Shipping Spare Parts: Fairings vs KIS Containers

[DeadJohn]

I've noticed that when I need to ship spare parts to one of my bases or stations, it's often more efficient to put the parts inside a fairing than it is to use a KIS container. Small shipments got into a small KIS container, but as soon as a shipment grows to require a 1.25m container I use a fairing instead.

I turn on fairing interstage nodes and generally attach one part per node. If the parts are small I'll use cubic struts to group multiple parts around one node, avoiding visual overlap on the parts so I'm not "cheating". I don't need decouplers because an engineer will grab each part from the fairing and reattach it elsewhere via KAS.

The fairings often end up much smaller and a little lighter than the smallest KIS container with enough volume to hold those same parts. Reading through the KIS thread and others, I think the blame lies with many parts having too high a volume compared to their visual appearance. It's not a KIS bug or bad container config.

Comments?

[Cavscout74]

On 1/24/2020 at 4:58 PM, DeadJohn said:

I think the blame lies with many parts having too high a volume compared to their visual appearance

You are probably correct.   The Tac Self-Destruct mod (in a previous version - fixed in 1.8), the little destruct charge took up over 300 liters despite a physical size of around 25 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm (my guess anyway).   And I know I've run into other parts that I was shocked I couldn't fit into KIS containers and ended up just surface attaching to something else for deliveries.