Booots

And, um, what if they're still in their survey station drop pod? Can I just boost its productivity above 1? EDIT: Yes. Yes I can. Thanks!

Before I complain about my bug, I'm just going to say that I am using a slightly outdated version so that my pre-0.9 base full of pilots can still build things so I understand if support is refused for not being updated. Anyway, I'm experiencing an interesting bug with regards to surveyed builds and launch clamps. I'm trying to build something on Eve and accidentally landed on a steep slope. When I build something with launch clamps, it jumps up so that it is above the surface (which is great!) and sits nicely vertical (which is even greater). The problem is when I try to timewarp because apparently it is staying in a 'In Flight' status despite not being launched yet. Any ideas what I can do to fix this? Is it because of the jump making KSP think it's still flying or a normal behaviour for launch clamps? And yes, the bounding stakes would be perfect for this if I could still build afterwards or re-train my colonists to be engineers somehow. Thanks!

Can I add a request for a readout in the menu for a Lat/Lon of the landing point? This would help for precision landings instead of just visually guestimating. Maybe also the option to type in the Lat/Lon of your target too, but that's secondary to a readout of where you're actually going to land. Other than that, great mod. So incredibly useful for everything.

I already have a base set up before updating to 0.90. When I do update, will my crew be randomly assigned occupations and start at level zero? Also, is there any mod out there that allows for real-time updating of levels so I don't have to ship my whole crew home and back again for them to level up?

Thanks for explaining that. It's still bizarre because I hadn't updated any mods or the game itself when this happened. That also means that my outdated DMagic version hadn't added any contracts yet. For future reference, couldn't I just narrow down the specific contract that was buggy and replace all but that one?

I don't think we can say that it's caused exclusively by HotRockets because I don't have that mod. I'm running Toolbar, DMagic Orbital Science, Extraplanetary Launchpads, Firespitter propellers, KAS, Kerbal Engineer, Kethane, Mechjeb 2, ModuleManager, RemoteTech, Trajectories, and Alarm Clock. My science archives were preserved as well, so I think Dwaine and I might have different but similar issues. On the plus side, I found out that I had a named quicksave that had my contracts data so I only lost about two hours. Yay!?

Sometime in the last few days, all record of my contracts was erased from my persistence file. This was weird enough, but I thought that fortunately I had backed them up when upgrading to OSX 10.9 a few days ago. The rest of my save file was untouched, but all of my current contracts and completed contracts were simply gone. I'm not sure about the offered contracts because they would have simply been replaced by new offers. So I thought that rather than undo all of the progress I've made since that backup, I might be able to just copy in the contracts section of my old persistence file to the current one. This seemed to work at first. The game loaded fine, and hovering my mouse over the contracts icon in the top right of the screen even showed the proper contracts again. Yay! But clicking on the tracking station did nothing, same result from the SPH and VAB. Buildings that bring up an overlay (like the runway, launchpad, and mission control bring up that building's display but nothing happens on clicking any buttons. Same awkward problem with the menu to exit. The only button that works is resume which leaves me force quitting my game and unable to do anything. Now, when I completely remove all the contracts again, everything works fine. Except I won't get my money or science from visiting Eve and I have no record of saving so many Kerbals. Looking at the logs, it seems to be throwing NullReferenceExceptions immediately after loading the contracts. I'm putting this in the modded installs folder because I am running mods, but since I can clear the error without removing mods I suspect it is not due to any of them (I do not have contract modifying mods). Persistence file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8k196eh065kbmy2/persistent.sfs?dl=0 Player.log file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/96hs6dshhqldzx7/Player.log?dl=0 KSP.log file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/agdrgmi2f3t6tse/KSP.log?dl=0 Note that in the instance shown in the logs, I loaded the copy of my save with no contracts; entered the tracking station to confirm it worked; exited, and proceeded to load the version with contracts. The lack of NullReferenceExceptions is evident in the first and disappointing in the second. Essentially what I'm wondering is if there is some way of re-instantiating my contract data into my current game or if I must choose between my contracts and my progress? Secondary objective is to find out why the contracts disappeared in the first place, though I understand that may be difficult since I don't know when that happened nor have logs from then.

