Disable subassemblies until they undock?

[Aphexan]

I'm building a kind of mothership, and this ship carries 6-8 smaller landers and other ships attached to dockports. However all their engines are included in the staging, their RCS goes off and their landing gear deploys along with the ships. Technically I guess this is as it should be, but is there any way to disable them until I undock them and fly off? Apart from putting everything in actiongroups, since this will clog up my list so much that I dont have space for the main ship's commands.

Fingers crossed. :D

[SievertChaser]

Alter staging - any complex ship will have a huge 0th stage that it never uses - and set up manual disablement of RCS via action groups. I think you can rmove the landing gears from the Gear action group.

[Aphexan]

Yeah, I was hoping to be able to remove them from the staging completely to get away from that huge 0stage, I have other engines there that I actually use that are hard to find in that mess. :/ Guess I could move them down a step. And yes their landinggear are moved by the Gear-group, that was also one of the problems that I want to remove. But guess I'll have to put their RCS in an actiongroup, argh.. Ohwell. Was hoping there would be a simple way to make a subassembly just be completely disabled by default until I actually use it, but suspected I wouldn't be so lucky. :)

[jamesc70]

You could set all the engines thrust limiter settings to 0 (zero) in the VAB, which would effectively disable them, although you'd see them as active in the staging list. When you need to use them, right click them and set the limiter back up. But, you'd still have them somewhere in the staging list; I usually put these at the top stage that never actually gets staged.

Why would you be using RCS for the mothership? Unless it's actually moving to dock with the smaller vessels, and not the other way around (which it should be), there is no need for RCS in a large delivery ship. If you are having problems turning a monster sized ship, add more SAS instead of RCS, which additionally is less prone to issues.

Same with gear... why use it on the mothership? Is it supposed to land? Seems like it wouldn't be an issue, because the only time you'd use gear would be when you were in control of an individual lander.

[Aphexan]

Hm good point! I cant test right now so thats why I ask, but if I do this while creating the subassembly, shouldn't that mean it "sticks" and is their default setting?
Yeah guess I cant get around that detail :)

Nah the RCS is for when I manouver it around especially during liftoff and landing when i need to be able to move a bit more agressively, but good point, I should try using reactionwheels more too.

Yes, it lands. Spaceplane. :) I land it when I want to get some serious science on, or put boots on ground so I can race around with akerbal on a rover or so.
Admittedly its not very practical and there's easier sollutions, but now I'm more into just trying to build cool scifi ♥♥♥♥, haha. :)

[Aphexan]

What, even "le scheitte" is a forbidden word now? Dang.

[SievertChaser]

Apparently Steam also has issue with parachute retardation. Good thing they have't yet gotten to Battlestar-frakking-Galactica.

[DaS]

rule of thumb when making complex Sub assemblies. Action groups are your friend, it's either that or spend 30 minutes-an hour redoing your stages anytime dock status changes

[SievertChaser]

The Alt+L combo is also your friend if you never miss that big button.

[Dandyman]

Along with what the others mentioned about action groups, thought I'd point you toward
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/74195-0-90-%28Jan31-15%29-Action-Groups-Extended-250-Action-Groups-in-flight-editing-Now-kOS-Support!

A great mod for all your Action Group assignment needs. Might make it a hair more bearable to deal with.