Can MechJeb "schedule" stages?

[Ninety-Three]

I'm building a rather bizarre craft for a challenge, and I want the staging to look something like this: "Ignite stage 1. Wait 6 seconds. Ignite stage 2. Wait 6 seconds. Ignite stage 3. Drop stage 1 when it runs of fuel." I've never used MechJeb because I prefer to pilot things myself, but this is an area where machine precision could really help me out. Rather than diving into the massive function library of MechJeb, I thought I'd ask the forums: Can MechJeb do what I want?

[hawkinator]

Hmm, possibly...

First off, I'm assuming you want it to reach orbit. However, even if you don't, MechJeb's autostaging is a persnickety little feature that is, oddly, independent of the Ascent Guidance module.

In the Auto-staging section, you can see that I have put a 6 in the Pre section. Basically, what should happen is that if you run this, assuming stage 2 and stage 3 are just lighting engines, without any decouplers, then MechJeb will automatically activate them because that's the way it does things. Then, if the next staging event is a decoupler that gets rid of the first thing, then MechJeb will discard it when it runs out of fuel, however, unless you are quick and change the value here mid-flight, it will discard it 6 seconds after it runs out of fuel. Probably what you want is to set a 6 second post-delay, which is a period of time after activating a staging event that MechJeb will wait before it activates the next stage.

In short, Yes, play around with the numbers in the auto-stage section and you will probably find what you are looking for.