Standardizing your Action Groups

[Snark]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Does it work with AGX (Action Groups Extended)?

In the interest of not derailing @Hotel26's thread, I've responded over in the DefaultActionGroups thread.  Short answer is "the two mods are unaware of (and don't affect) each other; can't use DAG functionality on the 'extra' action groups that AGX adds". 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

2 hours ago, Geonovast said:

Hitting Backspace will trigger the Abort action group immediately, and you can use it like it's just another group.

@Geonovast beat you to it. Lol.

...and then you deleted it.

Welp...looks like it's just me talking to myself now. 

Edited December 18, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[cy4n]

1. Orbital mode (extend solar panels, close intakes, toggle RAPIERs, etc.)
2. Landing mode (activate ISRU, extend ladder/drills, etc.)
3. Science (pretty obvious)
4. Clear science experiments (in case you have duplicates)

[regex]

I use 1, 9, and 0, mostly just 0 for the purposes of unfolding everything, with 1 being for triggering all the science experiments and 9 being for the odd things that staging can't handle. I used to use a few others for speisplains but I stopped building those a while back because they're silly.

[Joseph Kerman]

AG's I use:

1: NERV engines on SSTO, main drive on space battleships, afterburners on jets.
2: RAPIER activate on SSTO, missiles on BDA fighters.
3: RAPIER switch on SSTO, cargo bay.
4: usually none.
5: Solar Panels and/or Antennae on space missions
6: Extra
7: Extra
8: Extra, ladders on BDA
9: Countermeasures on BDA fighter jets, ladders everywhere else.
0: Misc.

[SupperRobin6394]

I use (space)planes the majority of the time, here's my list:

1. toggle engine modes (when available, otherwise same as 2)

2. Toggle engine on/off

3. Air brakes (top only)

4. Gear brakes.

5. All air brakes (top and bottom)

6. Cargo ramp (if available, else empty)

7. Cargo bays (if available, else empty)

8. Nothing by default

9. Nothing by default

ABORT: deactivate engines, open all air brakes, deploy gear and emergency chutes

0: Opposite of above; activate engines, retract air brakes and cut emergency chutes (gear stays down)

 

EDIT: I have a really bad memory when it comes to these things so it's nice for me to have a standard, otherwise I'll forget even if I just set it all.

Edited December 19, 2017 by SupperRobin6394

[Red Shirt]

Almost never use them. The few times I have set more than a couple I have forgotten what they were once off the launchpad. Hasn't been a problem but then I don't spaceplane.

[Hotel26]

An UPDATE on this that might have interest for others, or at least, stimulate some thought.

I've almost completed a drive to now standardize Action Groups on all craft, including documenting the assignments in the craft description[*] so that a pilot has a chance to glance it over before launch.

I've categorized all my craft by whether they are Tertiary, Secondary or Primary, meaning that a Tertiary craft has the potential to carry a Secondary (and Primary) and a Secondary has the potential to carry a Primary.

My lifters fall into the Tertiary category.  Airplanes and landers fall into the Secondary category.  Rovers and mining equipment fall into Primary.

I've reserved [9-0] for lifters.  Planes and landers get [1-4].  Ground vehicles get [8-5].  The boundary between 4 and 5 is somewhat flexible with consideration for how craft are possibly gong to be mixed.

The main thing, of course, is that a pilot does not want to need to activate some function on a craft for its normal operation and having all manner of riders respond in spurious ways in flight.

I see now also that there are [of course] mods in this area and I think I'll look into it.  The stock ten custom keys is not a lot.

* along with maybe the KSC return Pe...

Out.

Edited March 7, 2018 by Hotel26

[53miner53]

I usually use:

1. Toggle all solar panels, antennas, cargo bay doors, service bay doors, and docking port shields, 

2. Toggle lifter engines

3. Toggle most efficient vacuum engines

4-0. Toggle other engines. Never have gotten past 5 though. 

abort: depends on craft, sometimes stops all engines on the craft except abort engines, decouples everything and activates all parachutes, sometimes is a single decoupler. 

I don’t really mess around with the other ones normally. 

