Part Construction Plugin(AKA Space Engineers)?

[Tyrador]

For those who are not familiar with Space Engineers, there are 3-4 buildings stages which can only be completed if you have a resource in your inventory:

The idea of how to implement this mechanic into the Kerbal could be something similar to the image below:

Basically to complete construction of something KAS container should contain sort of a resource. So is it possible to create a plugin which will allow for this to happen?

[Justin Kerbice]

As I don't know SE, I'm not sure to understand what you mean, what about Extraplanetary launchpads ?

[sumghai]

As I don't know SE, I'm not sure to understand what you mean, what about Extraplanetary launchpads ?

Extraplanetary Launchpads pretty much handles the requested feature well enough - however, in order to have the skeleton->interior->exterior progression, each and every KSP part will need to be remade to include geometry and textures for each "step" in the process, which become memory and hard disk space intensive rather quickly.

I can't say I'm a fan of this idea.

[Tyrador]

Sorry, I should have explained it better. You place a block/part which is only a carcass, for it to be finished component you need to have a resources. Here:

As you can see there is actual construction process as opposed to Extraplanetary launchpads magical appearance of the ship built.

[Tyrador]

Extraplanetary Launchpads pretty much handles the requested feature well enough - however, in order to have the skeleton->interior->exterior progression, each and every KSP part will need to be remade to include geometry and textures for each "step" in the process, which become memory and hard disk space intensive rather quickly.

I can't say I'm a fan of this idea.

Well, my intention is to create a Space Engineers mod, so all parts will be built on orbit and be cube shaped. I do not think it will be very memory intensive, as I'm not planning to make 30-40 parts with bump maps and high res textures. Is it possible to make a plugin for these "steps"? Just I've never done a plugin before.

[notfirestorm]

I've played Space Engineers, and while I know what you're trying to do, I would advise against it. Two reasons:

-In SE, if you build a ship with 100 blocks, you still have only one physics object the engine has to worry about. In KSP, you'll have 100 physics parts, so even a small ship will destroy your CPU

-You can't have multi node connection points in KSP, so if you try to make a 5x5 grid of cubes, you'll really have a weird conga line of blocks. You could fix this by programmatically adding struts in the connection directions, but that will multiply your part count, which will destroy your CPU

If you're still keen on trying this, it probably would be possible. Check out KAS to see how they handle part addition via EVA. Then you just have to make your own PartModules to do the piece-by-piece constriction of the parts.