KSP 1.1+ Parts welding/combining?

[Arugela]

If KSP cannot or does not produce extremely high parts count with the new update, is there a way to make parts become one part later? If you take fuselage parts and fuel parts and take account of the offset tool you could make an assemble button where certain parts(maybe selectable) can be turned into on giant part. This could be called hull setting or something and making the body of a ship. This could save tons of resources on the CPU if it gets rid of the physics or something for those parts and actually makes a unique part. This could also be good for part/ship creation. People could lay hulls persay for ship and trade them to people etc. This could also be very good for space stations etc.

I was thinking there could be limits though. Either it doesn't support the offset or stacking(which I hope it would allow personally) or it has some test/requirement for stability in the parts with struts before allowing successful combining of parts. This could get rid of the struts(or make them invisible optionally) on the body and allow what you selected or put together to be one giant part with the normal stats involved. Not sure about multiple stacked or partially stacked fuel tanks and fuel amounts. Although I do this with all of my ships and have no personal problem with it. I would think at minimum as long as there is the same mass(including struts) it would be balanced in a sense. Albeit not in a totally realistic sense.

I would imagine this would/could hypothetically get rid of any unnecessary physics on the parts besides heat/external influences. it could allow for unique cargo hold creations and other structures you cannot do in a sense currently. And allow for(especially if parts can be stacked) a much greater use of each part naturally. This is also assuming this is part of the problem with parts count limits. If you can put together hubs and other parts with joints(And it preserves unused connection points.) on them you could make null most of them mods for any reason besides aesthetics. Which of course is something else missing from the stock game technically(Aesthetics design if it's not clear). 8)

Obviously balance could be take into account more seriously and limit parts stacking for realistic fuel amounts etc. But this would still be useful to a lot of people.

If you need a name call it an assembly tool! AKA a joint remover!

BTW, what does cause the parts count limits currently? I'm assuming it's related to the 100% cpu core that is always moving? I've read both physics calcs and UI coding or something similar. Anyone know? Is the code open for this game too btw besides the ship parts stats. I'm uncertain what they have done in this direction. It could be fun to go over it. Could we mode or make new physics ourselves for a mod or anything? Or make ones to select from for fun?

Edited December 13, 2015 by Arugela

[pandaman]

Features along these lines have been suggested several times and would IMO be a good feature if done well.  It would I think need some sensible 'rules' (such as limiting it to same size parts in a stack) though.

[YargJay9991]

The idea is good, but there is already a mod for that, and I don't think it will be part of the game. 

5 hours ago, Arugela said:

BTW, what does cause the parts count limits currently? I'm assuming it's related to the 100% cpu core that is always moving? I've read both physics calcs and UI coding or something similar. Anyone know? Is the code open for this game too btw besides the ship parts stats. I'm uncertain what they have done in this direction. It could be fun to go over it. Could we mode or make new physics ourselves for a mod or anything? Or make ones to select from for fun?

The part count limit is not a strict part limit (except in career mode), but is more limited by how good your computer is. Mine for example, which is an i7 Quad-core with 16 GB RAM, can run a 600 part ship with only a little lag (say 15 FPS) where as a smaller, low end computer could only run a 50 part ship before getting extreme lagging.

Regarding the code, I think they like to hide that, but I'm not sure. Ask some modders out there and they can tell you.

Happy Flying

YargJay9991