Landers Hopping When Accessed- What To Do?

[Dave Kerman]

For some reason, when I go to a lander from the tracking station, it does not start in it's original position, but starts a little in the air.  Therefor, it falls back to the surface.  On Kerbin, if I don't have landing legs, it will sometimes break off a part.  On Minmus, the lander will sometimes fall to the side a little.  i currently have a lander on Minmus which is standing on one leg for this reason and I am afraid to access it for fear it tips over completely!

 

Any suggestions on settings I could change or mods i could get to fix this?

[bewing]

Generally this is a problem in slightly older versions of KSP. The problem of "putting vessels to ground" is surprisingly hard, mathematically, when the terrain can be arbitrarily rugged. But the most recent versions of KSP tend to be much better about it.

So, that's my first guess -- you are using a slightly older version of the game, and upgrading to the current version will mostly fix your problem.

 

[VoidSquid]

Yes, like @bewingsaid, a well known KSP problem, which was even worse with earlier versions of KSP.

I'm using this mod, which helps a lot to mitigate this issue:

 

[Superfluous J]

Also note, it's entirely possible that your Minmus lander can right itself just with its reaction wheels. Craft on Minmus are almost comically light.

[ajburges]

14 hours ago, bewing said:

Generally this is a problem in slightly older versions of KSP. The problem of "putting vessels to ground" is surprisingly hard, mathematically, when the terrain can be arbitrarily rugged. But the most recent versions of KSP tend to be much better about it.

So, that's my first guess -- you are using a slightly older version of the game, and upgrading to the current version will mostly fix your problem.

 

Hah! No it's still a problem. My Munar lander springs up near the equator and falls 20 m at the poles when loaded.

If your craft are springing up on load, I find increasing spring strength can help. My hypothesis is resting position is saved but not spring compression, loading violently compresses the springs. Increasing spring strength raises the resting state recurring the impulse on load.

If your craft drops on load, reducing spring strength can help the landing.

Regardless, be extremely weary of overdamping. Setting it over 1 can introduce new problems.

[dire]

KAS/KIS and MKS both have solutions for attaching craft to the surface. KAS has, if I recall, a concrete pad you nail to the ground, and then you run a pipe from that to your craft to lock it in place. Or MKS Kolonization has a part called the Landing Stabilizer which is a landing leg with a toggle to attach craft to the ground, which more or less turns it into a piece of terrain. There are multiple parts in MKS that do this, but I always try to include a couple landing stabilizer legs so I don't forget to bring that ability along, and they also make pretty decent, wide landing legs even without that ability.

I generally use wings instead of spring-based landing gear, simply because I've had more than one craft clip through the ground and explode when I load them, which makes it very hard to do mining bases. They hardly ever do that if they're tethered, though.

Edited September 2, 2019 by dire