The SPACE-BAR of death ...

[Frag2000]

The SPACEBAR of death

Who would knew ... that in the future ... the worst threat to the life of Kerbals would be an infamous keyboard space-bar.

How many times I just pressed it by inattention, by accident or by dropping something on the keyboard. 

How many time I sentenced few Kerbals to be permanently stranded in space while kicking off that stage too early ... while pressing that death sentence that is the infamous SPACE-BAR!!!!!!! 

How sacred is that key, that has the power of life and death on them ...transforming a detailed planned mission into a nightmare if mistakenly used once.

ok here I go...

I started a Science campaign recently and really enjoy playing hardcore style. No back reload, no kerbal respawn, no nothing. If a Kerbal die, he is dead. If I miss a launch with a stupid error ...than it is. It adds a lot of pressure to the game that I really enjoy it. For more, it brings a new step to the game ... security for the Kerbals ...a way out when something goes wrong. But someone please tell me that I could find a mod or something, that would force me to double tap the space bar to switch stage. It happens to me too often. Any other ideas would help as well!

Ho and just so we put ourselves on the same page here. I know that I am the idiot. KSP is AWESOME as a game. I am just trying to figure out a way to protect my Kerbal against my dumbassspacebarkeypressdyslexia.

Thanks in advance.

 

 

 

 

 

[Kerbal pancake]

There is a keyboard shortcut to lock staging 

i think it is control L

Edited December 8, 2017 by Kerbal pancake

[Geonovast]

8 hours ago, Frag2000 said:

 But someone please tell me that I could find a mod or something, that would force me to double tap the space bar to switch stage.

No mod needed, just put an extra, empty stage between each stage.

Another thing you can do, for smaller  rockets without a bunch of gizmos, is to not use staging.  Trigger everything with the action groups.  So you have to push 1 for the lower stage, 2 for the next one, 3 for the next one, etc.

You can also use SmartParts to automatically stage based on conditioning.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Geonovast

[Frag2000]

Good ideas so far guys, nice to think outside the box! I will test around those!

[Delay]

You can use Ctrl+L to lock the stage, but it gets unlocked again when you switch to another vessel/ the space center.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

You could set all the stages as action groups 1-10 instead, and just don't touch the spacebar?

[Ultimate Steve]

13 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

You could set all the stages as action groups 1-10 instead, and just don't touch the spacebar?

The 1-10 keys are bigger than the space bar, though, so more likelyhood for something to go wrong. Maybe bind it to a useless key, like page up? Or maybe a complex keyboard shortcut like CTRL-O-5-, or something impossible to accidentally hit.

[Kerbital]

Just assign staging to another key. Mine is "\". I'd hit Spacebar by accident too. I changed the keybinding in the very beginning.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Kerbital

[Rocket In My Pocket]

7 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

The 1-10 keys are bigger than the space bar, though, so more likelyhood for something to go wrong. Maybe bind it to a useless key, like page up? Or maybe a complex keyboard shortcut like CTRL-O-5-, or something impossible to accidentally hit.

True, but one doesn't usually rest a finger on those keys like you might with the space bar and your thumb due to years of ingrained training from that being the "jump" key.

Hitting a number key is a pretty decisive action, requiring you to lift your finger up and move it to the key. If you can't not do that on accident...you got more problems than I can help you with lol.

That said; maybe I'm not the best person to be giving advice on this; I think I've accidentally staged like...two or three times maybe in my entire KSP career?

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

23 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

That said; maybe I'm not the best person to be giving advice on this; I think I've accidentally staged like...two or three times maybe in my entire KSP career?

Same here. I've staged by accident a couple of times, and it sucked, but I'm much more likely to hit F5 instead of F9; which is really painful.

[Geonovast]

I think the only problems I had with staging were either setting it up wrong, which no button re-mapping would fix.  Or, when I played on my laptop, sometimes the game would pause for a second when staging.  So I'd think I didn't hit the button... and I'd hit it again.  Then both would happen.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

35 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I think the only problems I had with staging were either setting it up wrong, which no button re-mapping would fix.  Or, when I played on my laptop, sometimes the game would pause for a second when staging.  So I'd think I didn't hit the button... and I'd hit it again.  Then both would happen.

