[Minimum KSP version - 1.11] Kerbal Attachment System (KAS) v1.12

[IgorZ]

31 minutes ago, Montieth said:

And you can transfer power over a cable....that's a resource ain't it?  

I cannot. But if you can, then you may save a lot by upgrading the wiring in your home   Why using these ridiculous two/three-core insulated wires, rated for voltage and current, when all you need is a piece of straight steel cable?

Edited February 4, 2019 by IgorZ

[Montieth]

Well, you can, you just need to include some return path for power. The ground works as a current return path it's just not very efficient.  

Or you can send signals down cable that has a single copper core and a braided outer core. A but of dielectric inside to keep the separate.  The cable is in fact a wave guide and not exactly a power signal and return path. 

As to a winch, a friend works on the electro/mechanical/hydraulic systems for these things. The hose is loaded on a drum that effectively works like a winch but with very specific controls for how far it is deployed and with specific tension monitoring sensors. I think there's some valve control wiring in the system as well. Far more complicated than the 10,000 lb Garwood winch on my Deuce and a Half. 

From a technical perspective, the winch cable is wire rope. See US army FM 5-125
 https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/5-125/

More seriously, on the point of winches, something that occurs to me now that I'm thinking about 10,000 lb capacity PTO winches. They usually have a shear pin in the drive input so as to act as a torque limiter on what the winch will pull and to act as a 'fail safe' to help avoid blowing things up in the winch or in your PTO/Transmission. Have you thought of such a function on the winches to help avoid parts explody when Kerbals use the winches over their strength capacity of say the parent parts? 

Edited February 4, 2019 by Montieth

[Tonka Crash]

8 minutes ago, Montieth said:

From a technical perspective, the winch cable is wire rope...

More seriously, on the point of winches, something that occurs to me ...

You assume the winch cable is conductive. The last winch cable I owned was a non conductive synthetic rope. It weighted almost nothing compared to steel wire rope and it wasn't nearly as dangerous if it were to break. If I had to choose which I'm taking to space it would be the lighter one.

Kerbals don't care about safety. The safety mechanisms you're talking about are to force a failure in something cheap to repair before something expensive to repair breaks. Doesn't really apply to KSP. Also in zero g it's never hard to move something, it's just hard to control it or stop it.

[Montieth]

True, the synthetic stuff is nice. It's also super un-durable. I was set to buy some until I found some elevator cable ( finer threads, tighter bend radius) for free that was removed from an elevator in a building I work in (They have to dump it in the land fill because it can't be easily recycled, gums up the metal shredders, I was able to get a spool of it for free! Spare wire rope is nice to have). 

However, the synthetic winch rope is very un durable as I said. Chafing and heat are a problem. Steel wire rope you can run it over a structure like a frame and it'll be fine (mostly). I know one guy who got his deuce and a half stuck in a field and he could only run the winch under the truck past the axles. It sawed a nice mark in his axle housings. I'd not want to do that with synthetic rope. You'd ruin the rope quickly. 

Heating in space would probably be a problem for the Samson and other stuff. It starts to lose strength at around 250°F. 

Edited February 4, 2019 by Montieth

[MaverickSawyer]

10 hours ago, Montieth said:

The thing to remember is that a steel cable is actually wrapped around another cable or sometimes a fiber strand there to hold oil. A hose is just a hollow cable designed to hold MORE oil than with a fiber wick. 

http://www.gsproducts.co.uk/media/wysiwyg/wire-rope-fiber-core-2_2_copy.jpg

And you can transfer power over a cable....that's a resource ain't it?  

Good point... Most aerospace hoses are reinforced with fiber or wires to some degree. They're not as strong as a dedicated cable, sure, but they're strong enough to handle some surprisingly large loads.

 

Re: electricity... Unless it's some sort of dual conductor cable, you'll need two cables for power.

[Montieth]

I suspect aerial refueling hoses that are used with probe and drogue systems are rather complex in their construction as well as being resilient for both flexibility and tensile strength. Let me ask a buddy who actually works with this stuff. I'm curious now about their actual construction and if they have any data or power functions in their makeup (valve status or control). 

