IO

Yeah, I can't reproduce it. Tested with and without vessel naming configured and I get "Pegasus 2" while "Pegasus 1" is docked to a station. Vessel name is stored in the history on launch, it doesn't matter if it docks something or not. The only 2 things that can alter history are decoupling (or undocking) or renaming the vessel. Neither should apply here from as far as I can tell. Maybe the history somehow got corrupted and it fails to save? If the history is empty (which should be the case right after installation) the plugin will look at all currently existing vessels to populate it, so the docked vessels get skipped (until they undock). The game stores docked vessel info, so I guess that part could get improved, but again, shouldn't matter in this case. Unless history got corrupted it should get the "3".

WDYM? It is exactly how the mod works. I did some testing and it appears to still work (although I spotted there's an issue with duplicate entries in the naming history). Do you have a setup in which it didn't work? I support renaming, so if you launch "Enterprise A", you can rename it after the launch to "Enterprise" and if you want the next one to be "Enterprise A" instead of "Enterprise B", you can again rename it. The numbering will restart at B for the subsequent launches. If a player needs special handling for a vessel they can rename the vessel themselves. It will be easier for them too rather than trying to remember the format for this one special case. Seems a little out of scope, but I could add that as an option. I'm not sure how much interest is there for such a feature. I should probably just add an option to define them via .cfg file.

Oops, it's an error in the post, it has its own letter. Fixed, thanks.

AO for moving parts is tricky. Compromises were made

Well one of the problems with Contract Configurator is: even with all conditions met it can take time before a contract is generated. While testing I often had to timewarp to the next day (something even more) in the space center view to get a contract I was testing. If you consistently don't get one though, something is indeed wrong. From what I can see the polar contract doesn't have any hidden or complex requirements so it shouldn't have any issues generating.

Ok a major update, I edited the OP with the details but tl;dr: added two more ways of specifying the naming template and added support for the vessel naming stock feature. Added. Will add later. EDIT: done Good idea, but it's indeed more complicated to implement. Maybe later.

I keep a list of all sats added via contract, so it should be doable.

Updated to include NATO Phonetic Alphabet and excel-column-like handling for the Latin and Greek alphabets.

I'm not using the stock module, IIRC it doesn't support rotation limits. IDK about rounding errors producing jerky motion: I interpolate the current and the target direction via https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Mathf.SmoothDampAngle.html so even if the former jumps around the movement should still be smooth. About deploy animation: I had one other person asking about it, so I'll probably add it and handle it within the module.

Right now it's not supported so it defaults to an empty string. "26 ought to be enough for anybody", but yeah I should probably handle that case too. Especially since I support Roman numerals up to 3999. Sure, trivial to do. If someone wants Chinese numerals or some other naming scheme I can add them too. Mainly in that it has more flexible formatting options and more naming schemes. E.g. with template like "MU%d Relay" I named my Mun relays "MU1 Relay", "MU2 Relay" and "MU3 Relay". You can also have something like "Kerblink %0d2dX" which turns into "Kerblink 01X", "Kerblink 02X", etc. Not possible with other mods I think. TBH I probably wouldn't bother with implementing this plugin had I known Project Manager existed.

Right now nothing beside tracking. Depending on what's defined in the .cfg, if the laser loses its target, it either goes back to the defined rest position or just stops moving. I thought of having a deploy animation, but after looking through some references it didn't seem like I need one: https://imgur.com/a/x6PhHaY shouldn't be too hard to add though. Good idea although in this case it just needs a heading pivot with a pitch pivot child: Names can be changed in part's .cfg too: headingPivotName = headingPivot pitchPivotName = pitchPivot Unfortunately this won't work with a more fancy setups like: so I might play with it some more.

I had a thought: we have quite a few mods adding extra planetary systems, but even the modded antennas usually struggle to reach them. There is an existing technology that would fit that niche nicely though, but is not yet represented in the KSP: laser communication. On the plugin side: it needs more testing, but I managed to get the basic functionality working i.e. added new kind of "antenna" and link on top of CommNet. You need 2 optical terminals to connect vessels via laser link, but you can have different kind of links along the control path e.g. rover <-radio-> probe <-laser-> relay <-radio-> KSC I also implemented a part module for tracking commnet nodes. Laser will always attempt to point at a valid relay or a ground station: Now I'm working on occlusion: it shouldn't be possible to communicate via laser from Eve's surface or Jool's athmosphere (assuming you're using cloud mods). I want to make it so the signal gradually degrades as you descend through an opaque atmosphere. That leaves the most dreaded part: models and textures. I gathered quite a few references, and it's not like I have absolutely no experience with 3d modelling, but not really confident that I'll be able to make nice looking ones. So yeah, help welcome. github source if someone's interested.

