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

[JajajTec]

wait kis and kas are not from the same developer?

[Tonka Crash]

6 hours ago, JajajTec said:

wait kis and kas are not from the same developer?

KIS and KAS were originally developed by @KospY.  @IgorZ took over maintenance and development. Since then he has completely rewritten KAS from scratch.  The underlying code only borrows the concept of what KAS is from the original, the code base is completely new. He is currently in the process of rewriting KIS.

Quote

oh the towbar will dissconnect (but still align sort of) when you quicksave/reload the game

I tested this and it's the behavior I see.  I'd suggest avoid parking a trailer on a hill.

[Tokamak]

Can someone help me out? I'd really appreciate a pointer in the right direction.

I'm trying to use the tow bar, and having no luck at all. I can connect a tractor to a trailer just fine, but then when I try to go anything but straight, I immediately jackknife, because the trailer doesn't want to go any direction but dead straight as if along rails. Presumably this is because it isn't steering, which makes sense.

I've tried enabling active steering, but it doesn't appear to do anything, as far as I can see. It certainly doesn't make the wheels on the trailer move to steer.

I'm confused, and I'm clearly doing something wrong. Can anyone help?

Also, "lock joint" doesn't seem to do what I'd think it would, because it doesn't make the joint stop bending. Very confused, I am. D:

Edited June 12, 2020 by Tokamak

[Tonka Crash]

5 hours ago, Tokamak said:

Can someone help me out? I'd really appreciate a pointer in the right direction.

I'm trying to use the tow bar, and having no luck at all. I can connect a tractor to a trailer just fine, but then when I try to go anything but straight, I immediately jackknife, because the trailer doesn't want to go any direction but dead straight as if along rails. Presumably this is because it isn't steering, which makes sense.

I've tried enabling active steering, but it doesn't appear to do anything, as far as I can see. It certainly doesn't make the wheels on the trailer move to steer.

I'm confused, and I'm clearly doing something wrong. Can anyone help?

Also, "lock joint" doesn't seem to do what I'd think it would, because it doesn't make the joint stop bending. Very confused, I am. D:

 

What works for me.

1. Connected the trailer.
2. Activate the lock.  You should see a message Tow Bar is locking diff ## where diff is the misalignment angle at the trailer end
3. Drive forward to straighten out the towbar, zig-zagging a little may help to get the towbar locked.  You should see a message Tow Bar is LOCKED The towbar should be perpendicular to the trailer.  It stays perpendicular to the trailer in my experience and doesn't fold flat like your photo if it's locked.
4. Engage Active Steering. The towbar must be locked to use active steering. The toggle changes to Disable active steering if it's active.  You should see the trailer wheels turn with the rover steering.

Another thing that I don't see mentioned a lot with rovers is it really helps to remap the driving keys in the game Input Settings.  By default they overlay the attitude keys, so when you go forward with 'w' the rover wants to pitch if you have a reaction wheel on board. Left and right want to yaw the rover in addition to turning the wheels.

I have my keys mapped to the number pad 2,4,6,8 with 5 as brakes.  At high speeds I use roll in the direction of the turn to help fight flipping. Nose down when accelerating, nose up braking.  These last two come in handy if you are towing a load that much heavier than your tractor vehicle.

[Tokamak]

2 hours ago, Tonka Crash said:

What works for me.

1. Connected the trailer.
2. Activate the lock.  You should see a message Tow Bar is locking diff ## where diff is the misalignment angle at the trailer end
3. Drive forward to straighten out the towbar, zig-zagging a little may help to get the towbar locked.  You should see a message Tow Bar is LOCKED The towbar should be perpendicular to the trailer.  It stays perpendicular to the trailer in my experience and doesn't fold flat like your photo if it's locked.
4. Engage Active Steering. The towbar must be locked to use active steering. The toggle changes to Disable active steering if it's active.  You should see the trailer wheels turn with the rover steering.

Another thing that I don't see mentioned a lot with rovers is it really helps to remap the driving keys in the game Input Settings.  By default they overlay the attitude keys, so when you go forward with 'w' the rover wants to pitch if you have a reaction wheel on board. Left and right want to yaw the rover in addition to turning the wheels.

I have my keys mapped to the number pad 2,4,6,8 with 5 as brakes.  At high speeds I use roll in the direction of the turn to help fight flipping. Nose down when accelerating, nose up braking.  These last two come in handy if you are towing a load that much heavier than your tractor vehicle.

Thank you! That's at least gotten me a lot closer. I did get "active steering" to do something, though it took me a bit to realize that I needed to toggle the "steering direction" option. Because of the orientation at which I built the trailer, the trailer was actively trying to turn in the wrong direction. XD

The towbar is still _really_ springy, so even starting to move very slowly causes the tractor and trailer to 'sproing' (the technical term) together and apart until I get moving, and the same when I stop. The active steeing doesn't seem to extend to the brakes on the trailer, so it does its best to smash into the tractor even if I slow or brake very gently, and usually lifts the back of it off of the ground. Is this just something I'll have to deal with, or am I doing something else wrong?

