[1.4] StageRecovery - Recover Funds+ from Dropped Stages - v1.8.0 (March 11, 2018)

[Baythan]

If you get too far away, parts go on a rail. As long as they don't hit the planet, there is no drag. That's the way I understand it.

AFAIK parts on rails do not experience drag in atmosphere, but KSP does auto-delete objects that reach a certain altitude in atmosphere. I recall that altitude being somewhere around 20-40 Km in previous versions of KSP, not sure if that is still the case or what the specific altitude is.

[Smurfalot]

If you get too far away, parts go on a rail. As long as they don't hit the planet, there is no drag. That's the way I understand it.

AFAIK parts on rails do not experience drag in atmosphere, but KSP does auto-delete objects that reach a certain altitude in atmosphere. I recall that altitude being somewhere around 20-40 Km in previous versions of KSP, not sure if that is still the case or what the specific altitude is.

Thank you both for the info, I will just have to make sure they are going to hit the ground.

[Baythan]

StageRecovery DOES detect when KSP auto-deletes objects due to atmospheric entry and recovers those objects if they are capable of landing and don't burn up in atmosphere.

I think the burning up calculations for StageRecovery are still at 1.0 or 1.0.1 sensitivity, because I drop things that trajectories says burn up but if I follow the objects myself, they never burn up. I even modify the atmospheric pressure for parachutes so they don't deploy until dropped stages reach safe velocities (provided they don't hit a mountain). StageRecovery can only do so much though, and I can deal with some things being lost due to aggressive reentry speeds.

[magico13]

I think the burning up calculations for StageRecovery are still at 1.0 or 1.0.1 sensitivity, because I drop things that trajectories says burn up but if I follow the objects myself, they never burn up.

It's still using the values for when it only worked when Deadly Reentry was installed, where reentry was actually somewhat deadly. You can tailor that how you like in the settings by modifying the DR Velocity. Turn it up to reduce the chance of losing stages, or down to increase it.

[Baythan]

It's still using the values for when it only worked when Deadly Reentry was installed, where reentry was actually somewhat deadly. You can tailor that how you like in the settings by modifying the DR Velocity. Turn it up to reduce the chance of losing stages, or down to increase it.

Ah, I'll look into that. Might have to run some tests to see what velocities will actually destroy things now. Thanks for reminding me about a feature I probably should have known about, had I been paying attention.

[magico13]

Ah, I'll look into that. Might have to run some tests to see what velocities will actually destroy things now. Thanks for reminding me about a feature I probably should have known about, had I been paying attention.

I usually try to make things configurable when its something under my control, so it's usually a good idea to check the config options if there's a play style issue. Chances are, you can change things to suit your play style

[Tontow]

As an addition: Would it be possible to enable recovery for the last stage once you have deployed the shoots and it has slowed down enough? IE: The main body of your craft.

Even with time acceleration, following a probe parashoot 5000km gets old after the 1000th time.

[Baythan]

As an addition: Would it be possible to enable recovery for the last stage once you have deployed the shoots and it has slowed down enough? IE: The main body of your craft.

Even with time acceleration, following a probe parashoot 5000km gets old after the 1000th time.

Reduce the altitude and/or pressure at which the chutes deploy so that you don't have as long to float downwards. Don't be afraid to use drogue chutes and then cut them off to freefall to a lower altitude.

[Smurfalot]

Still running into the issue where I drop the upper stage at apoapsis of high orbit with the expectation it will reenter at periapsis. If I only have it reenter at 45-50km it ignores the atmosphere and orbits indefinitely. If I set it to <0 to crash into the surface the stage disappears, but I get no credit for it-- no message at all.

What am I doing wrong?

[BudgetHedgehog]

Still running into the issue where I drop the upper stage at apoapsis of high orbit with the expectation it will reenter at periapsis. If I only have it reenter at 45-50km it ignores the atmosphere and orbits indefinitely. If I set it to <0 to crash into the surface the stage disappears, but I get no credit for it-- no message at all.

What am I doing wrong?

Well, the first part is stock behaviour - if something is on rails and doesn't encounter an atmospheric pressure of more than 0.01 (I think this translates to about 23km on Kerbin), it stays on rails and isn't affected by anything ever (until it's taken off rails). If it encounters pressures above 0.01 atm and is on rails, it gets deleted and only then StageRecovery takes over. So, putting vessels on an orbit with a 45km PE will mean it is never deleted and StageRecovery never has a chance to fire.

No idea about your second point though.

[magico13]

Still running into the issue where I drop the upper stage at apoapsis of high orbit with the expectation it will reenter at periapsis. If I only have it reenter at 45-50km it ignores the atmosphere and orbits indefinitely. If I set it to <0 to crash into the surface the stage disappears, but I get no credit for it-- no message at all.

What am I doing wrong?

