Can landing legs or robot parts be used to help stabilize an asteroid?

[PTNLemay]

EDIT, clarifying what I found to be the best answers:

As Cavscout74 pointed out, same vessel interaction does allow legs and other robotics to properly "touch" an asteroid.  But from my experimentation this is pretty buggy and the legs can sometimes explode.  I've found that AHHans's recommendation is much better.  Use multiple grabby claws on the ends of pistons.  It can still bug out, but there are fewer spontaneous explosions.

 

 

Here is the original post detailing the question:

I read past discussions on this, and the consensus seemed to be "No, you can't."  

But I wanted to test it anyway so I built a little test-bed.  The two platforms are connected to one another using a single grabber.  Two hinges are then used to bring the large landing legs into contact with the target platform.  And... it seems to be working?  Is this only for aesthetics?  If I push it to far (to the limit of the leg's ability to compress) it does start to clip into the large tank.

So, as things currently stand, is there still no way to provide extra stabilization to a ship/station docked to an asteroid?

 

Edited December 23, 2019 by PTNLemay

[Cavscout74]

Do you have same-vessel interactions turned on?  I haven't tried since they added that, but maybe that could improved stability? 

 

 

Or it might provoke massive, game destroying kraken attacks.  I give it a 50/50 chance either way 

[Laie]

8 hours ago, PTNLemay said:

the consensus seemed to be "No, you can't."  

I'd like to add: "you don't have to". Recently I put great effort into securing the vessel to the asteroid by means of KAS struts:

The results were not convincing. Autostrutting just a single part of the tug to the asteroid worked much better, was little effort, and required no special contraptions.

[AHHans]

My big asteroid tug uses five Klaws at the end of large pistons to attach to asteroids. That allows me to adjust the length of the pistons to orient my craft to point exactly at the center of mass of the asteroid, and then lock the pistons for a solid connection. Sometimes one of the Klaws touches the asteroid at too steep an angle to get hold, but the even with only four Klaws connected the connection is usually good enough to get a solid grip and push around even the heaviest asteroids.

[Grrr... Google doesn't like me removing their cookie from my browser each session, so they decided to liquid me off. So right now it's too much hassle to log into my (an) imgur account to show you a picture.]

Edit: I finally bothered to try imgur again, so here is a picture of my craft (but also check out @PTNLemay's solution):

Edited January 2, 2020 by AHHans
Added image

[PTNLemay]

@AHHans

So, those five claws are all part of one craft?  Do they all connect simultaneously, or one at a time?

I remember Danny videos showing that when multiple claws tried to grab onto the same craft it belonged to it could cause the game to flip out.

[AHHans]

12 hours ago, PTNLemay said:

So, those five claws are all part of one craft?  Do they all connect simultaneously, or one at a time?

Yes, five claws on one craft: one in the center and the other four in a square around that. I first connect with the piston of the center one at full extension. Then retract the piston to pull the craft closer, typically this makes one of the others connect. Then I connect (extend the piston) the claw opposite to that so I can balance out the craft (point to the center of mass) in that axis. The I follow up with the remaining two claws. Finally I lock all the five pistons. If one of the claws doesn't connect but just moves through the asteroid, then that's fine (up to now). The one time only three claws connected was when I was grappling a small-ish asteroid (class-C I believe, quite a bit lighter than the rest of the craft), so the three points of contact were fine.

No flipping around or other weirdness observed.

Edited December 15, 2019 by AHHans

[PTNLemay]

Thanks again Hans!  I'm not sure if it's how I will end up doing it, but you were right.  It looks like it's technically possible for a vessel to grab itself multiple times without the game freaking out.  I just tested it now.

I wanted to use them perhaps in a star configuration around a ring station, sadly it looks like the pistons haven't quite fixed the bugs involved in an object docking with itself (I can never get the gap to go away completely).

 

 

[AHHans]

17 hours ago, PTNLemay said:

I just tested it now.

Just wanted to say: your arrangement of the five pistons and claws is essentially the same as in my heavy asteroid tug. For me that turned out to be quite useful when pushing around 2000t asteroids with 200t (when fueled) craft.

About the gap in your station: I don't see any robotic parts in there, are some of the modded parts robotic?

[PTNLemay]

@ the gap in the ring 
I placed those crew-tubes on the end of a piston and part-slid the tube over the piston to hide it.  My idea was to test out the construction of a ring station using pistons to help "close the loop" (which is the part that has always bugged out on me in the past).  It's not a big deal, because I will be able to build the whole ring in one piece and send it up (with four piston-claw structures along the inside all pointing inwards towards the prospective asteroid), it's just really messy to do that without cheating and using hacked gravity.  I've always wanted to try building a ring station piece by piece.   But I can never close the loop.  I thought pistons would help with this, but the buggy behavior at the final connection is still there.

Edited December 16, 2019 by PTNLemay

[PTNLemay]

Little follow-up, the multi-claw technique worked best.  I did try using same-vessel interaction, but something about the robotic hinge, landing leg, and the massive asteroid caused things to explode sometimes.  Also you need to allow same-vessel-interaction for all parts in the loop, the claw at the center, the tank holding it, the hinge, the leg, and the asteroid.  If you forget one of them in that loop it doesn't appear to work.

The multi-claws were less of a hassle, and only bugged out if I started the first claw without giving the other ones enough clearance.  If you smoosh all of them right up against the surface and then try to arm and connect them one at a time, some tended to bug out.  So my recommendation is use the pistons to get some good distance between the asteroid and the ship.  Then nudge it forward as needed.

I also found a neat trick, if you turn off the motor of a piston, it will release any tension it had (in case it was pulling or pushing too hard).  You can mark that ideal elongation, reactivate the motor, and set it at the ideal elevation.  This helps prevent any weird tension in having so many pistons all pulling at the same part.