Asteroid shortage

[Jack Mcslay]

I'm getting a weird problem. I used to get so many asteroids entering Kerbin's sphere of influence that there were  about 10 asteroids at any time near kerbin, now I barely get any encounters, I get plenty of asteroids near Duna's orbit, others in weird orbits with low periapsis and/or high inclinations, but hardly any intercepts with kerbin anymore.

Can sentinels reduce the amount of asteroids detected near Kerbin? Because that seems to be happening since I had put a few sentinel satellites around, one of them around the same orbit as kerbin only a bit ahead.

[Guest]

Do you have Kopernicus installed (or any planet add on mod which uses it?) There’s something in there that stops them spawning.

[Jack Mcslay]

Nope. All I have installed is Kerbal Alarm Clock

[Guest]

Might be as you’ve suggested then. Doesn’t seem out of place for KSP let’s be honest: launch device to track asteroids and it causes asteroids to stop spawning 

[Starman4308]

Do you have any SENTINEL satellites in orbit of Kerbin itself? My guess is that they detect/spawn asteroids for the body they are orbiting.

[swjr-swis]

53 minutes ago, Starman4308 said:

Do you have any SENTINEL satellites in orbit of Kerbin itself? My guess is that they detect/spawn asteroids for the body they are orbiting.

The Sentinel needs to be in a solar orbit, and will monitor for asteroids near the closest planet to its own orbit.

 

On 5/9/2021 at 4:59 PM, Jack Mcslay said:

I get plenty of asteroids near Duna's orbit

Sounds like you made its orbit just a bit too wide around Kerbol then, and too far from Kerbin. Its orbit matches more with Duna than Kerbin, so it shows you Duna asteroids.

On 5/9/2021 at 4:59 PM, Jack Mcslay said:

Can sentinels reduce the amount of asteroids detected near Kerbin?

Not 100% sure about this one, but I think it was programmed to replace the 'stock' spawning algorithm (Sentinels used to be part of a separate, free DLC): as soon as you launch your first Sentinel, it no longer uses the regular spawning, and instead starts spawning according to what the operational Sentinels can 'see'. If none of the launched Sentinels are in a correct orbit to monitor Kerbin, you would indeed see no more asteroids spawn in that vicinity.

[JcoolTheShipbuilder]

And if you spam like 30 sentinels in the same spot by undocking from a lifter, toooons of asteroids will spawn, and could potentially lag the game.. tho I only found three class I interstellar comets, and several class b-c asteroids in extremely far orbits. All next to kerbin soo... hundreds nearby

[swjr-swis]

On 5/9/2021 at 4:59 PM, Jack Mcslay said:

now I barely get any encounters

I just thought of more that might affect this:

Assuming that the nearest Sentinels are actually matching orbit with Kerbin, did you check that:

• they have both EC and signal to Kerbin? (check for EC in the resource panel -top right- and the Comms indicator -top left- in map view)
• they are currently actively 'tracking objects'? (when rightclicking the Sentinel, the option should say 'Stop Object Tracking'. If it says 'Start' instead, you need to click to re/activate it)