MaxPeck

I get this too... I'm not using RO or RP-0, but I am using RSS. I'm not using Ven's mod. I get the same behavior with science labs suddenly vanishing in flight, usually around 6000m. Also, if you Hyperedit them into orbit, they go flying off at ludicrous speed in a random direction.

So I managed to intercept an asteroid, but when I got close to it, there was no texture, it was just black. After a few clumsy attempts, I managed to snag it with the claw, at which point my ship started - and this is the only word I can really describe this with - vibrating. I managed to swing the asteroid into a 200X200. I de-orbited my intercept ship and sent up a mining ship to start cooking up some rocket fuel, and after capturing the black blob with the claw again, I couldn't do anything. My ship showed as "landed", but I couldn't go back to the tracking station because the game insisted my ship was moving across terrain. I'm not really sure where to go with this. As you'll see in the log below, I'm playing with a couple of mods, including texture replacer and RSS. Not sure if that makes a difference, but at this point I have this black mass orbiting above Earth with no way to do anything with it. Any ideas? EDIT: I tried to upload a log, but apparently it's huge. I'll try again later when it's not 3:30 in the morning.

I neeeeeeeeed this. NEEEEEEEEED IT. The current recruiting system is beyond useless if you want to use mods like EP. You're truly doing a service to humanity with this mod.

I don't have steam either and I'm on a Mac.

FINALLY, you admit this is all just for the sake of schadenfreude. I knew it. You're all sitting there in your villainous lair, twirling your villainous mustaches and laughing your villainous maniacal laughs. I just knew it.

@Green Baron no worries, mate.. I know when I've met my match. Edit: FWIW, I've been flying powered airplanes with an actual pilot certificate since 1993 and have a degree in aeronautics, so I probably won't be on your roof anytime soon, either.

I give up. You win. I just don't have the energy to keep this up. Everyone, he won.

No. "Lift is increased on the left side and reduced on the right, resulting in a bank to the right. However, as a result of producing lift on the left, induced drag is also increased on the left side. The drag causes the left wing to slow down, in turn causing the nose of the aircraft to initially move (left) in the diretion opposite of the turn." ...lift is increased on the left side and reduced on the right. Increased on one side, reduced on the other. Almost as though the lift has become... asymmetrical. I never said yaw counters inertia (which for the layman, is the same as centrifugal force). I said inertia, centrifugal force, angular momentum, The Force, whatever you want to call it, will try to push the aircraft to the outside of the turn. If you don't apply some rudder correction in the direction of the turn, the HCL and The Force will be out of balance, resulting in a slip. In an uncoordinated turn, there is absolutely asymmetrical lift being generated, which is why at low speeds you're at risk of entering a spin. The lower wing in a turn has a lower relative wind across it than the raised wing, which will cause it to stall first. Yes, everything you've said about adverse yaw is correct. But adverse yaw is not the force pushing the aircraft to the outside of the turn, inertia is. Adverse yaw will push the nose slightly away from the turn, but the asymmetrical lift generated by the wings in the turn will still keep the aircraft banked into the turn and the HCL created from the bank will turn the aircraft, albeit in a slipping condition. This can be addressed by introducing a positive dihedral to the wings, but how many people do that in KSP? I'd be willing to bet that most KSP wings are symmetrical and flat. Did I simplify the interactions for the sake of explanation? Guilty. If you just bank, which is what most new folks are probably doing in KSP, without adding additional control inputs like yaw and pitch correction, The Force will try to push you to the outside of the turn, but the aircraft will still turn. You don't see it in real life, because in real life, turning is more than just banking, which is what my original post was trying to impart, which is possibly why turns seem weird to the OP. At this point, like I said, this is argument for the sake of argument, and we're arguing apples and baseballs. As a postscript - and I'm sure you'll howl about this, I am a college aviation professor. I cannot, unfortunately, name my institution. We had an instance two years ago where another professor was answering questions from student pilots on a Facebook page, and using his title and our school in his answers. We got smacked down for that, and the standing orders from our Department Chair was that we're free to discus things online and say what we do, but we're not allowed to name the school unless we get clearance from the school first. I'm not really interested in getting institutional clearance so that I can bicker on an internet forum about private pilot ground school stuff. Knowing my chair, I already know what his answer will be. Take that for what its worth, have fun with it.

