Next Big Development: Fix the Fairings

[Joeybafoey]

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been having real issues with the stock fairings lately.

For one thing, they don't stage with action groups. If I have a pod (or something I want to save in case of emergency) under a fairing, and my action groups look like this Abort> LES activate, Decoupler decouples, fairing jettisons. What will happen in case of emergency is this:

1. I hit backspace
2. Everything but the fairing jettison occurs
3. My crew pod gets smashed against the inside of the fairing and they die.

Which brings up my next point (kinda). After that, everything inside my fairing has been obliterated; my rocket is falling back down onto the space center; it lands on the grass; and... Everything but the fairing breaks and explodes. Fairings are needlessly strong. Don't you think that my launch escape system (homemade, it packs 300 Kn of thrust) should be able to crack that fairing open and carry my crew to safety? We like explosions don't we? Don't we want to see the fairing explode and crack into little pieces?

This last thing is much less urgent than the first two. It'd be really cool if we had multiple textures for fairings. Stock, solid white, grey, some kind of ability to upload your own (maybe?) be able to add a flag and such. While still maintaining the ability to customize the shapes of your fairings, I'd also like to see Procedural Fairings become stock.

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

 @Joeybafoey idk about ur problem. it doesn't really occur to me

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

That is a really peculiar problem. Perhaps try redoing the action group?

Or reinstalling KSP?

I have never seen that happen before

Edited August 31, 2016 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[Corona688]

Firing an engine inside the fairing should definitely auto-deploy it.  It'd pressurize and explode.  Which is kind of how I'd expect it to work when deployed intentionally, too-- blown open by a little SRB gas generator.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Corona688

[Shadowmage]

I too have experience the 'fairing won't deploy through action groups' problem, and it was also with an LAS setup. 

Basically if the fairings were set to deploy in the same action group as the decoupling and activation of motors... all the actions would work fine except the fairings would not deploy.  So the decoupling happens, the motors activate... but the craft is stuck inside the fairing as it refused to deploy.

Setting the fairings to a separate action group that is activated before the abort action group 'solved' the problem... however now the abort action group is much less useful (as you now need to remember to deploy fairings before pressing the abort button).

Perhaps someone would like to put in a stock bug report on the problem?  I'll be glad to add in the details that I have encountered / the information that I've found on the problem.

I believe the precise problem is likely 'Fairings will not deploy if command source is decoupled in same action group', or similar.  May be a generic problem that effects parts that are decoupled in the same action group as they are activated.  More testing would be needed.

[Alshain]

47 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

I believe the precise problem is likely 'Fairings will not deploy if command source is decoupled in same action group', or similar.  May be a generic problem that effects parts that are decoupled in the same action group as they are activated.  More testing would be needed.

Just theorizing, that sounds like an order of operations issue.  If the command module is decoupled first then it runs it's checks to see if there is a command module before allowing the action groups... something of that nature.

If this is indeed the issue, the ideal fix would be to have radial decoupling occur a split second before stack decoupling when in the same action group.  (Unless there is a consequence I'm not thinking of)

Edited August 31, 2016 by Alshain