Recoveries involving special tactics #48
Description
Hello magico,
I like StageRecovery but all my launch vehicles happen to use a "special tactic" that SR cannot handle. I use a design where first stage burns vertically to reach 73Km and the second stage burns horizontally to insert payload on LKO. There is only slight issue with first stage - if the bottom engine is twin-boar then SR does not account for its ridiculous durability :) But I do have trouble with the second stage. It is supposed to land after one orbit. If I let SR do the work, it penalizes me a lot for distance from KSC. I think this is a generic problem with any "special tactics", for example spaceplanes would face similar difficulties.
I came up with a solution, I call it "recovery guidance unit". The idea is that, the player is to perform a few recoveries manually to iron out issues and figure out parameters of the launch vehicle. Then the player sets recovery value in the RGU (custom part) to tell SR how much the stage is supposed to recover for. If SR finds RGU with non-zero value when it attempts recovery, it skips calculating whether vessel recovers successfully and for how much and instead uses the value from the part.
I have implemented the above in my branch. I have done some limited testing and I'm about to start using it in my campaign save. I haven't created a pull request yet, since it needs a bit more testing.
In the meantime, please take a look and consider whether you want to integrate this functionality. My code is heavily dependent on StageRecovery so stand-alone release is not an option for me, would be too much work.
https://github.com/PaletzTheWise/StageRecovery/tree/recovery_guidance_unit
Regards,
Paletz.