HandyAndy

Hello, I am a noob and I am lost. Any help appreciated. I have only a basic, cobbled-together understanding of Module Manager from digging into cfgs and reverse engineering things. To simulate life support and also provide some more reason to put giant overkill solar panels on your big-ass space station, I am trying to add a small ElectricCharge consumption to every crewed part (not just commmand pods, but hitchhiker too, and science lab, as well as any other cool parts I find in mods) (I don't wish to add any consequences such as Kerbals dying when it runs out, though). This is the way I have achieved it so far, but I dislike that the "generator nominal efficiency 1.00" text is appearing in every in crewed in-flight part menu: @PART[*]:HAS[@INTERNAL]:Final { MODULE { name = ModuleGenerator isAlwaysActive = true OUTPUT_RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge rate = -0.75 } } } I copied and pasted the ModuleGenerator from the stock RTG, and simply put a minus sign in front of the rate. Is the rate per second or per minute? While it drains EC, it doesn't seem to be very fast. I was wondering if it would be better to try and add a power-draining light module to the parts instead of ModuleGenerator? Or maybe try a negative rate solar panel module? Is there a simple way to say "Hey part, please drain x resource"? Maybe add ModuleResourceDrain? Thanks

If you are copying an existing part, renaming the new part is essential, otherwise, yeah, the game won't figure out that it exists and you'll be wondering where it is and what you did wrong.

THANK YOU THAT'S PERFECT!

I am looking for cool, useful or useless station parts that come alone. In particular, I would like just one centrifuge part. I really dig the gorgeous Stockalike Station Parts mod(s). The reason we go to that mod is because the stock game is a bit lacking in station parts of course. Unfortunately my problem with Stockalike Station Parts mod is that I don't want to load the huge number of textures it has, and I don't really know how to separate out just a couple of parts I'd like to keep without the mod also re-skinning a lot of the stock parts. Any tips on where to look for one piece here and there to add to my station would be awesome. For example, I love the SETIgreenhouse. It has no functionality in my game, it's just a single, cool looking part. https://spacedock.info/mod/19/SETI-Greenhouse

You can absolutely mod the part yourself to give you whatever stats you desire. Good on you for not going for OP

Honestly, once I learned how to do a rendezvous, I never did one without MechJeb ever again.

You can edit the .cfg file for the solar panel you want, change the 'sun tracking = true' into a 'false'.

I did build a robotic arm using many stock robotic parts, with the klaw on the end. I was able to use this to capture a spacecraft that came very close and stopped still right in front of me using precise RCS thrust. However the effort required to align every single elbow joint was massive and very annoying, and I found out soon that once the new ship had become part of the space station on the end of the klaw, it would no longer dock to a docking port while using the arm. So while it was a fun idea, it's not really feasible the way the game is right now. To address your original problem of a craft not having RCS, you can use the main engine to match velocity, and have a klaw on the end of a long piston, and shoot it out as quick and accurately as you can when the moment is right, without any aiming of rotating joints. This would accomplish refueling (like a mid-air refueling probe on a jet fighter) but depending how realistically you want to play probably wouldn't be appropriate for transferring crew. Unless of course you used Tweakscale or similar to make the piston and the klaw much bigger!! I'd be interested to hear if you made a robotic arm that worked for 'berthing'.

The Auto-strut included in the game works mostly great. Grandparent might be tricky if it ends up Auto-strutting to a tiny part that will be floppy in itself. Best to save this only for radial boosters to Auto-strut to the core stage while skipping the decoupler. As for the other two options, in big constructions I tend to have a couple of the biggest parts (or parts nearby a docking port or decoupler or reaction wheel) Auto-strutted to the 'root part', and the root part Auto-strutted to the 'heaviest part', and that kind of circular logic seems to hold everything together nicely. Remember that an Auto-strut connection is like using a Strut part and using them everywhere will increase your system lag. If you are building a huge vessel out of many docked smaller parts, I would add you might want to switch off or reduce the authority of some reaction wheels and use RCS for attitude control. I have experienced problems with two sides of a docking connection beginning to flex themselves to death wildly all on their own which even the Auto-strut did not help --- but, EVA struts did! You use an Engineer kerbal to attach them, this is stock now with no mod needed. One downside is that sometimes when you leave that vessel and reload it later, the strut ends are still attached where you left them but the steel bar itself is not there anymore.

I don't know the above, but I have found Docking Port Sound Effects to be the essential sound mod. Ka-chunk!

Thanks. PS: have just checked out your SIMPLEX Assembly 1.0 -- hooray for bigger EVA building! Thanks again!

Apologies if there is already a thread on this somewhere. After many years of enjoying mods I have begun to dip a toe into making my own, and learning from scratch. My first goal is to make a basic go-up-come-down pod with a bare minimum of parts to aid in performance. Like, 2 parts. So far I have been able to squash solar panels, decoupler, and all the propellant I need into an edited version of the Squad stock Mk1-3 Command Pod. I am trying to also add fore/aft RCS, engines, parachutes, and docking port. Another thing I did was fill in the gaps in the Structural catergory, in terms of 1.875m adaptors, hub, and docking ports, by simply changing 'rescaleFactor' in the .cfg files. Baby steps! So anyway, it's a fun little project and it would be nice to share it, but before I do of course I wonder if sharing only very slightly altered Squad stock parts (even with attribution) as my own mod is taboo. Or actionable. As an aside, if I accomplished the same thing by writing a Module Manager script instead of copying the whole part, would this be less so? Thanks