magico13

Are your rockets just so awesome that the launchpad can't even handle it? Can the runway not support your Single-Stage To Eeloo when it's packed with a full MKS base? Well, now it can! PadLock is a simple plugin that enables Indestructible Facilities for one second after loading the vessel, then turns it back off. It's a very simple fix. Download from KerbalStuff Proof of function: License is GPL-3.0, source is on GitHub. It came to my attention while writing this that Claw had already released a similar fix yesterday. Either way, I'm going to release this in case anyone wants to do anything more with it or can learn from it.

KCT prioritizes being on the toolbar mod's toolbar rather than the stock one when given the ability. I should probably make that configurable.

Unfortunately that's the KSP.log and not the output_log.txt (and the KCT debug messages were turned off). Still, looking through it I wasn't seeing any errors being displayed that might be related. The KCT button should always be available in the SpaceCenter as long as you enable it in the toolbar settings.

In-game, not at the moment. You can see it by looking through the persistence file (just search for PartTracker). I'm trying to think of good ways of displaying that and the part inventory, since the current method isn't all that great. The best way would be what Kerbal 4X does (displaying the numbers on the parts in the part catalog) but I don't want to just copy that.

Just to let you know, according to the GUI (and thus, probably the ckan repository) Firespitter has "Snjo" as the author and FirespitterCore has "snjo" (Uppercase vs lowercase). While it may not matter a whole lot, it is definitely an error I'm also having issues with trying to get KCT working with this, but I'll open a github issue for that.

If you don't mind, I would like to take that and use it as the official slogan (since "Vessels take time to build." is lame and I couldn't think of anything better at the time). "Unrapid Planned Assembly" is perfect! @gh7531: Those are very interesting ideas! I may look into using/creating strategies as a replacement or in addition to the upgrade system when I get around to redoing that. Taking time to do science is also an interesting concept. I like the idea but am not sure if it fits in KCT's scope. That could be a good mod on its own or be a good start to a total science overhaul (something I'm not quite prepared to undertake at the moment).

Stream is complete! Had a few people turn out for what resulted in me failing a lot more missions than I had anticipated (mostly parachute related). I'm planning on doing it again next week at the same time, 8PM Central at the same place. Thanks everyone!

Hello everybody, Mike, aka TheMagico13 here and I'm going to be trying out some KSP streaming for the first time over at http://twitch.tv/themagico13 at 8pm CDT (so about 10 minutes). It'll be ... something to say the least. Not gonna lie, kinda nervous. Hoping to do some career mode and have some fun, so come on over if you like. Here's a list of the mods I'll be using: Active Texture Management Astronomer's Visual Pack BoxSat Deadly Reentry EVE Fine Print FTT Karbonite KAS Kerbal Construction Time Kerbal Alarm Clock Kerbal Engineer kOS KSP-AVC Select Root MKS NEAR Part Catalog Precise Node Procedural Fairings RealChute RemoteTech SCANsat StageRecovery TAC Life Support

Kinda short on time at the moment (about to do a live stream over at http://twitch.tv/themagico13 Shameless plug ) so I haven't read your story yet, but I can answer this question. You don't need to change anything, it will just start working automatically @goldfang35 I have not observed that before. It will use Blizzy's toolbar if you have that installed, so make sure to check in there first. Otherwise, if you send me a log file I can take a look.

Hmm. The only error reported appears to be from the Stock game, but it could be caused by KCT. When you launch from the Tracking Station KCT first quickly changes to the Space Center before placing the rocket on the launchpad. This was to avoid another bug that caused the ship to start 50 meters in the air. It's possible that the really fast transition messes something up. I'll look into this more this weekend. Thank you!

