Long-term Laythe Mission (pic heavy) - ^_^ With Part 45 ^_^

[Major999]

I just wanna say that these stories are the main reason that I got KSP. If I had any rep I'd give it to you, but I joined the forums 22 hours ago.

[Brotoro]

I just wanna say that these stories are the main reason that I got KSP. If I had any rep I'd give it to you, but I joined the forums 22 hours ago.

Well, then I'll give reputation to you instead. Welcome to the KSP forums!

[Brotoro]

I've tested opening my old sandbox Save file in version 0.90 ...and things seemed to go quite well at first. The big problem I found was that the fuel ducts no longer work on my existing ships. Hopefully there is an edit than can be done to the Save file to fix this. The shrunken tank bug is still there...but the fix still works.

Also, my kerbals appear to have been randomly assigned roles (pilot, engineer, scientist)...but I presume that would be an easily fixed by editing the Save file.

I am unhappy that only engineers can fix wheels and repack chutes. Many of my missions would not have been possible if my kerbal pilots couldn't perform those tasks.

The kerbals all have five stars of experience...but the pilots are pretty crappy at pointing a large ship at a selected marker, overshooting back and forth a lot before settling down.

[Cydonian Monk]

Also, my kerbals appear to have been randomly assigned roles (pilot, engineer, scientist)...but I presume that would be an easily fixed by editing the Save file.

Sadly this appears to not be the case. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/103211 One possible solution comes to mind: Giving Kerbals a middle initial (and changing it until they're doing what you want them to do). It's not particularly elegant, but it'll work. (Edit: And by "not particularly elegant" I mean "Thanks to the new 'Names-Only' method of tracking kerbals, you now have to manually update each and every reference to a kerbal when you change their name or your save file will eat itself.")

I'm sure there's a way to fix the fuel line madness. I got lucky there, with only two craft currently in space that I care about being affected, but I'd still like to not have to relauch bits and edit them into place.

Edited December 16, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[Brotoro]

A kerbal's NAME determines their role? Well, I think THAT was an unfortunate choice by Squad. Why would they do such a thing? They already had a perfectly good "Type" attribute (set to either "Applicant" or "Crew") that I would think could serve ("Applicant Pilot", "Crew Engineer", etc.). Or they could have chosen to differentiate roles using the "dumb" attribute, which could be said to really be a measure of engineering vs. scientist abilities, with pilots like Jeb in the middle third and Bob and Bill on either extreme...this ensures that their 'first three' have the desired roles. I'd also hope we could train up 'mixed class' kerbals.

Once you you have probe cores to put on all your ships, the pilot class becomes useless compared to engineers or scientists. But taking the ability to repack chutes or fix rover wheels away from kerbals makes a lot of my single-kerbal ships or rescue craft require an engineer to operate (no longer can a lone Pilot explore the surface of a planet in a rover because they'd have no way to fix the inevitable broken wheel).

Since there is a mechanical device that replaces the Pilot class (the probe core), it would be nice if Squad gave use a mechanical device to replace engineers... like an R2 Droid that can be attached to a ship, and which can separate and maneuver using rocket pack, ladder grabbers, and magnetic rollers to fix things.

[Cydonian Monk]

I too was hoping for a more in-depth solution. Really I was expecting to just grab raw recruits and be able to train them at the Astronaut Complex for their future roles in life. This is... a bizarre choice, especially given what's already in the Kerbal class.

The experience levels at least make a bit of sense, increasing based on unique experiences.

[Deddly]

On the other hand, it does mean that a Kerbal with the same name will always have the same skills even accross multiple saves. If someone else has the same Kerbal names as you, they will be able to use them for the same tasks.

[Scotius]

That is indeed unfortunate. I'm afraid we will see a lot of strange job designations in this thread - Hellou as a 'kick-ass' pilot, Nelemy as a scientist, Aldner as a engineer...That sort of things Heh, i can't wait to read about crew reactions to the weird job asignments relayed from Kerbin.

[RobotsAndSpaceships]

Have you considered installing the Environmental Visual Enhancements mod? It doesn't break saves, has a fairly small memory footprint, and makes Jool and Laythe look so much better.

[Brotoro]

Have you considered installing the Environmental Visual Enhancements mod? It doesn't break saves, has a fairly small memory footprint, and makes Jool and Laythe look so much better.

I've been using it since Episode 21.

[RobotsAndSpaceships]

I've been using it since Episode 21.

Haha, my bad I've only read up too 19 so far. Great work.

[Brotoro]

I've been experimenting with changing kerbal names to change their roles.

Aldner Kerman is showing up as a Scientist. That's not Aldner, obviously.

Aldner J Kerman (with the traditional cartoony middle initial) is also a Scientist.

In fact, Aldner A Kerman, Aldner B Kerman, Aldner X Kerman, Aldner Y Kerman, and Aldner Z Kerman all come up as Scientists.

