Thick and thin decouplers

[S.Bartfast]

I've noticed when I attach the TD-12 Decoupler that it seems to snap to the attachment at two different distances, one very close, the other further away:

Is there any difference between using the decoupler at these different distances?

[Geonovast]

Welcome to the forum, @S.Bartfast!  (dig the username by the way)

As far as I'm aware, it's purely for looks.  I can't say for sure as I think that shroud is all manner of gaudy and I don't use it.  I've been meaning to write a MM patch to get rid of that attachment node, thanks for reminding me.

[S.Bartfast]

15 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Welcome to the forum, @S.Bartfast!  (dig the username by the way)

Why, thank you:

 

It seems there is a slight difference in the overall height of your vessel when you use the "gaudy" position but it's only 0.1m.

It looks like it may come from the fact that there are two attachment spheres on the decoupler and it seems you can kind of "push through" to the deeper sphere: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Geonovast]

Yup, that's exactly it.  There are two attachment nodes, and the lower one has the shroud appear when you use it.  It's most annoying when I attach a decoupler to the heatshield without the shroud, then when I go to attach something to the decoupler, it's close enough to the bottom heatshield node that it tries to attach to that instead of to the decoupler, which is why I want to just eliminate that node in my games.

[Fraktal]

27 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

As far as I'm aware, it's purely for looks.

It's not, actually. That shroud isn't from the decoupler, it's from the heatshield. If you go extremely fast while still in the atmosphere during takeoff, the heatshield starts losing ablator the same way it does during reentry unless you shroud it.

[Geonovast]

9 minutes ago, Fraktal said:

It's not, actually. That shroud isn't from the decoupler, it's from the heatshield. If you go extremely fast while still in the atmosphere during takeoff, the heatshield starts losing ablator the same way it does during reentry unless you shroud it.

If that's the intent, it doesn't work.  I see no difference to the ascent damage of a heatshield whether it's shrouded or not, and I don't see anything in the part's config to indicate that it's any different than the engine shrouds.

Even if it was the case, the amount of ablator you lose on ascent is pretty negligible.  I'm trying to burn the ablator off and at nearly 2km/s at 30km I've lost... 1 out of 800.

 

[Fraktal]

Yeah, but nobody uses up 800 ablator. A shallow aerobraking return from Minmus takes about 40 tops unless you do multiple passes.

[Geonovast]

23 minutes ago, Fraktal said:

Yeah, but nobody uses up 800 ablator. A shallow aerobraking return from Minmus takes about 40 tops unless you do multiple passes.

I would disagree.  One, people return to Kerbin from places much further away than Minmus.  Two, I would say a very large majority of players aren't even aware that you can turn the ablator level down in the editor, or even bother to figure out what a good number to set it at is.   The discussion here is whether or not the shroud protects the heat shield during ascent, which I've shown it does not.  How much ablator that's available has no bearing on that fact whatsoever.  Even if I had set it to 40 and only lost 1, it's not going to make much difference.  Again, this is trying to lose ablator.  Standard launches to orbit don't make you lose any, shrouded or not.