Stage order messed up?

[ROXunreal]

I don't get it, I'm in mun orbit, I still have my middle stage, my upper stage and a lander on top of all that. CLEARLY the decoupler to release the lander is next in order, when I highlight it in the stage sidebar the correct decoupler glows green. I still want to retain my middle stage because there's fuel in it. I press space and my upper stage splits from my mid stage, while the lander is still connected to the upper stage. So the COMPLETELY other decoupler activated even though it was not next in line. What the hell? Is this a bug?

[sal_vager]

You don't give us much to go on, no pics, no craft file, no save, we'd just be guessing.

[ROXunreal]

I tried to replicate it now during launch from Kerbin, worked ok now. However this sometimes randomly happened to me before...Will do more testing. Anyway the point I missed is that I switched two stages in the order while in orbit, but that shouldn't be causing the problem.

[Janos1986]

Since the last update I have noticed the annoying way KSP automatically messes up the staging during assembly, throwing parachutes together with engines, or mixing up SRBs when one is on top of another, or mixing up decouplers.

Double, no, triple check your stages before launch.

I remember it to be more precise in 0.25, or maybe its' just me.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Janos1986

[sal_vager]

It's always done this, especially if you don't have decouplers, those things are expensive

[ROXunreal]

I know it's been 13 days since I posted this, but this thing keeps happening now and again. It always happens when you manually change the stage order in flight.

Here's two screens. Disregard the part in the background, that is already decoupled, focus on the pod and the stage bar to the left.

The parachute and the engine were together in the same stage. I changed this and put the engine activation in its own separate stage as shown. Pressing space should JUST activate the engine.

After pressing space, the chute which is in the upper stage activates, while the lower stage disappears from the stage bar and the unactivated engine joins the upper stage group in the stage bar. After quickloading a few times, this problem would always persist. I guess it's a bug. The only way to get around it was to manually activate the engines by right clicking on them.

[T-Bouw]

It seems stage 1 in the first picture was already activated.

When you pressed the spacebar you activated the last stage containing the shutes.

I don't see the fuel bar next to the engines in the first picture. Can the fuel get to the engines?

Also it's best not to mess with the staging sequence in flight. Use it only in an emergency, because as you have discovered, unexpected things can happen.

Next time, check the sequence thoroughly in the VAB before launch.

Mousing over each icon in the sequence to see which part will trigger when and together with which other part(s).

[Starhawk]

I believe I had this problem when I had to manually adjust my staging a couple of weeks ago. Very frustrating.

[Anquietas314]

It seems stage 1 in the first picture was already activated.

When you pressed the spacebar you activated the last stage containing the shutes.

You are quite correct - I've had this issue quite a few times in 0.90. The problem is that, at least some of the time, the game doesn't add an invisible "extra" stage before the one at the bottom of the list; it used to. Instead, just add a blank stage at the end. When you stage it everything else should behave normally.

Note that you can't always rely on VAB staging; consider ships constructed in orbit via docking.

[Pecan]

Yes, again.

Except at first launch the bottom stage is the active one and staging again will activate the next one up (from 1 to 0 in the first picture).