Space debris disappearing

[Ncog Nito]

Hello all.  When I first started my career if I didn't ejected my stages or other disposable parts properly that they would stay in orbit as debris.  Now, I know that you can terminate those parts in the tracking station, but, in order to have more realism I chose to leave those parts floating about.  However, I have noticed recently that when I eject parts from my spacecraft that should stay in orbit they have been just disappearing after a bit.  Have I accidently change some kind of parameter in my game or is this some kind of bug?  If this is something I accidently changed can someone tell me how to change it back?  It would actually make for some nice self made missions to go retrieve those parts, now that I know how to do that.

[FancyMouse]

They can get deleted for various reasons:

1. In (almost) subortibal trajectory - if periapsis is below some altitude (different for each body, different from 0/atmosphere top), it will be deleted. This applies to all vessels, not only just debris

2. There is a global setting of max debris. I don't know what the number currently means, but it used to be that, if the total number of ships+debris exceed the number, then any new debris will be automatically deleted.

[bewing]

On your Main Settings screen, under the "General" tab, 2nd column, is the setting "max persistent debris". Default is 600 afaik.

The more stuff you have in orbit, the slower your game will run, and the bigger your savegame files will be. It's not a huge effect, but it's noticeable. So there is this setting. I would be a bit surprised if you hit the 600 limit -- that's a lot of debris. But when you get close to it, the game will start automatically terminating the oldest debris first.

 

Edited May 13, 2017 by bewing

[Ncog Nito]

1 hour ago, FancyMouse said:

They can get deleted for various reasons:

1. In (almost) subortibal trajectory - if periapsis is below some altitude (different for each body, different from 0/atmosphere top), it will be deleted. This applies to all vessels, not only just debris

2. There is a global setting of max debris. I don't know what the number currently means, but it used to be that, if the total number of ships+debris exceed the number, then any new debris will be automatically deleted.

 

1 hour ago, bewing said:

On your Main Settings screen, under the "General" tab, 2nd column, is the setting "max persistent debris". Default is 600 afaik.

The more stuff you have in orbit, the slower your game will run, and the bigger your savegame files will be. It's not a huge effect, but it's noticeable. So there is this setting. I would be a bit surprised if you hit the 600 limit -- that's a lot of debris. But when you get close to it, the game will start automatically terminating the oldest debris first.

 

Ok, @FancyMouse and @bewing, would tracking 648 asteroids have anything to do with it?

[bewing]

I can't be absolutely certain at the moment, but it seems to me like that might have something to do with it.

 

[Ncog Nito]

Thanks guys, and especially you @bewing, you have really helped me out a bunch with all my trivial questions, I really appreciate it.  Makes the game more fun when you have people like you guys explaining things that I can't figure out on my own.  Kudos!