one I also have to "wiggle around" so that the wind catches the wings in the right way to push them into the unfolded position. [Edit:] P.S. Because locking doesn't always work for me on the first try, I don't use the "toggle lock" action. If I do use an action group for the locks, then I use separate ones for "set lock" and "release lock". I also control each joint manually before proceeding. P.P.S. Hmmm... I guess that means my answer to your question is: "I don't. (Get a reliable lock.)"

I also would like struts - or at least something like rope - in the game! But, @SolarAdmiral have you tried autostruts in your vessel? They way they work now in the latest patch, is that they end at a movable joint that is not locked but can go across that part if the joint is locked. So with strategic use of autostruts and locking/unlocking of the joints one can get reasonably sturdy vessels.

Except for "STAGE_GROUP_INFO_ITEMS" - which I changed via the UI in the game - I have the same values in my settings.cfg. I never manually changed mine, so I guess what you listed are now the default values.

@Loskene The root of the problem is not really something Unity specific. Whenever you (try to) simulate rotating physical objects in cartesian coordinates you'll run into these kinds of problems. In cartesian coordinates the forces on rotating parts change all the time, so if you only compute the forces at the beginning (or end) of a time-step, then you'll never get them 100% correct. If the rotation is slow compared to the time-steps of the simulation then the effects are small (or negligible), but at higher RPMs you'll get these simulation artifacts. You could get around that by doing the simulation of the rotating parts in a co-rotating reference frame. But implementing this is a teeny, tiny bit of work. (I'd estimate about one master thesis worth of work.) P.S. What Mister Bond has to say about this issue.

Ah! Come on. That's WW1 tank armor at best.

I haven't explicitly tried that, but that is my plan for when (if?) I need it. (After loading a savefile all the motors are off, so I need to get the plane into a situation to survive without power anyhow.) Nope. I did notice that the deformation that you can see in a "healthy" propeller (no time-warping, no saving or so, just looking at the propeller spinning) gets better when I lower the RPM from 460 to 440. But not better enough to survive time-warping.

Well, I haven't found one. To make matters worse: when I save while a plane is flying with spinning propellers then there is a chance that the propellers are messed up in the save-file and the plane is unflyable after loading the save.