psychogre

I had high hopes a reinstall was going to resolve the problem; I finally got a chance to try that this weekend. Well, it did change the behavior, but not for the better - the pogo/hulu wobble of the ship still happened, and then the gyrations continued even after undocking the miner lander. Egads! I returned to experimenting with the Autostruts again. This time I set them on the ISRU units of both miner landers, to 'root'; less wobbling, but still the lower part of that lander eventually shook itself off (instead of breaking apart at the top of the ISRU). That inspired me to set the autostrut to 'root' on the main engines of the miner landers, and also for the engines of the adjacent science landers - basically the furthest part out. That calmed everything! As a test, I proved that disabling the autostruts caused the wobbles to return. Now I can return to completing the flight back to Kerbin! Thanks for all the suggestions!

The thing that irks me the most is that this ship, with all of its various landers docked to it, was totally stable when I exited the game one day, and was unstable when I resumed it the next day. It had been stable throughout the multiple planetary body visits over several Kerbal years. There was no state change (what was docked to what, torque rod settings, etc) to trigger this behavior; even loading up a earlier (stable) savepoint became unstable. I'm still thinking there was some change that was external to the KSP program itself and my savepoints, ie some dll dependencies that changed the physics behavior.

Tried that multiple times, still happens. Even tried docking at a different port, still happens, though the wobbling took a bit longer to start up. The wobbling starts up again after unwarping. No matter how many times I do that... I've never used Autostruts and only recently learned that there are different types. Any recommendations on which type of struts to apply to which kind of ship parts? My feeling is that it would not be useful/necessary to add them to every single part (>500) of the ship.

Using KAS, I constructed a large mothership in orbit that transports a collection of ore-mining/support landers. I've taken this ship to multiple planets, setting up the mining base on multiple moons and planets. All the landers return and are re-docked to the mothership before moving on to the next place. I've been doing this over a year in real-life, nearly five Kerbin years. See the screenshots below. I exited the game one day at a point where the ship is nearly back to Kerbin (minus a few comm sats left in place) - about 14 days out from an interception. Resuming my game the very next day, suddenly the whole ship starts wobbling and gyrating, like a bunch of hula dancers on pogo sticks that are tied together with bungee cords. After some point, explosions ensue, and various remaining portions of the ship drift off in different directions. Thinking at first it was some error in the loading of the KSP game, I restarted it at a previous savepoint. Same damned thing happens - usually starting as a quiver, then gradually increasing in magnitude, until the explosions.. Restarted again, picking another savepoint even further back - still happens. My version of KSP (1.7.3.2594 Windows) has not been upgraded in over a year. I also have Breaking Ground (1.2.0). Primary mods, all also unchanged in over a year : Kopernicus, KAS, KIS, Snarkiverse, EasyVesselSwitch). I've never used 'autostruts' at all, plus there was significant on-orbit construction. The forum entries discussing similar wild behaviors have suggested turning off the reaction wheels, adding autostruts, etc. Tried them, no change. I found the WorldStabilizer mod - installing that had no effect. My ship has over 500 parts, plus many landers connected with docking ports. My tests with adding 'autostruts' was done only on a limited number of key parts, but with no discernable change. At this point, I have only two ways of stopping the gyrations - either 'time warp', or undock the miner/ISRU lander that seems to be the part that consistently breaks apart first. I obviously can't timewarp through the rest of this ship's return to Kerbin, and removal of one of the landers severely unbalances the use of the ship's engines (needed for the Kerbin orbit insertion). Still looking for a solution - any other suggestions to try? I've looked beyond KSP, for any other system changes that occurred between the 'normal' and 'gyrating' behavior. I found that there were Windows 10 updates applied in between - though it was only Office updates. I also had Dell updates, but I can't find a record of what those were; BTW my Nvidia graphics card driver was last upgraded a few months ago. Is there any way to determine if something was upgraded that affected the Unity engine?

I've had Kerbals doing in-orbit construction, using KAS/KIS, for years now. I started out by bringing extra parts to attach to the rescued Kerbal's capsules/cans, enabling them to be sent back to Kerbin with engines/fuel, heat shields and parachutes. For interplanetary expeditions, I started building larger ships in orbit that included multiple landers, mining rigs and ISRUs. Here I used a combination of repositioned parts and docking ports. Here is a series of of screenshots from my most recent project. Initial launch config Kerbal used to move extra parts from bottom to pre-positioned attachment points on sides. Then did the same thing with a second ship of the same design. Then carefully maneuvered the ships to dock the four sets of docking ports simultaneously. Fully docked together After that, multiple other launches brought up other components and landers, docked on the backside ports Any large ship like this needs to be balanced in both weight and engine placement, otherwise it won't fly straight under thrust. hope this helps!

In building an interplanetary ship in orbit, I rely on the multiple docking capability. In prior versions I had to use struts. I launched two identical 'wide' rockets with pre-positioned attachment points and docking ports on the sides. Strapped to the sides were additional crew cabins and other docking ports, etc. Once in orbit, the KAS mode allowed me to reposition those crew cabins to extend laterally, with a docking port on the end, on both rockets. Then carefully docked these 4 pairs of ports simultaneously. Multiple 'supply' launches brought up additional components (ie, comm sats, landers, fuel ferries, and mining rigs), which were docked to the various ports. Only the small sats were docked to the front, all others were on the backside (this avoids the inevitable 'wobble' when thrusting a long stack of docked components). When building out something like this that will be using its engines a lot, it is extremely important to maintain symmetry and weight balance. Otherwise, it won't be able to keep flying straight under thrust.

