Craft control question

[Talonsin]

I wanted to send up a ship and then have four or five little probes drop off in orbit of each planet. If I do this, will I be able to control each probe individually? Would I need to put a guidance unit on each probe in order to do this?

Also, I see videos of people using kerbals to attach lines between ships and transfer fuel. Is this a mod? My docking sucks and being able to walk a fuel line would be appealing to me.

Thanks.

[Tw1]

Each probe needs a probe core, or it will be uncontrollable.

The mod you are thinking of is the Kerbal Attachment System, it's very useful.

Edited August 8, 2013 by Tw1

[M4ck]

It does not exactly need a "pod" category item to be controllable, MechJeb case attached anywhere is enough, maybe some other parts would work as well. But then you need reaction wheels from "Control" panel in order to turn your vehicle around.

[Skorpychan]

Generally, things need probe cores or a control pod to be controllable. Something like this:

Note the probe cores with the batteries attached to them. The setup works well for getting the probes into orbit.

Don't copy my probe design, though; they can't run the ions at anywhere near a decent thrust, due to lack of power. I had to redesign them with the new stackable battery packs and a couple of Gigantor panels each.

[Motokid600]

I have a question that relates. Lets say you take a set of probes to Jool. Each one destined for a moon. You go in for an aero brake into Jool's atmosphere to bring the apoapsis of each probe to the orbit of the target moon. So to do this each probe enters Jool at a different height. When I set the height for each probe...then what? I cant control all of them at the same time so will the probes that I don't have selected even aero brake properly? Because correct me if im wrong, but after 2.5km the object is on rails, no?