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

[Tonka Crash]

1 hour ago, Oli said:

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

Everyone gets errors. I don't really see anything out of the ordinary.  I don't really have time to go through and explain error by error how to fix every one of them, but I don't see any game breaking problems.  You can avoid some of the errors by looking for deprecated part folders in your mods and just delete them.  Since this should just get rid of parts you shouldn't even see in the game it shouldn't really hurt anything.

1. ADDON BINDER errors early in the loading process are pretty normal to see.  It just means the libraries haven't been loaded yet.  
2. The only other error differences I see are from other mods with deprecated parts that were design to work with the old version of KAS trying to reference KASModuleStrut or KASModulePort.  These models are for the old KAS and are no longer supported in the current KAS.  These are not a problem.
3. There are several errors common between the two files that have nothing to do with KIS/KAS: Texture errors, missing partmodules, missing agent title strings.  You'd need to track down the offending files and fix them individually, but you probably will never notice the problems in game.

[spoonyboobah]

On 6/16/2020 at 6:45 PM, Tokamak said:

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. 

OK, thanks.

I have changed the trailer to a Joint Socker and the truck to a Tow Bar. But when I right click on it it still doesn't give me any options??? Just the "Aim Camera"?????

[Tonka Crash]

@spoonyboobah Either your Kerbal isn't close enough to activate the KAS options in the PAW menu or you have it installed incorrectly or missing dependencies.  The PAW menu can only be activated by a Kerbal on EVA.  You can't just click the parts from inside a rover and get them to activate.  We can't tell what you are doing wrong without more info: a copy of the KSP.log to diagnose install problems or a video to diagnose user errors.

[rukhafi]

I'm sorry in advance for a possibly inappropriate question, but is it possible to change the range of attachment and maximum weight settings in the latest KAS versions? In earlier versions it was possible to change values in the config file, but now I can not find these values. Thank you

[Tonka Crash]

3 hours ago, rukhafi said:

I'm sorry in advance for a possibly inappropriate question, but is it possible to change the range of attachment and maximum weight settings in the latest KAS versions? In earlier versions it was possible to change values in the config file, but now I can not find these values. Thank you

It's a KIS config issue.  Look in KIS/settings.cfg for maxDistance and grabMaxMass in the EvaPickup node.  You can change them here, but you will have to change them after every update. Or create a patch file of you own to modify these.  Just save it to a file ending .cfg somewhere under GameData

@KISConfig:FINAL
{   
    @EvaPickup // Increase mass & range
    {
		@maxDistance = 5 // 3 (default)
		@grabMaxMass = 5 // 1 (default)
    }
}

 

[rukhafi]

6 hours ago, Tonka Crash said:

It's a KIS config issue.  Look in KIS/settings.cfg for maxDistance and grabMaxMass in the EvaPickup node.  You can change them here, but you will have to change them after every update. Or create a patch file of you own to modify these.  Just save it to a file ending .cfg somewhere under GameData

@KISConfig:FINAL
{   
    @EvaPickup // Increase mass & range
    {
		@maxDistance = 5 // 3 (default)
		@grabMaxMass = 5 // 1 (default)
    }
}

 

Oh thanks! I was very inattentive 

[Oli]

On 6/25/2020 at 12:59 AM, Tonka Crash said:

Everyone gets errors. I don't really see anything out of the ordinary.  I don't really have time to go through and explain error by error how to fix every one of them, but I don't see any game breaking problems.  You can avoid some of the errors by looking for deprecated part folders in your mods and just delete them.  Since this should just get rid of parts you shouldn't even see in the game it shouldn't really hurt anything.

1. ADDON BINDER errors early in the loading process are pretty normal to see.  It just means the libraries haven't been loaded yet.  
2. The only other error differences I see are from other mods with deprecated parts that were design to work with the old version of KAS trying to reference KASModuleStrut or KASModulePort.  These models are for the old KAS and are no longer supported in the current KAS.  These are not a problem.
3. There are several errors common between the two files that have nothing to do with KIS/KAS: Texture errors, missing partmodules, missing agent title strings.  You'd need to track down the offending files and fix them individually, but you probably will never notice the problems in game.

