Can anyone explain the new merge craft feature

[acchilde]

Can anyone explain the new merge feature in the VAB/SPH? I can't seem to figure it out on my own and haven't found anything online about it. Every time I try to merge ships, there is no point at which to connect the two things I am merging. Am I missing something?

Thanks for any help.

Edited April 29, 2015 by acchilde

[arkie87]

Can anyone explain the new merge feature in the VAB/SPH? I can't seem to figure it out on my own and haven't found anything online about it. Every time I try to merge ships, there is no point at which to connect the two things I am merging. Am I missing something?

Thanks for any help.

I could be wrong, but i think you have to design the ships to be mergable. Stock ships arent meant to be merged--they are meant to standalone.

As i understand it, its sorta like a sub-assembly, such that you can design a "ship" so serve one function, like a lifter or an efficiently packed science service bay, and then just load it and attach it somewhere.

Dont think about it as "merging" but rather, just loading the ship into the current building space.

[Starwhip]

I could be wrong, but i think you have to design the ships to be mergable. Stock ships arent meant to be merged--they are meant to standalone.

As i understand it, its sorta like a sub-assembly, such that you can design a "ship" so serve one function, like a lifter or an efficiently packed science service bay, and then just load it and attach it somewhere.

Dont think about it as "merging" but rather, just loading the ship into the current building space.

Yeah, that's your issue. Think of it as enhanced subassemblies.

[acchilde]

I tried creating my own ships and merging them but there still doesn't seem to be any point to connect them. Is there anything specific you must do or use in order to be able to connect them?

[TheMoonRover]

I tried creating my own ships and merging them but there still doesn't seem to be any point to connect them. Is there anything specific you must do or use in order to be able to connect them?

You need at least one unused attach node on each ship, so that you can attach them together.

[acchilde]

Thanks! That solved it. I guess I was just doing something wrong at first.

[gedro7000]

On 29.4.2015 at 6:32 PM, arkie87 said:

I could be wrong, but i think you have to design the ships to be mergable. Stock ships arent meant to be merged--they are meant to standalone.

As i understand it, its sorta like a sub-assembly, such that you can design a "ship" so serve one function, like a lifter or an efficiently packed science service bay, and then just load it and attach it somewhere.

Dont think about it as "merging" but rather, just loading the ship into the current building space.

nah I think they are just too excrements to code it lol

[NewtSoup]

I've had issues with merging ships / modules that I designed specifically with merging in mind.  Take, for example, my sky crane and the drilling unit I've just merged into the sky crane.  The crane has a docking port Jr on the bottom and the Drilling Module one on the top.  Yet the ONLY node available is the one on the bottom of a micronode.  So I thought I'd try it the other way.  Load the drills first and merge the sky crane in - This way the sky crane has no attachable nodes at all.

 

Merging seems to be buggy to say the least.  Incidentally I get the same effect if I store the drills a sub assembly.

In order to test the above I had to "launch" the two seperately and dock them together in orbit around minmus.  

Edited July 28, 2017 by NewtSoup

[Geonovast]

I can't seem to find where I saw the answer, but it only works for me if the two nodes I want to merge are their craft's respective roots.  So if I want to merge, I have to root the first one, save, go to the second one, re-root it to where I want to join, then merge in the first one.

Seems odd but I'm sure there's a backend reason why it has to happen that way.

Edited July 28, 2017 by Geonovast

[NewtSoup]

53 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I can't seem to find where I saw the answer, but it only works for me if the two nodes I want to merge are their craft's respective roots.  So if I want to merge, I have to root the first one, save, go to the second one, re-root it to where I want to join, then merge in the first one.

Seems odd but I'm sure there's a backend reason why it has to happen that way.

I will give that a try.....

 

Yes that worked.  It seems you can only connect to the root part.  Once it's connected other nodes on the merged assembly become available.  Which will be why the lifter had no nodes available as it's root part had all the nodes occupied.

 

Edited July 28, 2017 by NewtSoup

[NewtSoup]

Oh, just to clarify I did not re-root the lifter to the docking port jr.  Just the drill module.  But I loaded the Lifter first, then merged in the re-rooted module.

[Spricigo]

@gedro7000 apart from the desire to show how much finesse you have, what was the purpose to interrupt the 2 years of pacefull rest of this topic?

@NewtSoup, for future reference, it should work that way:

Craft A is loaded, and need to have at least one open attachment node no matter where.

Craft B is loaded with merge function, and need to have an open attachment node on the root part.

 

[NewtSoup]

Oh my word, I had not noticed the necromancy going on here.  So Sorry.  But also glad it sorted out an issue for me.

[sullyfubar]

@NewtSoup, thank you for your post, helped me understand what the issue was. This thread can go back to sleep.