 

[ChrisF0001]

So... I realise that perhaps I shouldn't be talking about legacy parts, but I've noticed that the Legacy Winch is no longer grabbable - the connector just dangles loose and can't be 'picked up' like the new winch connector can, which I guess is going to encourage me to try to switch things over to the new system eventually...

I have realised separately, though, that I just can't work without the CS-R2 Portable Strut.  It's just too useful for preventing large stations falling apart, and neither of the new mechanisms are anywhere near long enough to replace it, never mind not being symmetrical.  I don't suppose it might be possible in the future to just pull out the part .cfg / model textures into a separate folder so that I can keep them around?...

 

[IgorZ]

7 hours ago, ChrisF0001 said:

I don't suppose it might be possible in the future to just pull out the part .cfg / model textures into a separate folder so that I can keep them around?...

Correct. This part has a heavy logic behind it. You can copy the part config and the ola KAS DLL, but if one day this DLL breaks, the part will stop working.

I have a plan to make another part in the new KAS that would replace the legacy pipe. However, it's a long term plan.

[ChrisF0001]

7 hours ago, IgorZ said:

Correct. This part has a heavy logic behind it. You can copy the part config and the ola KAS DLL, but if one day this DLL breaks, the part will stop working.

I have a plan to make another part in the new KAS that would replace the legacy pipe. However, it's a long term plan.

Great, thanks - in fact presumably that whole LEGACY folder contains everything I need, I hope!

 

[bunjatec]

I don't know if this is a common occurrence, but almost every time I go into timewarp (non physics) the Survey stakes (from extraplanetary launchpads) attached to a planet's surface explode, the only place this doesn't regularly occur is on minmus's flats.

I haven't got logs for this right now as I'm just wanting to see if it's only me first. 

BTW I'm loving the revamped KAS connectors and hose parts/mechanics (oh the KPBS corridors)

[Tonka Crash]

@bunjatec Sounds like a problem to report to Extraplanetary Launchpads. It has a dependency on KIS, not KAS. KIS had a bit of a revamp recently (1.17+) and I don't think ELP has been updated since.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Tonka Crash

[bunjatec]

EPL is up to date (As far as I know)  but I've asked the question on the EPL forum and see were it goes..

Thanks.

[taniwha]

[copied from EL thread]

Your stakes exploding is actually not related to EL, and only loosely related to KIS. The problem likes in how KSP determines the height at which a vessel (in this case EL's stake) should be when loading a scene: if KSP thinks the vessel should be higher that what is is when it is resting on the surface (because the ground polygons are lower than the height data), KSP will raise the vessel. KIS then locks the vessel into place and because the vessel is no longer touching the ground, KSP marks it as flying. Then when you next go into warp (or leave the scene), the vessel crashes into the ground. I figured this out when I came across a floating rock on Duna: I planted a flag on the ground under one edge of the rock, saved, loaded, and the flag was floating in the air right beside the rock. As I had already lost a few flags to the kraken on that trip, I realized what was going on.

I don't know if anything can be done about it in KIS (thus why I haven't talked to Igorz about it yet), but there is something you can do: do not leave stakes out: do your building, then just before you finalize, plant your stakes, finalize the build, then collect your stakes. It is a pain, but it saves having to make KIS containers with more stakes. Note that you can always get away with one quicksave/quickload cycle because it's the loading that shifts the flags up. Since figuring out why stakes wind up flying and thus explode, I have not lost a single stake (though admittedly, it has been less than two weeks since I figured it out).

[Espatie]

I have lost multiple Surface Experiment Package setups to the same thing as @taniwha It seems to be localised to certain areas, so I now use flags to find out if the location is an explosion zone before I plant a full setup down.

[IgorZ]

@taniwha @Espatie

I'd be appreciated if you could give me coordinates that I could use in the stock game "place vessel" feature. It would help me testing this issue a lot. Who knows, may be there is a workaround? It would be not the first, nor the last "just for this case" code in KIS.

[Espatie]

The next time I find a spot I'll let you know.

[taniwha]

@IgorZ: On Duna, you should find a floating rock at 2.51321, -69,04729 (2d30m47s, -69d2m50s). Anywhere in the immediate vicinity of the rock should do.

