Resource Transfer and Priority?

[Elroy Jetson]

I am trying to use a rover to move fuel and ore from my drill rig to a cargo ship.  I don't understand how to  configure the tank on the drill and/or tank on the rover to move the resources from the drill to the rover?  What do the priorities mean and do I need to adjust each tank, the one on the drill AND the tank on the rover?

 

Once I get the rover filled up, I will need to drive over to my transport ship and offload from the rover to the transport ship.

If my drill rig is full, can this transfer happen quickly or is this going to be a slow process?  Same goes for the second transfer from the rover to the transport.

i hope some of this makes sense?  

 

Or, may even I can't transfer ore and fuel like I was planning?

Sorry for all the new topics I start!  Seems like I do a search here and the wiki, not finding an answer and then I start a topic.  I feel like I should start a single thread/topic titled "Elroy goes to space camp!"  But then it might not be as searchable for folks like me later on?

Edited March 12, 2019 by Elroy Jetson

[bewing]

That's not how you move resources.

The way you do it is by opening the Part Action Menu for a fuel tank (or more than one) on one craft, and then also opening a Part Action Menu on a tank (or more than one) on the other craft at the same time.

When multiple Part Action Menus are open at the same time, any resource that is shared among ALL the open Part Action Menus on your screen will get an additional pair of buttons that say "In" and "Out". Then you click one of those buttons to start a transfer in or out of that tank (respectively).

There are two ways to open multiple Part Action Menus at the same time. You can open the first one, and then "Pin" it, and then open the second one. Or there is a button combo that will open a second one while not closing the first.

 

[Elroy Jetson]

Ah!  Ya, that looks better!  Thanks!

[Elroy Jetson]

So,  that works great, I look up and I somehow drug the drill 20m away from where I started.  So I go to try and shove it back where it belongs and now the steering on my rover is toe in.  How is that possible when it was working fine when I parked it here to start the ore transfer?  argggggg....

Edited March 12, 2019 by Elroy Jetson
Typos, as usual, thanks auto corrupt

[bewing]

Because now your "rover" is being controlled by a different probe core that's pointed in a different direction.

Use "control from here" to set it back to the proper probe core.

The steering of any ship (including rovers) is based on the orientation of your probe core. It's also controlled by the "center of mass" of your vessel. So when you have craft docked together, your CoM moves, and the steering on some of your wheels will change -- depending on whether the CoM moved to the other side of the wheels after docking.

 

Edited March 12, 2019 by bewing

[Elroy Jetson]

Thanks again!  

[Elroy Jetson]

I got my tanker ship loaded up and returned to kerbin with 450 units of ore!  WOW that made the poor little thing struggle and the re-entry was smoking!  Leaving mimnus wasn't too bad but it took way more fuel than I was expecting due to the extra mass that I hadn't accounted for.  Very much a white knuckle re-entry!  Made good money from the contract!

[Elroy Jetson]

Back to prioritizing fuel and ore on my drill rig WHILE attached to the tanker.

 

can I use the priority values to cause the tanker to fill first, then once full the drills and converter will fill the tanks on the drill rig itself?

 

this way, if another transport ship arrives at the drill rig station the tanker might be full and could immediately move to refuel the transport ship?

 

 

[bewing]

AFAIK, converter equipment does not follow priority rules -- it always fills all tanks proportionate to their capacities. Doing so would be an interesting idea, but you'd have to put it into the bugtracker as a feedback.

[Elroy Jetson]

I left  the fuel tanks on the drill rig set as they were at -10 and I changed the large fuel tank on my rover to +1 and it looks like maybe that is causing it to process ore into fuel and it is putting all of it into the rover tank and the drill rig tanks are steady where the were at the time of the change to priority.

 

maybe this is different between console and pc OR  I didn't make my question clear which is the more likely answer.

Edited March 13, 2019 by Elroy Jetson

[Elroy Jetson]

Can the convert-o-tron overheat and explode?  I'm just passing overhead to land a supply transport ship near the ore processing unit and I see it explode!  The entire rover has vaporized and the ore drilling rig landing legs are gone and the ship is resting on the engines!  "The entire side is missing, all the way up to the heat shield!"

[bewing]

Well, it's been a constant problem in the game engine that KSP is built on top of (unity), that landing legs sometimes make landed spacecraft jump into the air.

So, I've never ever seen a converter explode from heat. Sometimes, I see fuel tanks get red hot, but I've never seen them explode either.

But I have seen ships jump and have parts of them blow up when they hit the ground again. I rather recommend never using landing legs for that reason.

 

[GoatRider]

Anything can explode in Unity, especially during "physics easing". I've had flags explode when coming out of time warp!

[Elroy Jetson]

I doubt this is new info but I landed another ship near my base again and this time it was all still intact BUT every component on the base was showing a heat warning icon like it was about to explode from heat of re-entry.

 

is there a work around for this?  I think I was able to select each control point and simply "operate" things and it cooled down.

 

not good for my fuel depot to get hot.  I did use time warp enroute to the depot.

[bewing]

Yeah, in version 1.2.2 (which is what you have) they get hot from residual heat. But I've never seen it cause an actual problem.