The magic number is below about 22km (20km should be a safe estimate). Below that altitude, KSP deletes the craft and SR takes over. Above that and it'll just keep orbiting without drag.

Are you remaining in the flight scene when the stage disappears? It doesn't work as well (possibly at all after the 1.0 changes) in any other scene since the part data isn't as easily accessed. For safety you should always stay in the flight scene when trying to recover things (so, don't go to the Tracking Center or Space Center). Otherwise, could be a messed up install.

[Smurfalot]

Well, the first part is stock behaviour - if something is on rails and doesn't encounter an atmospheric pressure of more than 0.01 (I think this translates to about 23km on Kerbin), it stays on rails and isn't affected by anything ever (until it's taken off rails). If it encounters pressures above 0.01 atm and is on rails, it gets deleted and only then StageRecovery takes over. So, putting vessels on an orbit with a 45km PE will mean it is never deleted and StageRecovery never has a chance to fire.

No idea about your second point though.

Thanks for the tip, I will try <20 km, but stay out of the negative periapsis. Maybe that will be the sweet spot.

[hab136]

I may add the ability to automatically deploy stock parachutes on unfocused vessels when get within a certain distance of the ground

Smart Parts already can do that, you might just point people at that mod

[Capt. Hunt]

I don't know if anyone's reported this before, but I'm only getting notifications if a stage is destroyed. I don't get a message if a stage has parachutes, so I don't know if I'm getting my refund for recovered stages.

[magico13]

I don't know if anyone's reported this before, but I'm only getting notifications if a stage is destroyed. I don't get a message if a stage has parachutes, so I don't know if I'm getting my refund for recovered stages.

Did you accidentally turn off Success Messages in the settings? I'd check that first, and then maybe do a test that you know should be recovered (like, drop a booster at 10km with a bunch of parachutes, then boost off until you get 22.5km away) and leave the Flight GUI open to see if it's being reported in there (click the SR icon in flight to access the Flight GUI). If you're still not getting reports, I'll likely need logs to see if an error is being logged.

I also don't recommend leaving the flight scene when things are possibly going to have recoveries attempted, since SR can't access as much data on a vessel outside of the flight scene.

[John Nowak]

I may add the ability to automatically deploy stock parachutes on unfocused vessels when get within a certain distance of the ground...

You can pretty much do this in stock. In your staging profile, put the parachutes of a stage in the same group as the decoupler that drops it. This will "deploy" the chutes.

The air pressure the chute opens and the altitude the chute unreefs are tweakable. Personally, I usually set the chutes to unreef at 500m and open at 0.3 ATM.

[Capt. Hunt]

Did you accidentally turn off Success Messages in the settings? I'd check that first, and then maybe do a test that you know should be recovered (like, drop a booster at 10km with a bunch of parachutes, then boost off until you get 22.5km away) and leave the Flight GUI open to see if it's being reported in there (click the SR icon in flight to access the Flight GUI). If you're still not getting reports, I'll likely need logs to see if an error is being logged.

I also don't recommend leaving the flight scene when things are possibly going to have recoveries attempted, since SR can't access as much data on a vessel outside of the flight scene.

I don't even see a settings option in the SR toolbar, so I don't know how I could have changed that.

[magico13]

I don't even see a settings option in the SR toolbar, so I don't know how I could have changed that.

It's accessed in the space center scene by clicking the SR button. After you check that, then check the other things I mentioned.

[Capt. Hunt]

ok, I found the settings, Recovered Stages is checked, I'll try reinstalling SR to see if that fixes anything.

Edit: reinstalled SR and now it works fine.

Edited June 7, 2015 by Capt. Hunt

[Feradose]

Can I shove heatshields to a cargo bay to make sure it survives? And lets say it has a 800% chance of burning up, and I add 9 heatshields, does it refund me ablator enough for one heatshield or do I get 9 heatshields full of ablator?

How does it handle 1.5m heatshields on 2.5m (3.75m, 5m) crafts?

[magico13]

Can I shove heatshields to a cargo bay to make sure it survives? And lets say it has a 800% chance of burning up, and I add 9 heatshields, does it refund me ablator enough for one heatshield or do I get 9 heatshields full of ablator?

How does it handle 1.5m heatshields on 2.5m (3.75m, 5m) crafts?

You can put heatshields in a cargo bay and it will increase the chances of survival. None of the ablator is actually used up (though I should probably do that, but it's probably not too expensive), however 9 heatshields won't reduce a chance of 800% down to 0%, it instead might only reduce it to 700%. The amount it reduces is 100%*(total ablator remaining / total max ablator), so more heatshields don't help. It also doesn't check sizes of heatshields, so you can put a tiny heatshield on a big stage and have it not be destroyed.

