Tail connector A exploded due to overheating.

[skepticon]

All of my planes.

[Taki117]

Sounds like a bad design, post a pic and maybe the community can help.

[skepticon]

Sounds like a bad design, post a pic and maybe the community can help.

Tail connector is always the first piece to overheat, despite the fact that it is stack-occluded by the mk1 cockpit and fuel tanks.

[1greywind]

Turn on "show heat on right-click menu" and temp overlay in debug menu. You need to check, how many heat comes from engines too. Heat is produced not only by air friction, but by working engines too (we all saw LV-N exploding due to overheating).

[skepticon]

If it was engine related, the other parts between the engines and the tail cone would explode first.

[1greywind]

Better check it with debug tools. SQUAD have implemented all types of heat transfer - radiative, convective and conductive. This means that heat can flow from parts to parts. In this case wings are hot from air friction. Engines are hot from work. All this heat flow into tail section and it may overheat.

[Brotoro]

Huh... Really doesn't LOOK like a part that should be overheating.

[Redshift OTF]

Yes, I am getting this problem with the same part orientated in the same way, (used it for aesthetics). Blows up first every time. Considering that most designs that use this part will have it pointing backwards this seems silly.

[Brotoro]

Maybe the temperature tolerance for that part is set incorrectly. I'm not where I can check its config file.

[purpletarget]

If it was engine related, the other parts between the engines and the tail cone would explode first.

Not necessarily...heat flux is a strange beast. It's not just the heat flux in, but also the thermal mass, etc. Smaller parts can end up overheating faster than more massive parts nearby. If the tail is getting heat from multiple sources (Engines source, plus friction heat conducted from forward fuselage, then it may fail before other parts around it.

[Tobyz28]

http://i.imgur.com/5HIKHo5h.png

Tail connector is always the first piece to overheat, despite the fact that it is stack-occluded by the mk1 cockpit and fuel tanks.

I would recommend going to debug mode to see what's going on as stated above. The tail connector im guessing has a very low mass, and it's receiving heat from two sources. It also probably has a low drag value, meaning it's going to be shedding less heat into the air (Just guessing, haven't tested). This results in it potentially overheating quicker than the parts around it. It may also have a lower thermal tolerance vs the wings around it.

It's entirely possible the part may need some balance tweaking too, so do check what's going on in Debug to be sure first before believing our speculations.

[Redshift OTF]

Looking at the debug menu temps the tail connector heats up far faster than anything on the craft, wherever it is placed.

[skepticon]

Better check it with debug tools. SQUAD have implemented all types of heat transfer - radiative, convective and conductive. This means that heat can flow from parts to parts. In this case wings are hot from air friction. Engines are hot from work. All this heat flow into tail section and it may overheat.

I was thinking this could be possible - if all the parts are heating up at the same rate then the tail cone at the center might be exploding just a little bit before everything else would. I might make a quick test model to see.

Looking at the debug menu temps the tail connector heats up far faster than anything on the craft, wherever it is placed.

So possibly/probably bugged?

[Redshift OTF]

So possibly/probably bugged?

Possibly.

[skepticon]

Okay, I'm seeing the same odd behavior with this design, which only has the tail connected to a single fuselage tank -

[Tobyz28]

Okay, I'm seeing the same odd behavior with this design, which only has the tail connected to a single fuselage tank -

http://i.imgur.com/dh6iC3Th.png

This looks like it may be an unanticipated bug/"balancing oversight" with the new changes (it's probably behaving as designed). I'd throw these screenshots into a Bug report Seems like it may need some balancing work by Squad!

[SelectHalfling0]

Looks like there is something overlooked (maybe none of the testers used the tail fin!)

[razgriz86er]

the tail connector's flux is in the tens of thousands where the other parts are at most 4000...

tail connectors and nsc adapter nosecone suffer way too much.

the nsc adapter is so much worse i had to replace it with a fairing.

i've placed gigantic heat shields on top and below of the tail connector. covered it in solar panels. had it touching nothing but the pod. hooked up way too many struts. attached cubic octagonals over all surfaces.. none of it shields or hurts how it heats up

im in normal difficulty if that makes a difference

[Scarecrow88]

Same problem on my SSTO. I did manage to get it to orbit without overheating the tail piece eventually, but it needed quite a change to the flight profile to do so.

[regex]

Maybe you can see the two I have on this plane here behind the lower intakes. I saw very little heating of either tail connector during ascent and reentry. They're radially attached (and the tank and intake stack-attached to it), maybe that has something to do with it, considering the examples I see here are predominantly stack attached.

http://i.imgur.com/bV766Qh.png

[arq]

I've had the same experience of tail connectors exploding, regardless of engine location (and on re-entry when the engines are off). Mk2-to-1.25m adapters have the same nasty habit, especially when mounted backwards. There may be a specific issue with backward-mounted parts.

[MiniMatt]

Same issue on first iteration of my tourist bus:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Heat map after the tails went pop suggests it was seeing conductive heat from the bits in front of it rather than from the engine.

[message2god]

After trying a few different parts, i found out some parts simply heats up and explodes faster than usual despite the stats are the same.

The MK2 cockpit will always blow up first from reaching 900+m/s in atmosphere but after changing the head to Inline MK2 cockpit and the MK2 to 1.25m Adapter long can go up to 1500m/s without exploding at all.

The Advance nosecone Type-A explodes at 900m/s while Aerodynamic nosecone does not.

Many Winglet explodes but i found Delta Delux winglet can go further.

I say many of the part stats are ether wrong somewhere or they have hidden and inconsistent stats which we do not know.

Or a bug.

[razgriz86er]

i wish it were the conductive heat from the bits in front because there would be something i could actually do about it. remember those bits took 2000 heat before the bits in front even started to take 600. and by the time they exploded your craft is going much faster with consequently more acceleration since you lost .4 tons

i get it, parts don't take uniform damage and that spreads out the Micheal Bay effects but at the same time the tail connectors are taking a factor of 6 times more flux. and that is constant of any parts thrown on top of or around a tail connector.

now if you actually get this part into space you're golden since aerobrakes will keep the fluxs from going out of control *on reentry*.

so for now i pull up from 800ms at 20degrees to 30 degrees pitch and lose nearly 400ms dv for a part that serves me no purpose but to look awesome. where as normally id like to take 1,200ms at 20degrees before pulling up.