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[1.4.1] Kerbal Construction Time 1.4.0.69 (2018-03-24) - Unrapid Planned Assembly


magico13

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18 minutes ago, smartdummies said:

Quick question. I am playing an RP-0 career and and have been upgrading KSC and Brownsville and now realize I need to upgrade a different building. Where do I go to alter the build queue for the building upgrades?

In progress building upgrades are under the "Tech" tab I believe. You need to be at the KSC where you started the upgrade.

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Hey, great mod! So far I had one problem and one suggestion. The problem is that when using the ModularFuelTanks mod, the Fill Tanks button can fill tanks beyond their capacity. For example, if you have a Mk1 Liquid Fuel Tank (normally 400 LF), and you change it to 100 LF using ModularFuelTanks, the Fill Tanks button will fill it to 400/100 rather than 100/100. The suggestion is having an option to automatically refuel the ship when you recover it.

Edited by AdamMil
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8 minutes ago, AdamMil said:

The suggestion is having an option to automatically refuel the ship when you recover it.

It's by design that it isn't automatically refueled. Recovering through the KCT menu is supposed to be a pain with a lot of manual steps, because you're trading off the automatic, bug free method of recovering + rebuilding for the faster manual recover and manual refurbish. Using normal recovery and then building a duplicate vessel from inventory parts is still very, very fast and has the benefit that you get fresh parts and nearly zero chance of bugs. By recovering to storage you're literally just moving the vessel into a hangar and when you relaunch you get the exact same craft. Refuelling and replacing parts is up to the player then. Also, I can't know a priori how full you want the tanks: for example, if you recover an SSTO you might want to only partially fill the oxidizer. Basically, I don't want to refill tanks automatically and I'm not sure it would really even help that much since you'll still need to tweak things manually.

I will try to take a look into the issue with ModularFuelTanks, but Modular/Procedural anything is often rather difficult to work with (example: I despise tweakscale because it basically destroyed KCT's inventory system :P). I tried to write up a fix for refilling procedural tanks but I've heard that it didn't work correctly. I don't use tanks like that so I haven't seen it myself.

 

Thanks for the report/suggestion!

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It's surprising that you say it's "supposed to be a pain with a lot of manual steps". Anyway, I imagined that the option, if enabled, would simply do the same thing as the Fill Tanks button. Regarding the SSTO example, it wouldn't be any worse than the Fill Tanks button and filling the tanks is still better than not doing so. After a flight it's certain to need more fuel, but it's not certain to need reduced oxidizer, so you'd have a good chance of getting it right, and if not the refueling work the user needs to do has still been reduced. Furthermore, with a mod like ModularFuelTanks you can reduce the maximum (oxidizer) capacities of the tanks rather than leaving them partially empty. Then, refilling all the tanks would be sure to restore it to flight-ready condition. Anyway, that's my argument. :-)  Up to you.

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It ultimately boils down to the fact that I don't really even like the "Recover To Storage" option, but it was requested repeatedly enough (and funnily enough is still a feature that people request, despite the fact that it already exists) that I added it in. I like that you have to bring it into the editor at least once. I wanted to make it so parachutes and such didn't reset, but decided that would be even worse. Also, back when it was added the build times were dependent on the fueled cost, so refilling the tanks would add a bit of time to the build queue. I liked that too. Plus there are cost differences with refuelling: as of right now when you recover you pay funds equal to the difference between the value of the vessel and the value after the distance percentage (ie, if you'd get 87% recovery value, you have to pay 13% of the value to recover it) (at least, I'm 90% sure I wrote it this way because otherwise you could generate infinite money), if you refuelled too you'd have to pay for the fuel as well.

 

Planes actually don't always need refuelled if you just take them for short trips. I've done that a few times actually just for dropping off science :P

 

I'll file it under the "consider" tab. Even if I did it, I'd probably make it an option while recovering rather than the default (ie, upon recovery there's a popup that asks if you want to refuel for X funds).

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1 hour ago, magico13 said:

It ultimately boils down to the fact that I don't really even like the "Recover To Storage" option, but it was requested repeatedly...

