Do I need to have a decoupler before rockets in a stage to auto-fire them?

[Benie]

So I heard from a tutorial that if you have a decoupler in the same stage as a rocket, you can have rockets in that same stage fire once the decoupler fires, and it does work.

But I got a question. I can't seem to get the decoupler to go under the engines in staging. It keeps being above them for some reason. I'm worried that it'll fire the rockets before decoupling, which I don't want.

Does it really matter what level the decoupler is, to auto-fire the rockets in that stage?

[Flixxbeatz]

I assume that you are working on some sort of a missile launcher...

[Benie]

Negative. Just a rover + skycrane strapped to a rocket. I just want to know if it's necessary to have the decoupler before the rockets (not the main rockets, just the skycrane's).

[DerekL1963]

Have you tried looking at the skycrane that comes with the game?

[CCKinnison]

Just manually sort your staging... Drag and drop the bits you want into different stages, as needed. I have to do that with almost every rocket at one point or another... The game does weird things with the default staging. or perhaps i build weird rockets.

[Nibb31]

The decouplers just have to be in the same staging group. The order inside the staging group doesn't matter, everything will be fired at the same time.

[Scarecrow88]

If you want your engines to fire when you de-couple, put them in the same stage as the de-coupler. If you don't, put them in a different stage. Simple.

[entaran]

Yep. You can either put the engine in a stage above the decoupler and hit space twice (give it some sep room etc) or you can put the decoupler and engine in the same stage and they will fire simultaneously. It's irrelevant which ones "on top" in the staging window, as long as they are both in the same numbered stage.