Sigh. I give up. You're seriously arguing just to argue and you literally just presented yourself as being more knowledgeable about flight than actual pilots, a college professor who teaches it *and the FAA*. If I can literally quote to you from the Pilots Handbook (published by the FAA and used by actual pilots and flight instructors) and the Instrument Flying Handbook, and you can sit there with a straight face and say they're wrong and you know better... then there's no place left to go with this. I'm out. I concede.

Ach. Here we go. Nitpickers at 12 o'clock, 5 miles. 1. Aircraft in KSP generally rotate, operate and land well above normal aircraft operating speeds. Your particular outliers are exceptions. I didn't say it was impossible, I said it's not generally done. Congratulations on designing aircraft that land at subsonic speeds, I don't think most people land under 100 m/s. I could be wrong. Also, I know 100m/s is subsonic, I was being deliberately hyperbolic, so relax. 2. The main force acting in opposition to the horizontal component of lift in a turn is centrifugal force. Yes, adverse yaw is a thing. Adverse yaw will tend to point the aircraft's nose away from the turn, but it is the balance between an aircraft's HCL and centrifugal force that creates a coordinated turn. Too much yaw control will cause the aircraft's HCL to be less than it's inertial force, resulting in a skid, not enough will create more HCL than inertia, resulting in a slip. Regardless of what causes the imbalance between HCL and centrifugal force, it is centrifugal force that you're working against in a turn. Refer to https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/media/FAA-H-8083-15B.pdf page 4-11 for more details. So what I said remains true... you're using yaw control to keep HCL and centrifugal force in balance. If you just bank an airplane and take your hands and feet off the controls, you're stupid, but also the airplane will react by raising the nose slightly and yawing away from the bank (due to adverse yaw, as you astutely pointed out). It will slip, and that's due to an imbalance between HCL and centrifugal force, which is caused by adverse yaw left uncorrected. There are other factors too, wing blocking in a slip or a skid reduces the available lifting area, and the aircraft's slipstream will also play a minor role. Regardless, it's inertia that you're working against, and inertia that creates the offset g-forces that enable a turn-and-back indicator to work. Interestingly, this is also what leads to inertial coupling, which is where the total inertia of an aircraft overcomes the authority of the control surfaces. Since almost all of our speeds in KSP are a hair shy of ridiculous, that's a lot of what you're contending with. Most people, I would hazard to say, don't bother at all with coordinated turns, they just roll 90 degrees, pull back on the stick to convert the aircraft's VCL to HCL, and let the wings do all the work. As for asymmetric lift, I stand by what I said. refer to https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aircraft/airplane_handbook/media/FAA-H-8083-3B.pdf In particular, turn to chapter 11-1, which says: "Deflection of trailing edge control surfaces, such as the aileron, alters both lift and drag. With aileron deflection, there is asymmetrical lift (rolling moment) and drag (adverse yaw). " It's also this asymmetric lift during a turn that can lead to spin entry. Again, in the FAA-H-8083-3B, refer to page 4-12. If the angle of attack of one wing becomes critical during a turn and it stalls, you get a spin. Why would that happen? Say it with me: asymmetrical lift in a turn. At low speed, we also refer to this is a "cross control stall" and it's one of the leading causes of traffic pattern accidents. If you're in an uncoordinated turn at low speed, the lower wing will stall before the higher one, resulting in a spin. If it happens at low altitude, you just bought yourself a farm. 3. In addition to being a pilot for over 20 years, I'm a full-time college aviation professor. I might have an idea or two how aircraft work.

