“StageRecovery RGU” is my enhancement of Magico13’s “Stage Recovery” add-on for Kerbal Space Program. I have added RGU, recovery guidance unit mainly for my own convenience.
I have made a video for demonstration:
The standard StageRecovery calculates whether a stage can be recovered and for how much. It takes weight and parachutes into account and if the resulting landing speed is deemed safe it recovers funds, kerbals and science from the vessel. It kicks in whenever a vessel hits Kerbin while the player is not in control.
So what is Stage Recovery RGU good for? Well, it let’s you recover stages that do not work well or do not work at all in standard Stage Recovery. For example designs using add-on parts, be it a weird engine or transporter beam. Another example are exotic launch/recovery procedures, such as boostback burn to get closer to KSC or spaceplanes in general.
I have added a new part called RGU and a new resource called RecoveryValue. When StageRecovery RGU attempts to recover a vessel it now looks for RGU and if there is non-zero Recovery Value entered, it automatically succeeds in recovery and uses the provided value rather than calculating it as usual. The RecoveryValue is supposed to be truthfully entered by the player upon trialing the vessel manually a few times and it is assumed the player is confident that the recovery can be repeated with similar results.
Releases: https://github.com/PaletzTheWise/StageRecoveryRGU/releases
Repository: https://github.com/PaletzTheWise/StageRecoveryRGU
Original StageRecovery repository: https://github.com/magico13/StageRecovery
Original StageRecovery thread: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/78226-14-stagerecovery-recover-funds-from-dropped-stages-v180-march-11-2018/