[magnemoe]

1 is always solar panels / radiators.
2 is either: toggle engine, this is typical chemical if both nuclear and chemical.
or deploy and start drills, you need to double tap.
3 is retract drills
4 is control related either disable rcs trusters and engines on rcs tugs or disable reaction wheels on rovers.

5 and up is science related. 

[Hotel26]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

you need to double tap

I don't know about this and maybe I should.  You're not on the PS platform, are you?

[AngryKitty]

I did this once, when I thought I was being clever.

Standardized:

1.) Solar panels

2.) Antennae

3.) Radiator panels

4.) Drills/ISRU toggle

5.) Undock

etc.

Until that one time, when I was ready to have my passenger shuttle depart my brand-new Minmus Station, both of which were built to that standardization. And I hit 5. And the station disassembled itself.

Whoops...  

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Hotel26 said:

I don't know about this and maybe I should.  You're not on the PS platform, are you?

No pc and not exactly double tap as in open files but activate once to deploy and then again to harvest, prefer this over toggle in chase drills are in different states. 
 

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

1. Main engine toggle (usu Nukes)

2. Vertical thruster toggle (VTOLs and Rovers)

3. Aux thruster toggle (I often have LFOs plus nukes)

4. RAPIER Lox toggle (or reverse  thruster toggle on high speed rovers)

5 SCIENCE!

6. Docking port door toggle

7. cargo bay door toggle

8. Kill SAS in ships vehicles (rovers/landers)

9. Space Mode: toggle solar panels, antenna, etc

0. Ground mode: toggle ladders, cargo ramps, drills etc.

 

[Gapone]

I nearly always have two-stage abort systems, so:

Abort: abort1

Custom10: abort2

On planes with cargo ramps I assign them to Abort, because it's backspace.

[panzer1b]

I generally stick to the following:

 

1 main engines

2 secondary engines (VTOL, rocket on a jet, emergency boosters, reverse thrusters, ect)

3 utility (solar panels, fuel cells on spacecraft, mode switch for rapiers, toggle certain rcs thrusters, ect)

4 utility 2 (only when i absolutely need 2 utility groups, only craft i recall using this on is a SSTO that has both too many solars to manually activate them all and a rapier+nuke combo which needed 3 keys already)

 

8 vehicle utility function (thusfar only used this to toggle rcs on some jump capable tanks so they dont mess with my dropship RCS system).

9 decouple turret (only on turreted stock tanks/armed bunkers, and on nothing else)

0 vehicle engines (fuel cells in tanks, armored cars, pretty much anything that has buisness using fuel cells on land to drive the very hungry wheels)

 

I keep land and space vehicle keys completely separate so that i can dock a tank to a dropship and then be able to control the dropship without having the tank do anything (like um shoot its guns while INSIDE the hangar bay, yeah ive done dat a few times...)

As for 5-7, those i use for extremely niche features, although i believe ive only used 5 and 6 once on a starship that had some droppods that were rather complex to manually deploy and needed to hit 2 functions in quick succession but not simultaneously (and i couldnt really do it manually either).  But aside from that, they are sorta reserved for special use.

And abort is pretty much exclusively used for jettisioning any escape pods or bridge jettision (if i bother to even include such a feature, 90% of the time the captain goes with with his ship anyway if he has any honor, and given how devastating stock combat is on most vessels, the bridge is much more likely to explode well before the ship is gone anyway).

 

So yeah, thats my action group preference, and i try to keep it that way so that i know more or less what every button would do on a ship, even one thats been left somewhere for a very long time and i just bothered to come back to it after a few months of real time passed by.  I do make a handful of exceptions (and occasionally forget to even set action groups at all), but this is sorta my build guidelines i try to stick to...

[MaverickSawyer]

I have two different sets of "standard" AGs...

Planes

1. Flaps

2. Toggle engine mode (reheat/reverse)

3. Toggle engines and parking brakes.

4. Ramps/doors, if present.

Anything else is usually for mission-specific tasks.

