[SOLVED] Ports do not undock

[Ariggeldiggel]

Hey community, 

 

I've a problem with some docking ports. At the moment I'm building a mining device in the orbit of kerbit. To make the connections strong I've started replacing the single docking ports with a quadruple system. After detaching, modifying and reattaching I realized: Damnit. It's rotation angle is wrong. So I wanted to undock the 4-docking-part-connection, fix the rotation and re-dock it again. But after undocking the first three ports, I can't undock the fourth one. What am I doing wrong?

 

On the picture below the left side represents the lower 4 ports, the right side represents the upper 4 ports of the connection.

 

https://imgur.com/a/zzUiMFt

 

And yes. I'm still building "go big or go home". 

Relate (To this quote): 

Greetings!

Edited March 20, 2022 by Ariggeldiggel

[Starhawk]

There is an old bug with the docking ports where sometimes the state of the port is saved incorrectly.

It can be fixed by editing the persistence file.
There is a mod which makes editing the persistence file vastly easier:

Hope this helps.

Happy landings!

[king of nowhere]

i had that bug too. I fixed it by tampering with the saved game file, though in my case it was easier because i had an exact copy of that ship in a previous file

 

[Ariggeldiggel]

Thank you very much for that editor, it's working great. But my big question now is, what to do. I was able to identify my vessel and the ports that are bug inflicted. Firstly I tried to delete the DOCKEDVESSEL node from the single one connected port and changed it state to Disengage. But it was still connected. Then I went the other way and just added every disengaged docking port the DOCKEDVESSEL node and changed their state to Docked (dockee), but they weren't able to undock. Soooo.. What am I missing here?

[18Watt]

Which version of KSP are you using?  

If you assembled all that in space, one consideration is that the way KSP keeps track of a vessel's structure, only one docking port will actually be used.

If that was assembled in the VAB (or SPH), there could be another issue going on.  Sometimes when adding docking ports to each other one of the ports will actually attach to the vessel, instead of the other docking port.  It can be difficult to detect this in the VAB, and if that is what has happened I do not know of a fix for that.  That has happened to me enough times that I now test the ability of docking ports to successfully decouple while on the launchpad.  If everything works fine, I just revert and launch.

I have encountered that problem frequently when attaching sub-assemblies or merging craft files, where the attach point is a decoupler.  The VAB makes it look like the assemblies are attached at the docking port(s), but they are actually attached between other parts.  So the docking port can not decouple, because the game doesn't think it's attached to anything.  In that case, the file tweaks mentioned above will probably not help you.

[darthgently]

I've run into this but always run KIS so have resorted to having an engineer detach the ports ('h' key I think).  Very annoying; especially when I don't have an engineer on the craft and so am delayed while I transfer one to it.  The DockRotate mod also does an audit of ports on craft loading for strange states and tries to fix them, usually successfully.  That mod will also allow you to rotate the port without undocking and does so without that stock dock rotation bug (just "lock" the stock dock rotation and ignore it forever)

[Ariggeldiggel]

Okay, the file editor is just insane. I was stupid enough to oversee the warning that pops out if something is completely wrong in my save file and so I was searching for a solution on my own. But a simple click on "fix error" does the job just fine. Thank you very much! Problem solved.

 

@18Watt

I'm using the latest version, I don't now the version number by heart. It's assembled in space and all four docking ports are used and have to be undocked single handedly. 

 

Greetings!