Thank you very much to have taken the time to explain me so much. I am reassured so I can reinstall the mods. I will not bother fixing if it's not alternating the game. Thank you

[Corovaneer]

I would like to leave a KIS item inside an empty ship, on a seat. Can I do it in-game, outside of VAB?

[Tonka Crash]

@Corovaneer Not with the default KIS configuration.  The seat inventory follows the Kerbal.  No Kerbal in the seat, no inventory to put anything into.

[DaveLChgo]

Hi everyone.

Still trying to get the hang of the "new" ( I know its been a few years ) KAS connecting between ships.

The old way used the same socket on both ends and link together.  Poof..... pipe formed, ships connected,  done.

Now its hose reel on one ship connector on the other.  Make connection and so long as they stay undocked.  OK.  But as soon as you toggle dock.  They pull together and start bouncing and destroying themselves.   I want them to be docked because then the base drill and resource converter can fill the tanks on the second ship with no intervention.  ( like the old way)  The new way is ( since we cannot use docked mode)  is to use the gui and transfer a tank at a time.   OK its been a few days go back to the base and transfer another tankful.   Kind of a pain.   Thanks for your time.

[Tokamak]

1 minute ago, DaveLChgo said:

Hi everyone.

Still trying to get the hang of the "new" ( I know its been a few years ) KAS connecting between ships.

The old way used the same socket on both ends and link together.  Poof..... pipe formed, ships connected,  done.

Now its hose reel on one ship connector on the other.  Make connection and so long as they stay undocked.  OK.  But as soon as you toggle dock.  They pull together and start bouncing and destroying themselves.   I want them to be docked because then the base drill and resource converter can fill the tanks on the second ship with no intervention.  ( like the old way)  The new way is ( since we cannot use docked mode)  is to use the gui and transfer a tank at a time.   OK its been a few days go back to the base and transfer another tankful.   Kind of a pain.   Thanks for your time.

I'm not sure why docked mode is doing that for you. I have encountered it a few times, but only occasionally. This may or may not be helpful, but if you use MKS, the "ground tether" feature is AMAZING for things like this.

[bcqJC]

1 hour ago, DaveLChgo said:

But as soon as you toggle dock.  They pull together and start bouncing and destroying themselves.

If you're able - maybe you have a save game - try the toggle dock but this time, display the autostruts first (Alt-F12/Physics/Display autostuts) before toggling dock. Observe how the autostruts change during the docking process.  I suspect that all the bouncing and possible whipping around is caused by the re-rooting and repositioning of the CoM when the ships are docked.  If so, you can mitigate this by changing the autostruts of each ship such that no part is autostrut to root. Also try to eliminate any autostrut to heaviest.  When the 2 ships are docked and you start moving resources around, the combined CoM of the 2 ships will move and anything autostrut to heaviest will move too.

Another way is to eliminate the need to dock.  Try out SimpleLogistics.  It allows 2 or more ships to share resources.

[Tokamak]

Quick question: I find that when I have vessels connected by a resource pipe (or MKS kerbitrail) in "docked" mode, if I check back a bit later they have usually switched back to "undocked" mode. Is this normal? Is there perhaps some setting I ought to look for?

It's not a game-breaker, but it does effect how I have to plan my MKS bases, if I know things will come undocked and become separate vessels.

[Tonka Crash]

9 minutes ago, Tokamak said:

Quick question: I find that when I have vessels connected by a resource pipe (or MKS kerbitrail) in "docked" mode, if I check back a bit later they have usually switched back to "undocked" mode. Is this normal? Is there perhaps some setting I ought to look for?

It's not a game-breaker, but it does effect how I have to plan my MKS bases, if I know things will come undocked and become separate vessels.

