Decoupling glitch - floating parts

[reinderien]

This happens reliably - three times in a row, now, which is frustrating. I have a space station with a small docking port, and when I carefully put a new station mast onto the dock, it seems to "take" correctly. However, when I then decouple the tug that brought the mast, it is taking the mast's deployable radiator, and in two of three cases the deployable solar panel as well. These parts then float in front of the tug as if attached where they were when the mast was being carried.

I am running stock v1.0.5.1028 on a Windows 10 64-bit machine, though task manager says KSP is 32-bit. I installed via Steam.

All of the crafts in question (the station, tug and mast) are from the most recent version.

Edited December 2, 2015 by reinderien
Add debug details

[sal_vager]

Hi reinderien, can you please upload the save file to a file site such as dropbox and post the link here, we can't tell what is causing your issue without reproducing it.

[reinderien]

9 hours ago, sal_vager said:

Hi reinderien, can you please upload the save file to a file site such as dropbox and post the link here, we can't tell what is causing your issue without reproducing it.

Thank you for responding so quickly.

Here is the craft that is causing the problem:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/50jl5daxphxto6i/Base%20Zero%20Mast.craft?dl=0

[Rfmeijboom]

Sounds to me like you attached the radiators to the tug and used the offset gizmo to move them to the mast.

If that is the case, then the parts are still attached to the tug although they appear to be attached to the mast.

[sal_vager]

I wasn't able to reproduce this with the craft file, maybe it's something to do with the station itself?  If you have a save file prior to docking please upload it reinderien.

The parts are definitely on the antenna and not offset from the tug.

 

 

[reinderien]

14 hours ago, Rfmeijboom said:

Sounds to me like you attached the radiators to the tug and used the offset gizmo to move them to the mast.

If that is the case, then the parts are still attached to the tug although they appear to be attached to the mast.

I am not sure what the offset gizmo is. I attached the parts to the structural elements normally.

12 hours ago, sal_vager said:

I wasn't able to reproduce this with the craft file, maybe it's something to do with the station itself?  If you have a save file prior to docking please upload it reinderien.

The parts are definitely on the antenna and not offset from the tug.

Thank you for attempting to reproduce. I will acquire screenshots and before-and-after save files.

[reinderien]

On 03/12/2015, 06:33:21, sal_vager said:

If you have a save file prior to docking please upload it reinderien.

Refer to the save files and screenshot in here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ac1l81sviidjpu7/AACryyOD1eD4HQSgvqB5ngEEa?dl=0

Edited December 4, 2015 by reinderien
Replace home link

[sal_vager]

You will need to post the share link reinderien, I cannot access your home folder

[reinderien]

3 hours ago, sal_vager said:

You will need to post the share link reinderien, I cannot access your home folder

Sorry, here it is.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ac1l81sviidjpu7/AACryyOD1eD4HQSgvqB5ngEEa?dl=0

[Majorjim!]

On Wed Dec 2 16:42:24, reinderien said:

This happens reliably - three times in a row, now, which is frustrating. I have a space station with a small docking port, and when I carefully put a new station mast onto the dock, it seems to "take" correctly. However, when I then decouple the tug that brought the mast, it is taking the mast's deployable radiator, and in two of three cases the deployable solar panel as well. These parts then float in front of the tug as if attached where they were when the mast was being carried.

I am running stock v1.0.5.1028 on a Windows 10 64-bit machine, though task manager says KSP is 32-bit. I installed via Steam.

All of the crafts in question (the station, tug and mast) are from the most recent version.

This happens sometimes. The craft file is corrupt I'm afraid. Delete it and start again. Always make two saves of every craft as this usually occurs in the VAB/SPH

[sal_vager]

Actually no, don't delete the craft and start again.  Will edit to update but must get this line out there.

Edit:

Okay, there's a really simple workaround for this, just quicksave then quickload, done, the craft will now undock with no issue.

Turns out your station was the necessary factor to reproduce this as I can only reproduce it when docking to your station and undocking without save/loading beforehand.

When your tug+tower docks to your station KSP must be messing up the paths to some of the parts, so when you undock you take the solar panel and radiator with you.

When you save KSP sorts itself out, so when you reload the parts are parented correctly and they stay where they should.

This happens in memory, by the time it's written to the persistent.sfs or the quicksave.sfs the problem is gone, so all the parts have the right parents in the docked save.

So there's no checking of the save to see what went wrong, as by that time it's already fixed, there's also no errors written to the log so there's no help there.

Also, if I dock your tug+tower to anything else the issue doesn't occur.

On checking over your ship in more detail I notice that your small docking port is the root of the vessel, that may be a factor, if you had used the probe as the root it may have been different.

I'll keep hold of the saves, and it may be an idea to post this to the KSP bug tracker, as the only way to debug this properly would be for a dev to watch what happens when your craft dock in the Unity editor.

It's an odd issue, and hopefully it'll be rare as it doesn't occur with other docking targets as my earlier pic showed, and thankfully it's easy to avoid.

So no need to scrap the ship just yet, you could try using the re-root tool in the editor (press 4, click vessel, click new vessel root) and see if future dockings with this tug on your station have the same issue, but as the docking port is the root I suspect you'll be rebuilding this for the next delivery anyway.

[reinderien]

2 hours ago, sal_vager said:

it may be an idea to post this to the KSP bug tracker, as the only way to debug this properly would be for a dev to watch what happens when your craft dock in the Unity editor.

Great idea - I have cross-posted to http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/6010