How do I make an interstage fairing?

[septemberWaves]

I can't figure out how to make an interstage fairing. Attempting to visually connect the fairing to any other part results in a message saying "Cannot accept current changes. Fairing is colliding with invalid assembly part." No amount of tweaking the fairing allows me to connect it.

The inside of the fairing looks like this:

How can I make an interstage fairing? Am I doing something wrong, or do I need to make a bug report?

[The Aziz]

It may be hitting the fuel tanks or the heathshield (which is currently useless without heating). I had that problem, when it was going through other parts wider than the interstage. Move/remove the tank or try to attach the fairing to the edge of the heatshield.

[schlosrat]

Currently, you don't make an interstage faring. There is, however a workaround! While the KSP2 faring's don't have interstage nodes, the simple engine mount has something that will work! It's a kludge, but it can get you there. I just did something like this to carry three comm sats to the Mun and deploy them. I got the idea from another post that I can't find right now or I'd credit that clever person, but basically you can do this.

Build the internal structure of what you want to enclose with your faring using appropriately sized engine mounts from the structures group. They're all 0.7 tons so you whichever size makes sense, but flip them over to orient with the small side up. This will put the interstage node where you need it. On the engine plate I stick an XS truss and a XS stack separate or stack decoupler. You can use decouplers to let go of your payload, but be careful they're oriented the right way. If you use separators they weight a bit more but you do't have to worry about their orientation. Oh, do set their decouple force to something small!

So my stack up looks like this (from bottom up)

1. Engine mount (flipped over)
2. XS truss (if needed)
3. XS stack separator (or decoupler with arrow facing payload)
4. Payload
5. XS stack separator/decoupler attached at the interstage node from the engine mount
6. Engine mount (flipped over)
7. XS truss (if needed)
8. XS stack separator (or decoupler with arrow facing payload)
9. Payload
10. etc.

Omit the last stack separator, then attack a faring to the under side of the first one and build your fairing!

Be careful that the stack separators/decouplers are in the last stage group. You don't want those buggers staging prematurely!

 

 

[septemberWaves]

Where do I go to submit feedback for the game? The lack of interstage fairings is a huge problem for making any remotely complex rockets. If it's just a matter of being planned but not yet implemented due to overhauled fairing mechanics, that's fine, but if it's been overlooked then it shouldn't continue to be overlooked.

Edited February 26, 2023 by septemberWaves

[schlosrat]

I believe it's primarily about the game being in Early Access. There are definitely a lot of missing features that we'd expect in the 1.0 release. This is more like a pre-Alpha. Fun to mess around with and get the hang of it, but definitely more buggy and feature poor than what we should expect in the actual 1.0 release.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

15 hours ago, schlosrat said:

I believe it's primarily about the game being in Early Access. There are definitely a lot of missing features that we'd expect in the 1.0 release. This is more like a pre-Alpha. Fun to mess around with and get the hang of it, but definitely more buggy and feature poor than what we should expect in the actual 1.0 release.

Yeah - I'm getting definite 'This should be Closed Beta' vibes.

 

[TonyC123]

I get the same issue also and I am now almost unable to create a fairing. I am not creating an interstage fairing either.

The issue happens when the fairing is obviously not touching anything also and when the fairing is only built with one stage (just for testing) and it is nowhere near any other parts, the same message appears.

I am unable to upload images of this at this time.

[schlosrat]

@septemberWaves If you'd like an example craft with the "interstage faring" workaround, take a look my Comsat Deployer here. Plenty of pics and you can even download it. Note, I've found that using clamp-o-tron jr's to release the satellites works better than the decouplers, plus it leaves your sat with a docking port should you ever need it!

[KingDominoIII]

The tubes in structures may work. I haven't tried them but I believe they can be deployed like a fairing.