Ok, I think I know what happened. There's a bug with powered recovery and scenes other than the flight scene that makes it so SR can't look at the engines and get their thrusts/ISP/etc and as a result causing a crash. I can get around the game crash, but it results in the loss of the craft. The stage must not have had enough parachutes to drop to a 100% recovery rate, so it tried to use engines, causing the bug. Two solutions: make sure to watch controlled stages from the map mode and not the tracking station, or turn powered recovery off. I should make that fail more gracefully in the future. I just wish I could actually get access to the values I need outside of the flight scene :/ The recovery window resets every time you leave the flight scene, so in this case it wouldn't have showed up unfortunately. The way DREC and this work together is weird to say the least. There's a 1% chance of a stage burning up for every 10m/s it's going faster than 2000m/s (2400m/s is therefore a 40% chance, 3000m/s is 100% chance). If you have a heatshield, the total chance gets reduced by the ratio of the remaining shielding to the total shielding (a new shield provides a -100% to the chance of burning). A full heatshield will protect you up to 3000m/s. After that there's a chance again (3500m/s: 150% chance normally, 50% with full shield, 100% with a half used shield). It isn't scientific or precise at all, but it prevents you from smashing things into the atmosphere at 5km/s and expecting them to survive, and it does pose a slight threat to stages dropped at near orbital velocities.

Did the second stage have any parachutes? It should have at least given a failed recovery notice (assuming you have those activated, they are on by default). You probably didn't check, but did it show up at all in the separate GUI that appears when you press the SR button? If it happens again, could you get me the log file (output_log.txt from the KSP_Data folder)? It might be an issue related to powered recovery. Do you have Deadly Reentry installed? It's possible that it "burned up" through SR's Deadly Reentry integration but didn't post a message.

You say you're running DebRefund? That isn't updated to 0.25 and will cause issues like this to occur. I would suggest trying without that and seeing if that helps. Providing the logs would help us immensely.

Thanks for the report. A couple things, in the future it's generally best to report these things on the main thread where it's more likely to be seen. Secondly, could you get me a copy of the output_log.txt file (this post has the location of the proper file for every operating system) from a session after this happened? It will allow me to see what's going on, especially since I may not be able to do my own tests anytime soon. Preferably turn on the "Debug Messages" setting in the KCT settings before creating the issue (it reports a lot more KCT-specific stuff in the log). Otherwise a very nice bug report. Looks like it should be easily reproducible, which makes things much easier to debug.

Yeah, I can see how that might be a bit exploitable. I don't think there's many people who use it like that, so it's not a big concern at the moment (though now that they know the secret they might start doing that!). When I redo upgrades I will attempt to address that (there's a chance that how I end up redoing them will make that sort of thing impossible on its own). The inability to access parts after starting their tech is a known bug that I haven't spent any time trying to find a workaround for yet. If you have a craft file that has the part on it, you can use it that way (use subassemblies and what-not to transfer it between craft). KCT currently doesn't restrict you to tech you actually have unlocked due to that bug (meaning, yes, it is possible to build your 1000 ton extra-super Jool lander with tier 0 tech if you transfer the craft file). You'll generally have enough time left on the contract that it isn't a huge concern, or will have (hopefully) already designed a ship using the part for the contract.

Well the simple solution is that rolling out a vessel in KCT won't actually place it on the pad until you press launch (which will only appear after the vessel has been rolled out). It will likely be that way initially since the way I'm putting vessels on the pad now is identical to pressing the launch button in the editor in a stock game (start a new flight driver with a new launch from a file). I can take a look at which InputLocks are available since I'm pretty sure I can make it so you can't recover a vessel. Put that lock on until you actually launch it and provide a way to roll the vessel back into storage. Wait a sec. Recovering the vessel won't put it into storage how things are configured now, you'd have to rebuild it. I don't think there's actually a problem here. This does imply that I should finally get the stuff set up so you can recover into storage directly. If you do that from the launchpad you have to pay the rollout time in reverse (but after 10-25% or so you can start rolling out a new vessel) and from anywhere else on Kerbin I can likely make it take time as well (based on distance and mass, maybe some other factors like the VAB rates. Should be LONGER than rollout for a comparable vessel [since those are on equipment designed for moving them], implying rollout times will be correlated to recovery times). JeffreyCor, thank you for taking a look at that. I wasn't actually hinting that you should do it, but appreciate that you are Take your time, it'll still get done before I would have had a chance to

