Combining plugins into Command Pods and Probes

[CoriW]

So recently I've been thinking about the mods and plugins that I have, and how I really don't like it when they add any parts to the game. It's pretty much due to past experiences when I've had an awesome ship that had like 1 non-stock part on it, I get rid of the mod or plugin associated with that part, and my ship disappears...

Until earlier today I came across a plugin for a mod. The plugin was MechJeb Command Pods and Probes and pretty much what it does, is let the stock Command Pods and Probes have the built-in ability to use MechJeb. Now I don't use MechJeb much, and even less because you have to attach a non-stock part to a vessel to use it, so I went ahead and gave the plugin a look.

After a bit of research I came to the conclusion that I was going to install this plugin, but the only issue was that since I have RemoteTech and Ioncross Crew Support, both my Command Pods and Probes already had plugin properties saved in their part.cfg files, and if I just dropped the zip for MechJeb Command Pods and Probes into my KSP folder, it would completely overwrite the other plugins.

So what I decided to do was go into the part.cfg files and see just exactly what this plugin was adding to the parts, then transfer the properties over manually. As I was doing this however I came to a (for me) rather surprising discovery about the plugin, that all it was doing was adding the same properties that are in the MechJeb part into the Command Pods and Probes.

Now... With this in mind, I have come to an amazing conclusion that will help drastically with my fear of non-stock parts. The conclusion is... Don't use non-stock parts!

Yes, this is a rather obvious way to solve a fear of non-stock parts, but there's more... Instead of using these non-stock parts that are for plugins such as MechJeb, Protractor and Logomatic, I can instead move the functionality of these non-stock parts into stock parts! ITS AMAZING!

Well, there is my little awesome discovery for the day, if anyone wants to share their opinions on the matter I would love to hear them.

[TriggerAu]

Great find Cori, I use this method myself and remember when I understood it too. in the mod copy of the game I play I tend to only use plugin style mods, so any that require a part in a ship to run I do as you have and add the module pieces to the right stock parts - adding the lazor docking cam to docking ports, adding flight enginerr to command pods, etc.

I'm a fan of this method, now to see what 0.20 brings...