TheDude

Get out now. The company is going under and there's nothing you can do to stop it. From your post it seems that you already know this but you haven't accepted it yet and you're clinging to the hope that somehow if you're put in charge you can turn it around. You can't. You'll never get the chance. This sounds like a small family run company and from my experience they're the WORST when it comes to management decisions. They'll always go with family or a close friend no matter what the credentials. You said it yourself that the guy weasled his way into the position so he could make his resume better. Of course he did. He's using this as a stepping stone to another position elsewhere. Beleive me - having the title on your resume is KING. You need to get out NOW. If everybody is leaving like you say then you're going to get stuck with the work. When things go bad it will be YOU that will be blamed. You don't need that kind of stress. The place was nice at one time but that time is over. I've been in this situation before and it sucks. You need to start SERIOUSLY looking for other work because it's MUCH, MUCH easier to find work when you're employed. Once you're unemployed it becomes VERY hard to get new work. IT's a stigma that sticks to you and is very hard to shake. It doesn't matter if you've been laid off or if the company went out of business. It's just the way of things. Best regards, The Dude.

?????? I didn't forget to add anything. It seems to work just fine without LifeSupportModule. Even without that module other command pods have the TAC resources and life support functions as expected. I took a B9 command pod, edited out everything except the commandmodule and minimum crew settings, loaded the game and Hyper Edited it into orbit. It had all of the TAC resources and in time they ran out and the Kerbals died. Everything worked as expected. When I checked the part in the debut menu it DID NOT have the LifeSupportModule in it. That is the source of my confusion. It appears that LifeSupportModule is not necessary and something else is adding TAC resources to command pods. I assume it's the DLL looking for specific modules in the part. So my questions are 1. What is LifeSupportModule and what functions does it provide? 2. How are TAC resources added to other command pods not included in the module manager config supplied with the mod? Best regards, The Dude

Greetings, Can someone clarify just how TAC resources are added to command pods? The source of my confusion is there is a module manager config file included in the mod that adds a module, "LifeSupportModule" as well as the TAC resources to the stock cockpits. I generally don't use any of thst stock parts instead choosing to use stuff from B9 for my ships. These B9 cockpits always have the TAC resources added to them but when I check the part in the debug menu it does not contain the LifeSupportModule module. How are TAC resources being added to other commands pods? Is the DLL looking for minimum crew or modulecommand and adding the resources based upon that? What does LifeSupportModule do? Does it need to be added to other command pods? Best regards, The Dude

Greetings, This was the point I brought up in the previous page. Being able to set pump levels by resource would solve this issue. Well, not so much "issue" but more of an "inconvenience". Lately I've become somewhat obsessed with reducing part counts so I don't use the TAC Life Support containers as they can get quite numerous and create a cluttered appearance. Instead I use 2 decent sized fuel tanks and the Modular Fuels mod to assign life support to one and waste to the other. By having two tanks I'm able to set pump levels for both and accomplish the automatic transferes that have been discussed. It's kind of a band-aid fix but it does work. Best regards, The Dude

Greetings, I do have one bug to report. I have 6 com sats in geo sync orbit around Kerbin. (See my post above for a pic of the sat. ) Above them is a com relay sat in a very high polar orbit that contains 15 com dishes. These dishes connect to various sats orbiting other planets and moons. 2 of these dishes are targeted at 2 of the sats in geo sync orbit around Kerbin. The problem is one of the dishs on the com relay sat will consistently become deactivated with no target set. I'll go back in and reactivate the dish and target it back to the geo sync sat and all will be well for a while. Then it'll happen all over again. I haven't been able to find any specific trigger and right now it's more annoying than anything else. Best regards, The Dude

Greetings, The truss came from Kosmos. It comes in 3 flavors: Empty, crew tunnel and RCS tanks. You can't see it in the picture but the bottom truss contains RCS fuel tanks and the top truss is empty. I mod the dishes and antennas all the time while in game and never had any issues with it breaking connections. Though, I've always modified the base settign such as cone, range and power. I've never actually added multiple targets to a dish. Interesting idea. I may have to try that on something. Best regards, The Dude