1.10 or 1.9?  No, it shouldn't change state.I haven't tried playing my save in i.10 yet. I keep running into mods with "issues"

I use KPBS and it doesn't ask for docked/undocked on it's kerbitrail equivalent. They are always docked. But I have seen the parts flake on me and all of a sudden they were all giving me the docked/undocked toggle and showed undocked.  I had to disconnect everything and exit the game then restart and reconnect to get everything back to normal.  I haven't been able to recreated it.  This was in 1.9.1.

With MKS isn't there a logistics sharing system so you don't have to do this anyway?  I don't do MKS, so my knowledge there is limited.

[Tokamak]

4 hours ago, Tonka Crash said:

1.10 or 1.9?  No, it shouldn't change state.I haven't tried playing my save in i.10 yet. I keep running into mods with "issues"

I use KPBS and it doesn't ask for docked/undocked on it's kerbitrail equivalent. They are always docked. But I have seen the parts flake on me and all of a sudden they were all giving me the docked/undocked toggle and showed undocked.  I had to disconnect everything and exit the game then restart and reconnect to get everything back to normal.  I haven't been able to recreated it.  This was in 1.9.1.

With MKS isn't there a logistics sharing system so you don't have to do this anyway?  I don't do MKS, so my knowledge there is limited.

I just checked and it's KSP 1.8. Oh dear, I seem to be a version behind. I tend to avoid upgrading so as not to break all of my mods.

This particular glitch has been fairly repeatable for me, unfortunately.

As for MKS... it is pretty good about that, but certain parts are required to make it work. So if you are relying on a crewed vessel to be connected to another vessel which has the supplies 'warehouse' part, you have a problem, since now you don't have access to the supplies.

[darthgently]

Quick question.  I know I can save pre-packaged containers as subassemblies but unless I can duplicate them somehow I still end up having to grind a lot to get multiple similar content containers into a launch.  Is there any additional mod or hackish technique that will allow me to copy a prepackaged container that is easier than repeatedly pulling up the subassembly, rooting my ship to the sub, moving the precious container over to the ship, getting another subassembly, then repeating 12 times?  I suppose I could have multiple same conent containers in the subassembly but this isn't really helpful when I want to use symmetry to put 12 containers of pylons and such onto a base ship.  If there is no solution then I'll do what I did before using KIS/KAS and just radially attach all this stuff to the ship directly and use the ship as my "attachment system".  Is there any way around the grind?

Clarification:  I'm willing to edit .craft files if necessary, but if it is just as grindy as the UI then would probably not.  I'm considering a tedium-reducing python script that would look in the .craft file for a KIS container attached to some symmetric radial point, like a ring of docking ports, and if it has contents and the other symmetric attachment points are have nothing attached to them, then it would edit the file to mirror the full container to all the other symmetric points.  There are problems in doing this; like coming up with all the unique IDs for the new containers.  Maybe I could have say 11 empties, and one with contents, that way the IDs would all be in place, but I think I'd still have to gen IDs for all the items in each container

Looking at a .craft file it appears that contents in KIS containers all have a persistentID of zero, so the probably don't "exist" in the game until taken out of the container and put in play, so maybe I will try to script something, but it really seems like something that would make far more sense built-in in KIS or into a mod on top of KIS.  I've never coded a mod for ksp and it would be far less familiar to me than doing a script to modify the .craft file.  Still, either a mod, or a fix in KIS would be far more ideal in the long run for everyone

Edited July 4, 2020 by darthgently

[DaveLChgo]

@bcqJC  Thanks for the suggestion.  It would do the trick if anchoring is not possible.

@ Tokamak  Thank you as well.  I've loaded MKS but cannot find the tethering feature.   I've looked through the part tree and cannot find it there either.  I've watched a video on tethering but the part looks like a a standard GP20 and a winch which are KAS parts if im not mistaken.   Not sure how to deploy the tethering.   Thanks again guys.