Again, thanks for the help. I appreciate it a lot.

[Tonka Crash]

16 minutes ago, Tokamak said:

Thank you! That's at least gotten me a lot closer. I did get "active steering" to do something, though it took me a bit to realize that I needed to toggle the "steering direction" option. Because of the orientation at which I built the trailer, the trailer was actively trying to turn in the wrong direction. XD

The towbar is still _really_ springy, so even starting to move very slowly causes the tractor and trailer to 'sproing' (the technical term) together and apart until I get moving, and the same when I stop. The active steeing doesn't seem to extend to the brakes on the trailer, so it does its best to smash into the tractor even if I slow or brake very gently, and usually lifts the back of it off of the ground. Is this just something I'll have to deal with, or am I doing something else wrong?

Again, thanks for the help. I appreciate it a lot.

There is no braking action on the trailer just stearing assistance.  I made a feature request on github about this last week. I made a video a couple weeks ago for another user that was having issues towing you might find interesting if you haven't seen it. I use reaction wheels to fight the tendency to lift the back end of the tractor off the ground during braking.

[Tokamak]

8 minutes ago, Tonka Crash said:

There is no braking action on the trailer just stearing assistance.  I made a feature request on github about this last week. I made a video a couple weeks ago for another user that was having issues towing you might find interesting if you haven't seen it. I use reaction wheels to fight the tendency to lift the back end of the tractor off the ground during braking.

Gotcha. It's good to know if I'm doing something inherently wrong, or if it's just a case of "yeah, it'll do that". Thanks!

[SpeedShot7]

Does this mod work with RO?

[spoonyboobah]

https://i.imgur.com/48TR9xv.jpg

Ok, is KAS broken in 1.9.1???? I've looked up everything I can and can't find and explanation???? Or, what have I done wrong link an idiot?

Thanks

[Tonka Crash]

6 hours ago, spoonyboobah said:

https://i.imgur.com/48TR9xv.jpg

Ok, is KAS broken in 1.9.1???? I've looked up everything I can and can't find and explanation???? Or, what have I done wrong link an idiot?

Thanks

Not broken, but not idiot proof either.  You have two towbars and no place to plug them in.  You need a JS-1 socket on whichever vehicle is the trailer. It hard to tell what you are trying to do from your dimly lit photo with no explanation. Kerbals have helmet lights that are useful at night.  The OP has a demo video on how to use towbars.

@spoonyboobah Edit: Finally took a look on a monitor instead of my phone where I could see a little more of what's in the photo.  I don't think you have KAS installed correctly with all the the dependencies.  Do you have Module Manager?

20 hours ago, SpeedShot7 said:

Does this mod work with RO?

No idea. I don't know why it wouldn't work, but I have never used RO and have no idea what all it changes. Try it and see.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Tonka Crash

[Tokamak]

7 hours ago, spoonyboobah said:

https://i.imgur.com/48TR9xv.jpg

Ok, is KAS broken in 1.9.1???? I've looked up everything I can and can't find and explanation???? Or, what have I done wrong link an idiot?

Thanks

It works differently than it used to. It confused me too, when I came back to KSP. Those parts are now no longer androgynous. A socket won't connect to another socket, but a tow bar, or resource hose, or winch cable will connect to it. 

[Jim123]

am i doing something wrong i put down the pipes but nothing shows up for the link button thanks in advance for help.

[Tonka Crash]

4 hours ago, Jim123 said:

am i doing something wrong i put down the pipes but nothing shows up for the link button thanks in advance for help.

That is legacy behavior that has not been supported since 2018.  To transfer resources you use the RTS-1 transfer station and a JS-1 socket

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by Tonka Crash

[Torchster]

Will admit to being a complete newbie.  Finally made the mistake of update my KSP.  Can't get ANYTHING to work.  I stored my save files before the update (for some reason)...but this has been a disaster and I will never do that again.  Anyway, topic at hand.

I nuked everything to start over.  I downloaded the game fresh.  Then I have only downloaded KAS.  I used to love to use KAS and i really want the js-1 joint socket to work with  TJ-1 and TJ-2.  But the only thing I see in the structural parts tab is the js-1 part.  When I hover over the part (where it should be) it lists that I am looking at TJ-1 or TJ-2 (the description is correct to what I remember) but it still looks exactly like js-1.  I even put it on a test craft and went to the launch pad...but no matter what part I put on the craft it looks like the js-1.  Heck I don't even see the hose attachment thing (can't remember what it is called) that I used to have ANYWHERE.

Again this brand new download of the game and brand new download of mod...what am i doing wrong?

[Tonka Crash]

@Torchster First off do you have all the dependencies?  Module Manager and CCK are required.  I recommend using CKAN for mod installs as it will automatically include any dependencies.  If you could upload your KSP.log to a file sharing site like dropbox or google drive and share a link here we can troubleshoot what's going wrong.

 

[Torchster]

Hmm...I don't remember loading CKAN before.  My computer didn't like it, but it work.  Thanks for your help.  Spot on.

