Active vessels disappear randomly

[Mechanic]

Active vessels will disappear randomly in my game and it's quite frustrating. I can be controlling one vessel for a time and decide to switch to another that is in orbit only to find it missing. If any Kerbals were on board they are all back at the astronaut complex. I have a base on the moon with two rovers and two landers parked there. When I returned to the base one lander was missing and the Kerbals are back at the complex. The same thing happened for one of the rovers the day before. This happens while in game and is random in frequency. I can go for a couple of days without a problem then stuff starts disappearing.

I am mod heavy (191)

Any ideas on what my problem is? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Mechanic

[Vanamonde]

There is a minimum safe morbit altitude (different for each world) under which a craft is assumed to have hit the surface and will be eliminated. The crew might respawn in time, if you have that option turned on. Might this be what's happening? Are you putting things in low orbits? 

[king of nowhere]

was just coming to say as @Vanamonde;; it happened to me, I had vessels in a nice low orbit that I thought safe, but there were actually a few peaks on the planet reaching that high, and maybe the orbit was stable for days and days, until at some point the planet rotation managed to align one such peak exactly with my vessel, and I'd find it disappeared.

or maybe your vessel is crossing the path of a mooon.

if that's not your case, then i have no idea. only times i ever heard of stuff disappearing, it was beccause they hit the ground

[linuxgurugamer]

2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

actually a few peaks on the planet reaching that high, and maybe the orbit was stable for days and days, until at some point the planet rotation managed to align one such peak exactly with my vessel, and I'd find it disappeared

That would only happen if the vessel was not on rails; in other words, the active vessel

[king of nowhere]

3 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

That would only happen if the vessel was not on rails; in other words, the active vessel

nonono, absolutely not. if the vessel is on rail, and its rails happen to hit a mountain, the vessel disappear.

and it's very annoying because the game does not give any message for it.

i speak for direct experience

[linuxgurugamer]

3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

nonono, absolutely not. if the vessel is on rail, and its rails happen to hit a mountain, the vessel disappear.

and it's very annoying because the game does not give any message for it.

i speak for direct experience

Is ot the active vessel, as in Time warping?

[king of nowhere]

3 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Is ot the active vessel, as in Time warping?

not controlling the lost vessel.

look, what's so strange about it? if you set a vessel on a collision course with a planet, and then you move away from it and time warp, the vessel is still going to hit the planet. barring potential glitches at really high time warp, but those are just that: glithces. maybe you are confused because a vessel in atmosphere, away from physical range, doesn't experience drag, but that's a different condition entirely. and it still gets eliminted if its periapsis is too low

a vessel out of physical range is put on rails, but it doesn't become indestructible. if the rails hit an obstacle, the vessel is destroied off screen. and you get no notification whatsoever, which sucks heavily, because instead of reloading and fixing the problem you keep playing and waste time.

[linuxgurugamer]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

if you set a vessel on a collision course with a planet, and then you move away from it and time warp, the vessel is still going to hit the planet. barring potential glitches at really high time warp, but those are just that: glithces. maybe you are confused because a vessel in atmosphere, away from physical range, doesn't experience drag, but that's a different condition entirely. and it still gets eliminted if its periapsis is too low

a vessel out of physical range is put on rails, but it doesn't become indestructible. if the rails hit an obstacle, the vessel is destroied off screen. and you get no notification whatsoever, which sucks heavily, because instead of reloading and fixing the problem you keep playing and waste time.

You seem to have a few misconceptions about what "on rails" and "off rails", and about the active vs non-active vessel.

When you are flying a vessel with no timewarping going on or with physics warping active, the vessel is fully functional, including all colliders, etc.

When you do non-physics timewarping, the vessels go on "rails", which, among other things, doesn't have the colliders active.  You can see this in action by putting a vessel into a low orbit with a cargo bay, have something in the cargo bay which is NOT connect to the main vessel, then timewarp.  Then do a timewarp, you will see the internal item literally float through the walls of the cargo bay.

Another thing you can do is to put a vessel into a highly elliptical orbit, where the PE is below the surface of the planet.  Then start warping at a high speed, the vessel will just pass through the planet without hitting the planet.

The only time a vessel will be removed when not active will be if it drops too low in the atmosphere (on Kerbin).  I don't know the exact numbers, and there may be code to do the same for other planets.

When a vessel is on rails, essentially all that's being done is the orbit is calculated.  No colliders are active, no collisions happen etc.  Vessels don't crash into the ground, they don't impact other vessels, etc.

 

 

[king of nowhere]

11 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Another thing you can do is to put a vessel into a highly elliptical orbit, where the PE is below the surface of the planet.  Then start warping at a high speed, the vessel will just pass through the planet without hitting the planet.