Edited July 5, 2020 by DaveLChgo

[Tonka Crash]

8 minutes ago, DaveLChgo said:

@bcqJC  Thanks for the suggestion.  It would do the trick if anchoring is not possible.

@ Tokamak  Thank you as well.  I've loaded MKS but cannot find the tethering feature.   I've looked through the part tree and cannot find it there either.  I've watched a video on tethering but the part looks like a a standard GP20 and a winch which are KAS parts if im not mistaken.   Not sure how to deploy the tethering.   Thanks again guys.

I don't use MKS, so I don't know how it's implemented in that mod. I use a patch to add that function to all command pods and probes.  For me it's just in the right click menu of any part with the module as Attach Ground Tether.

// Add USI-Tools Ground Tether option to command modules so we can add the Toggle Tether next
@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleCommand],!MODULE[USI_InertialDampener]] 
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = USI_InertialDampener
	}
}

 

[Tonka Crash]

@darthgently I get what you are trying to do, I just don't understand why bother?  It's you find it tedious to use a bunch of little containers, why not just use a bigger one?  Or you could look at mods that build things on site instead of hauling parts around. (Extraplantary Launcpads or OSE Workshop)

[Tokamak]

13 hours ago, DaveLChgo said:

@bcqJC  Thanks for the suggestion.  It would do the trick if anchoring is not possible.

@ Tokamak  Thank you as well.  I've loaded MKS but cannot find the tethering feature.   I've looked through the part tree and cannot find it there either.  I've watched a video on tethering but the part looks like a a standard GP20 and a winch which are KAS parts if im not mistaken.   Not sure how to deploy the tethering.   Thanks again guys.

Oh, there is no tethering part. Many MKS parts just have "toggle ground tether" in their action menus, but that tethers the whole craft the part is in. A few times I've just thrown one of the tiny Ranger airlocks on a thing just to get that feature.

[Tokamak]

Re my previous issue:

Hah! I caught it happening! A KAS pipe undocked while I was watching. The log entry when it happened was

[LOG 10:32:47.232] [Part:KAS.RTS1 (id=F2757413194)#Module:2] KAS joint is broken, unlink the parts
[LOG 10:32:47.235] [Part:KAS.RTS1 (id=F2757413194)#Module:0] Unlinking from target: [Part:KAS.JS1 (id=F3514968736)#Module:2], actor=Physics
[LOG 10:32:47.270] [Part:KAS.RTS1 (id=F2757413194)#Module:0] Make the cable connector physical
[LOG 10:32:47.273] [Part:KAS.RTS1 (id=F2757413194)#Module:0] Connector state changed: Plugged => Deployed
[LOG 10:32:47.436] [Part:KAS.RTS1 (id=F4134134619)#Module:2] Change coupling mode: COUPLED => ATTACHED

So, rather than a bug, it's clearly something happening in my game. The thing is, my craft was just sitting there doing nothing, tethered to the ground with MKS so it couldn't even shift around, and I was reading something so I wasn't giving any input. Does anyone have any thoughts as to what might cause this? I'd appreciate the help. Obviously I can upload full logs and everything, but all of the other entries for some time before and after were the usual stuff, like RasterPropMonitor complaining that a part didn't have an IVA, and USI-LS updating life support status.

Here's the log file, if that is at all helpful: https://mega.nz/file/Akg1QT4B#JgDTizz3WHQoNKZBEknhyE1l7Q2nGJEBz3tunXVbR8k

 

[Tonka Crash]

26 minutes ago, Tokamak said:

Re my previous issue:

Hah! I caught it happening! A KAS pipe undocked while I was watching. The log entry when it happened was