As of right now I have not heard anything, official or otherwise. My impression is that since in real life most uncontrolled stages are left to burn up or be recovered as scrap heaps, they likely won't add this feature as stock. If they did, they'd probably want to use a system that was less generalized than this (SR makes a lot of assumptions for simplicity, but loses a lot of physics as a result). I imagine that they'd try to find ways to run physics on the parts without bogging down the rest of the game, but if they did that it wouldn't be for a while. Probably much closer to the 1.0 release, or even afterward.

Had a feeling that might happen at some point after seeing a similar post in the DebRefund thread a while back. Remind me to add that to the ignore list Theoretically you should get the proper funds back, but I haven't really played with 0.25 so I have no idea. If it's a straight up modifier on the funds recovered then SR is setup to use the correct Transaction Reason for strategies to work properly. If there's some other voodoo magic going on then I couldn't figure it out. SR will definitely report a different value than the amount you get though, since SR reports the cost of the parts before those modifications (and I couldn't find a way to actually access what those percentages should be). You'd have to monitor the actually change in funds. Maybe I'll take a look at that this weekend and do some tests to see if it works like I hope.

So I want to include support for this in my mods and have a question or two. My mods are hosted on KerbalStuff, so I can use the quick/easy method of creating the ckan file, but I don't need to actually include anything in the zip correct? Additionally, one of my mods, Kerbal Construction Time, has the dll named Kerbal_Construction_Time.dll (with underscores) but the folder is KerbalConstructionTime (no underscores). Will the automatic detection of the folder path work in this case (Module Manager goes by the dll name, but the mod doesn't have anything that a Module Manager would ever need access to), or will I need to define that manually? I suppose I'll find out when I try to generate the ckan file but figured I'd ask first. Regarding recommends/suggests, I'm afraid that a lot of people are going to favor using recommends over suggests and "normal" users aren't going to realize they probably don't want to install every recommended mod (which presumably will recommend other mods ad infinitum, creating a potentially large snowball). And then suddenly there will be lots of posts saying that installing X mod also installed 16 other mods without their knowledge. The recommends system assumes users pay attention and are generally competent, but often times mod users have proven themselves to blame mod authors for their problems rather than themselves (meaning more support claims for things the users should have been aware of had they RTFM). It may be a good idea to push "suggests" as the preferred method rather than "recommends" and get that idea in mod authors' heads now before this really takes off. StageRecovery will be suggesting KCT for sure, but I'm not sure if I should have KCT recommend or suggest StageRecovery.

I think I may do this with crew, sending out planes/cars/boats to pick them up and letting the outsourced recovery crew handle recovery of the debris craft. Except if it's close to KSC, then I could probably send out my own recovery crane/vtol.

I'll do my best to provide a short use tutorial, or at the very least address the concerns you've raised. After installation you should have a new button on the toolbar (for Blizzy's toolbar you'll have to add it). In the spacecenter, it goes into the settings menu. In the editor, it looks at the ENTIRE ship and compares the parachutes to the full and empty masses. It's hard to split the ship into stages as a computer even though its easy as a person. The best way to use it is to build stages individually in the editor just to make sure that they'll be recovered, then (either as a subassembly or rebuilding them manually) attach them to your main craft later. As for the main functioning: flight mode. When a stage gets about 2.5 km away from the main ship it gets destroyed by KSP as long as its below about 22km altitude. StageRecovery then checks the parachutes and the mass, and if they're proportioned correctly (enough to get below a set speed, the Vt [terminal velocity]) it gets recovered as if it were landed right where it is. If the stage actually lands then KSP won't delete it and it won't get recovered by this (you just have to recover it manually in the tracking station). Whenever a stage gets deleted by KSP you should get a message, successful recovery or not (which is configurable). Some additional, more advanced stuff: Kerbals and science also get recovered by default. There's a GUI in the flight scene that has a more detailed, more informative set of information about recovered and destroyed stages. Powered Recovery: If you've got a controlled stage and enough fuel/thrust you can have stages get recovered on their rockets (like the Falcon 9 by Space X) instead of (in addition to) parachutes. There's an ignore list that you can add parts to if you're getting recovery messages you don't care about (like flags, or fairings). There's two recovery models, one is a flat rate and one uses a variable rate that follows a quadratic curve between two speeds.

