Making a decoupler multi-activation capable?

[ConquerorTW]

I am modifying the stock Small Hardpoint part to be more useful for some of my airplanes which equip with external fuel tanks.

My idea is to make it behave like the real world pylon that drops external fuel tank but stays attached to the aircraft, instead of stock behavior that detaches together with jettisoned parts from parent parts. And subsequently a new fuel tank can be installed onto using KAS mod.

 

So far I have added an attachment node to Small Hardpoint (and also scaled down Mk1 fuel tank, Mk0 tank's weird orientation under mirror mode disturbs me badly lol) for easy attachment and alignment. And also tested detaching capability of the new node and re-attachment using KAS. This part was a great great success.

Spoiler

Detaching external fuel tanks:

 

Bill reattaches tank:

The problem is that I cannot jettison now re-attached tanks again. Also tried ModuleDockingNode but this seems to be technically more complicated.

So I am wondering what I can do to make this pylon repeatly drop empty tank?

[Kryxal]

I wonder if it could be done using action groups...

[Firemetal]

This should probably in the add-on sub forum. Doesn't really fit "Gameplay Questions and tutorials".

Fire

[Foxster]

Why not use a docking port instead?

[Snark]

Moving to Add-on Discussion.

[ConquerorTW]

13 hours ago, Firemetal said:

This should probably in the add-on sub forum. Doesn't really fit "Gameplay Questions and tutorials".

Fire

 

9 hours ago, Snark said:

Moving to Add-on Discussion.

Ah yeah wasn't really sure where I should post this question. Sorry for inconvenience

 

 

13 hours ago, Kryxal said:

I wonder if it could be done using action groups...

Yes, I use action group to decouple them. But I can still activate once.

 

12 hours ago, Foxster said:

Why not use a docking port instead?

I feel using a pylon is visually more comfortable for me. Also, although I haven't tried this, but I feel like a size0 or size1 docking port will leave part of its non-docking side on the upper side of the wing, if not mounted on the fuselage?

[MaxxQ]

22 hours ago, ConquerorTW said:

I feel using a pylon is visually more comfortable for me. Also, although I haven't tried this, but I feel like a size0 or size1 docking port will leave part of its non-docking side on the upper side of the wing, if not mounted on the fuselage?

Maybe this is a dumb question, since I really have no clue about modding, but would it be possible to lift (or recreate) the code for docking ports that allows them to be undocked/redocked any number of times, and apply it to the pylon?  I mean, AFAIK, there's no rule that says the docking port HAS to be the current shape in order to work.

[ConquerorTW]

10 hours ago, MaxxQ said:

Maybe this is a dumb question, since I really have no clue about modding, but would it be possible to lift (or recreate) the code for docking ports that allows them to be undocked/redocked any number of times, and apply it to the pylon?  I mean, AFAIK, there's no rule that says the docking port HAS to be the current shape in order to work.

In fact I did put a ModuleDockingNode in the custom pylon's cfg file, but it didn't work as expected. And after a little bit of search on the Internet seems to suggest there's more work should be done than simply adding a docking module to the pylon, which currently is still beyond my knowledge.

Gotta give docking module another try but I don't think I have free time this weekend...

[tg626]

The model needs a transform for the docking attachment point.  Technically this could be done but you'd need a mu file that was only a docking node (no visual model) and some config trickery...

[Azimech]

1 hour ago, tg626 said:

The model needs a transform for the docking attachment point.  Technically this could be done but you'd need a mu file that was only a docking node (no visual model) and some config trickery...

Too bad ... was hoping a standard stack node would be enough.