[LOG 10:32:47.232] [Part:KAS.RTS1 (id=F2757413194)#Module:2] KAS joint is broken, unlink the parts
[LOG 10:32:47.235] [Part:KAS.RTS1 (id=F2757413194)#Module:0] Unlinking from target: [Part:KAS.JS1 (id=F3514968736)#Module:2], actor=Physics
[LOG 10:32:47.270] [Part:KAS.RTS1 (id=F2757413194)#Module:0] Make the cable connector physical
[LOG 10:32:47.273] [Part:KAS.RTS1 (id=F2757413194)#Module:0] Connector state changed: Plugged => Deployed
[LOG 10:32:47.436] [Part:KAS.RTS1 (id=F4134134619)#Module:2] Change coupling mode: COUPLED => ATTACHED

So, rather than a bug, it's clearly something happening in my game. The thing is, my craft was just sitting there doing nothing, tethered to the ground with MKS so it couldn't even shift around, and I was reading something so I wasn't giving any input. Does anyone have any thoughts as to what might cause this? I'd appreciate the help. Obviously I can upload full logs and everything, but all of the other entries for some time before and after were the usual stuff, like RasterPropMonitor complaining that a part didn't have an IVA, and USI-LS updating life support status.

Here's the log file, if that is at all helpful: https://mega.nz/file/Akg1QT4B#JgDTizz3WHQoNKZBEknhyE1l7Q2nGJEBz3tunXVbR8k

 

Looking at the code the only way to get message KAS Joint in broken, unlink the parts is for core game to have decided the joint broke. I'm guessing it calculated the loads through the joint exceeded its limits. KAS is just smart enough to see this and log a message.  The thing about KSP is your craft is never just sitting there doing nothing. Physics is always running.  in this case  the relative position between craft got high enough to increase the loads to snap the joint. 

Now to get a little technical about how this is not an "simple" problem to fix.

In a previous job I wrote ground handling code for full motion flight simulators. The hardest part was getting the airplane to stay parked.  The airplane was always in motion due to rounding errors and discrete sampling of the physics. The best I could do was to keep motion from being perceptible to the people in the simulator.   The way most sim code works is you calculate the forces and moments on a vessel, from this you get accelerations that are integrated to the previous physics tick's velocities for a new velocity. These velocities are integrated to the previous position to get a new position.  I haven't tried to research it, but this is probably in just one routine or a set of routines all called in sequence from a parent routine. Mods probably can''t affect something this core to the game without completely replacing the physios engine.

How the MKS ground tether works is that it just resets the craft velocities to zero each physics tick, so instead of integrating from the previous velocity, you start from zero velocity each tick of  physics engine. This still allows a little position change depending how much velocity can build up in the physics engine before the ground tether has a chance to zero it out.  Usually these changes are pretty imperceptible, but I have seen craft with an active tether moving in the game.  I've also been able to takeoff with a tether attached, because the tether only works for landed craft and in that one cycle of the physics engine I can move enough to no longer be considered "landed" but "in flight" so the ground tether deactivates automatically.

When you use any KAS or KAS derived parts like MKS flex-o-tubes or KPBS flex corridors in a docked mode you are locking the relative position between the two craft and forcing the KAS tube to carry loads.  if this load gets high enough joints break. This game I've started using Simple Logistics to share resources between buildings so I don't have to rely on rigid connections and manually use an RTS-1 undocked to refuel craft.  Also when you 'dock' the loads are redistributed across all parts as if it were one rigid vessel instead of several discrete craft that support themselves.  This redistribution of loads is a prime source of exploding landing gear and "hopping" as you dock and undock craft to a large base.  

[Tokamak]

1 hour ago, Tonka Crash said:

Looking at the code the only way to get message KAS Joint in broken, unlink the parts is for core game to have decided the joint broke. I'm guessing it calculated the loads through the joint exceeded its limits. KAS is just smart enough to see this and log a message.  The thing about KSP is your craft is never just sitting there doing nothing. Physics is always running.  in this case  the relative position between craft got high enough to increase the loads to snap the joint. 

Now to get a little technical about how this is not an "simple" problem to fix.

In a previous job I wrote ground handling code for full motion flight simulators. The hardest part was getting the airplane to stay parked.  The airplane was always in motion due to rounding errors and discrete sampling of the physics. The best I could do was to keep motion from being perceptible to the people in the simulator.   The way most sim code works is you calculate the forces and moments on a vessel, from this you get accelerations that are integrated to the previous physics tick's velocities for a new velocity. These velocities are integrated to the previous position to get a new position.  I haven't tried to research it, but this is probably in just one routine or a set of routines all called in sequence from a parent routine. Mods probably can''t affect something this core to the game without completely replacing the physios engine.

How the MKS ground tether works is that it just resets the craft velocities to zero each physics tick, so instead of integrating from the previous velocity, you start from zero velocity each tick of  physics engine. This still allows a little position change depending how much velocity can build up in the physics engine before the ground tether has a chance to zero it out.  Usually these changes are pretty imperceptible, but I have seen craft with an active tether moving in the game.  I've also been able to takeoff with a tether attached, because the tether only works for landed craft and in that one cycle of the physics engine I can move enough to no longer be considered "landed" but "in flight" so the ground tether deactivates automatically.

When you use any KAS or KAS derived parts like MKS flex-o-tubes or KPBS flex corridors in a docked mode you are locking the relative position between the two craft and forcing the KAS tube to carry loads.  if this load gets high enough joints break. This game I've started using Simple Logistics to share resources between buildings so I don't have to rely on rigid connections and manually use an RTS-1 undocked to refuel craft.  Also when you 'dock' the loads are redistributed across all parts as if it were one rigid vessel instead of several discrete craft that support themselves.  This redistribution of loads is a prime source of exploding landing gear and "hopping" as you dock and undock craft to a large base.  

Thanks for the explanation! While I'm more or less familiar with how physics simulation generally works, I didn't know about the mechanism that MKS's tether used, so that's interesting.

I do know that one way around this sort of problem can be do what Blender's rigid body sim does, and have a threshold velocity below which an object is considered "at rest" and no longer has any kinematics applied to it at all until there is a certain amount of change on the forces acting on it. But I guess that would be a fundamental change to KSP's physics simulation, rather than a mod you can throw onto the top.

Regarding the stresses on the craft, might there be some way to just have the landed colony bits be considered a point mass, instead of a bunch of separate connected physics objects? I suppose that is also probably easier for me to say than it actually is to do.

So is there _any_ way to stop my colony bits from gradually sliding around on the surface, and make them actually stay where I put them? The tether helps a lot in the short term, but in the long term, those small deltas that you pointed out do start to add up.

[Tonka Crash]

2 minutes ago, Tokamak said:

... have a threshold velocity below which an object is considered "at rest" and no longer has any kinematics applied to it at all until there is a certain amount of change on the forces acting on it. But I guess that would be a fundamental change to KSP's physics simulation, rather than a mod you can throw onto the top.

It's a space game, everything is calculated relative to the center of the SOI of an celestial body, so a landed craft is in orbit around the center of the body that just happens to be moving at "close" to the same velocity as the point on the ground it's sitting.

Quote

Regarding the stresses on the craft, might there be some way to just have the landed colony bits be considered a point mass, instead of a bunch of separate connected physics objects? I suppose that is also probably easier for me to say than it actually is to do.

KSP calculates the physics for each part of every craft in physics range independently.  It's why the game bogs down as part count goes up and why you can have floppy unstable rockets.  The only fix is to fundamentally change how physics are done in KSP.  I'm guessing KSP2 will try a different approach at least to solve the large craft problem and their bases look to be built into the terrain instead of sitting on it.

Quote

So is there _any_ way to stop my colony bits from gradually sliding around on the surface, and make them actually stay where I put them? The tether helps a lot in the short term, but in the long term, those small deltas that you pointed out do start to add up.

No one has come up with a way yet.  The ground tether is the closest I've seen without using launch clamps with Extraplanetary Launchpads.

[Tokamak]

@Tonka Crash

That makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to explain!