ISRU attachments

[Wemb]

Argh! I just landed, with some difficulty, an ISRU next to my nascent base on the Mun.  And then my engineer, using KAS, discovers he can't bolt anything onto the side of it...

Is there anything I can do, other than send another one out with a tank or something else attached underneath it? There's nothing else attached to it now, since I'd decoupled it from my delivery ship with a separator, rather than using a docking port.

Wemb

[fchurca]

If you're willing to play hide-and-seek with the Kraken, I could suggest attaching them with an electric buggy with two claws, one on each end. If you forgot to add a drill and ore tank, now could be a good time to add them as part of the buggy.

Spoiler

Not depicted: the aforementioned ISRU and base

The delivery of the buggy to the premises is left as an exercise to the reader.

[Wemb]

23 minutes ago, fchurca said:

If you're willing to play hide-and-seek with the Kraken, I could suggest attaching them with an electric buggy with two claws, one on each end. If you forgot to add a drill and ore tank, now could be a good time to add them as part of the buggy.

  Reveal hidden contents

Not depicted: the aforementioned ISRU and base

The delivery of the buggy to the premises is left as an exercise to the reader.

Ah - hadn't thought of using the claw... Erm. That going be particularly explodey? I'm already getting spooked with KAS seemingly to cause random explosions around my engineer. The ore tanks, cooling and power is on it's way in another transport.  

Thanks

[Snark]

I'm not sure I understand your problem-- what exactly is it that you want to do, that you can't?

I use KIS/KAS all the time and never have any problems.  I specifically use it when I want to bring a ship up to my ISRU miner/refiner so I can fill it up.  The connector ports in KAS are perfect for this.

I avoid using the Klaw at all costs, since it's 1. ugly and 2. incredibly kraken-prone.

3 hours ago, Wemb said:

Ah - hadn't thought of using the claw... Erm. That going be particularly explodey? I'm already getting spooked with KAS seemingly to cause random explosions around my engineer. The ore tanks, cooling and power is on it's way in another transport. 

No, the claw doesn't make things explode.  It just causes the entire game to crash and corrupts your save file in the process.

So, I guess it depends on whether you consider that to be a big deal. 

What sort of "random explosions" are you talking about?  I use KIS/KAS all the time with no problems.  The only explosions I see are if I detach a radial part and let go of it so it is free to fall to the ground; KSP doesn't handle that well, it's liable to go boom at some point.  But as long as you don't let radially-attached parts sit around loose, it's fine.

[fchurca]

 

 

The few issues I've had with the claw have appeared when I used multiple claws per ship and shook them vigorously. Even then, I think they had to be attached to each other with both armed in order for them to summon the kraken. I currently have a station in orbit with two claws and have yet to have any issues with those. It may be because both are locked and not attached to each other, and the station is in orbit.

Spoiler

If you don't plan to shake your base around, you may be fine; be sure to back up everything first though. If your base is on wheels and has a forward or backwards-facing docking port accessible to the buggy, you could replace one of the claws with a docking port and it will be Absolutely(tm) kraken-free.

Screenshots of your base and the relative position of the ISRU will be helpful!

Edited 2016-01-24T21:32-03:00 : Added picture

Edited January 28, 2016 by fchurca
Added picture

[FancyMouse]

Well probably because you're using big ISRU which doesn't allow surface attach, and KAS is respecting that?

Small ISRU can surface attach, or you can use EVA mono to jump to the top and attach to the top stack node if it's not already occupied (but if it's already occupied you can attach to those parts instead of ISRU).

[Snark]

19 minutes ago, FancyMouse said:

Well probably because you're using big ISRU which doesn't allow surface attach, and KAS is respecting that?

Small ISRU can surface attach, or you can use EVA mono to jump to the top and attach to the top stack node if it's not already occupied (but if it's already occupied you can attach to those parts instead of ISRU).

Ohhhh, now I get it.  The OP's post now makes sense to me:

11 hours ago, Wemb said:

Argh! I just landed, with some difficulty, an ISRU next to my nascent base on the Mun.  And then my engineer, using KAS, discovers he can't bolt anything onto the side of it...

Is there anything I can do, other than send another one out with a tank or something else attached underneath it? There's nothing else attached to it now, since I'd decoupled it from my delivery ship with a separator, rather than using a docking port.