Greetings, A lot of them are. The engine is a monopropellent from RLA Stockalike. The MRTGs are from RLA as well but are modified a bit. I made them bigger to fit the probe core and increased the power output a bit to match. The Monoprop tank (The yellow band) is stock but I shrunk it down because I didn't need the size and amount of fuel. The RCS thrusters are from.... I __think___ KW Rocketery but don't quote me on that. The Whip antennas are actually from AIES and are modified using Jasonwas Module hacks that can be found here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/61393-0-22-Johnsonwax-Module-Hacks-Dec-12 The probe core is stock but has the MechJeb module installed via Module Manager. The Dish is from RT and is slightly modified for a very slightly increased cone angle, longer range and increased power consumption. I typically don't use this launcher as I don't need 24 sats in in any given place. The only time I used it was to go to Jool and it had to be refueled on the way as it didn't have enough dV to complete the mission. Usually I only have 6 - 12 sats which is more than enough for everything else in the Kerbin system. As you can see I like small, simiple and standardized. That way when something breaks it makes it very easy to find the fault which 99.99% of the time is me being stupid.

Here you go:

The heck with Remote Tech, I want to see a picture of this beast! Back on topic - I too haven't had any issues with multiple pobe cores. My main satellite launcher has 12 com sats on a central launch core with another probe core and dish pointing to my main relay sat. I also have a 24 sat launcher but it's a FPS killer and rarely used. That too doesn't have any issues. Best regards, The Dude

Now that you've ranted and got the frustration out of your system how about giving us some detailed information on your network so we can fix where you've not correctly designed your network. I've said this before and I'll say it again - This mod works fine. It is my belief that the majority of problems related to this mod come from a incomplete understanding of how the components work which leads to a badly designed RT network. I know Cilph has some changes in mind and I'm personally against some of them because I feel that some of them are to accommodate badly designed networks. Except the "Target active vessel" which I believe has created the VAST MAJORITY of the issues discussed in this forum. That needs to go. Post pictures of your com sats, a picture of your overall network, a better description of what you're trying to do and where it's breaking down and we'll be able to help. Best regards, The Dude

Greetings, Yes. I've seen this issue with the last few dev builds. Like you I was using the Rendezvous AP and when the ship got within the designated distance it completly stopped responding to commands. Dropping out to the tracking station and reselecting the ship to reload fixed the problem. However, I wonder if it could be related to RT as this behavior is exactly like what happens when your craft no longer has a connection. I do have the patched version but since this was a manned ship it should not have been an issue. Of course if you're not running RT then it blows this theory completly out of the water. Best regards, The Dude

Greetings, Speaking of the spacers - Would it be possible to make the spacer wider so there is a better visual indicator of what's grouped together? Heck, even making it a configurable option would be awsome! Now that I'm thinking about it would it also be possible to change the size of the UI text? For us old, poor eyed buggers it would be a god send. :-) Best regards, The Dude (Properly caffeinated and in the right forum.)

Kill it with fire.

Hmmmm...... That is certainly a much more elegant solution than the one I proposed. I have the nagging thought that may not be as flexable but I can't come up with any practical examples to support that statement. I'd imagine your way would be much easier to code as well. I've been thinking about the dump option as well. It's __RARE__ that I ever use it but when I do it's always to dump life support waste products. Having it in this mod would be nice as then I could uninstall TAC. Best regards, The (Now fully awake) Dude EDIT: Ah, now I know what's bothering me. I now wonder how the "Always Invert" option would affect the "pumping high to low" model this mod uses. Again using life support as an example we'll say the station tank is level 7 and the docked ship is level 1. Food, Water and O2 would be pumped from the high level to the low level. Waste, wastewater and CO2 would be pumped "against the flow" so to speek. I've not looked at the code but I wonder if that will break how the mod functions.