From a pilot's perspective, I can tell you there are two things you're experiencing that make it feel weird. Stock/FAR arguments aside, and mathematical proofs notwithstanding, there are two things that dramatically impact aircraft performance: 1. Speed is indicated in a scale you're not used to, and wholly unrealistic. We typically don't measure our forward (or vertical) velocity in m/s. We measure them in knots and feet/second. Most aircraft under 18,000' MSL operate at 250kts or less, even those sexy fighter planes and airliners. That's a mere 128m/s. The slowest useable approach speed for most aircraft in KSP, even propeller-driven light aircraft using firespitter and KAX is around 65m/s. That's a blistering 126 knots, faster than the level cruise speed for most piston-driven light aircraft. For contrast, the recommended approach speed of a Boeing 757 is 132 knots, which is only 68 m/s. Keep that in mind next time you're trying to land a cessna mockup in KSP at 125 m/s. Also, as a result of this, most KSP aircraft cruise at entirely absurd speeds. A propeller-driven airplane cruising at 150m/s is blasting along at 291 knots, which would appear to be a blatant violation of FAR 91.117(a). Except it's not, because our altitude expectations are also wonky. We're used to measuring altitude in feet, not meters. The upper limit of most non-turbocharged piston aircraft is around 12,000' MSL, which is only 3,658 meters. 10,000 meters is about 32,000 feet MSL. 20,000 meters is pretty much in the stratosphere. And that's on Earth, Kerbin probably has smaller atmospheric layers. 2. There is zero turn coordination in KSP, unless you do it yourself (or use a mod). When you bank a real airplane, centrifugal force will try to push the airplane to the outside of the turn unless you apply yaw correction in the direction of the turn. The aircraft will still turn in the direction of the bank due to asymmetric lift, but the turn will be very inefficient, as you see in KSP. A properly coordinated turn requires both rudder into the turn, as well as slight back pressure on the controls to keep the nose from dropping. In KSP, we tend to just bank the wings and hope for the best, whereas in properly controlled flight, a turn requires adjustments along all three axis, and possibly power adjustments as well. Also, going back to point #1, because we're flying at 90% of ludicrous speed all the time, there's a fair amount of inertial coupling going on as well, so your control surfaces either have to be cartoonishly large or are ineffective outside of the small subsonic sweet spot that real aircraft operate in.

Jesus Smoking Christmas, guys. I made a simple observation. @NathanKell was good enough to come on here and address it specifically and in great detail (thank you, Nathan!), without making excuses or obfuscating. Can we possibly have one thread that doesn't involve us collectively keel-hauling the devs over everything? I'm the last person to defend Squad's business practices, and I've been very vocal in my opinions about them, but even I have to admit the rancor is reaching the point of ridiculousness. If you continue to chastise these guys every time they speak, even when they're giving answers that they don't have to give, in levels of detail that they're not obliged to provide, eventually they're going to stop communicating with the community. He could have just given a simple, "gee, thanks, that's interesting" and let it go, but he didn't he tried to be forthright with us, but we just can't resist the urge to punch down at every opportunity. Give the guys a break, already. Thank you, @NathanKell for addressing my OP. I appreciate it.

Okay, I have to give you coolness points for this. As for the rest of what you said... it's a game/it's not a game, it's a simulation, but it's not... what I'm coming to realize is that KSP is the best Kickstarter campaign I've ever backed. I do really stand in awe of the work that has gone into KSP, both from the devs, and from the mod makers. Like you said, the scale and capabilities of the game are what keep us coming back, even in its various incarnations of almostness. I think where a lot of heartburn comes in is that many of us are not used to buying a product that isn't off-the-shelf complete, and one of the hardest learning curves of the game isn't about rocket science or sound design principles, it's about learning to manage expectations. As for giving up on submitting bug reports and logs - there are (last time I looked) over a thousand open bug reports already. Or at least several hundred. Why pile on? What good is another CTD report going to do added to the pile of hundreds already submitted? I don't think they need more bug reports, I think they need time to address the ones they already have (which most likely would already include my issue). For me, crashes are my cue to go do something else for a while. Like a built-in reminder to go get some sunshine and a fresh drink.