On Mun, there's one at 4d28m37sN, 48d22m7sW.

Probably anywhere it looks like a chunk was taken out of the ground.

These are more extreme examples of the problem. The way to test is to plant a flag in the spot, save, then load. If the flag is floating above the ground, you found one.

[Friznit]

The problem appears to be more common if you have low res ground textures.  I had a nice Duna base going but FPS was suffering from my overzealous use of fun things. I turned down ground textures to help a bit and ...well, let's say I no longer have a nice Duna base going.

Could a potential workaround be to add an "anchor" feature for ground attachable items, similar to the what the USI mod has?

[taniwha]

Anchoring is actually the cause of the problem because it winds up anchoring the vessel off the surface and thus the vessel thinks it is flying. Thus, when you leave the area, or warp, the vessel gets destroyed.

[Espatie]

I can confirm that I have a terrible PC and therefore use low Res everything.

[Twiki]

Will this mod be updated for 1.6.1? apologies if this was covered in the thread already

[Jacke]

3 hours ago, Twiki said:

Will this mod be updated for 1.6.1? apologies if this was covered in the thread already

It's better to read the last few pages of a mod's topic where you'll find that out.

[Twiki]

2 hours ago, Jacke said:

It's better to read the last few pages of a mod's topic where you'll find that out.

...

42 pages

 

i read 2... how far back is it?  who posted about it? then i could find it in a search

 

 

 

[Twiki]

On 1/25/2019 at 1:02 AM, IgorZ said:

Sorry guys and gals, I was a bit behind this thread in favor of KIS. Multitasking is not exactly my strongest ability  Anyways. Let's get started.

Making a good video tutorial for all of the KIS & KAS parts is my bright dream! I've even set it as a target in my Patreon account, assuming there can be enough people who need it. However, the sad truth is: the interest to this (very time consuming) feature is negligible. So, my answer to you is, unfortunately, no. The majority of the mod fans need functionality, they don't bother abou tutorial videos. If by a chance you make your own tutorial video, please let me know  I will gladly add it to this thread.

I hate to say it, but the new KAS doesn't support action groups yet   There is a pending feature request, though.

I cannot say for the other modders. As of me (KAS), there is no way to attach anything in VAB/SPH. If I start explaining "why", it would take couple of pages. In nutshell, it's very complicated to make it stable. At this moment of time, KAS is only designed to be used by an EVA kerbal in the flight. Sorry, you cannot do anything in the editor.

Rest assured, the new version of KAS will go live at time: as soon as possible. I'm working to make it possible.

There was a reason. I assumed that a steel cable is not exactly a good media to transfer resources. I've completely missed your use-case, though. And to fix it, I'm ready to hear any ideas. Maybe we can allow RTS to behave the same way as winch does? Like, you deploy the RTS head and allow it to fly. What I definitely don't like, is transferring resources over a steel cable. I spent 6 years of my life, learning physics!

I'd be appreciated if you give examples. Show me what are you're trying to make. The "TJ" (not "JS") parts are usual parts from the editor perspective. I see no reason why you cannot use them as a regular part. Even if you're going to "misuse" them.

Alas, no   And I cannot express how I am sad about it. I've spent several hours of my life, trying to make it possible. And I've gave up. It doesn't mean it's impossible at all! It only means, that it will be very complicated, and at this moment it's not feasible.

As of now, there are no reports that would say otherwise. So, yes, use KAS from 1.5.* and ignore the warning. If you're bothered by the warning, remove "MiniAVC.dll" file from the KAS folder.

 

[Jacke]

1 hour ago, Twiki said:

...

42 pages

 

i read 2... how far back is it?  who posted about it? then i could find it in a search

To search, you'll have to have a matching search term.  Easier to look up when KSP 1.6 was released.

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Version_history

Look to the posts after 2018 Dec 19.  That's 3 pages back.  Skim from there looking to see what's happening with the mod.  You'll see the mod is currently supported and from at least the lack of posts mentioning issues, the mod likely works.  Since that's 2 months, you'll likely see if there's any issues.