Greetings, (OK... now that I'm properly caffeinated I can post this in the CORRECT place. *bangs head agains the wall.* ) Gawd, I love this mod! It has removed the majority of micromanaging resource transfers between my space stations and docked ships. I do however, wish it was a bit more granular to allow for more flexability. This wish comes from the fact that the pumping action is set at a tank level and not at a resouce level which prevents you from transfering resources both IN and OUT of the same tank. A good example of this are life support resources. I'll use TAC Life Support as an example. When I dock I want food, water and O2 to be transfered to the ship while waste, wastewater and CO2 to be transfered to the station. Since all of these resources are stored in one container on the station, what actually happens is food, water, O2, waste, wastewater and CO2 are filled on the ship. I'm then forced to manually transfer the waste, wastewater and CO2 back to the station using TAC Fuel balancer. This problem can also arise from the use of the Modular Fuel Tanks mod. If you have a tank configured to hold LF, Oxy and Kethane then you'll have to do the same thing when your Kethane miner docks. So, my feature request goes something like this: You wish to keep the right click menu uncluttered and simple. Hell Yes. I completly agree. Change nothing there. Put everything under the pump options button/menu. The new menu would look like this terrible ASCII art example below. [ pump ] [ balance ] [==========6_________] Food [ pump ] [ balance ] [==========6_________] Water [ pump ] [ balance ] [==========6_________] O2 [ pump ] [ balance ] [=====3________________] Waste [ pump ] [ balance ] [=====3________________] Wastewater [ pump ] [ balance ] [=====3________________] CO2 The only thing left is the tank level slider on the top right click menu. My first thought was to leve it exactly where it is and use that as a tank default level setting. Setting it to level 6 for example would set all of the resource sliders to 6. Afterward you can change the individual higher or lower. The only problem I see with that is if later you change the default level then it could reset all of the individual resources to that new level. I guess you could add a third button labeled "Default" which would allow that resource to follow the tank default level rather than a custom level. That's starting to get complicated and I'm not sure I like that idea. Ok, this post is getting long I my boss would like for me to do some real work rather than spend all day on the KSP forum so I'll stop here. What do you guys think? Best regards, The Dude

Yeah, this is what happens when I post befor the caffeine kicks in.

Greetings, This has got to be the most bizarre bug I've seen in a long while. Even though I'm using 2.1.1.168 I've seen this for the past few builds. Maybe starting around 160 or so. I have MJ on a small refueling station with the RCS balancer enabled. When I turned on Smart A.S.S. I got HUGE RCS plumes. I mean freakishly huge. I turned off the RCS Balancer and the behavior stopped. I turned it back on and it resumed. The funny thing is it didn't seem to be any more powerful than normal RCS as the station didn't go flipping end over end or use any more fuel than normal. What's also odd is the game really slowed down while the RCS thrusters were firing. This has been happening on just about anything I put RCS on. Rockets on the pad, stations in orbit, satellites, etc. It doesn't happen all of the time either. It's kinda random. If it starts I can focus on something else and come back and it'll generally stop. I've been trying to find a trigger event but so far the only common thing is MJ. I also tried this on a relatively semi-stock game with only MJ, Hyperedit, Toolbar, and TAC fuel and it would happen. Again, very random and very infrequent. Anyway, they say a picture is worth a 1000 words so here you go: In the second picture if you look behind the giant RCS plum you'll see a second set of RCS thrusters firing at their normal size. Anyway, I thought I'd pass that along.

I may have. I have RT2 and KAS installed. Last night I was upgrading my network with a total of 15 sats throughout the system. When I decoupled the 16th sat the game immediatly froze and the memory in Taskmager started steadly climing until it hit 3.8 Gb and the game crashed. (It was running about 2.2GB before that.) I restarted, selected the save and then went into the tracking station to select my sat launch ship. The very instant I selected the tracking station the game froze and the memory steadly increased until the game crashed. I removed the RT2 DLL and was able to load and play the game without any issue. Putting it back in recreated the freeze/crash issue. The only way to get around this problem was to remove the DLL, go into the tracking station and end the flights of the last satellites that I'd deployed. The only difference between those last satellites and the first 15? They had KAS parts installed on them. Removing the KAS parts and relaunching seemed to fix the issue. I'll know more as I keep playing. Best regards, The Dude.

