Recovering boosters and other staged parts.

[Patrick Kerbivan]

Looking forward to First Contract, I'm wondering what experiences others have had with recovering unmanned/uncontrolled stages of their spacecraft, and if it seems like it will be possible to mount parachutes on boosters and recover them after launches. It seems that anything that drops off my vessel with parachutes deployed ultimately gets treated as having crashed into the planet unless I remain close enough to watch said part until it has safely floated all the way down to the surface (which isn't really going to happen during a proper launch) and I'm wondering if I'm just doing something wrong or should be planning on jettisoned boosters always being total losses.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Patrick Kerbivan
Answered!

[GluttonyReaper]

Anything that moves more than 2.5km away from the active craft is automatically deleted, regardless of parachutage. Whether or not this will be taken into account for First Contract is yet to be confirmed. My personal guess is that it won't be a thing though, as it has been stated that the vessel recovery system is currently only in its first iteration.

[Taki117]

There is a mod called Kerbal Construction Time that takes the number of parachutes and the weight of the part into account when items are staged.