A small plugin, similar to the Launch Numbering, but less automagical and with finer control. It lets you specify a naming template in the VAB/SPH. E.g. you launched "Kerbochod 1" and "Kerbochod 2". With a naming template like "Kerbochod %d", the plugin will search the name history and rename it to "Kerbochod 3" on launch. There are currently 3 ways of specifying the naming templates (from the lowest priority to the highest): 1) Vessel description in the editor: the plugin will search for a string within "[]" 2) Vessel name in the editor 3) Part's vessel naming: an underused stock feature that lets you launch a vessel with a different name than in the editor. Multiple naming schemes are supported: %d - Arabic numerals %0nd - zero padded Arabic numerals, replace "n" with the minimal width (e.g. %02d) %x, %X - hexadecimal numerals, lower and upper case, can also be zero padded (e.g. %02X) %b, %B - binary numerals, %B for padded to 8 digits, %b for unpadded (thanks AMPW-german) %r, %R - Roman numerals, lower and upper case %a, %A - Latin alphabet letters, lower and upper case %g, %G - Greek alphabet letters, lower and upper case (α, β, γ, etc) %w, %W - Greek alphabet letters as words, lower case and capitalized ("Alpha", "Beta", etc) %p, %P - NATO Phonetic Alphabet, lower case and capitalized ("Alpha", "Bravo", "Charlie", etc) %l, %L - legacy WWII CCB (ICAO) Phonetic Alphabet, lower case and capitalized ("Able", "Bake", "Charlie", "Dog", etc) %c, %C - Russian alphabet letters, lower and upper case (А, Б, В, Г, etc) %% to escape % Note about the vessel naming: "Configure Vessel Naming" feature also lets you configure separate names for a "mother-ship" and decoupled from it "daughter-ships" right inside the editor. If you specify the naming like so: the relays will get numbers automatically in the order of decoupling (which is quite random when decoupling all at once). The one annoyance with this approach was: vessel naming doesn't support part symmetry so you'd need to name each relay individually, so... I made it follow part symmetry. Now you can name one part and the naming will be copied to its symmetry counterparts (assuming they have no configured names already, so you are still able to set different names manually). Another annoyance is: changing vessel's name in the editor changes the highest priority configured naming. So if your naming gets mangled blame Squad not me. Download spacedock CKAN github source

You have .git folder bundled in the zip.

Contract Configurator v2.10.0.0 is out and it has some new features I needed. I can now release the generic station-keeping contracts: Version 0.7 0.8 out on spacedock

Version 0.6 out on spacedock Changelog:

Hmm, strange. You're sure you're looking at the correct section ("The first satellite", "The second satellite", "The third satellite") for a given marker (I can't really see that in the screenshot)? I double checked and the code is exactly the same as the previous contract with 2 satellites, you hadn't had any problems there? Rendezvous check is a simple distance check so there's not much room for bugs. If you upload your persistent.sfs savefile somewhere I could take a look with a debugger, although I won't have access to a PC until weekend.

That's only true for the first relay though, but now you mention it, I don't see why it shouldn't be also true for the "improve coverage" contract.

Version 0.5 out on spacedock Changelog:

Nope, I forgot to lower the power requirements while lowering the tech requirements. I fixed that in the unreleased version (lowered to 10M), but I'm still waiting for my PRs to be merged to the Contract Configurator. I guess I could make a stripped down release, including the fix. PS. If my calculations are corrects it's more than dozens, you'd need 5061 HG-5s

The idea behind the KSO Relay contract (I assume you mean the relay, because there's also the generic kerbostationary satellite one) is to be an end-game relay, that stays up until the end of time. Before that, the low-tech LKO relays were supposed to fulfill its role. I'm actually doing a fresh playthrough with Probes Before Crew and yeah it feels like there should be something in-between. I have an unreleased contract for replacing Mun/Minmus relays when the player unlocks antennas strong enough to reach a pod-integrated antenna on the surface. I might do something like that for KSO relays too i.e. weaker intermediate relays that gets later replaced by RA-100-tier ones. There's no hard-coded tree-node anywhere in the pack. REQUIREMENT { name = TechResearched type = TechResearched part = RelayAntenna100 } The Contract Configurator just translates that to a node containing the given part when displaying requirements. It's not currently possible in the Contract Configurator. I could make a PR to or a plugin for the CC, but I'm not sure if that would be better. Rescaling mods tend to rescale antennas too and stock antennas seems like a good indicator of the progression. On the side note I did some rebalancing to the generic satellite contracts, as they too required unreasonably strong antennas. Anyway: balancing feedback is much appreciated! In other news: The next version of the pack is ready, but I'm waiting for my pull requests to the CC to be merged and released. I managed to make station-keeping for generic contracts work.

Kind of both. It has to be a "transmit" or "direct" antenna, not a relay antenna. The fact that it show an OK in the VAB is a Contract Configurator bug. TBH the way it is now is pretty unnatural to the player and I was thinking of changing it to "transmit or relay" for the satellite contracts. I'll probably make a Pull Request to Contract Configurator first though. The other thing I should probably mention in the OP (that also tripped me in some other contract packs) is: the range modifier applies to contract parameters e.g. if a contracts wants a 100G antenna, but you have range modifier set to 0.8, you need combined 125G. Maybe I should make a Pull Request to fix that too. Anyway, please do keep the feedback coming.

It's a bug, should be a quick fix. EDIT: updated, should be fixed now

I didn't make it generic because I wanted the relay to be exactly above the KSC. I have no idea how to achieve it without hardcoding the orbit. I probably could make a generic version, for non-stock Kerbins, where the player is free to pick the position of the first relay. Will look into it!

Thanks! There should be no problem in having both installed. Contract Configurator allows pack creators to disable given stock contract type (which both I and clever sats do for stock satellites), but there should be a Contract Configurator tab it in the difficulty settings, where you can override what to enable or to disable. If you want, you can have all three: stock, clever sat and constellations active simultaneously. Similarly, you can disable them at any point and it won't break anything.