Greetings, I'm at work at the moment but best as I recall it does it on just about everything. Best regards, The Dude

Greetings, I've noticed that using this mod seems to produce "scrolling shadows" or "flashing shadows" on everything. The scrolling shadows are bands that roll across the parts like ripples on a pond. Flashing shadows will appear and disappear very rapidly on any parts. While not terribly important I was wondering is there anything I can do to minimize it? Lights and shadows are both set to 32 in the graphics settings. I'm using 2.15 aggressive with the dev DLL build that shows the memory stats. (Saving 2 GB of RAM!!!!) Best regards, The Dude

Greetings, I'm having a problem with the interstage fairings not releasing when triggered. The fairing will kinda release and the second stage engine will fire but it all stays attached like it's connected with a giant rubber band. The first stange and fairing will flop around while the second stage drags it along. I was able to get around the problem by using 8 radialy mounted engines(I can't remember from what pack) instead of the Merlin 1D Vacuum Engine provided in the pack. While i"m thinking about it - Can you get rid of the "tit" on the second stage tank so other engines can be used? I've tried other engines, and they do mount, but the tit seems to interfere with the gimbal. On all engines I've tried the engine will fire but the gimbal will hard lock to one extreme which causes the second stage to spin wildly out of control. Best regards, The Dude

Ummmm.... OK..... I think I get what you're saying. It's the "connects as if the dish were an omni" that's kinda throwing me. I guess the best analogy that I can come up with is satellite TV. The orbiting satellite points its dish "at the planet" where the cone covers a given area. The small dish bolted to the side of your house still has to point at, or targets, the satellite to get a signal. They both connect and you can watch the Simpsons. Am I close? As far as option 3, I think we're thinking the same thing. I'm guessing one satellite would target "the group" which would consist of multiple satellites somewhere. Would that automatically make every satellite in that group target the single satellite or would you need to manually do the targting? What about one satellite group (Group A) target another satellite group (Group ? It's not a feature I want but I can see it come up sometime in the future. I'd bet that would get really messy very quickly. Lastly, I know it's been brought up before but range indicators in the map view would be very helpful. Not only from a planning standpoint but also from a troubleshooting/support standpoint as well. I'd imagine it would help eliminate many of the "Why doesn't my satellite connect?" questions. Best regards, The Dude As far as Option

Greetings, Option #1 and #2 These options don't make much sense to me. Dish antennas have very high gain and are meant for point-to-point long range connections and they work very well in that regard. Omni Antennas are meant to cover large areas and talk to anything in those areas. They too work very well in that regard. Having a dish talk to __anything__ that's in range (act as an omni) goes against the very idea of how a dish is suppose to work. To me this just breaks the entire mod. To me it allows for bad design. If that's the case let's just have one omni antenna with rediculous range to connect to everything else. Option #3 This I can see having some use. If a dish can't connect with its target then it will try another target in the list until a connection is made. This will solve some problems with satellites going behind plantets and will give some redundancy to the communication network. I don't think it should "target everything" but instead go though the list one-at-a-time until a connection is made or it runs out of power. What is the driving force behind the changes? I've been running the patched DLL on 0.23 and have an extensive network deployed through the Kerbal system and honestly, I can't break the damn thing. Everything is working exactly as expected. There has been communication failures but EVERY ONE of them has turned out to be my fault from poor design. My only complaint is I feel the satellite and omni ranges are bit out of balance and could be adjusted somewhat. There is a lot of short and long range stuff but not much in between. Id' be happy to submit a proposal if you're interested. Best regards, The Dude

Hey Cilph, If you need testers then I'll be happy to throw my hat into the ring. I kinda do testing/troubleshooting IRL so I'm a bit good at finding and breaking things. Right now I'm in the process of building a system wide communications network with the patched version so this could be a decent test. :-) Send me your spreadsheet and I'll get started. Best regards, The Dude

Greetings, Thanks for your replies! How about a stupid feature request? Could you create a CTRL or ALT key combination to bring up a window that shows the uncompressed and compressed sizes of each folder with totals at the end? It would be good to know what mods are taking the most memory and which ones are best compressed. Anything skipped would show a zero or "Skipped" Best regards, The Dude