RCS Thruster Malfunctioning

[phantom000]

This might be the wrong forum since i do not know if its a bug or if it is a problem with my design.

For some reason, when i go to dock with another ship i put the craft into docking mode but when i press the controls, A,S,D or W, it fires 4 thrusters instead of 2. So instead of moving left, I move left and up, or right and down. It is very frustrating because it makes it almost impossible to line up the docking ports.

I use the RV-105 Thruster Block.

[diomedea]

Pls show your ship, it may have RCS thrusters misplaced. Firing 4 instead of 2 is normal when thrusters are in a X cross configuration (pic below should make this clear), but thrust of those 4 sums to give the same as 2 in a right cross. However, you may also have center of thrust from RCS misaligned with the vessel CoM, so each time you want to translate, you also thrust to make a rotation (and then, having both SAS and RCS on, thrusters are fired to cancel the unwanted rotation, so you're actually seeing that retroaction). If that's the case, you may find RCSBA useful to check thrusters position while building vessels.

(Also, this fits in GamePlay Questions, rather than Technical Support, at least until confirmed you are having a bug. Moved for now)

[phantom000]

Thank you for showing me the RCSBA mod, that really, REALLY helped a lot. Yeah, my RCS thusters were way off the mark, they were trying to compensate but could not quite manage it.

Thanks!

[FullMetalMachinist]

2 hours ago, phantom000 said:

Thank you for showing me the RCSBA mod, that really, REALLY helped a lot. Yeah, my RCS thusters were way off the mark, they were trying to compensate but could not quite manage it.

Thanks!

A trick that you can use to help with unbalanced RCS is to use fine controls. Press caps lock to toggle it (the little pitch/yaw/roll indicator in the bottom left corner will change color). It causes the RCS thrusters to fire less powerfully, which can make it easier for your reaction wheels to counter the thrusters being off balance.