4 Ships, Only 1 Survives

[sibrit]

In preparation for the eventual career mode, I've been working on getting reusable main engine setups and I've come up with one that links 5 Mainsails with orange fuel tanks, where the outer 4 separate and land horizontally using drogues and radial main chutes.

The Brake action group is setup to lower the landing gear, deploy all chutes, and decouple all 4 from the central engine, which has an additional half-height fuel tank so keeps burning a while longer.

Trouble is, even though all 4 have a probe module, only the one that I have focus on actually lands safely. I can switch between them as they continue upward towards apoapsis but once I change focus to one in atmosphere, I get the message about not being able to switch and all I can do is watch as the other 3 don't deploy chutes and smash into Kerban.

Is this "working as intended" or just something that has not been implemented yet?

[Psycix]

Make sure the parachutes are deployed in the same stage as the decouplers, so that the chutes are deployed/armed as it decouples.

That said, the parts will unload when the current object of focus is more than 2.2 km away from it, and far-away parts that enter the atmosphere are automatically deleted.

[sibrit]

Getting things to happen at the same time was easy - once I understood what action groups are all about...

Oh. Automatically deleted. OK. Part of the current game mechanics. I suppose they will change that before they introduce career mode. I can live with it since it doesn't cost me anything (apart from time, and heaps of it - used to be longer until I found out what the duplicate and snap buttons did) to put together launchers.

I wonder when they will implement water landings? In any case, I'll try and put together a 5 engine lifter that I can recover as a single unit.