Docking and ship merging

[Warzouz]

Another question about docking : I d'ont quie understand how KSP manage ship before and after docking.

Let's say I have a mother ship and some kind onf sub-ship. Both have names and actions groups, ressources and crew.

I'm in the sub ship and I dock with the mothership. My ship "vanish" and is merged into the mother ship. Ressources are shared, crew can transfert from seat to seat. Only the Mother ship keeps it's name. Action groups are merges.

- Crew : I can transfert the. Ok, no sweat

- Ressources : Some are shard (elec, air intake), other can be transfered (fuel, RCS). OK

- Action group : To get them manageable I have to prepare coherent action groups on each ships. If I set 1 to solar panels on one ship and 1 to toggle engines, it'll be a nice mess.

- Staging : they are merged. If I'm on stage 3 on the mothership and stage 2 on my docking ship. What is the current stage on the resultaing stage. What will happen il I press spacebar ?

- As my docked ship is now a part of the mother ship. As I undock the game spawns a new shipand sets a derivative name from the morther ship. Why can't I get my ship name back ?

What is the rule for the mother ship. Would it be the same if I had docked the mothership on the sub-ship ?

This feature is very nice, but it's not intuitive at all. It's quite strage the the docking ship merge and thus disapear.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Warzouz

[Claw]

Docking/Undocking rules can be found here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79594-Docking-and-Vessel-Type-Rules-%280-23-5%29

Action Groups: Yes,consistent action groups is a good idea. For example, 0 for me always toggles solar panels.

Staging: Is a big mess. The stuff in the lowest stage block is usually the stuff that is active. If you are going to leave things connected long term, it's a good idea to rearrange the stage stack.

Undocked Name: You should be able to get the old name back. The game stores the craft name for any ships that had a name prior to docking. If it isn't storing the name, then there may be something strange going on with the hierarchy.

Rules for the mothership are the same as rules for the docking ship. It's actually based more on craft type, which is outlined in the link above.

Cheers,

-Claw

[Warzouz]

OK thx a lot for this link. Its more clear now.