I know that. as I said, there can be glitches at high warp speeds. but it's not guaranteed.

the reason the vessel sometimes moves across the planet is that the game only calculates positions at every amount of time. of real time. so, at high time warp the game checks the vessel position only every few minutes of real game clock time. If the vessel moves through a planet in a few minutes, and the game does not check for position in those few minutes, then the vessel is fine. if the game checks at the wrong time, it removes the vessel.

for the same reason, at high time warp one may have an intercept trajectory to a small body like gilly and skip it entirely. like, not even register that you entered a new SoI.

try to set a craft on mun in a 10x5 orbit - not a fast passage from a high apoapsis, but a prolonged passage below ground, even if nominally above "sea level". you'll see how well that goes.

 

So, sure, to hit a mountain during time warp you have to be very unlucky. you need that the game checks for position right when you are passing through the mountain. or maybe you stop the time warp to go manuever something else. regardless, it happens.

P.S.

Quote

When you do non-physics timewarping, the vessels go on "rails", which, among other things, doesn't have the colliders active.  You can see this in action by putting a vessel into a low orbit with a cargo bay, have something in the cargo bay which is NOT connect to the main vessel, then timewarp.  Then do a timewarp, you will see the internal item literally float through the walls of the cargo bay.

yes, I am fully aware. I've been using time warp to ease some difficult docking manuevers occasionally.

but it has 0 relevance to the argument discussed. you confuse the physic bubble with the workings of rails.

[Mechanic]

Thanks for the reply's all. but it's not a low orbit problem. I had a space station in a very high orbit just vanish. Also landed vessels can end up missing. I can dock with another vessel that's in a safe orbit, undock and leave the first vessel then when I look  in the map or tracking station, the vessel I just left is gone. Any crew are immediately back in the complex without going through a re-spawn time (I have it set to 1 hour). Like I said this occurs randomly but not frequently but enough to be frustrating.

I've searched quite a bit for anything similar happening to other players but have found nothing. I suspect it could be a mod that is affecting the auto saves but I'm not sure what to look for. I could send a list of the installed mods if any developer would be interested.

I play in RSS and except for a couple of mods that I manually installed most everything is installed with CKAN.

Mechanic

[linuxgurugamer]

47 minutes ago, Mechanic said:

Thanks for the reply's all. but it's not a low orbit problem. I had a space station in a very high orbit just vanish. Also landed vessels can end up missing. I can dock with another vessel that's in a safe orbit, undock and leave the first vessel then when I look  in the map or tracking station, the vessel I just left is gone. Any crew are immediately back in the complex without going through a re-spawn time (I have it set to 1 hour). Like I said this occurs randomly but not frequently but enough to be frustrating.

I've searched quite a bit for anything similar happening to other players but have found nothing. I suspect it could be a mod that is affecting the auto saves but I'm not sure what to look for. I could send a list of the installed mods if any developer would be interested.

I play in RSS and except for a couple of mods that I manually installed most everything is installed with CKAN.

Mechanic

Post a log, I'll take a look when I have some time

[Mechanic]

Thanks linuxgurugamer. When you get the chance, I know your busy.

I ran a test.

Deleted everything in the Tracking Station so there was nothing left out there.

All Kerbals were back in the Complex.

I built a reusable launch system (2 Kerbals in command pod) and pushed a small station (3 Kerbals in station command) and a relay satellite.

Released the relay in a 5Mm orbit around the Moon.

Decended to a 500k orbit and released the station.

Returned the launch system to a low orbit around Earth.

Jumped to the Tracking station.

The launch system was in orbit. The relay sat was in orbit. The station was gone.

Quit the game and grabbed the Log.

 

Guess its time to start pulling mods out. I’m such a pig when it comes to mods.

 

Mechanic

KSP.log

[linuxgurugamer]

16 minutes ago, Mechanic said:

Mechanic

KSP.log

Two things.

First, can you provide both the Player.log, KSP.log and all the logs in the main directory called Logs?

Second, would help to both have every vessel have a unique name, and to know what they are.

The only suspicious thing I found ( and it doesn't make sense that it affects this), is for a vessel called "Tmp Moon Payload Station",  there is only 1 place I can find that in the log file.

Also, there are a number of the following error, indicating an error in one or more of the contracts:

[ERR 12:59:58.374] Input is null for field 'agent' in config node 'CONTRACT'
  at System.Environment.get_StackTrace () [0x00000] in <9577ac7a62ef43179789031239ba8798>:0 
  at ConfigNode.AddValue (System.String name, System.String value) [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at Contracts.Contract.Save (ConfigNode node) [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at Contracts.ContractSystem.OnSave (ConfigNode gameNode) [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at ScenarioModule.Save (ConfigNode node) [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at ProtoScenarioModule..ctor (ScenarioModule module) [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at ScenarioRunner.UpdateModules () [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at ScenarioRunner.GetUpdatedProtoModules () [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at Game.Updated (GameScenes startSceneOverride) [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at GamePersistence.SaveGame (System.String saveFileName, System.String saveFolder, SaveMode saveMode, GameScenes startScene) [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at GamePersistence.SaveGame (System.String saveFileName, System.String saveFolder, SaveMode saveMode) [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at FlightAutoSave+<PersistentSave>d__6.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <39c0323fb6b449a4aaf3465c00ed3c8d>:0 
  at UnityEngine.SetupCoroutine.InvokeMoveNext (System.Collections.IEnumerator enumerator, System.IntPtr returnValueAddress) [0x00000] in <12e76cd50cc64cf19e759e981cb725af>:0 

Usually indicating a missing "agent" field in one or more contracts.