For me, it was when 2 ships separated. You know the way stages can get mixed up. A couple of times I just hit the spacebar without really paying attention. Then, of course, when I build a 1,200 part monster, I sometimes find out the staging wasn't quite right when I suddenly dump a couple of engines I was gonna need sooner or later. Always puts me in a good mood. 

Come to think of it, I guess that's not hitting the spacebar accidentally. Just hitting the spacebar stupidly. 

Edited December 9, 2017 by Cpt Kerbalkrunch

[GoSlash27]

What @Kerbital said; go in the settings menu and change the keybinding to something you won't accidentally hit.

Best,
-Slashy

[adsii1970]

When constructing monstrosities designed to terrorize Kerbals, I always deactivate the separators from staging. That way, I have to do it manually to drop the spent stage, then hit the space bar to activate the next stage's engines. It works for me...

[Frag2000]

On 12/10/2017 at 11:58 AM, adsii1970 said:

When constructing monstrosities designed to terrorize Kerbals, I always deactivate the separators from staging. That way, I have to do it manually to drop the spent stage, then hit the space bar to activate the next stage's engines. It works for me...

HO very good idea! I did not know you could disable those! This would probably do for me!

[adsii1970]

1 hour ago, Frag2000 said:

HO very good idea! I did not know you could disable those! This would probably do for me!

In the space plane hanger or vehicle assembly building, simply right click and turn off the option for auto-staging. That's all you have to do. It has saved me a lot. right now, I have a ship that has the capability of jettisoning nuclear reactors before they go critical (with @Angel-125's BARIS mod, you'll need to consider this!). But here's the kicker... I used the small (.625) rings and turned the staging off for them. That way, when I engage the ship's main engines, I don't accidentally jettison my reactors!

[Cavscout74]

Funny seeing "Space bar of death" today after I executed a load of tourists this morning after some minor tinkering with a fairly standard orbital tour ship caused a Tac Self-destruct charge to get placed as the very first stage followed by the engines in the next stage.  I actually managed to stage enough times to separate the "victims" capsules & deploy parachutes, but they didn't open far enough to slow the pod as it fell into the ensuing fireball.

In an odd turn of events, due to the reputation loss of killing 8 tourists from 3 different contracts, I now have MORE tourist contracts being offered.

[Frag2000]

15 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

Funny seeing "Space bar of death" today after I executed a load of tourists this morning after some minor tinkering with a fairly standard orbital tour ship caused a Tac Self-destruct charge to get placed as the very first stage followed by the engines in the next stage.  I actually managed to stage enough times to separate the "victims" capsules & deploy parachutes, but they didn't open far enough to slow the pod as it fell into the ensuing fireball.

In an odd turn of events, due to the reputation loss of killing 8 tourists from 3 different contracts, I now have MORE tourist contracts being offered.

LOLLL!! Seems like Kerbals may like to die into a spectacular fireball instead of a slow death eaten alive by cancer!

Really LOLLed that one out. Made my day

 

[Archgeek]

I think stage lock is [mod]+L, where [mod] is alt on windows, option on mac, and right-shift on linux.

It will be your new best friend if you make a habit of it (and make sure the staging light is green when you do need to stage).

[Ozzallos]

My five year old has learned that the space bar usually produces amusement in the form of catastrophic events.

[Gardevoir11]

When I play ftl I use the space key to pause, so in ksp I end up reverting.

[Daveroski]

21 minutes ago, Gardevoir11 said:

When I play ftl I use the space key to pause, so in ksp I end up reverting.

I changed the key for staging to NUMPAD 0. That helped a lot.

 

[InterplanetJanet]

On 12/11/2017 at 4:23 PM, Cavscout74 said:

In an odd turn of events, due to the reputation loss of killing 8 tourists from 3 different contracts, I now have MORE tourist contracts being offered.

*laughs and laughs* There is something just so Kerbalistically wrong about that...

[RealKerbal3x]

When I recently tried to do an Apollo-style mission, I accidentally had the separator for the command module(which was inside a fairing) go off at the same time that my first stage was released. Many explosions. Much combustion.

I sat there dumbstruck for a moment, then clicked 'Revert to Launch'.

[MaxwellsDemon]

I always reset the spacebar keybinding to the backslash.