I don't know how many times this has been answered... Do you have Kerbals in a part with the workshop module? You need somebody to build the thing. Preferably a Kerbal that isn't stupid who won't take away from productivity

I used to have this issue when I was building a base on one of the low spots of Pol. I think you should include in your steps that it has to be built on the low spot of a body with comparatively large bumpiness/diameter. Out of curiosity, when loading your base, does it first appear far above the ground and then seem to warp to the surface when physics loads? Mine did, and I had to cycle through each of the individual craft at my base as the active vessel to assemble them on the actual ground. If yours does too I would suspect that the root part (in this case, your drone core) spawns below what KSP initially thinks is the surface level when it finalizes/builds the craft. I don't know why the rest of it doesn't explode too. The logs might tell us if that's the actual reason but I think I ditched my logs once I made a workaround (build it at the actual launchpad, hyperedit it to my base, then delete the appropriate amount of ore from the deposit).

On this subject, the Kethane thread suggests the newest update will break plugins that use it. Are we good to upgrade to 0.9 or is that bad for my EL save? Also, Taniwha, please don't leave us in disgust. We need you!

Thanks for continuing development on this. I'm excited to see what this new feature is and how your idea of terrain leveling pans out. Cheers! P.S. Great book, btw. Mowat is from near where I grew up. It's not a long book, though, does this mean the update isn't far away?

I'm also having this issue. I've gone about two Kerbin weeks without any new applicants. I'm a little picky about not hiring stupid astronauts (I use EL) and so I don't really want to just chance it by clicking the 'Fill' crew button. Same as SmarterThanMe I am using Ship Manifest and can't create astronauts with that either. Can anyone recommend a fix so that I can start my colonization mission finally? EDIT: My current workaround: a python script that randomly generates Kerbals and lets me select which ones I want to hire and then outputs the appropriate persistence section. Crude, but functional.

Hey, this looks like a fantastically useful mod. I'm a huge fan of self-lighting my spacecraft but it's always a bit touch-and-go to get it right. Any news on v0.2?

Wow, I'm impressed with your code. Here I was spending three hours to get a python script to do that same thing. But does yours pipe it to excel? The only thing is that those parts are all fairly low mass and so to build a vessel for recovery that takes advantage of the cost/mass, you have to attach hundreds of those parts, which should dissuade most people from doing that. With one high-value part, it makes it that much easier to crash the economy.

That makes sense, however it's also a little bit economy-breaking. Going from a cost/mass standpoint, it's still the highest out there with the exception of science parts. For very little metal (and without sticking hundreds of Gravioli sensors to a hull), one can very rapidly finance their space program by building workshops and recovering them for cash. By building these, the price of metal goes from 800/ton to 50000/ton (give or take losses in processing), which I think far outstrips the cost of precision engineering. Especially when the build time is based off mass. Anyway, that's my viewpoint. I can always module manager my own install. Another way to solve the economy problem could be to make the build time based off cost instead of mass (or a combination of the two).

Just a question about the cost balancing. I remember you saying something about how the parts were priced based on their effective value or real world equivalents or something. But I still think some parts are way over-priced. For example, the workshop part costs 750000 funds which struck me as over-priced from most playability standpoints. And comparing it to the hitchhiker pod (including the productivity factor and reduced crew capacity) I calculate I should be able to get equivalent performance for 125000 funds (roughly 31 full pods). This still seems a bit high, but much more reasonable. I'm not saying to necessarily change it, but I'm just wondering if there was a reason for it before I go and adjust it on my own. Thanks!