[Duke Leto]

Dumb Question.

Back in 2018, I used KAS to construct what I referred to as a "modular Minmus mining base".  Basically I got fed up with trying to assemble a complicated mining setup in orbit and land it on Minmus, or with trying to dock base components on the surface, so I took inspiration from oil drilling operations and landed a "Control Tower" and several individual rocket landers that each contained a big ISRU, drills and all the accouterments needed to turn out a fuel at a fast clip.  Each tower was connected to one of the others or to the control tower using W-50 winches and JS-1 sockets (or whatever the equivalent parts were called then), so that all individual craft consolidated into one base and the Level 3 Engineer in the control tower applied his bonus to all of them.  Then I landed my nice 10m SpaceY fuel freighters next to the setup in order to, as I said at the time, "make the rocket equation my poodle" in preparation for a huge interplanetary exploration effort.

Then Squad and Steam conspired to ruin my plans by spamming save breaking updates, all of my favorite mods stopped updating, and I generally lost patience with the whole goddamned enterprise.

So then I find myself staring at the wall during quarantine and I decide I might as well make another try in version 1.9.  Fortunately, things have been going faster because I learned a lot last time.  (And I moved my installation away from where Steam could harm it...)

So I mostly reused my old designs, landed the towers at a nice flat equatorial plateau with a nearly 13% ore concentration and lashed them together.

 

Didn't work as expected.  The craft are still separate.

So my question is: does KAS still do craft consolidation via fuel lines?  I'm hoping the RTS-1 will do the job, because linking with solid pipes was (in my experience), the equivalent of chanting "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Space Kraken R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn..."

[vossiewulf]

I have a probably dumb question, what does one do to cancel a connector? I started one, moved to where I wanted to connect it, it was too far and my engineer dropped the connector and now this pipe is sitting on the Mun. The context menu on the RTS-1 only has link mode docked/undocked, and disassemble the part, no cancel.

[Grem]

vossiewulf, You can hold down the "G" key to pick up items and drag them into inventory.

[Tonka Crash]

8 hours ago, Duke Leto said:

So my question is: does KAS still do craft consolidation via fuel lines?

Try changing Dock Mode to Docked.  In Docked Mode the connected ships are one vessel just like if you used the old pipes to join them.

5 minutes ago, vossiewulf said:

I have a probably dumb question, what does one do to cancel a connector?

Is Lock Connector on the RTS-1 one of the choices?  This retracts the hose instantly.

[vossiewulf]

5 hours ago, Grem said:

vossiewulf, You can hold down the "G" key to pick up items and drag them into inventory.

I assume you mean the RTS-1, I will try that.

5 hours ago, Tonka Crash said:

Try changing Dock Mode to Docked.  In Docked Mode the connected ships are one vessel just like if you used the old pipes to join them.

I tried that, it did nothing, long connector tube running from it remained.

[Wilhelm]

I need a little help on understanding the PCB. I have two vessels on the surface of Mun (one of them is a tipped over lander). I attached (via KIS) the PCB on the lander A and the hook in the tipped over lander B. My hope was that when I took off with lander A, it would tow lander B, after which it could use its own engines. The issue is that this does not happens. It behaves as an infinite long rope. Is this normal?

I must point out that I edited the "maxLinkLength" in the file "part_PCB1.cfg" from its default value of 5 to 500 (needed to do this to allow linking between the two vessels, since the rescuer landed ~250m from it).

As  an extra incentive for you guys to help me, I must also say that Jebediah is on the tipped over lander. You would not let him rot on the Mun, would you?  

[Tonka Crash]

@Wilhelm A video would help.  The cable should maintain the length it had when you connect the parts.  Did you see lander B move at all?  The only thing I can think of is the cable snapped loose.  These joints are not infinitely strong. 

[Wilhelm]

17 hours ago, Tonka Crash said:

@Wilhelm A video would help.  The cable should maintain the length it had when you connect the parts.  Did you see lander B move at all?  The only thing I can think of is the cable snapped loose.  These joints are not infinitely strong. 

On my first attempt surely I heard it snapping because I went full throtle on lander A. Then I reloaded and tried a couple more times with a gentler take off without success. On these, I did not heard the snapping sound and the cable seemed to be still attached. The lander B was completely motionless in all cases.

Right now I am a bit constrained in terms of time to play (real life getting in the way), but as soon as I can launch the game, I will try posting a video.  

[Oli]

Hello 

I am restarting my game from the beginning because of my mistakes and too many mods who mess my game.

So I have desinstall all mods, start a new game and had the mods one by one almost because I am using CKAN wich install KAS / KIS / Easy Switch Vessels together.

It's fine for me but I install them I get errors in my log... I wonder how bad is it ?

MHere is my log before install of KIS/ KAS/ EVS : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ssoL1HDXjB_E9odWL4LyY46DvSitoHp1/view?usp=sharing

And after : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BaVTJByrzfqFR6m60HzHK3vmjgDZckYG/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for your help I cannot play without this essentials mods