Questions on activation groups?

[Falkenherz]

I did not understand yet how to give a activation group a name. I can assign parts a function group number, but I don´t see any name option.

Also an overview of the activation groups in the builder seems to be missing?

How can I assign a part´s specific function to a activation group, not just switching that part on and off. E.g. making a dock undock by pressing an activation group, how can I configure that?

[Blueberry Muffins!]

It's in the pre-launch checks, there's staging, issues, activation groups, I think that's right.

Seems weird to me that it's not in the command disc setup.

Vizzy can program any response you like to a group, I think every part can have its own vizzy program, anyway all the ones I've seen so far, and they can all talk to each other by broadcasting events.

[toinkertoy]

There’s a tab in the builder (same place as staging just bellow it) for activation groups. You can type in the groups name there

For the docking example: I think if you add it to an action group it will undock when clicked. One thing those groups do is just turn on/off parts. Although there is an “undock” option in the flight info window you can also undock two craft by clicking on one of the ports and turning it off (which is basically what the activation group would do) but I’ve not tried it just seems like it should work!

ADD: actually this is best as simply hitting the “undock” button just separates the two craft. They can sometimes redock inadvertently as the magnets pull them back together. by turning the port off it also disables the magnet!

[Falkenherz]

So far I haven´t gotten the behaviour I expected. Switching docking clamp off doesn´t push my craft away, it still seems to stick to the dock. Setting the part # of the clamp to false via vizzy also just turns it off.

In addition to that, RCS are totally misbehaving, following the command of the main ship, even though I deactivated docking clamp plus RCS activation group. However, that switches all groups on all command disc sections on and off. Despite having the control settings all off, so that the behaviour of action groups and commands should not transfer.

Here is a screenshot where RCS is on on the command module, after I switched everything off and just wanted the RCS of the main ship to be on. It just switched back on by itself. This causes all RCS to fire, not only the one of the main ship. Even through a deactivated docking clamp.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2941984033

The best I could achieve so far where it worked was deactivating all secondary command pods plus undocking manually.

I think the developers urgently need to fix this. Right now, complex orbital rendez-vous based operations are simple not possible or a huge russian roulette at best.

[Falkenherz]

Now this is the weirdest behaviour ever: I am in control of the patriot capsule, switch of RCS on my patriot capsule, want to turn with gyros, and it is the transfer stage which activates RCS according to my key input. WTF?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2942153641

[Falkenherz]

Ok after some tries I can confidently say, the weird behaviour or RCS, Gyros, and action groups appears when you launch with docked crafts. Somehow, the game is not able to sort them out after they undock. I circumvented the issue by launching only staged crafts and dock them later in orbit. This made all weird behaviour disappear.

It is still horrible to deal with switches between command units. Sometimes they copy the behaviour of the other ship e.g. going prograde, sometimes RCS and/or gyros of docked ships work against each other. You can switch this off most of the time, and there is a switch which forces the programm to recalculate alignments, but this could really be better. I never had such control issues in KSP1.

[toinkertoy]

I assume you tried the "replicate Activation Groups" setting on the command discs? It can even be changed in flight.

[Falkenherz]

Yep, it did not have any effect in that particular constellation.