Any way to prevent the next stage's engines from firing besides action groups?

[Eleven]

I have a lifter, and docking ports connecting it to my vehicle it's putting into orbit. When the lifter gets to the last stage, it also fires the engines on my vehicle. I've set up an action group to shut those engines down when that happens, but is there a way to prevent this with staging somehow?

Here is a SS of the launch pad, when the last of the asparagus engines jettison, the center engine is still firing, but then it fires Stage 0.

Edited April 6, 2014 by Eleven
Answered

[soranno]

click the orange plus to add a stage, and then drag what engines you want into that stage to separate them

you can also drag the whole stage by clicking and dragging the orange bars with the stage numbers, and drop them in a new sequence

[Starstrider42]

Not sure I understand. What prevents you from staying at stage 1 (just after your last asparagus jettison, I assume) for as long as you like?

[Superfluous J]

It seems your central stack isn't attached to your payload with a booster, but instead a docking port? In that case, hitting space won't stage it. You have to right click it and select "decouple node." Maybe that's it?

I've never used MechJeb. Does it have an auto-staging feature? Maybe it's auto staging when you don't want it to, when that central stack of the lifter empties.

Edited April 6, 2014 by 5thHorseman

[Eleven]

Sorry I think I did not word that correctly:

After the last of the asparagus stages, Stage 1 decouples, the engine on the center stack is still firing, it's full of fuel. At that point, Stage 0 fires as well and I don't want it too. I only want the center stack which is the single engine from Stage 5 to continue on its own. There is no need for the engines on the vehicle on top to fire at that point, but they do since they are next in line in the staging. THAT is what I want to prevent.

I did find another fix, other than using action groups to shut those down, and that is to put an actual decoupler on the thing between the center stack and the vehicle, INSTEAD of the bottom docking port.

I think I've answered my own question, but wanted to relay that here for clarity.

[That guy who builds stuff]

Does it have an auto-staging feature?

It does.

If that's the problem then it can be solved by setting autostage to stop at stage 1

[Eleven]

I had two of these setups, one manned and one unmanned. I just checked them both, added a Decoupler inplace of the lifters docking port (Still wanted docking ports on the bottoms of the vehicles themselves) and that solved it. I was thinking 'docking port means next stage' but the game was thinking 'docking port means same stage' and that's why it was firing those Stage 0 rockets after the asparagus staging was done. All is well now, thanks for the helps!

[Pecan]

Soranno's advice, right up there beneath your original, tells you how to put them in their own staging group. Everything in the same group goes-off at the same time when you stage to it (engines, decouplers, parachutes if included, etc.) - that's what they're for.

[Salda007]

If you find yourself needing to use the docking ports to connect a stage like that for some reason in the future, you can also just add an empty stage to your staging list; that should let you stage away things without triggering the upper stages. Be sure to disable fuel crossfeed on the docking ports, though! Found that one out the hard way. "Why doesn't my upper have any fuel?"