Legacy parts destiny

NOTE. The compatibility patch has been deprecated in KAS v1.6. In order to use the approach, described below, you need to downgrade to KAS v1.5.

Overview

It's been announced multiple times during the path of half a year that the legacy parts (KAS 0.6+) will eventually be removed from the mod. Their support has been terminated in year 2018, and now it's time to keep the promise: drop them from the mod! Starting from KAS v1.2 the legacy parts will no longer be shipped in the release archive. If you have a game that uses them, and you want keep playing it, you must carefully read thru this Wiki! Remember, that absolutely no support is offered on the legacy parts.

It's VERY IMPORTANT that you've read the whole article before trying to do anything! If you do something wrong and your game gets corrupted, nobody will help.

Note, that when KSP sees a vessel with unknown parts, it simply drops the whole vessel! With all the science and (omg!) kerbals onboard. New KAS has an ability to prevent this to happen, but it cannot be as smart as you! KAS needs your help to do the things right.

Best way to migrate

If you want the work to be done well, do it yourself! Load your game(s) before upgrading to v1.2. Go thru all of your vessels and manually disconnect all legacy links. By doing this you ensure there will be no kraken awakening on load with the upgraded version.

If you want to have an absolute control on the process, install KIS and detach and dispose (read about it below) all the legacy parts. Don't worry about the parts in KIS containers, they will be automatically cleaned up once you've upgraded. There will be some errors logged though.

Automated upgrade

New KAS has a special upgrade pipeline that ensures you can load a game with the legacy parts. However, it cannot keep your legacy parts (obviously). What it does, is replacing the legacy parts with the new parts that fit best. What it doesn't, is keeping the linking state. That's why it's important to break all links manually! And, to be honest, not all legacy parts have counterparts in the new KAS. So some parts will be lost forever. It's space, it doesn't cooperate. I bet you knew it when started your carrier.

The following parts will be replaced with a new KAS part. The replacement is not guaranteed to match by mass, cost, or use. It's only a kind of "refund" from "KAS Laboratories, Inc." for the lost equipment.

• CC-R2 Connector Port => JS-1 Joint Socket. It's backed by our own funds. The best offer on market! If the old port was docked to another vessel, then we keep the docking. However, we don't provide any pipes anymore.
• CS-R2 Portable Strut => CH-1 Cable Hook. This hook alone cannot make a strut, you also need to buy PCB-1 as counterpart (sold separately).
• Winch IW-50 => HW-80 Winch. Sponsored by Kerbal Motion LLC, a limited time offer.
• Winch RW-50 => W-50 Winch. Brought to you by Experimental Engineering Group. No one knows why.
• Ground pylon => GP-20 Pylon. Jebediah Kerman's Junkyard and Spacecraft Parts Co found a way to convert old pylons into new ones. There was a problem with the conversion of imperial units into metric ones, so the new parts became a bit smaller.
• HA-01 Anchor => JS-1 Joint Socket. This is not a replacement because it cannot perform the same function, but you get it for free. Why refuse? Official notice: if you file a lawsuit, you lose the free offer.
• HG-02 Grappling Hook => JS-1 Joint Socket. Again, no replacement. Submit a claim for loss of use to your insurance company (our lawyers will take care of this).
• HP-01 Harpoon => JS-1 Joint Socket. Still no replacement, but we had no choice. This thing was banned in many countries as a deadly weapon, so we had to stop its production. Our legal department is working on this issue.
• HE-03 Electro-Magnet => JS-1 Joint Socket. This is not Energy Star compliant, and we are an environmentally friendly company. Contact your local energy provider for compatible versions.

The process

Now, the most important thing: how to make it happen. There are rules. Follow them, and you have a chance to not end up with a broken game.

Save the progress

Make distinguished saves for any moment of your play! Quicksave is not the save. The persistent save (the state at which you leave the game) is not a save at all. Never ever think about it as such!!! Before doing upgrade, ensure you have no progress pending in quicksave or persistent save. If you do, you'll lose it. This is not an exaggeration.

