increase unload distance? tried lazor systems, sorta-kinda-didn't work...

[Nartainpower]

i'm trying to find mods to increase unload distance, now with 0.9 out and trying a bit of hard mode, i'm trying to do as many of the missions as possible to get some funds, and i've gotten to a point where all the "collect surface temperature/atmospheric data" missions are on mountains, and i cant risk a kerbal landing there.

so i came up with the brilliant solution of carpet-dropping small probes on parachutes from my planes... but they despawn 2.5km away before they could land.

i googled around and found 2 mods that did this, one was... TTneverunload i think, but that one never got updated to curse, and the other is lazor systems, which has the option to increase "view" distance to 999km, i was hoping this would work, and it sorta did... but it increased the unload distance to 5km only... which is better, maybe now i can do loops around the probe until it lands, but still not ideal.

anyone know how to do this? maybe a config file somewhere dictates this?

[Zael]

This is EXACTLY what I'm trying to do right now. Been googling and searching, and searching and googling to no avail. I've got a mission to collect atmospheric pressure data from the surface of the water in the middle of the ocean. I've also tried lazor and found exactly the same thing you have, that probes unload before they can land. Lazor systems only ups the unload distance to about 5km in spite of the 99.9km the 'view distance' setting says it should be. I'm so incredibly frustrated right now. It would also seem that you've exhausted every resource that I've already googled for, and found exactly what I have, that nothing like this has existed since spaceport went kaput. If anyone out there has any answers PLEASE come forward with them. This is driving me insane.

[Nartainpower]

If it's any consolation I have managed to drop small parachuted probes and fly around in a circle till it lands, but it's very annoying and I wish I could drop them off and fly back to base, my only successful mission as just north of the base, i'm afraid if the next one is out at sea I won't have enough fuel.

This is with the 5km unload range btw, the 2.5 was so small I couldn't make the turns... I hope somebody will figure something out

[Zael]

I made it work once in a test with the 5km range, but it's rough, and to be honest, not something that we should have to deal with. Probes and other 'live' objects shouldn't unload ever. Like, if Kerbals were on-board, they shouldn't unload.

[SubzeroSpartan7]

I think (but I am not 100% sure) that you can change the load distance in the settings config for KSP. I remember Scott Manley talking about it during his re-usable space program series.

Edit: Nope, not in there.

Edited January 3, 2015 by SubzeroSpartan7

[Hobbes Novakoff]

You can use the BDArmory mod to increase the load range. If it's open-source, then someone with more programming experience than me could probably go into the code and find these bit that did that, then copy-paste it into a standalone mod.

[Nartainpower]

That would be awesome, especially if they made it so only certain ship parts wouldn't unload... Maybe pods and drones... Maybe things with parachutes?

[vikmonster]

You can use the BDArmory mod to increase the load range. If it's open-source, then someone with more programming experience than me could probably go into the code and find these bit that did that, then copy-paste it into a standalone mod.

ok, i went in to bdarmoury and foud the following code in settings.cfg

FireKey = mouse 0

INSTAKILL = False

BULLET_HITS = True

PHYSICS_RANGE = 5000

EJECT_SHELLS = True

INFINITE_AMMO = False

DRAW_DEBUG_LINES = False

DRAW_AIMERS = True

AIM_ASSIST = True

REMOTE_SHOOTING = False

DMG_MULTIPLIER = 2000

FLARE_CHANCE_FACTOR = 25

BOMB_CLEARANCE_CHECK = True

change physics range

[Yski]

following code in settings.cfg

There's also an in game menu for that, Ctrl + B if I recall correctly.

[*Aqua*]

I had a look at the relevant part of code of BDArmory but I'm not completely sure what it does.

Does the game really handle landed and not-landed crafts differently? And why are the relevant properties of inactive crafts named distanceThreshold-something and not loadDistance-something? It's not consitent.

public void ApplyPhysRange() 
{ 
	if(PHYSICS_RANGE < 2500 && PHYSICS_RANGE > 0) PHYSICS_RANGE = 0; 


	if(PHYSICS_RANGE > 0) 
	{ 
		Vessel.unloadDistance = PHYSICS_RANGE-250; 
		Vessel.loadDistance = PHYSICS_RANGE; 


		foreach(Vessel v in FlightGlobals.Vessels) 
		{ 
			v.distancePackThreshold = PHYSICS_RANGE*1.5f; 
			v.distanceUnpackThreshold = PHYSICS_RANGE*0.97f; 
			v.distanceLandedPackThreshold = Mathf.Clamp(PHYSICS_RANGE * 0.95f, 0, 11400); 
			v.distanceLandedUnpackThreshold = Mathf.Clamp(PHYSICS_RANGE*0.9f, 0, 10800); 
		} 

		FloatingOrigin.fetch.threshold = (PHYSICS_RANGE + 3500) * (PHYSICS_RANGE + 3500); 


	} 
	else 
	{ 
		Vessel.unloadDistance = 2250; 
		Vessel.loadDistance = 2500; 


		foreach(Vessel v in FlightGlobals.Vessels) 
		{ 
			v.distancePackThreshold = 5000; 
			v.distanceUnpackThreshold = 200; 
			v.distanceLandedPackThreshold = 350; 
			v.distanceLandedUnpackThreshold = 200; 
		} 

		FloatingOrigin.fetch.threshold = 6000 * 6000; 

	} 
}

It calculates and sets loading and unloading distance and makes sure that the range isn't shorter than 2.5 km. And it changes the behavior of Krakensbane.

It sets the range by modifying properties of all crafts (units are in meters):

• active craft
  
  • unloadDistance
    
    self explanatory

    
    

  • loadDistance
    
    self explanatory

    
    

  [*]all inactive crafts

  • distancePackThreshold
    
    loadDistance when not landed

    
    

  • distanceUnpackThreshold
    
    unloadDistance when not landed

    
    

  • distanceLandedPackThreshold
    
    loadDistance when landed

    
    

  • distanceLandedUnpackThreshold
    
    unloadDistance when landed

    
    

  [*]Krakensbane

  • FloatingOrigin.threshold
    
    Krakensbane!
    
    
    If the distance between your craft and the origin of the scene is greater than that
    
    
    the universe will be recentered on your ship.
    
    
    Afaik
    or the resolution of single precision floating point numbers will apply phantom forces to your ship.
    
    
    (Yes, it's the universe which moves, not your ship!
    
    )

    
    

[magico13]

Why not use FMRS to do this? You'd just drop whatever you were going to drop, then fly your plane back and recover it. Then go to each dropped thing and manually land them. Once the saves have all rejoined the master save you can then do your science and complete your contracts.

Then you don't have to worry about suddenly having tons of things loaded all at the same time since the limit stays the same.

Unpacking is roughly the same thing as loading, not unloading. Landed craft are unloaded sooner to save on physics calculations (since they're not going to be moving).