Starting fresh career in 1.1 - tips to keep it tidy

[Callmedave]

Im going to start a new career in 1.1. I had issues where my previous saves were messy, I had lots of redundant craft floating around, and I lost track of what each was for. I did name them 'Mun sat 1' or 'Contract probe' etc, but i still ended up with a lot of random craft. so much so that when i log on, i looked at all the mess and logged off again. (kind of opening a door to a cupboard to clean it, seeing how bad it is and closing the cupboard again)

I would like a better method for naming my craft, maybe some kind of coding system? so i know what they are for and what i should be doing with them. What methods do you use?

I like the idea of not leaving any space junk, de-orbiting lifter stages, etc. Il be playing with remote tech and happy to install any other mods you recommend to help.

[Snark]

24 minutes ago, Callmedave said:

I would like a better method for naming my craft, maybe some kind of coding system? so i know what they are for and what i should be doing with them. What methods do you use?

My own method is a combination of:

1. aggressively renaming things as "debris"
2. following a consistent exploration regimen that reduces the number of craft involved
3. naming conventions

Aggressive debris naming:

This is the equivalent of clearing stuff out of my house and stuffing in the attic.  Unless there's a convincing case that I'm going to need this for something soon, then as soon as I'm done with a ship I rename it to the debris category to get it out of my face.  This includes just about all contract-placed craft.

 

Consistent exploration regimen:

Non-RT:  I'll generally send one (and only one) initial probe to pave the way, generally with an orbital resource scanner on it.  Always named "<planet> Surveyor".  Leave in place so that I can pick up "science from space around <planet>" contracts for free.

RT:  Instead of a Surveyor, I send a Relay.  It's like a Surveyor, but big and packs a lot of antennas and is destined for a high circular polar orbit.  It does a low orbit on initial arrival to get the resource survey done, then transfers to the higher orbit for relay status.

Low-orbit ring of commsats to establish surface and near-space coverage around the planet:  they're named "<planet> Comsat <N>", and I leave them "visible" only in early stages of exploration when I don't have many planets covered.  Then I rename them to debris (which makes them invisible, but they still function for RT).

An appropriate set of names for crewed ships, e.g. motherships ("Mission"), extractors ("Miner"), science landers ("Lander"), always named after the destination.

Ships designed for one-off contracts have a standard naming convention so that I have 'em around in the VAB for future reference, to save time if a similar contract comes up.  The name is always "<destination> (Station|Outpost) <crew capacity> [modifiers for add-ons]".  Thus, "Put a station in a solar orbit that supports nine kerbals and has cupola and a science lab" will be "Solar Outpost IX-CL", or "Put a base on Minmus that supports five kerbals" would be "Minmus Outpost V".

 

I used to have much more of a clutter problem because I kept reacting with "but I might need that!" anxiety and never threw anything away.  Then I just got ruthless about it and marked anything that's not immediately needed as debris, and life got simpler.  If I *really* need it I can go hunt through the debris list. 

I really wish that KSP had an extra few ship types (e.g. "Custom1," "Custom2", "Custom3") that aren't otherwise used for anything, so that I could (for example) just decide that "I will reserve Custom1 for all my RT communication satellites" and put them all there, which would make managing things a lot easier.

[KocLobster]

This kind of thing bothers me too, although I never let it get to the point that you let it get to. You can start by deleting all your unused vessels, unless you're dead set on starting a new career. Either way, I suggest adopting the strategy of creating ships that don't leave debris, it's actually really easy.

Ensure that each stage will be decoupled in an orbit that eventually destroys it; do this for everything but your payload. This helps keep things in the tracking center to a minimum.

As for naming, I do something simple similar to you. I name everything by [Celestial destination] [Type of craft] [Number of crafts that already exist currently in flight, that share the same celestial destination and type of craft].

This means that a lot of ships end up with the numeral designation of 1, but this just makes sense to me. Why have a 2 when it's the only ship out there in existence?

Some examples:

Mun Probe 1

Mun Station 1

Duna Probe 1

Minmus Lander 1

Mun Probe 2 (if it's launched before Mun Probe 1 finishes its mission)

 

I don't usually have an extreme amount of ships all at the same time, typically less than 15 different crafts at a time, and so this isn't confusing. Maybe it would be if I had a ton or used realism/RSS mods.

For those ships that just couldn't help but leave some debris somewhere, I just delete them from the tracking center. It's far easier and not worth it to manually destroy them with a Klaw->deorbit, or explosives (if you have a mod that has that, like KIS/KAS).

Hope this helps. It works very well for me.

Edited April 21, 2016 by KocLobster

[Empiro]

If you carefully plan out all of your stages, you can definitely avoid creating any debris at all. I personally like using a 1.5 stage to orbit design, because a good sustainer engine (like the Skipper or Swivel) plus boosters will almost make it into orbit. For example, for a hypothetical Mun mission:

• Boosters: dropped into the ocean early
• Core stage: dropped when PE is ~20km
• Transfer stage: transfers to the Mun, circularizes, performs most of the landing burn, and is dropped a few KM from the surface of the Mun
• Lander stage: performs the final landing, takeoff, and return to Kerbin. Detached from command pod before entering the atmosphere

I've actually gone entire careers with only a few pieces of debris (usually due to mistakes) drifting about. Most of my satellites also had enough fuel to crash into something once their mission was complete.

[Guest]

The Haystack mod can help you with selecting and viewing craft in a more reasonable, organized manner.

[Superfluous J]

My goal in every career is 0 debris and 0 ships around after they have reached end of life. This keeps things pretty tidy and makes me feel good to boot.

I will only delete ships and debris if one of these is true:

• It will crash or touch atmosphere
• It will cross a sphere of influence boundary
• It is escaping from Sun.

The first and last are obvious. The middle one though, you can safely assume that the craft will get into one or the other state eventually.

Edited April 21, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[Wemb]

There's also a mod which can automatically number your launches, I believe - though I've not used it myself yet, but I keep seeing it in the list of 1.1 compatible mods in CKAN.

Don't have KSP here, but this might be it.

 

Wemb