 

Rockets

1. Fairing jettison.

2. Cruise stage solar panels and antenna deployment.

Beyond that, it's pretty much mission-specific. I recently ran a mission that used a total of 9 action groups and Smart Parts to heavily automate the whole mission.

[RealKerbal3x]

Hmm, I've never really made a standard 'protocol' for action groups, because they're one of the things I regularly forget when building my craft. I guess it would be a good idea though.

[MrSystems]

I keep it simple and standard--I keep a lot of craft in orbit and often it's several real-life days or weeks between launch and craft arrival at my destination.

1) open KOS terminal
2) do science
3) reset experiments
6) anything that happens after probe deployment (antennae and solar panel toggle on the probe, usually)
7) anything that happens when entering/exiting an atmosphere (antennae and solar panel toggle on the main craft, usually; my KOS launch script activates this group when the craft is first placed into orbit)

If it's a mining rig,
4) deploy mining equipment
5) turn on mining equipment, ISRU, and radiators
6) turn off mining equipment, ISRU, and radiators 

If I'm building a lander, I put the ladders and landing light toggle on the Gear group.

[septemberWaves]

1: Toggling antennae, solar panels, and anything else which has to be deployed in space but retracted during atmospheric flight - does not deploy inflatable heat shields.

2: Primary cargo bays - examples include spaceplane cargo bays and the service modules on spacecraft that remain in space.

3: Secondary cargo bays - examples include spaceplane cargo ramps and any cargo space of landers.

4, 5, 6, 7, 8: Miscellaneous uses, depends on the vehicle.

9: Any actions related to landings (usually reserved to opening service bays that contain parachutes, or for deploying parachutes in cases where staging does not make sense - sometimes used for deceleration motors in vehicles where those are present).

0: Science experiments.

[Cavscout74]

I vary between VAB & SPH designs, and between spaceplanes & aircraft, but within categories, I try to keep them fairly standard.

For the VAB, there's only really 2 that I keep standard:  1 - Solar panels  & antenna & 2 - Toggle radiators. 

For Aircraft, there are also 2 standard groups: 1 - Toggle engine mode & 2 - Flaps

Spaceplanes are more complicated: 1 - switch mode of airbreathing engines.   2 - toggle airbreathing engines (including rapiers), 3 - toggle vacuum engines, 4 - flaps, 5 - solar panels & antennas)

[Ozymandias_the_Goat]

Depends, I usually use action groups for large groups of deplyable objects (solar panels, radiators), usually programming them into the 1 or 2 action groups. I simply deploy them all at once, and then rarely use it again. Of course, I also use the default “gear” and “lights” action groups, but usually push the actual GUI button instead of the respective keyboard key. But to answer your question, no, I don’t really have a protocol for “standard” action groups.

[purpleivan]

I've been playing for over 4 years and I think I've set up Action Groups on no more than five vehicles.

For the vast majority of my missions the standard game controls (e.g. for raising lowering gear) have been sufficient. It's only when I've had a need to do something more complex, such as cutting off a set of jet engines and starting up a set of rockets motors at the same time, that I've need to set up an AG for it.

[Scarecrow]

1: Toggle engine mode (used mostly on SSTOs)

2: Toggle flaps if they are not bound to the undercarriage button

3: Deploy solar panels/antennas

4: Toggle ladders

5: Toggle cargo bay doors

6: Decouple (used on Apollo style Lander to detach from CSM)

7: Not often used

8: Shut down descent stage engine (used on two stage landers)

9: Jettsion escape tower

10: Jettison escape tower/deploy chutes during launch abort

Edited February 13, 2019 by Scarecrow

[farmerben]

I like using action groups.  The 0-9 groups are unavailable until the VAB and spaceplane hanger are upgraded.  Therefore I use the lights action group for everything that I want opened in space; toggle solar panel, toggle antennae, toggle payload doors.  It's nice to have that green button available to click as soon as I'm out of the atmosphere, and click again to close up for EVA's and landings.

Usually I have 1-9 available before I build complex engine layouts.  But if not I can put toggle engines in the brakes or landing gear action groups.  I've used that for an early Duna lander for example.