Hunting for ideas: KIS-assembled space station, Conquest of Eve

[Sharpy]

It's time to fulfill my contract for a space station in orbit of Eve. 5000 units of ore, ISRU, 11 kerbals, antenna, docking port, generate power. On the minus side, the launch window is way off, so no help from Kerbin. On the plus side, the Gilly base has its OSE workshop running at full capacity, filled up on PartKits and Ore, I got one of 5-meter containers empty, and obviously launching *anything* from Gilly into Eve orbit is easy.

Obvious problems: only 8 kerbals in base, so 8 tons per part max, preferably less because coordinating kerbals like that is hell. All tanks are manufactured empty, need to be filled afterwards. If a part uses exhaustible resource that can't be refilled, it can't be refilled (so, I can manufacture only useless empty SRBs). Only stock attachment modes (node/surface), no part offset, although arbitrary rotation. No clipping - things REALLY like to explode during KIS assembly when clipped. Really big, unwieldy parts can be moved through RCS and attached through docking ports if I can only fit them in the 5m container and remove them from it (the deciding factor is part volume... roughly 2 orange tanks will fit).

I could trivially make a station that JUST fulfills the requirements, dump it into Eve orbit and be done with it, either terminating it or landing it and recycling back into PartKits. But I think I *could* do better... I just need an idea, *how*.

My ultimate goal is conquest of Eve. Land kerbals, return from the surface, possibly building an outpost/base in between. An orbital station could be helpful in that, but I guess by the time I find out *how* it could be helpful by myself, it will be long in orbit.

So... any good ideas, how I could make that station more than a stupid contract-filler?

[Gianni1122]

I apologize if this doesn't help and/or you are already aware of this option...

I tend to increase the max size of the parts Kerbals can grab in the settings .cfg for KIS. Not only is it helpful but it also feels more realistic to me that somewhat larger parts can be manipulated with relative ease in a weightless environment. 

A bit cheeky and less realistic; I also sometimes increase the volume of the containers (just a bit). Alternatively, to solve you're container volume problem, you could use TweakScale and scale down the design of some aspects of your station to increase the quantity of parts you bring into space via the containers.

[sardia]

KIS yourself a space plane. It looks pimping, even though it's fairly useless. 

[Sharpy]

42 minutes ago, sardia said:

KIS yourself a space plane. It looks pimping, even though it's fairly useless. 

Any way to get CoM and CoL display outside of SPH?

[sardia]

8 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Any way to get CoM and CoL display outside of SPH?

Mechjeb. Though the current dev version is bugged, so it won't show outside the parts. You need to zoom in to see it inside the  part. I think it's under the window "attitude adjustment" or something.