A Hanger for Reusable craft and ground crew

[katateochi]

I'm getting into having reusable craft in my space program and I've got a small fleet of ground support craft for refuelling, taxiing and bringing over new payloads. It's fun having ground crew, but the proverbial lag issue crops up. Currently I keep my ground crew and reusable craft parked just over 2km away from the launch site (about 800m west of the end of the runway) so launching rockets are not effected by them. But that makes using the ground crew a bit of a mission and it still effects planes.

I really want my ground crew to be parked on the apron outside the SPH, but this adds lag to any rocket being launched or plane taking off/landing.

What I'd like is a hangar where these craft can be "parked". What the hangar does is store the craft as it is; current fuel levels, MET, basically all the info for that craft from the persistent file, but takes it out of the persistent file so its not actually loaded in the scene and is therefore not being simulated. This would enable a set of craft to be on hand when needed, but not causing all of KSC to be a lag-zone.

Ideally (not sure how possible this is) the building should be something that you could switch to (unlike the other buildings) and then displays a menu which shows the stored craft so you can select one to load. Failing that it could work like the other buildings which you interact with from the space centre view (but I'd prefer not to have to return the space centre view).

When you select a craft to load from the hangar is basically re-injects the craft (sorry VESSEL{...} ) into the persistent file, then reloads the scene and the craft will now appear, exactly as it was, outside the hangar.

I'm not sure how to handle the crew in craft being stored in the hangar. Leaving them sitting in the craft doesn't sound right, but that may just be a simple solution initially. Or the crew get "reclaimed" and when you load a craft from the hangar you get a similar interface to the load craft from space centre interface that enables you to select which crew you want to put in it.

Aside from creating a new building I don't think this would be too hard to implement.

What do you guys think?

[mardlamock]

I think this is a must, and also something like KAS and maybe some FAR in it as well

[PringleMan]

The crew could also be handled by the plugin. Something along the lines of saving the crew names, on vessel store it sets those kerbals to "dead" so that they wont respawn in another rocket. On vessel relaunch, it changes those kerbals back to an alive state, then sets them as the crew. There are definitely hooks to allow crew manipulation as we see with life support mods, so I think it might be possible.

[Immashift]

I like this idea. I too would use ground crews and more ACTUALLY reusable (as opposed to recovering once landed and going "good enough") craft. The problem with me, like so many others, is the lag involved when doing such things. It's why I have around 10 small space stations up at various altitudes rather than one enormous one because of how bad lag gets for me when I have >300 parts or so.

The idea of a hangar which would be more or less a box of crafts that don't actually get loaded unless specifically asked to, is really cool. Sort of like a garage you'd drive your fuel truck or whatever into, and then it is saved and unloaded. Select hangar empty-handed and you get a list of stuff you've parked there. Select something, and it spawns in the hangar under your control, exactly as it was left.

While we're on that sort of idea, I'd love a way to refuel stuff WITHOUT spawning tanks with docking ports on runways. Sort of like a permanent fixture somewhere near the launchpad I could drive a truck up to, perhaps dock with a special part, and have it refuel all LFO tanks on the craft. Or perhaps integrate that into the UI of the hangar idea. This is just all conjecture of course, but I love the idea.

[Van Disaster]

Yes, this is something I'm trying to work out how to do because I'm trying to build a permanent base on Laythe using Kerbtown. Spawning craft is something we can do, despawning is also something we can do but I'm not too sure about the despawning-and-saving-for-later bit right now. Storing resources in a kerbtown building and being able to transfer those resources around other buildings without having to use KAS is the other line of inquiry atm. I don't mind using KAS to plug into a movable thing like a craft, just don't want to have to use it to hook up a permanent base.

The crew issue I've thought about - I would want to route them to the base's personnel storage if it has one, otherwise to an office in the hangar I guess.

Edited October 10, 2013 by Van Disaster

[b0bby]

What do you guys think?

I support this idea 100%! That would be very awesome.

[SargeRho]

Totally supported. Currently, servicing my kethane freighter SSTOs is quite tedious. Having a hangar to park them in would be awesome.

[Andersenman]

That physics freeze that (appears to) engage whenever time acceleration goes above 1x could perhaps be used selectively for such vehicles.

[SofusRud]

Totally in favor of this.

It would also be useful in career mode, once money becomes a factor, since you wouldn't have to pay for a new craft.

[M5000]

I like this idea, I think it would begin to really have more of its place when career mode is more robustly implemented, such as having certain parts of spacecraft that you "retrieve" from the world, and place in this stockpile. You could then use these parts/ships in the VAB/SPH as subassemblies of their own, except you would have limited quantity, which would depend directly on how many you have retrieved from the world. You could place these pieces on your craft in place of "New" parts, and they would then help you lower the cost of the ship you are building.

This would make it very profitable and sensible to then have a reusable launch system, where the cost of the ship would basically only be fuel+a bit of maintenance/assembly labor.

Recovery could help you find:

-SRBs

-Individual parts, such as struts/trusses/science modules

-Large, multi-part side booster rockets

-Command pods

-Anything you can safely return to the surface

[TheAquired]

I like this idea! And maybe you would be able to spawn kerbals from this hanger as well?

[Van Disaster]

I'd rather ( also plan to ) stick with spawning new Kerbals from "Space centres" - given we don't actually have towns to produce Kerbals that's the nearest thing. If they're not in my outpost hangar/accomodation already then they're not going to appear.

Kerbtown seems to be able to let you add new spawn points for the VAB/SPH already.

[3_bit]

Come to think of it, a maintenance vehicle bay would be nice. After all, who would launch a car/truck off of a RUNWAY?

[DoomtrainInc]

I was going to suggest this myself! Glad someone else is thinking along these lines. I dont think it would need to be able to store vehicles or kerbals. You should just be able to select a design you have created in the VAB/SPH and spawn it from this location. Or perhaps import specific designs to the building and launch them as needed. Honestly just having a parking lot to put refuel trucks and cranes in would be AWESOME. Beware i might start a 'parking lot' thread. I dont think it is on the do not suggest list lol.

[Van Disaster]

DoomtrainInc: Kerbtown can add spawn points already ( and I think I might add a vehicle shop spawn point, I'm getting sick of the runway too ). This *does* need to store used vehicles, the idea is not to have a magical spawning point of infinite resources *or* a scrapyard-cum-shipyard which converts ships to metal and back ( which EL can do already ) but just somewhere to shove existing things out of the way, complete with minor breakages/mostly used fuel etc; ie they come out in the condition they went in.

Alternatively I'm wondering if you can make a flat area which puts vehicles on rails, that way you could see all your collection of rides but they'd not kill the physics engine.

[MK3424]

Maybe a launchpad crawler?