"Stage" Action Group

[Starstrider42]

Most of the action groups seem pretty straightforward, but there's one that puzzles me: Stage. As far as I can tell, it gets triggered by any staging event, including liftoff. So I can't use it to trigger an action I want to occur after a particular staging event (say, deploy solar panels after dropping the 2nd rocket stage), because it'll happen too soon.

Do people use the Stage action group? When does it come in handy?

[rennsport27]

I myself have never used that action group, but perhaps it can be used to fire up a motor for pushing stages apart? I'll agree that it's rather redundant, since most things you want to occur during a stage, you just want to happen once after one particular stage, but I'm sure someone has a use for it. I just can't think of many things you'd want to happen during every stage.

[the_bT]

On non rapier SSTO spaceplanes I usually put the deactivate action of the rocket engines into stage. I put all engines in stage 0 so when I launch, the turbojets start, the rockets start as well but shut down immediately and the rest is controlled by action groups anyways. Other than that I don't use it much. Sometimes for navigation lights or something like that... but that's about it

[Pecan]

Yep, I've thought exactly the same as you for the same reasons. In as much as I ever use it it's for single-stage vehicles where several things have to happen at 'launch'. Oddly enough, looking at my current fleet, that's just on rovers - first time they're used module torque and things get switched off.

[Red Iron Crown]

It's another available action group in a single stage vehicle, which can be handy sometimes.