The Ladder on KSP 1.9.x (and beyound)
On KSP 1.9.0 a new feature was introduced: "Adjust Kerbal ladder navigation to remove sliding and provide better automatic transition between ladders", as on the change log of the release.
Well, I don't know exactly what they intended to fix but this feature ended up causing headaches for power users - for example, when stacking ladders inverted:
But since I'm having my arse heavily bashed by KSP for some time, I ended up getting some insights about how KSP works (besides a bruised ass). I know the ladders works by colliders, and I learnt some small tricks about how colliders behave.
The trick for this stunt is to align the ladder in a way that the colliders are near enough, not too close neither too far.
Using a Cubic Octogonal Strut
for reference:
The trick is simple. EVA, and then descend a bit
At this point, stop. And start do little, spaced taps on the down key.
Pretty little taps, not too close from each other!
And vóilà! :)
Now you can descend continuously until the next hop:
Remember, nice little spaced taps (we are tricking the FSM):
And we are set again!
Climbing up it's the same:
Again, nice little and spaced taps on the up key:
And we are set again!
Transiting into the capsule is somewhat more tricker, however. Perhaps I should had put some more distance between the ladder and the capsule.
"Keep tapping..." :)
Yep, this is getting weird! :D
But it works nevertheless.
I think that we can create a new (inverted) telescopic ladder that would work fine with the current system by inverting the Y axis of the collider. I don't know a way of doing such using Module Manager (I know how to change whole meshes and textures, nut not the colliders), so this probably will need some code to duplicate the ladder and mangle its collider at startup runtime.
Nice project for a lazy weekend, perhaps.