Probe loses contact with KSC shortly after launch... what gives?

[RoboRay]

You asked "why would anyone want more than one satellite?" and I answered.

If you don't want questions answered, don't ask.

Edited October 20, 2016 by RoboRay

[Guest]

Okay, this is weird.

I tried to reproduce the behaviour and... I can't. Same probe, same savegame, same settings, same trajectory as close as I can make it -- or even for spits and giggles a much lower one than I used yesterday -- and contact isn't lost, not even briefly. Only thing I've done in the interim is restart the game, and no, it hasn't auto-updated.

I'll chalk that down to quality Kerbal engineering then. Sorry about the bother everyone. 

(I also made a successful remote-controlled visit to Duna. Doing that I noticed that the connection lines pass well through the surface of the planet before being cut off. I dunno if that's just to make life easier for us or if it models some actual radio behaviour -- waves bouncing back from the ionosphere maybe? -- but in any case it worked. Pictures related.)

[regex]

56 minutes ago, RoboRay said:

You asked "why would anyone want more than one satellite?"

Within the context of the discussion and the topic of this thread, which is about losing connection during launch.

Do try to keep up.

39 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

I'll chalk that down to quality Kerbal engineering then. Sorry about the bother everyone.

I don't know... Glad it cleared up for you but apparently this is an actual thing for some people. vOv Launch sats should prevent it though.

[_stilgar_]

3 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I'd like a confirmation on the requirement of a relay type antenna.

 

I can confirm that you need a relay antenna on controlling craft. Controlled can have either relay or direct. 

It's because of the way comm network is implemented. The game has a graph of relay network. Only relay antennas and KSC is on the graph (because you can't use direct antennas to relay, so there is no point for them to be on the graph - you'd have to implement direct nodes as "leaf only", and it would complicate things and most likely lead to reduced performance). Direct antennas look for target to connect to on that graph - but, since there are no direct antennas on the graph, you can't have direct-direct connection. 

 

 

[RoboRay]

44 minutes ago, regex said:

Within the context of the discussion and the topic of this thread, which is about losing connection during launch.

Do try to keep up.

Ah, you're a "one tree instead of the forest" kind of person.  Noted!

(There sure are some strange pictures in this thread for it to be about nothing but Kerbin launches, however.)

Edited October 20, 2016 by RoboRay

[moronwrocket]

One other thing - a stayputnik core cannot act as a relay point, it has to be a "better" core.