Aldner Buzz Kerman is a Pilot.

Aldner, Kerman and Aldner: Kerman are also Pilots.

Aldner{alt-space here} Kerman is also a Pilot...and the alt-space is not too obtrusive. But I'm not sure wether or not the game would have problems in future with the alt-space in the name.

Also, will the game have problems in the future with a kerbal name that contains a middle name? I don't know.

Aldner j Kerman (lowercase j) is an Engineer.

Aldner b Kerman is also an Engineer (BUT Aldner z Kerman is a Pilot).

Aldner. Kerman (with a period) is an Engineer, as are Aldner~ Kerman and Aldner_ Kerman.

Aldner, Kerman = Pilot

Aldner ' Kerman = Scientist

I've yet to figure out what's going on.

Also, I'm not sure what to make my guys. They have been acting like Engineers (fixing wheels and repacking chutes...actions necessary to the missions they've been on)...but I always thought of them as Pilots. There are astronaut pilots in real life that have engineering degrees, of course. And as long as I have Probe Cores on all my ships (not to mention MechJeb), being a Pilot is extraneous.

Hellou Kerman, by the way, comes up as a Pilot. Just sooo wrong.

Hellou{alt-space} Kerman is a Scientist.

Kurt Kerman is Scientist.

Kurt J Kerman is also a Scientist.

Kurt j Kerman (lowercase j) is an Engineer.

Thompbles and Emilynn are currently coming up as Engineers.

What a pain in the butt.

The much more serious problems are the non-working fuel lines on my multitude of ships. I have been fiddling around in the Save files, but I haven't been able to figure out how to fix this yet.

Edited December 17, 2014 by Brotoro

[Tw1]

-snip-

What a pain in the butt.

The more serious problem is the non-working fuel lines on my multitude of ships. I have been fiddling around in the Save files, but I haven't been able to figure out how to fix this yet.

Damn. Looks like quite a bit of trouble. I couldn't find a pattern to the names either.

I got lucky- important members of the cast of Oceans of Eve have all landed on appropriate things, I just have to make sure I don't break any wheels. Hopefully, someone comes up with a fix for fuel lines.

[Cydonian Monk]

Heads up: There's a nice little file in GameData/Squad/Experience named Traits.cfg. You can copy all of the effects of each "class" into one and delete the other two. All Kerbals are then of the same class.

This is also how you add custom traits. I added a TestPilot class that was both Engineer and Pilot that was then randomly assigned to my kerbals.

Edit: An important note: Not having a Pilot, Engineer, or Scientist class glitches-out the astronaut complex in saves with a Bob, Bill or Jebediah. But we're getting somewhere.

Edited December 17, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[macdjord]

Heads up: There's a nice little file in GameData/Squad/Experience named Traits.cfg. You can copy all of the effects of each "class" into one and delete the other two. All Kerbals are then of the same class.

This is also how you add custom traits. I added a TestPilot class that was both Engineer and Pilot that was then randomly assigned to my kerbals.

Edit: An important note: Not having a Pilot, Engineer, or Scientist class glitches-out the astronaut complex in saves with a Bob, Bill or Jebediah. But we're getting somewhere.

Hrm. What if, instead of deleting 2 of the classes, you just made all 3 identical? Or at least copied the critical skills (wheel repair and chute packing) to the other 2?

[Geschosskopf]

Hrm. What if, instead of deleting 2 of the classes, you just made all 3 identical? Or at least copied the critical skills (wheel repair and chute packing) to the other 2?

There's a new mod that does this. It's called Multi-tasking Kerbals. Replaces all stock classes with a single "Astronaut" class.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/103288-Beta-0-9-Multi-tasking-Kerbals!-V1-0-Testers-feedback-needed

Wish I could help on the fuel lines. I did hear they totally changed how fuel lines and struts work under the hood to make them more in line with the rest of the parts, but have no idea what that means.

[Brotoro]

Hrm. What if, instead of deleting 2 of the classes, you just made all 3 identical? Or at least copied the critical skills (wheel repair and chute packing) to the other 2?

I like this idea...except that I don't mind Scientists. Getting science bonus for carting around some scientists is fine by me.

But I think I'll give Pilots the RepairSkill, since I expect you could teach a pilot the two skills of repacking chutes and fixing wheels without requiring them to have engineering degrees. When Skylab got messed up on launch, we didn't send up aerospace engineers to fix it...we trained the astronauts in the steps that they would need to perform to get its solar array extended and position some sunshields. When the Hubble Space Telescope's main mirror was flawed, we didn't send up optical engineers to fix it...we trained astronauts to do the necessary tasks.

I'll also give Engineers the AutoPilot skill for simplicity (so I don't have to modify as many of my kerbal's names to change classes). So I'll essentially have two classes: Pilot/Engineers and Scientists.

