Attaching parachutes To Vessels With Docking Ports?

That worked. Thanks

@OldCoach Not dense at all mate, indeed the only reason I figured out the instructions posted in reply to my question, was because I'd done this in KSP but forgot about it!

You have it right, you attach one - only one - strut to the attachment point normally used by a parachute. Resize this so it's nice and thin and shortened so it can be offset right into the CP without sticking out the bottom.

Now attach a docking port on the very top of the strut, and a parachute angled at 90 degrees directly beneath it on the side of the strut. The parachute can be a little fiddly, but it'll go on easily enough. Now hit symmetry x2 and that's the "complicated" stuff done!

All you do now id select the offset tool, click on the strut (it can be easy to hit a parachute by mistake here) and lower the whole assembly into the CP until the docking port is resting on top of it, just as it would if you had stick it on the thing without fiddling about with parachute.

Hope this helps; I did take some screenshots of me putting all this together, but I'm too dense to suss out how to attach them to this message. :(

I must seem dense to you, but I'm not understanding your instructions. Are you attaching the struts to the docking port and then attaching the parachutes to it and then pushing that assembly into the CP? I can't make the struts attach anywhere on the CP except on the middle of the top of the CP.

@OldCoach For me, small structural piece means taking a strut, resizing it so it's small enough to be able to be offset into the CP completely, attaching two chutes symmetrically and a docking port on top, then burying the whole thing into the CP until only the docking port is visible on top of the CP.

The chutes are completely hidden inside the CP, but so are real chutes on real spacecraft; this works just fine in the real world, and it does in SR2 too!

What do you mean by small structural piece?

What do you mean by a small fuse piece?

Great advise everyone, I've now got a docking vehicle which can also successfully reenter and land.

Now if only I could figure out how to dock in this game...

I’m trying to solve the same question...

Do what you did, only put a small structural piece between the capsule and the docking port, and attach the chute(s) to that. That way, you won't stage it away.

Look at my vessel, Eridanus MPCV: https://www.simplerockets.com/c/DU83gP/AFFA-Eridanus-Crew-Module

It's not my newest tuned version. It's waiting for bug shooting. However you can give a look at docking shield with radial parachute setup.

A radial-specific option for a parachute like in KSP would be nice

Like I said make a suggestion.