For me, it's gonna be 1995 again - I was playing Microsoft Space Simulator then - it ran on MS-DOS. It was crude by today's standards, but a lot of fun back then. I still have the set of install floppy disks in a box somewhere, not that they can be used anymore...

After a bit of experimentation, I settled on a method, that I have briefly described in this imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/zsMOp I later discovered this method is very similar to the "reverse gravity turn landing" method described by GoSlash27 in this post (unfortunately, all the images are missing):

This is just amazing - and just what I was looking for. After casually playing KSP for a few years, I shook it up a bit with GPP (that's gorgeous too!) but found my PC couldn't keep up. Sometimes the simplest changes are the best thing to do. Thanks for making this!

During in-orbit construction of large ships, I would often move various parts across large distances. I started out doing the stepping method mentioned, but then figured out I could take advantage of the coasting movement of the Kerbal's jetpack. Since you can't make any jetpack adjustments after grabbing a part, I set it up so the Kerbal is coasting over the part I want to move, and toward the target location. I'd have the Kerbal grab the part as they passed by, and then attach it at (or very near) the target. If the coasting direction aim is off, the Esc key puts the part back where it was picked up, and you can try again. It does take a bit of practice, but it works pretty well. I've managed to move larger parts too using this method, as long as you have the needed number of Kerbals within range of where it is grabbed, but not necessarily where it is subsequently attached. An imgur album of my construction: https://imgur.com/a/2k1Vi

Now that Take Two owns KSP, is there any word if there will be any new licensing agreements for making KSP merchandise? I'd really like to buy a coffee mug like what used to be available at CafePress, the one with the big KSP logo on one side, and the lineup of Bill, Bob and Jeb on the other. Sadly, it's not available any more, and the other KSP-related ones (with independent art) are less recognizable. I want to be able show off my love of the game at work, and get other people hooked too...

Taking a bit over a year to complete (and a lot of learning along the way), i was able to set up a mining base on Minmus, then constructed a transport ship in orbit (using KAS/KIS). Then collected all the landers on this ship for a single-craft flight to Ike, and deployed the mining base there. This Imgur album shows the progress I'm still using KSP v1.04 since I didn't want to break anything during this 'campaign' mission. It all grew out of a contract to mine ore on Minmus, then another one to explore Ike. I had to learn the quirks of the drills and ISRUs, and it just sort of took on a life of its own. Got lots of practice for targeted landings, orbit rendezvous, docking, and KAS ship construction techniques. Definitely a worthwhile effort, and a sense of accomplishment. A few more things I plan on doing in this current game before doing an upgrade to the upcoming v1.3.1, adding in some interesting new mods, and restarting my career game. There have been so many changes and improvements since 1.04, I am looking forward to learning how to use.

I tend to do things more by the seat of my spacesuit. The method I use could be called a 'reverse gravity turn'. I first tried this out a few times on Mun, but then had a lot more times to practice and perfect it when I set up a mining operation on Minmus (ferrying the fuel up to ships in orbit). I've since moved the whole operation to Ike. I made an imgur album showing my procedure - hope this helps If there's an atmosphere, you would have to make a larger overshoot to take account of the drag.

Repeating the others' suggestions of the KAS/KIS mods, I'd also like to show of an example of what you were asking about. I've been working on assembling a large ship to be able to transport multiple landers (mining/fuel production base) from initial location on Minmus to Ike, but all in one ship. Basically I built two medium sized rockets, then connected them together with girders, adding docking ports for later docking the multiple landers to it. An Imgur album showing a few points of its construction: http://imgur.com/a/2k1Vi It took quite a bit of time for the the numerous EVAs needed to do this construction (and some frustration in there too), but I feel the effort was worth it. A sense of accomplishment. There were a few follow-up supply flights to bring up specific parts, like extra heat shields, parachutes, docking ports, NRV engines, RCS units, extra struts, etc. During the construction, a few of these 'rescue' contracts popped up around Minmus. Using KAS/KIS, I was able to easily collect these Kerbals and their derelicts, salvage a few odd rocket stages left in orbit from my earlier flights, assemble them into a ship (and refuel them), and send them back to Kebin. I added a recent shot to the Imgur album - I docked all seven landers to the ship, escaped from Kebin, and nearing Duna.

Yes, absolutely worth it! Makes the game much more interesting. I've collected several cast off stages from the orbit of Minmus, collected stranded Kerbals, added a few spare parts brought from home (heat shields, parachutes, docking ports, etc). Put them together, refuel (I have an ISRU setup on the surface), then send them back to Kerbin. To do this you have to figure out which parts you need, and look what's available. Then assembly of the return ship (via KAS) sometimes is challenging. I have a large platform I work off of, with a collection of parts just for this purpose. I just recently sent back two separate rescues on a single ship put together from salvages.