I get the impression it's a nasty hack, but I think it's a really cool feature. :-)

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3 hours ago, AdamMil said:

I get the impression it's a nasty hack, but I think it's a really cool feature. :-)

Oh, it is. KSP isn't a big fan of converting a vessel back into a craft file. If you grab totally fresh parts it's not too bad, but I wanted to keep everything on the vessel as-is when you recover. That has some weird side effects sometimes. The biggest issue was when trying to recover things with broken symmetry (ie, a missing wing on a plane) as it would totally break the save file. Someone helped me track that down and I think the code actually works fairly well now. At the very least I added more checks so it shouldn't break the game anymore ;)

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Well I have to say that for me that was the first time KCT made me feel like my space program had a "history", which I know is one of the things you've emphasized. The delayed construction hasn't done it for me since, life support aside, time in KSP is really just a number. Nobody gets old and retires or dies, nothing wears out, etc. But when recovering, repairing, and retrofitting planes I did feel like it added some depth to the game, even if it's functionally equivalent to building a new craft.

By the way, I think B.R.O.K.E. or similar mods might complement KCT well if they ever get finished and balanced. Then time would matter. On the other hand it'd be annoying to be forced to do weekly satellite missions to keep the accountants happy when all you want to do is get some Kerbals to Dres... but I think this is a problem that can be solved.

Also by the way, I saw your posts about a simple life support mod on your website. I've also wanted such a thing. The best one I've seen so far is the life support feature in BTSM (Better Than Starting Manned). It also for the most part eliminates the "just slap on a bunch of resource tanks" problem. If you haven't tried it, I recommend it. (The whole mod is interesting, but tough.) BTSM also has some features that in my opinion can be leveraged to improve funding mods like B.R.O.K.E.

Edited by AdamMil
added note about life support/BTSM
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On 1/25/2016 at 3:54 PM, minepagan said:

Ok......now it just keeps kracken-ing. I keep trying to launch from KSC 2, and it, well........says "fatal error."

Alas, it is not a proper 'crash', so I have no output log to provide....but picture!

E1D6108635141493103D81ACEEB615317788E4EF

EDIT: Happens for planes too. It appears to be serious.

This bug.

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I see on that quite it says there wasn't a lot because it wasn't a proper crash.There actually is still a log created, there just isn't a folder created because it's not a game crash. The log is under KSP_Data and still has the usual filename of output_log.txt

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So I just started playing with this mod, and all though it makes me rather uneasy not being able to instantly create ships and launch them willy nilly, I'm enjoying the depth it adds. It adds a sense of scope to the game, and life support actually has meaning now, as does recovery of assets (I did it before using your other excellent mod out of habit, but now I got to even greater lengths). It's clear you've spent a lot of time on it, and I'm really impressed; well done!

One thing I would like to see, off the top of my head, is selectively cleaning out of my inventory, rather than just dumping it whole sale. Also, I noticed it didn't clean everything out (maybe they were damaged  or resized pieces from "recover active craft"?) once, but it was only a couple of items.

Very impressed - keep up the good work!

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5 hours ago, joflashstudios said:

Is there any way to merge recovered craft?

By this, I mean, for example, doing a Falcon-Heavy-style launch, having the side boosters separate and land, having the core booster separate and land, and then recombining the recovered stages into a Falcon Heavy?

I think the best way to do that is to use StageRecovery, which puts the parts into your KCT inventory, so they can be used to quickly reconstruct another ship that uses those parts.

26 minutes ago, Deimos Rast said:

One thing I would like to see, off the top of my head, is selectively cleaning out of my inventory

Honestly I don't see why one would want to clear out the inventory at all. Is there some downside to having more parts in there?

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30 minutes ago, AdamMil said:

Honestly I don't see why one would want to clear out the inventory at all. Is there some downside to having more parts in there?

You get upgrade points for clearing out your inventory. If it's filled with a lot of low-tier items you no longer use...makes sense in my opinion.

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On 2/27/2016 at 2:49 PM, minepagan said:

This bug.

Ah, I'll look into it when I get a chance. It seems Kerbal Konstructs is broken with both KCT and StageRecovery based on some reports. Since the mod hasn't been officially updated I haven't given it much priority.

7 hours ago, eberkain said:

Does this still work with KerbinSide?  I keep getting errors when trying to launch from anywhere other than KSC.   Log is full of null reference exceptions. 