[Cydonian Monk]

Hrm. What if, instead of deleting 2 of the classes, you just made all 3 identical? Or at least copied the critical skills (wheel repair and chute packing) to the other 2?

That was my thought too. And that certainly works. (Edit: Ninja'd. Grab the mod instead.)

And I'm seeing the same thing with the middle initial as Brotoro. So could we then use a prefix? Mr. Dr. MD, PhD, Cdr, Lt, etc? I'm not seeing an absolute pattern in that, either. Quick tests on Jebediah, Bill and Bob show that Dr. and Mr. both produce Engineers, PhD produces a scientist. Cdr and Lt both produce Pilots. Using the same prefixes on other recruits results in slightly different job titles, so it might have a minimum number of characters its looking for.

Unfortunately testing on Jeb, Bill and Bob glitches out KSP for me, and the UI locks up when I leave the Astronaut Complex. Thou shalt not mess with the Holy Kerbal Trinity, I guess.

Fuel Lines.

There's a fix for this (if you still have the 0.25 save file), but it's not easy. Might be possible to fix it through a plugin, but it'll be this weekend before I'll have a chance to even think about that. Basically what's going on is this: In the PART node for a FuelLine, there's a child node named PARTDATA. That PARTDATA node has a "target" attribute named tgt. On "broken" fuel lines, that tgt value is set to 0. On "working" fuel lines, it's set to the "cid" attribute of the part the fuel line is flowing into.

An example of a working fuel line, trimmed for space: I have a fuel line flowing from a fuel tank to a Small 1.25 - 0.625 flat adapter, to which an LV-909 is attached.

The flat adapter:

PART
{
   name = adapterSmallMiniShort
   cid = 4294623296
   ...
}

The fuel line:

PART
{
   name = fuelLine
   cid = 4294612946
   ...
   PARTDATA
   {
      tgt = 4294623296
      ...
   }

In the pre-0.90 saves, the target of the fuel line was defined as a direct attribute of the PART node like this:

cData = tgt: adapterSmallMiniShort_3; pos: -1.66164,-0.04181697,-0.00677514; dir: -0.9996764,-0.02510512,-0.004097404; rot: -0.5,0.4999998,-0.5000003,0.5

So it was referencing the part it was connecting to by name, or more specifically, by NAME_treePosition. That data was lost at conversion. The only other information in the post-converted part node telling you where the fuel line goes is all geometric data. So I'm not sure there's a programatic way to fix this, and I can't think of a way to do it manually that won't give a person a quick headache.

Edited December 17, 2014 by Cydonian Monk

[Brotoro]

Yes, that was what I found in the code as well. I tried editing the PARTDATA child into the old ship and put in the information from the old cData line into the PARTDATA... but it didn't work for me. I think I may have put the wrong numbers for the tanks (uid numbers instead of cid numbers maybe...but I'm confused). But even if I get it figured out, it will be a monstrous editing job with all the ships I have.

[Tw1]

So it was referencing the part it was connecting to by name, or more specifically, by NAME_treePosition. That data was lost at conversion. The only other information in the post-converted part node telling you where the fuel line goes is all geometric data. So I'm not sure there's a programatic way to fix this, and I can't think of a way to do it manually that won't give a person a quick headache.

While I am no programmer, if it's converting one sort of data to another sort, shouldn't it be possible to automate somehow? Or is this data that would require far better knowledge of KSP's systems than anyone has?

[macdjord]

I'll also give Engineers the AutoPilot skill for simplicity (so I don't have to modify as many of my kerbal's names to change classes). So I'll essentially have two classes: Pilot/Engineers and Scientists.

So, 'Crew' and 'Mission Specialists'?

[Major999]

It seems that middle names have no effect on the saveability of kerbals, as I have one named Billy-Bobby Kerman. I guess the hyphen is necessary though.

[Cydonian Monk]

While I am no programmer, if it's converting one sort of data to another sort, shouldn't it be possible to automate somehow? Or is this data that would require far better knowledge of KSP's systems than anyone has?

The problem is data loss. There is only one point of data for what the fuel line connects to (makes sense, as it can only go one place). Once that data is lost, there's no way to recover it without going back to an earlier version. Probably the only way to automate it (from inside KSP) would be to jump in during the conversion process, which is done in the MainMenu scene when loading the list of save games. I'm not sure that conversion routine has any hooks or provides any events back to listeners, which is what it would need for a third-party plugin to fix this.

I wonder if this can be fixed by using Kerbal Attachmet System.... Have a repairkerb go out to each and every fuel line? Ick.

[Geschosskopf]

I wonder if this can be fixed by using Kerbal Attachmet System.... Have a repairkerb go out to each and every fuel line? Ick.

What about struts? I hear they got changed in a similar way (although I'm sure the details vary because they don't flow fuel). Do all existing struts have to be fixed as well?

[Brotoro]

The struts are still there. The fuel lines are also still there...they just aren't carrying fuel.