Upgrade to the new version

Exit the game if it's running. Upload the new version of KAS and install it according to the instructions. Or simply update via CKAN.

First start

Load the game and ignore any errors that will popup. There may be none or a lot, it depends on your current persistent game state. Ignore them all, and keep in mind that at this moment your persistent game state is ruined (that's why you need to make "Save the progress" action).

As an example, the game may warn you that the current state cannot be loaded correctly. Of course it cannot! Say "yes" to it. Since you have already saved your progress, you risk nothing.

If you have not received any errors when loading the game, do not think that all is well. Most likely, everything is worse than you think. Just proceed to the next step.

Load the game you need to fix

Load a saved game of your choice, and you may get a dialog like this:

This is normal, not time to panic. The game warns you that the saved state has unknown parts. And you expect it, don't you? So, simply answer "OK".

Get the game patched

Here begins the unique KAS upgrade pipeline! It will replace the old parts with new ones. The exact choice may not be what you would choose, but you have no voice, sorry. The best thing you can do to make this process go smoothly is to detach all the outdated parts, as suggested above.

Save the patched game

Regardless to how the process went (there may be some or many errors thrown), save! But do it into a new file. And this file must not be quicksave or persistant.

Load the patched game

You may ask yourself "why should I load a game that is already fixed?". A short answer: if you don't, it won't work. The long answer is out of the scope of this document, so just load the saved game. It is important that you do it. Now game is safe to play.

It didn't work! What do I do???

The only thing you can do is read this guide again. If this does not help, then you are doomed. There is no support for the legacy part migration.

The happy path

If you did everything right, then this setup:

Turns into this one with no issues:

Note, that the upper image had the cPort parts docked. After the upgrade, the parts will stay docked, but there will be no pipe between them. The only way to resolve this awkward situation, is using KIS to decouple the parts. And using new parts to couple the vessels back.

Using KIS to cleanup the game

KIS v1.18 has debugging ability that allows spawning new parts in flight or disposing the unneeded ones. It's not what you would normally use in a career game, but you may use this feature to cleanup your saved game after the KAS migration. E.g. you may go thru the vessels that used to be connected via CC-R2 and reconnect them using new pair of parts: JS-1 + TJ-1. Or you can use the dispose feature to drop the old parts before starting the upgrade.

To enable debugging in KIS, find settings.cfg file in its folder and change the values:

KISConfig
{
	Global
	{
		itemDebug = true
	}
}

Reload the game to have the changed values to take effect. Now, when you open kerbal's inventory, you'll find an extra button "Spawn item". It brings up an extra dialog that allows spawn a new part in the inventory for free. Also, if you right click on any part in the inventory, there will be extra menu option "Dispose". It destroys the item. Using this two powerful features you can re-configure any setup without spending your carrier game budget.

Plans on supporting absent parts

Anchor and harpoon parts are not supported by the new KAS. This was done intentionally, because the old design did not fit the new paradigm. It is planned to redesign these parts and implement them in accordance with the new requirements. However, no specific milestones have been established. If you have ideas or want to speed up development, you can express it on the general forum or on Patreon.

I want my legacy parts back!

If you want to get the legacy parts back, you still can do it. At your full responsibility! Before reading further, please, note the following:

1. The legacy parts are completely not maintained.
2. There were reports that some of the legacy parts are already broken in KSP v1.7. Due to #1 nobody is going to fix anything.
3. Last time the legacy parts were compiled was year 2018. Sooner or later all these parts will become completely non-functional. It's not about "if", it's about "when".

So, to bring back the legacy parts:

1. Download the latest release that had them. E.g. KAS v1.1.
2. Find folder GameData/KAS/LEGACY in the release archive and extract it.
3. Ensure that the extracted files are located in your game at exactly same location: GameData/KAS/LEGACY.
4. Find the KAS compatibility patch and disable it. It's located at GameData/KAS/Patches/COMP-LegacyParts.cfg. Either drop this file or rename it to non-cfg extension.
5. Keep in mind that every KAS update will rollback these changes.