rabid_sloth Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 Can someone explain to me like I'm five.... how does staging work in this game? I've searched the forums, the wiki and google and I still don\'t get it. I\'ve experiemented but all I come up with is sometimes the staging works one way and sometimes another. When I\'m building rockets, I\'m trying to set up the staging with the icons on the right hand side of the screen. On a single stage, for example with 2 pieces, a motor and a decoupler: If the rocket motor icon is above the Decoupler icon BUT THEY ARE BOTH IN THE SAME STAGE which one will be engaged first, the motor or the decoupler? Or is there a specific system that I haven\'t learned for staging? I.E. decuplers need their own specific stage. Staging and icon explanation has been very brief in all the youtube tutorials. I can\'t find anything that goes into detail on the icon placement and its respective functionality when launching multpile stages.All the fun has gone out of this game for me. I fly a rocket and I go back to tweak the design and next time I launch, staging is completely different than the previous flight. Typically, at launch the SRB\'s drop off and explode. or I get halfway to orbit and go to launch the 2nd stage and instead of starting the motor all the fuel gets dumped. What am I doing wrong?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DonLorenzo Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 All the items in one stage get activated at the same time, either that or the difference is so miniscule that it doesn\'t really matter. The second thing you describe, your stages reverting to how KSP thinks it \'should\' be is a bug, unfortunately. In the next release it will hopefully be fixed by reverting to an older piece of code. In the meantime the only solution is to either try and build your rocket in such a sequence that the standard staging sequence is in fact correct, or try again from scratch and hope the bug doesn\'t get you that time. Or re-do the staging every time you want to launch, but that gets tedious fast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awaras Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 The bug messes up the staging when you add or remove parts from your rocket. If you build your rocket first and then set the staging the way you want it it will not get messed up again unless you change the ship. It\'s a PITA, especially getting which decoupler is which, but they will probably fix it in 0.14... I wish they would hotfix it sooner but its not a deal breaker.As for the rest, only the staging of engines, boosters, decouplers and parachutes matters. The rest can all be put in a single stage since they all work all the time. It might make sense if fuel lines started pumping fuel at the moment you activated the stage they are in, or if you could blow struts away by activating a stage, but as far as I can see they work all the time, no matter what stage they are put in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
witeken Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 Or, if you\'re even worse in building ships as me, you can take ships from others and have fun with these. That\'s what I do and it works very fine for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UmbralRaptor Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 Since everyone else has covered the bug in 0.13.2...When I\'m building rockets, I\'m trying to set up the staging with the icons on the right hand side of the screen. On a single stage, for example with 2 pieces, a motor and a decoupler: If the rocket motor icon is above the Decoupler icon BUT THEY ARE BOTH IN THE SAME STAGE which one will be engaged first, the motor or the decoupler? Or is there a specific system that I haven\'t learned for staging? I.E. decuplers need their own specific stage.The top part (the motor in this case) will engage first. Generally speaking, you want decouplers to activate first on a given stage, or be on their own stage. Motors firing first tends to tear apart rockets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PD Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 OK staging is just a complicated name for a 'next' button.Big rockets like the ones you are considering building have a bottom set of engines and (for the sake of argument) 1 more set above those.Each time you press space bar it turns on the next 'stage'.e.g.On the launch pad, you have a stage with your bottom engines and ruel tanks. These engines fire.Then, you want a stage to decouple (get rid of) all that dead weight when the engines are burn out. You need your decoupler in the Next stage above those engines.Then after that, you want to fire your top engines, so they need to be above the decoupler again.Here are a few photos to illustrate.In the VAB - Build your rocket and check the stage icons on the right are in the Order you want them.On the Pad - Notice here the stage number is that of your first active stage, and the stage readiness light (or whatever you want to call it) is green. Ready to launch. Press Spacebar...Liftoff - The stage number in this case only remains the same. You will notice icons turn green which are active.Note: You don\'t have to press space to advance to the next fuel tank, that is automatic.Stage 1 Burnout - Here you will notice that all six tanks in the first stage are emptied, but the stage number has not changed. Yet.Separation - Pressing space-bar, and my decoupler fires. You could merge this with the next stage, but I think it\'s pretty to watch the old stage drift away. Notice the stage number has now changed.Stage 2 Ignition - Space again and your second stage engine fires. The stage number has changed again.Orbit established - Once you\'re multi-stage rocket has gotten you into a nice circular orbit, you can do as you please. As this is an instructional flight, we will simply turn around and come home.Retro-burn - We\'re still in the same stage, although we\'re in a very different part of the mission.(A bit late) Capsule Separation - I forgot to release my capsule for a while, I was busy thinking about what to say in this tutorial. It\'s probably worth separating from your final stage before you enter the atmosphere if you don\'t want to burn up in later versions. Fortunately our flight plan has been a success so far, and we are landing pretty close to where we planned.Parachute flight before landing - Popping the chute is the final stage. Notice the stage number has changed for the last time and the Stage readiness indicator (or whatever) has gone off. There are no more stages to be ready to activate!Hooray! You just achieved orbit using a multi-stage rocket!I hope you found that demonstration flight useful and instructive.PD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rabid_sloth Posted February 19, 2012 Author Share Posted February 19, 2012 Well, thank you all for the help... but the problem persists. I\'ve been playing since August, so I know how staging is supposed to work and how it used to work. But at this point, every ship that goes to the launch pad turns into a dice roll on how the staging works. Or not works, to be precise. I build a rocket and the first time its on the pad, the first stage launch ejects the SRB\'s. Bah! Back to the VAB and the icons show the SRB decouplers in their own separate stage ABOVE the lowest stage; which means the decouplers will fire when the lowermost stage is finished. At least that\'s the way it used to work and that\'s the way it does on the 2nd attempt (sometimes. Not always.) Randomly, it will work okay- I spend 15 minutes flying and then I screw up the moon orbit or something so I try again. Same ship, just hit relaunch, but now we\'re back to the dropped SRB\'s again. or the 3rd stage separates instead of dropping the empty tanks. Its maddening. I really do enjoy this game and it\'s a testament to it\'s appeal that I\'ve been playing it over and over again, despite the fact that it\'s pissed me off so much. I don\'t know if this is a problem just on the Mac or if it\'s not that big a deal to anybody else, but it ruins the game for me. I\'ve spent 4 hours playing tonight and I got two flights to orbit; the rest of the time was spent fixing staging problems. I really wish I could download 13.1 or even 12.x. for OSX, but since that\'s not showing up. I guess I\'ll wait for 14 and keep my fingers crossed. See you guys in March, hopefully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PD Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 The only thing I can suggest is: Does your PC meet the system requirements?Mine doesn\'t, by quite a long way and I often get input lag. I wonder if you are suffering from your game thinking that each time you tap space you are holding it, for several inputs?I can\'t think of anything else. If you are building your rocket as above, then you do know 'how', so I suggest posting in the bugs section of the forum?PD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
witeken Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 I think it\'s a bug. You should mention it at the Development forum section. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hypocee Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 It is a bug in .13.2, well-known and reverted to .13.1 behavior in .14.http://www.atomicgamer.com/files/95362/kerbal-space-program-v0-13-1-for-mac-free-game Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rabid_sloth Posted February 19, 2012 Author Share Posted February 19, 2012 Thank You!! You\'re the Best!! I can keep trying for a Mun landing!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
semininja Posted February 20, 2012 Share Posted February 20, 2012 What I recommend for attempting to deal with the staging but is to save the ship first, as that (theoretically) locks the staging until further changes are made to the ship. I don\'t know if that actually makes a difference, but that\'s what I do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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