Why is Bob Kerman dead?

[Ron Devu]

   The story: (TLDR? skip to paragraph 5)

 

   Bob and Jeb set off to the moon on a low-orbit rescue mission, with Jeb piloting a Mk I command pod and Bob riding in the back in a Mk I crew cabin. For the trip home Jeb rode in the crew cabin with Bob, and the new guy piloted for the trip home. Unfortunately the new guy messed up the de orbit burn, wound up re encountering the Mun again and then ran out of fuel.

   A second rescue mission was launched with the same ship design piloted by Valentina with Bill in the back seat. Of course on arrival it was discovered that only one Kerbal could be rescued. Bob drew the long straw and Valentina, Bob and Bill headed home. Because Jeb's stricken ship was halfway home when the rescuers arrived, Valentina arrived in low Kerbal orbit with a ton of spare fuel, so she cleverly burned it all to give everyone a nice low speed re-entry. She jettisoned the the empty tanks and engine at about 60,000 meters. Soon it was apparent that there were some small mountains ahead and Valentina delayed parachute deployment to let the ship coast past them. It almost worked but at 4000m AGL it was clear the far side of the mountain was a cliff and it was directly below. Valentina manually activated full parachute deployment and gave the order to abandon ship. She then EVA'd, jumped and pulled the rip cord. Bill transferred forward to the command pod and did the same. Last man out was Bob. Upon Eva, while still clinging to the ship, it was discovered that he had no option labelled "deploy parachute". Maybe scientists do not get issued parachutes? Bob got back in the capsule and decided to take his chances, riding the ship in.

    Meanwhile our two parachutists had realized that due to a very limited choice of landing spots they would be unable to land simultaneously. Seeing this Valentina decided to execute some hard spiral turns to lose altitude rapidly, giving her time to clear the landing area for Bill. Unfortunately she forgot to set her altimeter properly, and she thought she was 2500m AGL when she was 2500m ASL, and augured in at about 120 m/sec. Bill landed safely about two minutes later, finding no trace of Valentina's body. So he called in the recovery crew. Valentina was posted as missing.

  Now Kerbals must have a pretty amazing recovery organization because they returned to the scene in time to see Bob and the parachuting spacecraft touch down at a graceful 4.2 m/sec. On an eighty degree slope. The spacecraft was destroyed and poor Bob went with it.

    The odd part is, Bob was listed as KIA, not missing like Valentina. The persistent file listed him as "assigned" even though his craft was destroyed and the pieces were recovered. I went into the persistent file and editted "assigned" to "available" but even after a complete game shutdown and reload he is still listed as KIA in the astronaut centre lists.

   How do I get Bob back?

[Superfluous J]

10 minutes ago, Ron Devu said:

How do I get Bob back?

Open your persistent file twice. Or if your editor doesn't like this, copy it and open both copies.

In one search for Valentina Kerman. In the other, Bob Kerman.

Change Bob to look like Val in every way you suspect to be relevant.

Load up that edited SFS and see if it worked.

If it doesn't work I'm not sure what would.

[Ron Devu]

Will do!

[Ron Devu]

A strange resolution... on re opening the persistent file I found Bob is now listed as Dead. I editted that then closed and reopened the game. That didn't work, still dead. Then I thought maybe the game does some tidy up when closing, looking into the astronaut centre and seeing Bob listed as KIA and then saving the new persistent in accord with that.

 

So I exitted  to the game selection menu screen, THEN editted the persist file. That worked. Bob lives again. Thanks for the help.:)

BTW when it changed the persist file to read "Dead" the game also gave Bob a new parachute. So it seems that scientists do get parachutes after all. Probably what happened was Bob attempted to deploy his chute while still clinging to the ship. This is very bad because I think the chute deployed then disappeared. The moral of the story is, jump first, give it second to clear the ship, THEN deploy your chute. You only have 1 chance to get this right.

[bewing]

Um. Depending on your settings, when crew die they are supposed to be set either MIA or KIA -- one or the other, not a mixture. So something funny happened. Again, depending on settings, MIA crew will respawn all by themselves after a set time.

There's supposed to be a minimum AGL deployment altitude for personal parachutes.  It doesn't work all that great next to cliffs, but I don't understand why Val's parachute failed to open at all.

Pilots get personal parachutes at one star. All other professions get their parachutes after further training when they hit 3 stars.

The deal with ladders and personal parachutes was supposed to have been fixed back in version 1.6.0 or something. The parachute is not supposed to deploy until you release the ladder.

So, you are reporting many strange events that I don't understand. Did you create a savegame at any point? Exactly which version are you running? Is it pure stock with no mods? If you created a savegame in stock, can I have a copy of it?

 

[Ron Devu]

2 hours ago, bewing said:

Um. Depending on your settings, when crew die they are supposed to be set either MIA or KIA -- one or the other, not a mixture. So something funny happened. Again, depending on settings, MIA crew will respawn all by themselves after a set time.

There's supposed to be a minimum AGL deployment altitude for personal parachutes.  It doesn't work all that great next to cliffs, but I don't understand why Val's parachute failed to open at all.

Pilots get personal parachutes at one star. All other professions get their parachutes after further training when they hit 3 stars.

The deal with ladders and personal parachutes was supposed to have been fixed back in version 1.6.0 or something. The parachute is not supposed to deploy until you release the ladder.

So, you are reporting many strange events that I don't understand. Did you create a savegame at any point? Exactly which version are you running? Is it pure stock with no mods? If you created a savegame in stock, can I have a copy of it?

 

This is actually the second time I've had a KIA in a game set up to MIA then resurrect. I have never had a failure to respawn  an MIA, although the clock on the MIA timer seems to only run down while there are active missions in space.

 

Val's parachute did open. She augured in at high speed because she was executing spirals and dives to lose altitude as rapidly as possible. She basically misjudged her altitude.

 

Your explanation of stars and parachutes fits perfectly with the facts. I lost Bob (scientist) and Bill (engineer) due to lack of parachutes. Both were passengers trying to collect their first star. Bill died on the third rescue mission which I didn't mention. I did not discover his lack of a parachute until he was in free fall.

 

The version I am running is up to date, stock KSP without the two expansions. 1.7.2.2556, I believe.

So that leaves only one or two cases worth checking. If a non-pilot is in the pilot's seat, and is in sole possession of the craft, a qualified pilot having left the craft and died, will the non pilot KIA instead of MIA if the craft crashes?

If a pilot leaves a single-seat craft, his parachute opens and he then hits the ground at high speed, will he erroneously show as KIA instead of MIA? This one is what I recall happened to Jeb and might be easier to check.

p.s. I had assumed that every Kerbal could parachute. The only way I would have discovered this was false, aside from losing crew members, would be to go look up a problem I did not know existed!

[Ron Devu]

p.p.s. I just checked Bob, Bill and Jeb.. On EVA only Jeb has a visible parachute and Jeb does have the option to deploy it. None of these guys has a star, but Jeb had one before he died.