Any way to remove a part from staging?

[Blackstar]

So I noticed that the KSPX pack I had downloaded for a few of the structural pieces also came with an escape tower part with a really nice T/W ratio. Cool, it also looks spiffy on the nosecone. I decided to give it a try on my space station resupply vehicle; since one of its lifter's middle stages has a nasty habit of occasionally nicking an engine if dropped when the rotation isn't perfectly zero (and this stage is dropped right in the middle of the gravity turn... yeah, good thing I don't work for NASA!).

I set up some action groups - 1 decouples the stack separator and fires the escape tower, 2 deploys the parachutes since I obviously don't want those adding drag as I'm trying to get my crew away from the exploding engines. Then copied the craft file into my 'Simulation' savegame and tried it out on the launch pad.

Hit the button and wheeeeeeee -- up went the command pod! As it was flying through the air, I noticed on the left of the screen that the stages from the lower part of the rocket started collapsing together one after the other. Finally it hit the last one -- and deployed the parachutes automatically while the pod was still flying upward. I think you can guess what happened next; as soon as the pod hit the top of its arc and its velocity crossed 0, the parachutes disappeared. D'oh! That's why I put them on a separate action group to begin with...

So is there any way to remove a part from staging altogether? This is a ship that's designed to land on its own power back at KSC, so I really don't need the parachutes except in an emergency. Ideally I'd want to take the separator and escape tower out as well to prevent them from being accidentally triggered, since I'm terrible about remembering to lock the staging (and it always seems to get jumbled up after docking/undocking). I couldn't find anything in the interface to do it -- is the only way to create extra copies of all 3 parts with a modified cfg?

[J.Random]

As it was flying through the air, I noticed on the left of the screen that the stages from the lower part of the rocket started collapsing together one after the other. Finally it hit the last one -- and deployed the parachutes automatically while the pod was still flying upward.

Do you have parachutes in stage 0, escape engines with decoupler in stage 1 and everything else in stage 2+? I don't think you do. If you decouple your command pod, the rest of the ship turns into debris, and whatever happens with that debris shouldn't affect your remaining ship's staging at all.

[ThatBum]

You could stick them on your last stage. It's a bit of a kludge, but it works. You could also put one of the small probe decouplers between the pod and the escape tower to jettison the tower when there's no longer a need for it. This saves weight and also could expose a docking port.

[Blackstar]

Do you have parachutes in stage 0, escape engines with decoupler in stage 1 and everything else in stage 2+? I don't think you do. If you decouple your command pod, the rest of the ship turns into debris, and whatever happens with that debris shouldn't affect your remaining ship's staging at all.

Ah, yes, I had all the "junk I don't care about because I'm using action groups to manage" in stage 0. Moving the escape tower to 1 should work around that then, thanks.

For the routine launches that I'm lazy and use mechjeb auto-ascend on I'll just need to remember to set auto staging to stop at 1, just in case...

[Merinsan]

I personally think this is a missing feature. I sometimes have modules that are attached with decouplers which are not meant to be staged. I deploy them at some point in the mission, based on need, such as probes in the Joolian system. Now I know I could use docking ports, but then I have the problem of fuel crossfeeding through the docking port, and having to remember to check the fuel before I detach them.

It's not a huge issue, I normally just put them all in stage 0 and try not to accidentally stage (it happened once), but it'd be a nice polish to the configuration options.

[magnemoe]

Dont talk about it, pressing space and decople the pod from the ship then going in for an Jool aerobrake is pretty classical. Pod will do two orbits and crash into Jool.

[NeoMorph]

It's a shame there isn't a virtual device like I used when skydiving. The AOD (Automatic Opening Device) take a constant reading of the air pressure. When it hit 1200ft it waits about half a second and then takes another reading... if the differences in the air pressure is greater than a set figure it knows the skydiver is dropping too fast and fires off the parachute.

If we had something like that in KSP you wouldn't have to worry about deploying the chute. Just decouple from the stack and fire the escape tower... The firing activates the AOD and when it is below 1200ft it detects the speed the thing is dropping (ie it wouldn't fire until the pressure difference is positive so no firing before it is actually descending) and job done.

[J.Random]

Well, there are istg and dstg parameter for every part in the craft file (which I guesstimate as "ignition stage" and "decouple stage"). Setting istg to -1 removes part from staging, but I guess it may and most certainly will break other stages as well.

[PurpleTinker]

Is there yet a way to remove items from staging?

[draeath]

I personally think this is a missing feature. I sometimes have modules that are attached with decouplers which are not meant to be staged. I deploy them at some point in the mission, based on need, such as probes in the Joolian system. Now I know I could use docking ports, but then I have the problem of fuel crossfeeding through the docking port, and having to remember to check the fuel before I detach them.

It's not a huge issue, I normally just put them all in stage 0 and try not to accidentally stage (it happened once), but it'd be a nice polish to the configuration options.

This would be an excellent VAB tweakable!

[Javster]

I use the capsule icon as an indicator: everything above it is launch towers etc.

[DrMonte]

Ha staging, look what mess you will get when you dock to a space station.

[Sharpy]

I'm really missing this feature. I have a bidirectional lander, which is meant to move in jumps: engine A launches it up, engine B on the other end lands it gently, then engine B launches it up, A serves for braking. I toggle the two through actions and I definitely don't want both working at the same time.