Order of activation in stages?

[Saberus]

I've been tinkering a good bit with a few designs in an effort to make a generic lifter design to stick mission-specific payloads on top of.

I'm trying to future-proof for when cost becomes a factor, and have my air-breathing jet boosters both jettison and deploy parachutes to float back to Kerbin for recovery, but I cannot seem to order the decouplers, chutes and possible separatrons to fire in an order I like. (Decoupler, separatron, chutes) Is there a defined order that parts are activated in a stage, or is it all a race condition?

[EndlessWaves]

I think sepratrons activate when in a stage with decouplers but parachutes don't, in my experience. If so you need to trigger the chutes on the stage before currently. I'm sure it'll all change if we get part recovery though.

Edited October 14, 2012 by EndlessWaves

[Saberus]

I think sepratrons activate when in a stage with decouplers but parachutes don't in my experience so you need to trigger the chutes on the stage before at the moment. I'm sure it'll all change if we get part recovery though.

Whee... so I need to deal with a bit of excess drag when I stage, to hit the spacebar one more time? This does not bode well for the Blackball. (The lifter unit's name)