Ongoing Flights and Selective Debris Removal

[Silverchain]

Few things I'm wondering;

1) Is there any significant drawback to having large numbers of ongoing flights? Does it make a difference if the flights are in orbit or landed?

Does it make a local difference if the flights are in another location (e.g. if LKO is full of junk, does it make any difference to a ship landed on Dres?)

Does debris count for as much as controlled flights?

I have about 100 flights-in-progress and little junk, and it seems not to be having too much of a performance hit.

I don't know how the on-rails simulations work, and clearly a modern computer can handle loads of objects like this if it's optimised, I just don't know how well optimised KSP is at doing it if I continue to start flights... ...also kinda curious how many ongoing flights people have.

2) Is there a selective automatic debris removal mod? I'd like to clear debris from around KSC (and perhaps the Island Runway) only, without removing stuff from other places on Kerbin, orbit, or other worlds.

(If there's not I'll see if I can write one, I just don't want to duplicate effort if someone's already done it!)

[KerbMav]

1) Someone tested this: Especially the first 30 flights seem to have a noticable impact on overall performance, after that it gets worse still, but seemingly to a lesser degree.

Landed crafts - even flags - are the same as flying ones.

If the craft is not active, everything is "uncontrolled" but still calculated "on rails", so they all count the same - if that is what you are asking for.

2) No, but I would sign any petitions asking for this; especially removing landed/splashed debris on Kerbin.

[psyper]

2) not sure if you are aware of this but you can manually remove debris from space command - move the mouse to the top centre of the screen and a little selection tab comes down - selecting the far left (debris) option with the left mouse will show only the debris (right click to add it along with everything else). you can then select it from the map or from the list on the left-hand side.

[Boosterspice]

If you want to remove debris right away, like an orbital stage you forgot to add separators to, then I recommend Hyperedit, it has a nice UI for just clicking on the name to delete it. Be careful though, it sort every craft and debris only in alphabetical order, so one misclick may ruin one of your missions, but it is great for instant removal while flying.

[Claw]

Yes, the tracking station is your best bet. And no plugin required.

As stated above, move the mouse to the top center of the screen. A set of buttons will pop up. When you select debris (the left most button), the tracking station will only display things marked "debris." You can display more items, but by default the debris will only show with your first click.

[KerbMav]

Yes, the tracking station is your best bet. And no plugin required.

2) Is there a selective automatic debris removal mod?

Which is what I would like to see for Kerbin's surface at least, too.

[Claw]

Ahh, my bad. I missed the automatic part. Probably because I wouldn't like an automatic removal all the time. But I can see the utility as long as I had to click on something to remove a wide area. (I.e. It doesn't go away on its own.)

[Silverchain]

Thanks everyone. That's the sort of thing I'm thinking of, something that you'd point at the save file and say "get rid of any debris near KSP" or "get rid of all debris on Duna" or similar. Yeah, a utility rather than a mod.

I've got some free time next week so I'll probably look at it then, should be easy. Debris is identified with type = debris, think root is the body and lat / lon are straightforward so should just be a case of hacking through the save file to excise those entries which fall within whatever bounds are set.

[AlexisBV]

Yes, the tracking station is your best bet. And no plugin required.

As stated above, move the mouse to the top center of the screen. A set of buttons will pop up. When you select debris (the left most button), the tracking station will only display things marked "debris." You can display more items, but by default the debris will only show with your first click.

This is for display only, it doesn't actually remove anything from the simulation.

If you want to remove/delete debris, AFAIK you have to manually select them and terminate/abort it. Note that if it's landed anywhere on Kerbin (including water), you can recover it instead, and gain whatever science point the debris might contain (if a science part with science in it). That was a pleasant surprise for me when one of my returning science probes had a less-than-perfect landing and disintegrated spilling sensors all over the place.

[Claw]

This is for display only, it doesn't actually remove anything from the simulation.

Yes, Psyper already said that and I assumed that the OP knew how to terminate/recover. It was several weeks before I figured out the debris is masked, so I was trying to clarify that piece in case it wasn't known.

It was all moot anyway as the OP is looking for an automatic process, not manual.

[Silverchain]

I've written something that'll automatically remove for example "all splashed down debris on Laythe" or "any orbital debris anywhere" from a save game, but it doesn't have a UI yet. I hope to upload something half-presentable at the weekend.