[0.21.1] KAS v0.4.3 - Struts, pipes, part storage, containers, merged winches & more

[tfm]

Can anyone tell me how is this possibly better for fuel transfering than quantum fuel transfer? I mean if you have two ships few metres away each other lets say on surface, how can you possibly do any kind of transfer?

With KAS you have to walk over and drag the cable/hose to the object you want to transfer to/from and plug it in. It is more fun in my opinion.

[KhaosCorp]

Can anyone tell me how is this possibly better for fuel transfering than quantum fuel transfer? I mean if you have two ships few metres away each other lets say on surface, how can you possibly do any kind of transfer?

Two ways its better......Its faster and ALOT more realistic! How can ya transfer fuel to a ship a few meters away...with a hose...same way they refuel planes .......

As far as the attachment issues go...those have been around since the removeable port was added...reloading the craft/kerbal fixes it in most cases.

[regex]

I picked this up last night and didn't have time to play with it, so I was wondering if someone could answer a simple question before I get home from work and settle in with a six-pack:

Can a probe attach to another craft using a magnet or do you need a Kerbal around to do all this magically fun stuff?

[tfm]

I picked this up last night and didn't have time to play with it, so I was wondering if someone could answer a simple question before I get home from work and settle in with a six-pack:

Can a probe attach to another craft using a magnet or do you need a Kerbal around to do all this magically fun stuff?

A probe can do the attach from the KAS part menu (right clicking on it)

[regex]

A probe can do the attach from the KAS part menu (right clicking on it)

So if I have some probe crane thing with no Kerbals around I can attach two craft using a magnet. Cool, thanks.

[tfm]

So if I have some probe crane thing with no Kerbals around I can attach two craft using a magnet. Cool, thanks.

Yes. You can fire grapples, toggle the magnet on and off and lock and unlock connections. But you can't use the attachment points to the different parts. But you can launch it pre-attached. You can also have more then one KAS winch on the same object.

[NeoMorph]

With KAS you have to walk over and drag the cable/hose to the object you want to transfer to/from and plug it in. It is more fun in my opinion.

But you had to do that with QFT as well. Basically the only difference is that with KAS you have a wire transferring the fuel and with QFT you had a see through pipe with a rotating helix around it to show fuel was transferring. It was just a texture difference. They both worked the same way. Kerbal selects the source point, walks across and selects the destination point and voila. In fact QFT is better in that it has a fixed destination point as in you had to specifically place a fuel transfer nozzle on the ship. The KAS method means you can plug fuel in anywhere on the ship which didn't seem right to me.

But it's not even valid comparing the two now though because QFT doesn't even work in 0.21 so KAS is the only way to transfer fuel (if KAS works right in 0.21 that is).

[Wice]

I seriously love this mod

I'm not sure if you intended for this to happen but it looked like a bug to me: When you press the Numpad 2 button to release all the cables, it doesn't only release the cables on your current craft but on other crafts as well. Also, it would be nice to have an option to detach the hook from whatever it's holding on to through an action group...

[taniwha]

Wice: what about the gui? it's quite nice.

[OopsThatNotWork]

I seriously love this mod

I'm not sure if you intended for this to happen but it looked like a bug to me: When you press the Numpad 2 button to release all the cables, it doesn't only release the cables on your current craft but on other crafts as well. Also, it would be nice to have an option to detach the hook from whatever it's holding on to through an action group...

Helpful tip, if you disable a winch on a craft you not currently using, pressing the numbers wont do anything to any winch that is disabled.

[taniwha]

OopsThatNotWork: you can do that? I hadn't noticed. I'll keep it in mind.

[JewelShisen]

I seriously love this mod

I'm not sure if you intended for this to happen but it looked like a bug to me: When you press the Numpad 2 button to release all the cables, it doesn't only release the cables on your current craft but on other crafts as well. Also, it would be nice to have an option to detach the hook from whatever it's holding on to through an action group...

You can action group the hooks and the winch.

[OopsThatNotWork]

OopsThatNotWork: you can do that? I hadn't noticed. I'll keep it in mind.

Yup. I tied a bunch of fuel tanks (huge spherical kethane tanks) together with them and disabled the winches every time i added one so that when i brought my crane over and lowered or raised the cables on it, I didnt destroy my tanks that were already in place.

[Wice]

You can action group the hooks and the winch.

I know, I use Action Groups a lot on this but there's no Hook-detach in the Action Groups, only a hook decouple (which decouples the hook from the cable instead of from what it's connected to)

[NKato]

There's no way for me to use this mod with the B9 parts. The only thing that hooks up anywhere in the cargo bay is the Connector mod. I can't get anything else to stick in the VAB. Would love some kind of fix for this. :\ (Or suggestions on how to make putting payloads into B9 ships easier...)

