Does the Kraken actually exist in KSP?

[jimmymcgoochie]

I've only been playing KSC for a few months, but I keep coming across references to "The Kraken" and how it would destroy ships/kill off Kerbals. Is it actually a thing? Was it something that used to exist but got removed at some stage? (I've only played v1.7.3 and v1.8 so maybe it was in older versions?) Or is it just some kind of Kerbal backstory type thing? 

...Am I breaking some unwritten rule along the lines of 'never mention the Kraken' by posting this? 

[fulgur]

The first Krakens were bugs which literally ate ships, for example when they crossed SoI boundaries (see Eve Order Zero).

We have successfully harnessed the powers of the Krakens in many different ways; in Ladder drives, K-Drives and (pre-1.0) there were reportedly things called 'infinigliders', aka electric planes, but Kraken powered.

The Krakens still show up occasionally, especially on new releases, but the Kraken Tamers are in control and banish them to whence they came.

If you want to harness your own Kraken, you will need Same Vessel Interaction, an engineer to replace broken things, and a lot of luck.

[steuben]

I wouldn't call it unwritten... but by mentioning the kraken you increase your likelihood of encountering it. Though it does hide more than it used to... for both good and ill.

The kraken is the unexplained force that in versions past would destroy ships, and propel their parts to multiples of the speed of light. It could be casued by clipping parts together, crossing the SOI borders, using parts in different ways, the phase of the Mun, a fail of a 1d20 against your wisdom, etc. In 'verse it got called the Kraken, a k word, and kerbals like k words. Out 'verse it was bugs,  floating point errors, the phase of the moon, a fail of a 1d20 against your wisdom, etc.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

45 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

"The Kraken" and how it would destroy ships/kill off Kerbals. Is it actually a thing?

Definitely.

I once launched a very large, ambitious manned expedition to Eeloo. But I summoned a kraken through abuse of a shielded docking port. When the ship reached Eeloo and aimed to land (or just the lander did) the kaken fully manifested and ate the main ship and everyone but the kerbal in the lander. Things got messy along the way too, I think. So I had a hint it was coming.

Once upon a time, there was a galaxy mod (adds lots of stars and planets) whose name shall not be named, but it possessed a black hole and what I call the "black hole kraken." The black hole's gravity was so strong that it broke physics and spawned a silent, vicious kraken that filled Mun's SOI. Anything that went to Mun would vanish when the player switched scenes.

[Kerbart]

Mount some solar panels on a hinge. Extend the hinge, extend the panels, enjoy the kraken party

[Pipcard]

It was a figure of speech, similar to the Great Galactic Ghoul.

[Gargamel]

IIRC, there was an actual Kraken on Eeloo or Dres way back in the day.  ^{[citation needed]}

[The Aziz]

4 hours ago, Gargamel said:

IIRC, there was an actual Kraken on Eeloo or Dres way back in the day.  ^{[citation needed]}

Bop, but close enough

And yes it exists. Sometimes even in physical form, as seen below

[klgraham1013]

Praise the Kraken.  Fear the Kraken. 

[Kerbart]

3 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

Praise the Kraken.  Fear the Kraken. 

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!

[Kernel Kraken]

Check the surface of Bop with some satellites and try to find some anomalies. There's some fun stuff. 

There's also some Kraken- based accounts floating around here somewhere. Not sure where though.

I haven't encountered any wild Krakens, oddly. The only ones i've seen have been domestic- I created them on purpose for content or lolz. Spaghetti Krakens are really easy to find and tame.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Kernel Kraken

[jimmymcgoochie]

So that time when I switched to a ship and it immediately glitched itself from about 10km over Kerbin's surface to outside the solar system at about half a million m/s in 2 seconds flat was 'a Kraken'? I see...

[Incarnation of Chaos]

I think the primary reason some people don't know the kraken's wrath is that it appears most often when pushing the limits of KSP or while using mods. If you rarely use ships with more than a few dozen parts that will make encountering it far less likely.

But it does exist; mine really likes the taste of nuclear engines unfortunately and will eat them during interplanetary transfers even though multiple large radiators are activated. Also had a 2.5 M docking port spontaneously collide with the attached mothership and obliterate it for no reason while orbiting Ike. 

Nothing reloading the previous save couldn't fix, or in the worst cases editing the save directly.

But the kraken is the only reason why i save compulsively when playing.

[Sitting Duck]

I've discovered the almighty Kraken in several ways, so far:

1) Mount ore drills on your ship, close enough to the surface so that when they are deployed and running, the ship/craft will bounce around annoyingly. Now Warp to any level. Bam! The Kraken is called and sucks the ship down to its doom, as is right and proper. You have, after all, danced your ship upon the surface of a world in Kraken-exciting rhythms. May only apply to mesas (above "sea" level) on Minmus—I have yet to try that anywhere else.

2) Add too many struts to an already complex ship. Launch said ship on Kerbin, then wait for the struts to vibrate at glorious resonant frequencies, which ultimately become a siren song of the Kraken. Your ship is then sacrificed for the good of kerbal-kind.

