My point was against the orbital launchpads, not orbital construction.
Spacecraft built entirely in orbit and only intended to work in a vacuum are a staple of science fiction. I don't understand why you're so against the idea.
You could apply that same argument to things like reactionless drives and FTL travel.
And the thing is...you can build things in orbit. You just don't want to. And even something like quantum struts is a way less silly way of doing things than a launch pad in orbit.
There is a difference between "dock things to things in space and pretend it was meant to be that way", and emulating an actual orbital shipyard. Even with KAS, there are still many things you plainly can't do with per-module assembly. Extraplanetary Launchpads is just filling in for the abilities you would have IRL, but can't have right now in KSP.
"Pretend it was meant to be this way"? If you're half-competent, you'll have planned it that way and won't need to pretend.
And notice how there is no such thing as an "actual orbital shipyard" in reality, nor plans for one? Notice how KSP is more representative of modern space mission technology than sci-fi (ignoring of course the lack of life support requirements)?
For one, we have canadarms, tethers, personal parachutes, interstage fairings, and laws of aerodynamics in real life, and yet we don't have them in KSP - so KSP not having something does not mean it should not have that something. Secondly... why yes, there is no real orbital shipyard in reality. But then we spend more money on military development per year than on the whole of the space exploration effort across all of its existence, if I recall correctly. In KSP you have much more lift capacity, and much more freedom to do whatever you wish, than all the space agencies of the real world combined twice over. If we wanted to, if we felt we had a
need to? We'd have an orbital shipyard a decade ago. An Industrial Space Facility project failed to obtain funding back in the 80s, and it could sure have come in handy for servicing space shuttles.
Thing is, it is, as you said, far easier to hit the same target hanging on a geosync orbit with multiple consecutive launches, than it is launching various different parts to have them combine like Voltron and hopefully not break. Therefore, some form of space assembly platform is very much desirable, assuming there are actually things it has to build - which there currently are none. Anything we want to build is currently either small enough to lift in one go, or is meant to lift itself up - until that hypothetical manned Mars mission we aren't even going to be sending ships of any mentionable size anywhere in the Solar System. So we, in the real world, plainly do not need a space dock - not yet.
In KSP, however, it is a very different story, and if you would project our reality onto the realities of KSP, you would see that an orbital shipyard is an entirely reasonable thing to have.
Also, do make an effort not to insult my design and planning abilities. I am quite capable of assembling interplanetary motherships in orbit, and I do not use the EL mod because I consider its visual aspects downright atrocious, but even I get tired of maneuvering bits of spacecraft into position. When a ship has to be 30% docking ports by mass fraction in order to look like its designer intended it to look, I think it's time to wave vanilla KSP goodbye.
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