As you can see, it's really easy to game the system, because it's a very rough approximation that's not really designed to be accurate, but instead is there to prevent you from using SR to get around reentry heating entirely. Without it, you could just have SR recover your retrograde interplanetary craft that otherwise would explode from hitting atmosphere at 9 km/s, which is less realistic than SR's approximation If you turn reentry heating off entirely, then SR's approximation will also turn off.

[Tontow]

Reduce the altitude and/or pressure at which the chutes deploy so that you don't have as long to float downwards. Don't be afraid to use drogue chutes and then cut them off to freefall to a lower altitude.

The reason I don't like to do that is that the ground on most, if not all, of the planets isn't flat. If I trigger too low, I go splat. If I trigger too high, then I may as well stop playing and go do something else while it drifts down.

As far as using and cutting a drogue chute; I'm doing a very hard campaign mode where I have to deal with very very low starting money and then part and weight limits.

I bet the plugin would kick in and auto recover the ship if only I could switch away from it during free fall or even after I deploy the chutes? But atm the game will end the flight and delete the ship if I tried that.....

[hab136]

The reason I don't like to do that is that the ground on most, if not all, of the planets isn't flat. If I trigger too low, I go splat.

Just to be clear: the parachute altitude trigger is altitude above ground, not ASL. If you're landing at the launchpad, "500m" will trigger about 565m. If you're landing on a 4000m mountain, "500m" will trigger at 4500m. "500m" will only trigger at exactly 500m if you're landing in the ocean.

That said, if you are landing on mountains be sure to note that the air is thinner up there. It will take longer to slow down and your final velocity will be higher than at sea level (regardless of the altitude you deploy your chute).

If I trigger too high, then I may as well stop playing and go do something else while it drifts down.

Mildly related: SafeChute will disable warp both when your parachutes deploy and when you're right about to touch down, so that you can safely warp through the boring parts. It's actually not that dangerous to physical warp with parachutes any more, but the mod is still nice for the impatient

[magico13]

The reason I don't like to do that is that the ground on most, if not all, of the planets isn't flat. If I trigger too low, I go splat. If I trigger too high, then I may as well stop playing and go do something else while it drifts down.

As far as using and cutting a drogue chute; I'm doing a very hard campaign mode where I have to deal with very very low starting money and then part and weight limits.

I bet the plugin would kick in and auto recover the ship if only I could switch away from it during free fall or even after I deploy the chutes? But atm the game will end the flight and delete the ship if I tried that.....

Just to be clear: the parachute altitude trigger is altitude above ground, not ASL. If you're landing at the launchpad, "500m" will trigger about 565m. If you're landing on a 4000m mountain, "500m" will trigger at 4500m. "500m" will only trigger at exactly 500m if you're landing in the ocean.

^ This. I generally trigger my chutes at about 1km, which covers just about every situation and requires minimal waiting. I don't predeploy until 3km to get past reentry heating. I'm also using RealChutes and FAR, but it should be similar for Stock.

Alternatively, you could decouple everything while still in space and switch to another vessel before entering the atmosphere, then StageRecovery would recover it. Depending on the speed, it might get destroyed instead, though.

I'm having a strange bug with this mod. The screen turns black like this after launching a vessel.

I'll also put my Gamedata here.

You have a lot of mods and nothing makes it obvious that it's a StageRecovery related issue. With logs I can check to see if any errors are being reported and can hopefully figure out what mod is having issues.

[Tontow]

Just to be clear: the parachute altitude trigger is altitude above ground, not ASL. If you're landing at the launchpad, "500m" will trigger about 565m. If you're landing on a 4000m mountain, "500m" will trigger at 4500m. "500m" will only trigger at exactly 500m if you're landing in the ocean.

That said, if you are landing on mountains be sure to note that the air is thinner up there. It will take longer to slow down and your final velocity will be higher than at sea level (regardless of the altitude you deploy your chute).

Mildly related: SafeChute will disable warp both when your parachutes deploy and when you're right about to touch down, so that you can safely warp through the boring parts. It's actually not that dangerous to physical warp with parachutes any more, but the mod is still nice for the impatient

And here I always thought that it was ASL. Now I don't have to keep setting them to 5000. + that mod :D

- - - Updated - - -

Just to be clear: the parachute altitude trigger is altitude above ground, not ASL. If you're landing at the launchpad, "500m" will trigger about 565m. If you're landing on a 4000m mountain, "500m" will trigger at 4500m. "500m" will only trigger at exactly 500m if you're landing in the ocean.

That said, if you are landing on mountains be sure to note that the air is thinner up there. It will take longer to slow down and your final velocity will be higher than at sea level (regardless of the altitude you deploy your chute).

Mildly related: SafeChute will disable warp both when your parachutes deploy and when you're right about to touch down, so that you can safely warp through the boring parts. It's actually not that dangerous to physical warp with parachutes any more, but the mod is still nice for the impatient

And here I always thought that it was ASL. Now I don't have to keep setting them to 5000. + that mod :D