I was reading this as:  "I just landed a mining ship that includes ISRU refining capacity, and then for some reason I haven't explained I want to use an engineer to bolt something to the side for some reason I haven't mentioned but it must be needed in context for me to start using."

Whereas what he actually meant was "I just landed just the ISRU part itself next to my base, and have been trying to bolt things to the side of that part."  Didn't even occur to me. 

Yeah, it's not surface-attachable.  Attach stuff to the top or bottom of it.  Use a little connector port, then link that to a connector port on the rest of your base.

[RizzoTheRat]

Use the KAS winch to tip it over and then attach things to the ends.

[dangerhamster]

Personally I just do the tipping over at home and use KAS/KIS to connect to everything else.

Self positioning, all that needs doing is moving the legs to the sides and plugging in. The motive units can be left in place or removed and reused to build rovers.

[Wemb]

On 27/01/2016 at 10:39 PM, Snark said:

 

What sort of "random explosions" are you talking about?  I use KIS/KAS all the time with no problems.  The only explosions I see are if I detach a radial part and let go of it so it is free to fall to the ground; KSP doesn't handle that well, it's liable to go boom at some point.  But as long as you don't let radially-attached parts sit around loose, it's fine.

Oh, it's me - trying to put node attachment points into my inventory. Just haven't quite got to grips with the UI yet and I keep letting go of them, rather than putting them in my inv.  They they just seem to explode when they hit the ground...

My entire Mun mining operations need revision though - I've realised my combination miner/ore carrier which was ferrying 900 units of ore back into orbit for processing was costing slightly more than 1800  units of fuel/oxidiser mix to transport to orbit full and back down empty. 

Thx, Wemb

[Snark]

20 minutes ago, Wemb said:

My entire Mun mining operations need revision though - I've realised my combination miner/ore carrier which was ferrying 900 units of ore back into orbit for processing was costing slightly more than 1800  units of fuel/oxidiser mix to transport to orbit full and back down empty.

Yah, there are a lot of ways to arrange a mining operation-- various advantages and disadvantages that shift around with the logistics of the particular situation.

For Mun mining operations-- where the dV to shuttle between surface and orbit is significant-- what I like to do is to keep a combination driller + refiner ship that just stays on the surface.  Then I just land my fuel hauler next to it to stock up.  The fuel hauler is really efficient, because it's basically nothing more than a flying fuel tank with an engine attached.  I'm not wasting any fuel moving ISRU or drills to/from the surface, and I don't have to worry about getting the right proportion of ore-versus-fuel capacity in the hauler-- it's all just fuel.

This is different from what I do on, say, Minmus.  Minmus has such tiny dV requirements that going between surface and orbit is practically free.  So there, I usually don't bother with a permanent surface base at all; I just leave a flag planted to mark the juicy ore spot.  I have a single big ship which is drills, plus, ISRU, plus fuel haulage, plus an engine that's big enough to move the lot.  Fly the whole shebang down to the surface, load up, fly it all back to orbit.  Yes, it means that I'm technically wasting some fuel by moving the ISRU and drills back and forth between surface and orbit, but frankly it's chicken feed, since Minmus escape velocity is so low.  For me, the small amount of wastage is a trivial price to pay, in exchange for having a much simpler operation with less hassle.

For both the Mun and Minmus case, the ship that goes down to the surface only goes back to low orbit around the moon in question, not back to Kerbin.  Shuttling between the moon and Kerbin is done by a dedicated fuel hauler that never lands anywhere; very low TWR, great big fuel tank with a nuke engine.

To be honest, though, these days I don't spend much time setting up mining operations around Kerbin.  I used to do it, because it was a fun challenge, but I soon exhausted the novelty.  In terms of actual economics, the "return on investment" (i.e. amount of funds I save, per hour of my time spent) is pretty terrible.  Cash is in reasonably ready supply, and it's simpler and faster just to bang out a solar-station contract and use the cash to launch fuel from Kerbin, than it is to set up and maintain a mining operation.

Where ISRU becomes really useful is when I'm going on interplanetary missions.  Being able to top off the tank is absolutely invaluable when the nearest gas station is a year's travel time away.    For near-Kerbin operations, it's just not worth the time investment to me anymore, since it's so easy just to launch stuff from Kerbin.