Help with (passive?) fuel transfer using docking ports

[Eternal President of NK]

Hi

First time posting but I seem to be having a bit of trouble with one of my designs and could use some help figuring it out. The idea was to have a two part ship made up of the ship itself (screenshot 1) and a fuel section (screenshot 2) Both were separately launched then docked in orbit. Screenshot 3 is what it looks like when assembled. I wanted to keep the ship light by making the fuel supply as module and disposable as possible.

When tested on the ground, there was a passive transfer of fuel from the fuel section to the ship (screenshot 4) and everything worked as intended. When it was launched however the passive transfer effect was gone and the only way to move fuel around was by manual transfer. (screenshot 5 - fuel is now draining from the tiny white tank)

Is there a way to get the passive transfer effect from screenshot 4 when the ship is launched in two parts? Mods even? Cheers.

1

3

5

http://img30.imageporter.com/i/02166/xp69t2onsd3y_t.jpg' alt='xp69t2onsd3y_t.jpg'>

[esinohio]

Well it might not be the best possible solution but..... You could try the Lazor System v28 by Romfarer. If I remember right in the Engineering subsection where you do the fuel, electricity, etc. transfers there is an option to setup somewhat of a persistent link. So you could add the lazor system part to each section of your craft along with the yellow lazors. The yellow lazors allow you to transfer things between craft. Then setup that link and let it go. That would let you constantly pull fuel from the orange section into the drive section (freaking cool looking by the way!). Not sure what happens if you change control to another craft and come back to this type of setup going. You might have to play with it some. Hope this helps!

Edited July 18, 2013 by esinohio

[NoMrBond]

TAC fuel balancer perhaps

[stupid_chris]

Eh, Romfarer's plugin is known to cause a lot of bugs.

What is happening here is that when you are connecting two dockingports in the VAB, the game considers it as a "decoupler" somewhat until you deconnect it for the first time. When you dock them in orbit, the game considers it as a bug. To transfer fuel between two docked ship, you have to do it manually, by alt clicking the two tanks and transfering. But this might get tricky. Instead of using the glitchy Romfarer.ddl, I recommend that you would use the TAC Fuel Balancer. This plugin works extremely well to transfer, balance or edit the amount of ressource in any part of your ship, it's very useful. Plus, once you set it to do something, it works without your input. This way, you would just have to make the big orange tank "transfer out" and the fuel would slow out of this tank to every other tank on the ship until it's depleted.

Link to the mod

By the way, I don't know how long you've been playing, but very nice ship You have some building skills.

EDIT: Ninja'd by MrBond dammit.

Edited July 18, 2013 by stupid_chris

[esinohio]

TAC Fuel Balancer !!! Where have you been all my life! Thanks NoMrBond and stupid_chris!

[Eternal President of NK]

Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it. I have tried Romfarer’s lazor mod before (including the yellow transfer lazors) to transfer fuel before but the options in the engineer subsection are new to me. Between that and TAC fuel which seems to at least have a “balance mode to transfer a resource such that all parts are the same percentage full†I should be set.

The crew of my base on Pol also sends their regards - This is the ship that’s supposed to get them home, assuming they stay put in the external command seats stuck on the side of the lander.

[Khrissetti]

On the same line, how do you transfer fuel manually?

[pizzaoverhead]

On the same line, how do you transfer fuel manually?

Alt + right-click on one tank and then another to bring up the transfer window. It works with other resources too.

[Khrissetti]

Ah-hah! Cheers!