[TinyPirate]

Can't you just put a tiny cube strut on any suitable surface and then sick anything you wish to it?

[JewelShisen]

select the hook. it has actions of it's own.

[Milkshakefiend]

Can't you just put a tiny cube strut on any suitable surface and then sick anything you wish to it?

That's what I do - I also rotate the strut so it faces inwards and thus provides a near-flush mounting point. Works a treat.

[FaceDeer]

I've started running into a little problem using this mod with 0.21 and I'm wondering if anyone else has seen it. I was in orbit around the Mun and I needed to transfer a command seat from one ship to another so my EVAed Kerbal could ride it back down to base (I'm using the Attachment Pack mod, which extends KAS to allow certain other small parts to be removed and reattached) and I found that once I had the seat on my Kerbal's back I couldn't attach it to anything - thought every surface was out of range, showing only the yellow "ghost" of the part and not turning green regardless of how close I got. Then when I tried dropping the seat in open space, intending to pick it up again in the hopes of "resetting" whatever was going wrong, the dropped part was instantly at rest relative to the Mun's surface (and thus dropped out of orbit and was destroyed).

As an experiment, I then went over to my Minmus-orbiting station and had a Kerbal go outside to rearrange some docking struts. I got the exact same behavior - every surface behaved as if it was out of range, and then when he tried dropping the docking strut anchor in open space it instantly came to a halt relative to the surface.

Fortunately KAS still seems to work correctly for Kerbals who are down on my surface Munbase. It just seems to be those in orbit that can't attach things properly. Which is unfortunate, the attachment pack used to let me do wonderful things to my space stations and large interplanetary ships. Perhaps the mod is somehow treating things in orbit as if they're on the surface? That might account for both the out-of-range problem and the instant loss of orbital velocity problem.

[JewelShisen]

The Attachment Pack is not something supported in this thread as, if I am correct, it is not an 'official' KAS extension. You should probably ask the creator of the attachment pack.

[corekiller54]

I can use the connector but i cant right click any of the parts, like the winch, and it kinda messes up using it practicaly.

[FaceDeer]

The attachment pack is just where I first happened to notice the problem, I didn't have stock KAS detachable parts handy at the time to repro it.

I just sent out a mission specifically to test that, though, and can confirm that it also happens for stock KAS detachable radial ports. Here's the complete repro steps: I launched a ship into low Kerbin orbit (nothing but stock parts and a KAS detachable radial port) and, in low Kerbin orbit, went on EVA. My Kerbal was able to detach the port and reattach it to the Mk 1 command pod correctly. I then sent the ship to orbit the Mun instead, and when my Kerbal went on EVA he was able to detach the port but not attach it to anything. I did the trick where you switch to the tracking center and then back to the EVAed Kerbal again to "reset" the KAS system (this is another known glitch the current version of KAS has in 0.21), and that allowed me to *attempt* to attach the port. But as with the other parts above, the surfaces I tried to attach them to registered as unattachable no matter how close I got to them. Then when I tried dropping the radial port in open space it lost its orbital velocity, just as above.

So this is a general KAS problem, not specific to stuff that's extending the module's use to other parts.

Now I need to launch a mission to rescue my test Kerbal. I didn't think to give his ship return capability, and we can't just end flights without consequence any more. Oh well, the price of doing science.

[Crater]

The orbital attachment issue sounds a lot like an issue that has been around since... oh 0.17 at least, with or without KAS. Sometimes when you EVA a Kerbal from one vessel, and try to interact with another vessel, e.g. board it, bump it, whatever, the game would react like the vessel wasn't quite where the screen showed it to be. Sometimes you could even float through another ship, other times, you were just bouncing off the wrong part.

Could you try going back to the space center and reloading back into the scene, and see if that allows your EVA Kerbal to attach the object?

[CreationMe]

I just experienced some similar problem as FaceDeer. I can grab the parts and attach them, however, the don't stay attached; they just slide off. I do get the green ghost though. Good to know is that I added the module grab/attach to a stock part.

Edit: forget to mention this happens on the Launchpad so nothing to do with any orbit bug I suppose.

Edit2: So I now tried to do replicate FaceDeer's problem with the Attachment Pack and it worked without problems. I guess I made a mistake somewhere. *So I never posted this all* =]

Edited August 12, 2013 by CreationMe

[FaceDeer]

I'll do some more experimentation when I get home tonight. I do have a bunch of other mods installed as well, I'll make a clean stock-and-KAS copy of the game to try it in just in case my problem's coming from interaction with other plugins (I doubt Attachment Pack is the problem, all it does is modify the .cfg files of various parts to include the KAS module's attach and detach components).

I did do the spaceport-and-back-again trick with the Kerbal in orbit around the Mun, it was necessary in order to get the option of attempting to attach things in the first place. I only did the back-and-forth thing once, though, I'll see if a second try clears up the orbital velocty problem.