I am not sure if clipping is the right term but I just started playing a few days ago and after playing in sandbox for a bit I decided to try career mode. I decided while trying to go to the moon I would play with bigger rockets for inter-planetary travel. I have created a fairly large rocket that now I am obsessed with getting to work. I built it in 4 stages. 1- Lifter, 2- Upper atmosphere, 3- Orbital maneuvering/Orbital escape, 4- Payload/lander. I originally built the rocket in its respective stages, saved them as subassemblies and built the rocket. The problem I have with this is that for some weird reason the 2nd stage acts like the layer of rockets below it in the first stage are not even there and fall right through the first stage and epic explosion... I originally thought that this was because of minute mismatching of tanks and rebuilt extra meticulously paying attention to detail... Again, same results. I then tried building the same rocket all together and then I have issues with the 4 corner rockets not properly separating from the lower stage and they won't work rendering my 2nd stage useless... It is mildly possible I have that part of the staging wrong but I do not believe so I checked it rather meticulously as well. A few questions... 1: Are big rockets always this much of a monumental pain to build? 2: any ideas/suggestions what may be happening and how I can fix it? 3: any good resources on some basic tips and tricks to look at how to build/plan bigger rockets multiple stages etc? Here is a screenshot:
