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What is the purpose of separating drill deployment and surface harvesting?


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14 minutes ago, Alshain said:

It's incredibly useful! Just as useful as clicking a part twice to re-root a craft!

/sarcasm

Hey, I think I noticed the intended purpose of that initial click for re-rooting. You know you can take a chunk of parts off a craft and it goes sort of see-through? Well, you can click on that see-through chunk and make a piece in that the root.

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I'm not sure we should be complaining about one potentially superfluous/redundant part menu action button. The potentially very useful ones that for arbitrary reasons have been left out outnumber it by the dozens...

Edited by swjr-swis
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Main use is on asteroids, it/ was an bug with the drill continue to empty an asteroid even if ore tanks was full, deploying drills takes some time.
It has some uses with mods who give you multiple resources and you might not want to harvest all because of power or weight issues. 
 

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18 minutes ago, KerbMav said:

While deployed you can activate and deactivate them for whatever reason without having to wait for the animation to finish.

The drills work as landing legs??

Only the upper part of them, not the pipe itself. That was pre-1.1 behavior though, it might have changed.

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10 hours ago, KerbMav said:

While deployed you can activate and deactivate them for whatever reason without having to wait for the animation to finish.

That is actually a very good point.  I guess if you are base building, rather than doing a mining ship then that does make sense.

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On 7/25/2016 at 1:03 PM, Alshain said:

Just as useful as clicking a part twice to re-root a craft!

There's actually a reason for that. It wasn't always the case, but it is now.

 

Also, the second button was added for drilling in case it shuts down. Though I get that it could perhaps be better mechanized.

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On Tuesday July 26, 2016 at 8:15 AM, pandaman said:

All I can think of is that with the drill deployed then the vessel become fixed in position, irrespective of whether the brakes are on or not.

Great idea, except it did not work when I tried. And I have a hunch it would likely break drill.


 

On Tuesday July 26, 2016 at 5:13 PM, KerbMav said:

The drills work as landing legs??

Their top part, like R.I.C. said. But if you stand on them and start drilling it shakes like hell. Did this once with four drills (by mistake, drills deployed lower then the landing legs) and stress was big enough to tear ship apart.
 

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6 hours ago, radonek said:

Great idea, except it did not work when I tried. And I have a hunch it would likely break drill.

I could be mistaken,  but I thought that was part of the way it was coded.  I know it was like that when I used a drill last, and the drills didn't break then (even checked the theory on a slope, because I didn't trust it either), but I haven't done mining in a while so it could have changed with the new wheel workings in 1.1.x

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You people are all thinking way too stock. :P

In some mods, you can find drills that can mine multiple resources, or you can find such capabilities added to the stock drill. In such a scenario, it's a great idea to have the deploy action separated from the mining action. You can deploy once, and then choose individually what resources you want to mine. Turn on extraction of resources A and C, but leave resource B off.

If the deploy action also initiated mining, then your drills would be either locked to a single resource, with no expandability possible by mods - or automatic on/off for all resources together. Either of those cases is less useful to the player and causes more work for the modder than the system we have now. KSP prides itself on being highly moddable, and this is just a small example of why this is true.

 

Edited by Streetwind
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42 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

You people are all thinking way too stock. :P

In some mods, you can find drills that can mine multiple resources, or you can find such capabilities added to the stock drill. In such a scenario, it's a great idea to have the deploy action separated from the mining action. You can deploy once, and then choose individually what resources you want to mine. Turn on extraction of resources A and C, but leave resource B off.

If the deploy action also initiated mining, then your drills would be either locked to a single resource, with no expandability possible by mods - or automatic on/off for all resources together. Either of those cases is less useful to the player and causes more work for the modder than the system we have now. KSP prides itself on being highly moddable, and this is just a small example of why this is true.

 

This was my argument too, you might not want to collect all the resources as it adds weight and possibly increase power use. 

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4 hours ago, pandaman said:

I could be mistaken,  but I thought that was part of the way it was coded.  I know it was like that when I used a drill last, and the drills didn't break then (even checked the theory on a slope, because I didn't trust it either), but I haven't done mining in a while so it could have changed with the new wheel workings in 1.1.x

Well, I had this small problem in 1.1.x with my drilling rig skating downhill on Minmus, because Squad oiled landing struts or something… Deploing drills in an attempt to anchor definitely did nothing.
 

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3 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

While we're on the subject of useless gui buttons, is there any gameplay reason to "close" the Science Jr? The only possible thing I can think of is to trick yourself into forgetting you ran it.

I just tested and it has less drag with the doors closed. I suppose that might be important if you were returning it to Kerbin after running the experiment? <shrugs>

Edited by Foxster
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29 minutes ago, Foxster said:

I just tested and it has less drag with the doors closed. I suppose that might be important if you were returning it to Kerbin after running the experiment? <shrugs>

From what I recall, reduced drag/heating was the stated reason for allowing the materials bay to be closed after use.

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14 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

While we're on the subject of useless gui buttons, is there any gameplay reason to "close" the Science Jr?

When aerodynamic heating was added, we discovered that the game was detecting that the SciJr bay doors were sticking out from behind the heat shield, thereby overheating. The "Close" option was added so that the doors could be returned flush to the model, making it fit behind the heat shield better.

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10 hours ago, Terwin said:

From what I recall, reduced drag/heating was the stated reason for allowing the materials bay to be closed after use.

 

20 minutes ago, Claw said:

When aerodynamic heating was added, we discovered that the game was detecting that the SciJr bay doors were sticking out from behind the heat shield, thereby overheating. The "Close" option was added so that the doors could be returned flush to the model, making it fit behind the heat shield better.

See that's what I get for designing over-efficiently. And by that I of course mean littering Science Jr's everywhere before coming home :D

Seriously I don't remember the last time I returned from anywhere but LKO with a Science Jr.

Edited by 5thHorseman
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