How to build bases?

[bewing]

I agree with Ges about the Kraken.

And one more tip -- the most common thing these days that summons a Kraken to eat a big construction is autostruts. Once you've got your base landed make sure to go through the whole thing and turn off all the autostruts. Autostruts can be very handy and useful when you are transporting some godawful off-center rovery thing (such as Cpt. KerbalKrunch's), but they do you no good (and a lot of bad!) when you are landed.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

If you zoom in on my behemoths, you'll see that they are all strutted manually. I never use autostrut or any kind of part clipping. I believe that those two things, and my lack of mods, are the reason I don't have any Kraken-type attacks on even my largest creations. And my personal record is 1,700 parts for a single vessel. Though many of those parts were strut connectors, of course.

[Silverwood]

11 hours ago, bewing said:

I agree with Ges about the Kraken.

And one more tip -- the most common thing these days that summons a Kraken to eat a big construction is autostruts. Once you've got your base landed make sure to go through the whole thing and turn off all the autostruts. Autostruts can be very handy and useful when you are transporting some godawful off-center rovery thing (such as Cpt. KerbalKrunch's), but they do you no good (and a lot of bad!) when you are landed.

What are auto struts?

Never heard of them.

[bewing]

5 minutes ago, Silverwood said:

What are auto struts?

Never heard of them.

Autostruts are like regular struts, except better. They hold parts of a ship in a fixed position relative to each other. They keep the joints between parts from flexing. Wheels and landing legs automatically have them.

To turn them on for the rest of the parts in your ship, you have to enable "Advanced Tweakables" in the Settings.

They are better than regular struts because they don't cost anything, they have no mass, and they have no drag. The devs put them into the game temporarily because there is a Unity bug that makes rockets too noodley, so they exist to counteract that.

 

Edited September 19, 2017 by bewing

[Spricigo]

11 hours ago, bewing said:

They are better than regular struts because they don't cost anything, they have no mass, and they have no drag.

OTOH they are limited to be a link between the current part to another specific part (root, heaviest or grandparent) while regular struts can be placed anywhere.  

A somewhat common problem is if you have autostruts to heaviest part and it change (e.g. tank was heaviest until enough fuel was burn). This cause to autostruts be rearranged causing a disturbance in the force. 

Similar problem may  happen with autostruts to root while docking. 

[Tyko]

On 9/16/2017 at 10:55 AM, klesh said:

Since people have posted examples of the docking port moethod of base construction, here is one which features the Kerbal Attachment System pipe method.

 

Those modules are simply landed next to one another by hand, and the pipes are created when you connect the little pipe-end-pieces that are placed on the craft.  The end pieces can be re-oriented by taking them off and putting them back on the craft in a better spot once you've landed.  You can also send up a container with several of the pipe ends inside it, for future use.

This is a very flexible method but slightly unrealistic.  The entire base is now considered one ship and you can transfer Kerbals between the modules in what would be through those small pipes.  You can also just EVA them and walk them over to the other modules if you want them realistic feels.

One of the benefits to this method is that you can place the base on a more uneven surface, as the pipes needn't be aligned:

Which mods did those great landing legs come from? Looks like at least 2 varieties. Thanks!

[klesh]

5 hours ago, Tyko said:

Which mods did those great landing legs come from? Looks like at least 2 varieties. Thanks!

 

 

Yes, good eye!  They have a great wide base to them.  I believe they are found in the USI suite of mods.

[Silverwood]

Hi Folks,

Downloaded the KIS/KAS mode and all was ok, but now Nortons has removed part of the file as its says its a threat. It is a CKK file. Anyhow the mod does not work now.

Is there an issue?

Keith

 

[Spricigo]

5 minutes ago, Silverwood said:

Hi Folks,

Downloaded the KIS/KAS mode and all was ok, but now Nortons has removed part of the file as its says its a threat. It is a CKK file. Anyhow the mod does not work now.

Is there an issue?

Keith

 

Shouldn't be a issue if you got the mod from the official thread, where you may ask for more help if necessary

[Silverwood]

I did that, so not sure why Nortons flaged it up. Anyhow I have set it to allow this file, so hopefully it will work. Having said that, I just tried it and I can't seem to get the inventory to work nor the Kerbal inventory, so perhaps Nortons removed other key files.

I am going to try a clean install.

[Draalo]

Take a look at Planetary Base Systems:

(no pics here, there are many in the thread above)

Best thing that mod brings: Parts with attachpoints for wheels - all modules have the same height, building dockable rovers is pretty easy.

It also supports various mods, like TAC lifesupport. The greenhouse recycles carbondioxide into food and oxygen, there is a special water drill etc.

The modules have pretty nice interior modells too - i love them.

Edited September 23, 2017 by Draalo