Another thing, please install this mod:

 

and write notes to the log file before every step, will make it easier to isolate the events

[Gargamel]

Moved to Tech support modded.

[Mechanic]

 

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

First, can you provide both the Player.log, KSP.log and all the logs in the main directory called Logs?

No Player.log exists in the game folder or anywhere else.

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Second, would help to both have every vessel have a unique name, and to know what they are.

The only suspicious thing I found ( and it doesn't make sense that it affects this), is for a vessel called "Tmp Moon Payload Station",  there is only 1 place I can find that in the log file.

"Tmp Moon Payload Station" was the name given to the model in the VAB. Tmp models are saved in a model category to be reviewed and deleted. After separating the components I renamed them "Lunar Sat", "Lunar Station" and the previously named "Tmp Moon Paylod Station" was renamed "Lunar Return Flight".

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Also, there are a number of the following error, indicating an error in one or more of the contracts:

I am unfamiliar with contracts and don't make any in the game as far as I know.

I manually installed Notes2Log. CKAN shows it as incompatible with my game version (v1.12.3.3173). It shows up in game and doesn't seem to be a problem.

I'm going to make the exact same flight tomorrow and use the notes for every step. I don't know if it's important but I don't play the game in Steam.

Thank you very much for taking the time to look at this.

Mechanic

Festina Lente

[linuxgurugamer]

17 hours ago, Mechanic said:

No Player.log exists in the game folder or anywhere else.

Read this BEFORE asking for support: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/83212-how-to-get-support-read-first/

[Mechanic]

I have read Before asking for support.

I'm going to strip my mods out and rebuild them slowly testing for the error along the way. If you get a chance, before I do this, here is a new KSP.log. The error occurs between lines 111492 and 111562.

These are the lines where the Space Station is removed. Maybe you can enlighten me on ScaleModList exceeding the maxListSize?

[LOG 15:18:07.130] ScaleModList: listSize 779 maxListSize 576
[LOG 15:18:07.130] [ApplicationLauncher] SetHidden:
[LOG 15:18:07.131] ScaleModList: listSize 779 maxListSize 617
[LOG 15:18:07.133] ScaleModList: listSize 738 maxListSize 617
[LOG 15:18:07.134] ScaleModList: listSize 697 maxListSize 617
[LOG 15:18:07.135] ScaleModList: listSize 656 maxListSize 617
[LOG 15:18:07.136] ScaleModList: listSize 615 maxListSize 617
[LOG 15:18:07.137] ScaleModList: listSize 574 maxListSize 649
[LOG 15:18:07.138] ScaleModList: listSize 533 maxListSize 649
[LOG 15:18:07.139] ScaleModList: listSize 492 maxListSize 649
[LOG 15:18:07.140] ScaleModList: listSize 451 maxListSize 649
[LOG 15:18:07.141] ScaleModList: listSize 410 maxListSize 649
[LOG 15:18:07.142] ScaleModList: listSize 369 maxListSize 649
[LOG 15:18:09.819] Earth Station Unloaded
[LOG 15:18:09.855] ScaleModList: listSize 369 maxListSize 557
[LOG 15:18:09.872] [DR:698516] JM:-5534872:null.OnDestroy()
[LOG 15:18:09.872] [DR:698516] VMM:-5605764:0:Earth_Station_(Unloaded).OnDestroy()
[LOG 15:18:09.910] ScaleModList: listSize 369 maxListSize 557
[LOG 15:18:29.153] Flight State Captured
[WRN 15:18:29.153] [ProtoCrewMember Warning]: Crewmember Norman Bailey found assigned but no vessels reference him. Norman Bailey set as missing.
[WRN 15:18:29.153] [ProtoCrewMember Warning]: Crewmember Franziska Müller found assigned but no vessels reference him. Franziska Müller set as missing.
[WRN 15:18:29.153] [ProtoCrewMember Warning]: Crewmember Carla Rogers found assigned but no vessels reference him. Carla Rogers set as missing.

Mechanic

[Mechanic]

I removed all the mods and rebuilt the list in five sections deleting a few mods and adding a few new ones. What exactly was causing the problem will take a greater mind then mine to answer but I have a stable system again and that's all I care about.

Thanks

Mechanic