Edit: No mods were used.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Sitting Duck

[guesswho2778]

@jimmymcgoochie

here is an example of the "kraken"

and another one

EDIT:

damn now im re watching dannys vids

heres another one

 

Edited November 5, 2019 by guesswho2778

[Space Nerd]

On 11/4/2019 at 2:08 AM, JadeOfMaar said:

Once upon a time, there was a galaxy mod (adds lots of stars and planets) whose name shall not be named, but it possessed a black hole and what I call the "black hole kraken." The black hole's gravity was so strong that it broke physics and spawned a silent, vicious kraken that filled Mun's SOI. Anything that went to Mun would vanish when the player switched scenes.

Ahh, my favorite planet pack which unfortunately died before I bought ksp.

[guesswho2778]

i mean since you've already bought it.... there are some "cough" certain ways.... you could get an old version of ksp...

[Vanamonde]

Nobody remembers the actual kraken? In the early game, ships moving at very high speeds might be distorted or even have parts destroyed by tiny math errors magnified by the speed of travel. It was fixed years ago. (In version 0.17, according to the wiki.) Properly speaking, that's the only true kraken, but players have expanded the nickname to include all sorts of other bugs. Later, an easter egg in the form of a kraken-like creature was placed on one of the moons. I won't spoil the details, though it's easy enough to find if you want to poke around on the internet a bit. 

[guesswho2778]

i was going to say "the Kraken takes a physical form here"

but i feel like @Vanamonde just ruined it with facts

ksp's "Kraken" is just like space engineers "lord clang" any bugs or unintended shenanigans are blamed on these "godlike creatures"

Edited November 6, 2019 by guesswho2778

[Space Nerd]

11 hours ago, guesswho2778 said:

i mean since you've already bought it.... there are some "cough" certain ways.... you could get an old version of ksp...

I didn't have a copy of the mod(maybe I downloaded it sometime before I bought ksp so it's somewhere in my computer), I can get ksp 1.3 from steam through.

[Snark]

I'll just leave this here:

 

 

[guesswho2778]

On 11/7/2019 at 8:54 PM, Space Nerd said:

I can get ksp 1.3 from steam through

HOW PLEASE TELL ME HOW! steam wont let me disable auto updates and its broken my mod list yet again just as i got it working again

[AHHans]

30 minutes ago, guesswho2778 said:

HOW PLEASE TELL ME HOW! steam wont let me disable auto updates and its broken my mod list yet again just as i got it working again

Righ click on KSP in the "library" -> Properties -> the tab "Betas" -> "Select the beta you would like to opt into:" -> select the version you want.

[Pds314]

The original Kraken is well understood and doesn't just inhabit KSP but also other games such as Minecraft. It is known by many names but has different effects on different games. (In Minecraft, it created the Farlands and herobr- oh wait no he didn't exist.)

Specifically, it has to do with floating point accuracy in physics computations. The way KSP stores physics information about a vessel is as 32-bit floating point numbers. Basically a binary version of scientific notation.

One obvious problem we can see here is that when the exponent gets really large (i.e. the physical quantity being measured is a very big number), the precision degrades a lot and becomes more quantized. So if you're, say, 1000 km from whatever origin the position is based on, part positions can only be accurate to within about a meter.

Well, if you have part positions with an error of a meter, they are gonna clip into each other and generate crazy phantom forces. Unfortunately, KSP is a game where the whole point is to explore space. This means that whatever fixed origin you could possibly choose would likely not just be 1000 km from the places you want to go but tens of millions of kilometers.

The solution is that the game's physics NEVER deal in distances of thousands of kilometers. The origin of all physics calculations is the ship in question.

However, the floating point Kraken manifested itself in other ways. It is not just position that is stored in floating point but velocity. At surprisingly reachable speeds, this could manifest as phantom force, torque, or other effects. The solution was to cap the velocity relative to the sphere or influence in question at 750 m/s, then operate in a different frame of reference above that speed. This is called the Krakensbane. It was supposed to kill the Kraken. Or at least contain it. Instead, it allowed us to unleash it.

 

Landing leg physics was and is strange. First, it let us slowly ascend, hovering and gliding in a bizarre, mass-independent way (Kraken drives with more deadweight payload mass were actually typically better accelerating). These devices really came into their own above 750 m/s though. However, crossing this speed barrier with the landing legs extended would typically cause the device to explode, destroying the craft and often stopping whatever was leftdown to 1 m/s or so. At low speeds, the device could act almost like a wing or rotor. It could generate phantom lift and drag and could be flown around like a helicopter, but could not exceed about 150 m/s, even outside an atmosphere, without a high chance of self-destruction and excessive phantom drag.

The device's behavior changed above 750 m/s. The craft would shake and accelerate at roughly 10-40 G in the direction the device was pointed until a landing gear broke and it spun out of control or until it was turned off.

 

There are still functional devices but they now work by altitude instead of speed and enter a low speed mode gracefully when within roughly 150-300 meters of the ground. (Also the altitude where adjustible landing gear mod begins to stutter severely).

 

As time went on, more floating point issues were fixed, including those in the transition between spheres of influence. And ultimately the original Kraken is pretty rare to nonexistent these days in KSP with the exception of common purely graphical bug that looks like macroscopic Z-fighting and mesh glitches, but new Krakens have been named based on other bugs that either destroy craft, cause phantom forces, or allow for reactionless drives.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Pds314

[Pds314]

The Deep Space Kraken did this. No. Not a different crazy bug. The Far Lands was caused by the Kraken. It is the same bug in a different environment. The same thing can both eat your ship and turn your Minecraft terrain to swiss cheese.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Pds314