See above. Seems to be some sort of incompatibility, though I'm not sure what would cause it off the top of my head.

21 hours ago, joflashstudios said:

Is there any way to merge recovered craft?

By this, I mean, for example, doing a Falcon-Heavy-style launch, having the side boosters separate and land, having the core booster separate and land, and then recombining the recovered stages into a Falcon Heavy?

If you've recovered them into Storage then scrap one (in this case scrap the side boosters), then "edit" the other one (the main core) and add the scrapped parts back on. You can also "normal recover" the side boosters and get the same effect without having to spend time to recover them. The parts get put in the inventory when you scrap or "normal" recover them which cuts down on the amount they contribute to the build time by quite a bit. If you "edit" the main stage you can then start with some of the build already completed. If the change of adding the side boosters is too much, though, then editing the main stage won't be any better than just scrapping/normal recovering and rebuilding all of them, in which case I would recommend doing that. StageRecovery also puts the parts directly in the inventory.

 

In short:

"Normal" recover side boosters (or KCT recover and scrap), KCT recover main booster, edit main booster to reattach the side tanks. OR

"Normal" recover all three (or let StageRecovery recover them), reattach with Inventory build times (about 1/10 of normal)

16 hours ago, AdamMil said:

I think the best way to do that is to use StageRecovery, which puts the parts into your KCT inventory, so they can be used to quickly reconstruct another ship that uses those parts.

Honestly I don't see why one would want to clear out the inventory at all. Is there some downside to having more parts in there?

There isn't a downside to having them in there other than it being hard to navigate the list. Clearing it out does give you upgrade points as some sort of incentive. If I eventually make it so you don't get funds back upon recovery then clearing out the inventory will let you get back some funds.

16 hours ago, Deimos Rast said:

So I just started playing with this mod, and all though it makes me rather uneasy not being able to instantly create ships and launch them willy nilly, I'm enjoying the depth it adds. It adds a sense of scope to the game, and life support actually has meaning now, as does recovery of assets (I did it before using your other excellent mod out of habit, but now I got to even greater lengths). It's clear you've spent a lot of time on it, and I'm really impressed; well done!

One thing I would like to see, off the top of my head, is selectively cleaning out of my inventory, rather than just dumping it whole sale. Also, I noticed it didn't clean everything out (maybe they were damaged  or resized pieces from "recover active craft"?) once, but it was only a couple of items.

Very impressed - keep up the good work!

While the inventory remains in it's current state of not really meaning much physically, and there not being a downside to having parts in the inventory, it'll remain all or nothing. I do want to make it so once you purchase a part, you don't get any funds back upon recovery but instead only when you sell the part, in which case you'll need to be able to sell individual parts. Things that don't get cleaned out are because those parts either don't exist anymore (ie, you removed the mod they're associated with) or at the very least their costs couldn't be found. I wouldn't worry too much about it, since all that's tracked is the name and the number, so no chance of save corruption or anything like that.

Thanks for the kind comments! I've been working on KCT slowly for a little over two years now (wow, it's been that long already?!). Unfortunately I haven't had a whole lot of time for the past year and a half to work on it due to graduate school, so development has slowed a lot. I'm hoping once I graduate this May I'll get more time to revamp a lot of things.

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1 hour ago, StickyScissors said:

Is there any way to remove/delete launchapds from this mod without having to re-install anything? Ive got a second one but it's causing visual issues when i modify my save's gamemode

You can just remove it from the save file. Set the default one to active and then open the save file and search for KCT_LaunchPad

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Hi there, I do have some suggestion/request.

As much as i love KCT it always sort of bothered me that you can not change the Name of the Ship/Mission aswell as the Mission Flag in kct's launch Window, like we can in the stock launch window, to add this option would, at least in my opinion, add  a lot to the convenience.

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33 minutes ago, Filigan said:

Hi there, I do have some suggestion/request.

As much as i love KCT it always sort of bothered me that you can not change the Name of the Ship/Mission aswell as the Mission Flag in kct's launch Window, like we can in the stock launch window, to add this option would, at least in my opinion, add  a lot to the convenience.

This might be a silly question, but then again maybe not. Do you know that you can rename the vessels from the star-button to the left of the name in the build list (one button click earlier than launch for a ship that is rolled out)?

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