Unlike 5thHorseman (and most people, I think), I build almost exclusively from the surface. But I also operate almost exclusively from small moons like Bop, Pol, and Minmus. I justify that because they are well-placed for interplanetary flight and have low delta-V requirements for landing and orbiting. It also means that things fall over really really slowly or not at all in the low gravity. I build and immediately turn on SAS and things don't fall over. My Laythe base that I'm in the process of building, on the other hand, is definitely going to have the same problem as you're having. I used kerbalmaps.com to find the place with the lowest slope but I'm still sitting at about 5 degrees. Taniwha mentioned that he plans to add the functionality to 'build' terrain and that should be the end of our leveling woes. Until then, I'm sticking Hooligan Labs airships on the top of my tall things to keep them upright. I suppose you could also use KAS ground pylons and pipes to build a wider base so that it can't fall until you click release. And then light engines and go quickly before it falls.

I have a peculiar problem and I'm wondering if there is a workaround or if it could be fixed in a future update. Using Kethane and EL, I scanned Laythe and found a kethane deposit and an ore deposit that, although not overlapping anywhere, were perfectly adjacent at one point. As there were no other combined deposits on land, I figured I would land precisely on the border of the hexes and extend one drill into one hex and another into the other. Mining the kethane works great, but I have to undock my ore miner for it to mine ore. It seems that the Kethane mod checks for which hex the center of the craft is in as opposed to which hex the drill itself is penetrating. Is this indeed the case? If so, how difficult would it be for the code to be modified to check the physical location of the drill? For now, does anyone have any suggestions to save me from having to unlink my pipes any time I want to mine ore? Thanks!

Thanks! Take your time, I finally caved and got hyperedit to continue building my base. I'll burn off some ore and Kethane eventually to make up for it. But for now, on to conquer Laythe! (It doesn't seem to have the issue so I'm happy there.) On another note, does anyone have LLL-style workshops? I've got some Module-manager'ed from the hull sections but it would be nice to have dedicated models. And where did the 1.5 tons per Kerbal weight come from? I only today realized how heavy the current workshops are.

I was at first skeptical of this idea but seeing the Baha drills take off got me on board. Minimalism for the win! Are those other details in regards to the power requirements? Also, any rough timeline to the next update? And will said update address the explodey root part issue some of us were having? My Joolian outpost is stranded until I can build them a fuel depot...

Oh good! I'm glad you're getting the chance to have fun with KSP since I use your mod to have fun with it all the time. Just as long as you know about it. You're really good at tracking these things down. Thanks! PS: I got my Pol base to build a ship by loading the base from the tracking station and pressing time accel before it jumped it down to the actual surface. Then, while in time accel, I clicked finalize and it built it properly while jumping back to 1x. This only worked once, though, and I forgot a Kethane tank on that ship.

Taniwha: Do you know why some of us have been having problems with root parts exploding immediately on clicking 'Finalize Build' on terraineous bodies? Most of the posts on the subject are on page 105 of this thread. Thanks for looking into it!

I was going to post about this a few days ago but decided to keep messing with things until it worked. Still no luck so maybe it's an actual bug. Everything I've built has been from the SPH so the orientation is definitely not consistent with the pad. Building things on the Mun seems to work but not my base on Pol. I wonder if it has something to do with the "ground" level and the elevation map leading to a false collision detection on craft spawn? EDIT: It is always the root part for me too. And only the root part. The rest freezes in place until I go to the space center and then it enters a sub-orbital trajectory and disappears. I managed to switch to it once and it cut to a black screen (no stars), a black nav ball, and altitude numbers that went 99999999 88888888 and so on. It was super weird. Oh, and no commands did anything and I had to force quit the game.

You need a construction workshop with some kerbals in it to build something. If you've installed Module Manager, any manned command pod will do, but really, construction workshops (the big blue pod under utilities) are the way to go. Also, this is why we need orcaman's guide because I'm pretty sure this has been said at least three times now.

Just offhand, does anyone know the conversion rate? I'm assuming it's mass for mass, but what does that work out to in units of metal per ton?