Sub assemblies

[-RanZ-]

Is there any way to make it so staging doesn't get completely messed up when using sub assemblies? I built a craft with 10 stages and then stuck my heavy lifter sub assembly under it but the staging for the 2 get merged together instead of separate.

[Spyritdragon]

My suggestion would be to take your heavy-lifter subassembly, then add about a dozen decouplers (or as many as the highest amount of stages your rockets usually have) in a stack somewhere random on it where they wont get in the way for attaching it. Put these decouplers in stages 0-11, one in each stage. Then organise your normal staging under that in stages 12 and up, then save your subassembly. You can now attach this heavy lifter to whatever you want, and the stages for the payload will go in slots 0-11 along with the decouplers, leaving your payload and lifter stages nicely organised. Now you just pick up the decoupler which attaches the decoupler stack to your rocket, and throw away the 11 decou leaving them out of the staging system, but keeping the stages organised as you want them. You should be left with nicely staged rocket :-).

[Guest]

I haven't tried it, but I'm pretty sure if you add a bunch of empty stages before you load the subassembly it should separate them better.

[-RanZ-]

My suggestion would be to take your heavy-lifter subassembly, then add about a dozen decouplers (or as many as the highest amount of stages your rockets usually have) in a stack somewhere random on it where they wont get in the way for attaching it. Put these decouplers in stages 0-11, one in each stage. Then organise your normal staging under that in stages 12 and up, then save your subassembly. You can now attach this heavy lifter to whatever you want, and the stages for the payload will go in slots 0-11 along with the decouplers, leaving your payload and lifter stages nicely organised. Now you just pick up the decoupler which attaches the decoupler stack to your rocket, and throw away the 11 decou leaving them out of the staging system, but keeping the stages organised as you want them. You should be left with nicely staged rocket :-).

thanks, I will give that a try.