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Should I be able to recover safely landed parts?


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In career mode, lvl 2 tracking. I've been putting parachutes on everything to try and recover some of the costs since I am early in, and some of the contracts don't make me much money, once I build a craft to do them, when you count all the parts I loose. (30,000 to test a rocket booster at 16,000 feet. Need two for balance, plus I need to get them up that high. Craft costs me 27,00. Though I did combine with another contract)

I did the contract and watched as all the parts landed (mostly) safely. The main pod gets back home, and there are stages sitting all around the space center (went straight up). But I can physically see most of everything I went up with. But 'debris' isn't showing on the map, and even though it's all sitting *right on the center grounds* I can only recover whatever is still attached to the pod.

Should I be able to recover the other stuff, or is that really not doable in this game?

Again, thanks for all your help.

Edited by SignalCorps
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You should be able to recover anything landed on Kerbin, from either the tracking station or the space center. Try switching to the debris from an active vessel and them using the recover option at the top of the screen.

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Make sure you can see the debris - you need to select it in the space tracking centre up near the top left. It looks like a small cigar, with a count of how many items are tracked. However of you launched higher than 20 ish km or flew further than 20km, the debris that is staged is removed by the physics engine and can't be recovered without using a mod to simulate it

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It seems that the game has a tendency to auto-delete debris on KSC grounds. If you can go to the Tracking Station, and then back to your landed pod-ship, and still see the debris sitting around, then you should be able to recover that debris. Use the icons at the upper-left of the Tracking Station screen to un-filter the debris category.

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It seems that the game has a tendency to auto-delete debris on KSC grounds.

This I can confirm.

Unless it has a pod on it, it doesn't really exist.

For example, in a recent challenge, i had a ship that deliberately hard-landed, breaking off intact spent "Flea" srb with attached Goo canister. I thought to lose the mass, and still recover the goo?

Nope.

Go to KSC, or tracking, and the non-pod bits are *poof*.

They did exist while kept under eye, but went as soona s point of view left the immediate area.

The **exact** same vehicle, in the same circumstance but landed on grasslands not KSC grounds, left the expected parts as persistent debris, accessible from the tracking station et al.

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This I can confirm.

Unless it has a pod on it, it doesn't really exist.

For example, in a recent challenge, i had a ship that deliberately hard-landed, breaking off intact spent "Flea" srb with attached Goo canister. I thought to lose the mass, and still recover the goo?

Nope.

Go to KSC, or tracking, and the non-pod bits are *poof*.

They did exist while kept under eye, but went as soona s point of view left the immediate area.

The **exact** same vehicle, in the same circumstance but landed on grasslands not KSC grounds, left the expected parts as persistent debris, accessible from the tracking station et al.

Debris that is really close to a vehicle sometimes seems to disappear regardless of location. Possibly only when you recover the vehicle. I've seen it happen a lot with plane crashes.

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Taking a step back: Are you in career "hard" mode? My experience has been that contracts are (mostly) financially worth it, and generally don't require recovering debris for cash. I never bother with trying to recover debris, and do financially OK.

Of course, it's caveat emptor with the contracts-- some of them are sucker deals, keep an eye on what they pay and don't accept if they're asking for something really hard and don't pay much.

So the solution here may not be a matter of "how to recover debris," but rather being more choosy about which contracts to take, and being careful about ship design to keep costs down. For example, use SRBs as much as possible-- they're dirt cheap, it doesn't matter much if you don't recover them.

One thing that took me a while to catch on to: You know how the contract advertises an "advance" and a "completion" amount for funds? When I first started playing career, I just assumed that the advance was taken out of the total reward (i.e. if a contract has a $20K advance and a $100K reward, I just assumed that I'd get $20K up front and then $80K when I finish.) It turns out that my assumption was wrong: they add together. You get the advance right up front, free and clear, and then the reward when the contract completes. I find that the advance is nearly always enough to cover the cost of the ship I need to do the contract, with funds to spare.

Maybe I'm the only person to make that dumb mistake :wink:, just mentioning it in case anyone else has been similarly confused.

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If you want to recover debris then you'll need a stage recovery mod, otherwise debris in the atmosphere gets deleted without chance for recovery even if it would've (or even did) land safely.

Generally solid boosters are worth less than parachutes, but once you start using rockets like the mainsail then it starts to be worth it.

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If you want to recover debris then you'll need a stage recovery mod, otherwise debris in the atmosphere gets deleted without chance for recovery even if it would've (or even did) land safely.

Generally solid boosters are worth less than parachutes, but once you start using rockets like the mainsail then it starts to be worth it.

This.

Get the mod, its the best thing ever, and should really be stock IMO.

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