That's an aspect of the stock game. Only a bubble with radius about 2.3 km is actually loaded at any time. In space the unloaded vessels just go on-rails, but in atmosphere the game deletes them. You have a couple options: Follow the object down in the plane until it lands Use a mod to increase the physics loading range (which can also dramatically increase lag). I know of the Lazor Docking System mod, but I believe there are other, more recent mods that do this. Use the Flight Manager for Reusable Stages mod to fly each vessel separately (and then the save files are merged) Use a mod like StageRecovery, which will recover your kerbals and the parts, but won't actually land the craft (probably not what you want in this situation, but works for dropped stages)

That's pretty weird but I have some ideas of how that could happen. Not sure what I could do except to add it to the ignore list. You can do that yourself by opening up the SR settings in the spacecenter (by clicking the SR button in whichever toolbar you're using), opening the ignore list, and adding the word "flag". I'm pretty sure that will stop those messages from erroneously appearing (can't check myself right now).

I have been meaning to try it, but haven't gotten around to it. I too am curious about their compatibility. The only incompatibility I can think of is that KCT has its own funds recovery method, but if you set the recovery percentage to 0% then you won't have to worry about getting funds for the stage, then flying it down and recovering it giving more funds.

Corax, sorry didn't mean to ignore the original content. I did see it and register it, but forgot to mention anything about it. Rollout is for sure, definitely, 100% going to be added (it is in fact my number 1 priority), so don't worry about that. There was enough interest to warrant its inclusion. For simplicity I was going to have one or the other (or both) be options, but the idea of a configurable split is something I will take under consideration. The two require substantial differences internally, so splitting the time is not trivially easy, but having both be separate options is definitely doable (and then you'd just probably reduce the reconditioning time yourself). Rollout time will not be very long (minutes to hours likely by default, maybe max of a day, the VAB is pretty close to the launchpad). I'm thinking about the split thing more though. If I precalculate the reconditioning BP (I'm gonna have to anyway), then apply the split to that, then build the rollout object out of that split BP, then do the same for reconditioning afterward, it'd probably work. Then there's one reconditioning time setting (and corresponding maximum) and a slider from 0 to 100% for how much is considered rollout. I do like the end user simplicity of that. Fine, I'm sold on it. It's easier than I had originally thought and I like the end result. It brings up the question of how to handle reconditioning and rollout at the same time. From a "realism" perspective you can't rollout a vessel onto a launchpad that is being fixed (probably), so should you not be able to start rollout until after reconditioning is finished? I like the idea of both happening at once from a gameplay perspective, but it doesn't make sense to have a rollout finish before reconditioning. Launch will still be prevented for sure until reconditioning is complete. Next question, what if you rollout a vessel, then change your mind and want to send a different one out. Do you have to take the time to roll the first one back, then roll the second one out? For gameplay do you just rollout the second one and insta-magic the first back into the inventory? Should the added rollback time be reduced from the original rollout time (simulating that you can have both travelling at the same time)? I'm curious as to what all of you think about those questions. As for KCT Lite, I've decided to scrap the idea for now and instead improve KCT's integration with Stock, while making the initial configuration setup simpler with presets (like KSP's preset difficulties, but likely after starting the game instead of beforehand).