cbale2000

Is the first contract "Launch a New Vessel" broken for anyone else? No matter how many times I launch things it will not complete for me. It seems to be preventing me from getting any higher-tier contracts too.

Is there any way I can change that?

So, did I install something wrong or is MechJeb supposed to be completely and utterly useless in career mode?

Parachutes can slow/stop an entire ship provided the ship is not too heavy, and that the decent is not too fast. Because of the sudden deceleration caused by a parachute opening, if a ship is not already traveling at a significantly reduced speed, the parachute will likely cause so much force on the ship that it will tear off whatever its attached to. The best ways to fix this is to either slow your decent by other means (engines or drogue chutes), or use a smaller, lighter decent vehicle. Also keep in mind that deploying the parachutes too low will cause them to fully open immediately on deployment, causing a much stronger jolt than if they partially deploy higher up, and then fully deploy at lower altitudes.

I hope you're also planning to make the round parts thinner, the less space used the better IMO.

The only problem with this idea is that, inevitably, if you decided to perform a rendezvous with a ship using different parts than those on your current ship, the lag caused by spawning in the second ships models at close range would increase drastically. Frankly I used to crash the game before I had any mods installed. I've wondered for some time now if rather than the lag and crashing being caused by the complexity or number of the models (which in most games are a relatively small drain on resources), if rather the physics engine is what's really causing the lag and crashing, since it always seems to happen (to me anyways) when I'm dealing with large, wobbly contraptions. I'd be curious to see how much difference making the KSP physics engine treat ships as a single entity (at least until acted on by some outside force), would make on overall performance.

I tried mod about 2 days ago and it worked fine, but now I can't get the docking autopilot to open (press button, nothing happens), all the other modules seem to work fine though.