Or, you know, make this the tier 4/5 skills. Pilots are pilots. By current nomenclature, Karbal scientists and engineers are basically what NASA calls "payload specialists"... they do one thing and do it well. Maybe when they get to tier 4 and tier 5, they can graduate to "mission specialist" and become scientist/engineers. For the tier 4/5 you could have pilots become mission commanders, which would let them be pilot/engineers or pilot/scientists. Or vice-versa.

That was my quote! You cited me without proper attribution. I'm deducting points from your final grade, sir. By "feature complete", I mean that all of the components of the game are intuitively playable and long-standing bugs that people have to play around are resolved. I lurked around this game prior to 1.0 because I wasn't really interested in playing a beta. When the game hit 1.0, within a few days I bought it. I have been grossly disappointed. My very first ever post here on the forums was a sarcastic request for more loading jokes, so I'd have something new to read during the many MANY restarts from crashes I was experiencing. I was shocked that a "released game" was as busted as KSP... and then came the fixes, 1.0.X, and I calmed down, and I think 1.0.5 was as close to feature-complete as KSP has been. Most everything worked as advertised. Now here we are at 1.1, and there are significant portions of the game that once again require tweaks and workarounds to function. That's not feature complete. I hate analogies, but I'll use one anyway: if I buy a car, but I have to duct tape the door closed because the mechanisms that are supposed to do that don't work, the car isn't complete. If I have to apply patches and workarounds, and something as critical as landing gear don't work as expected, that's a problem. I know that the answer is (probably) some type of engine-ish thing, and I'm intelligent enough to understand what that implies, but I shouldn't have to. A thing called landing gear should roll, and should enable and aircraft to depart and land smoothly. It should hold you in a constant direction, and it should not explode at random, nor should it sink into or magically levitate above the runway. Landing gear (and other things) that behave in the way they are billed are complete features. I'll add something for the record. I've been a pilot for 23 years. I'm currently a college aeronautics professor. I love airplanes, and I might even know a thing or two about them and how they fly. I have no major gripes with the flight system, stock or FAR, simplified as they may be. But, as I sit here right now, I'm going to tell you that in my experience as an aviator, airplanes do not work, and it's entirely because takeoff and landing are a HUGE part of flying and you cannot do either reliably. People may be able to kludge them into working, but that shouldn't be confused with them being operational. Part of the fun of KSP for me, and I'm basing this entirely on my own prejudices and styles, is making airplanes and flying them. I enjoy that. I have built several airplanes that fly fantastically, only to have takeoff failure after takeoff failure. It kind of ruins the experience. So for me, who spends a lot of time playing KSP from the spaceplane hangar, the game is very incomplete. Now, having said that, I'll qualify it. I understand the huge amount of work that's gone into, and is going into the game, and I'm entirely supportive of the good work and outstanding community feedback we get from the devs. But when I play the game, if I have to deal with (and work around) glaring bugs as I play, such as dancing apo- and periapsis, or malfunctioning landing gear, or my current headache - science labs suddenly flying off into space at warp 6 - that game is not feature complete. It's a work in progress. With every devnote, and every update, I hope against hope that THIS will the THE ONE that gets the game to its full potential, but in a year+ of playing KSP, I can't say I've ever really considered the game stable. I'm in the habit of saving frequently now, not because I'm worried about screwing the pooch and doing something wrong, but because I know at any moment the game could freeze, CTD, or do some other unexpected thing. Just today, playing with Roverdude's awesome mods, I was trying to launch some greenhouses up to an orbiting station. It took a dozen tries. I have a standard lifter that will give me 15,000 DV up to 5t of payload, so I should have no problem hitting my station with it. But it took so many tries because of crashes, random launchpad explosions, my rocket performing unscheduled disassembly in flight a few times for no discernible reason, my payload just vanishing (yeah, here one minute, gone the next). Not one was a launch failure due to gameplay, it was all due to game failures. That's not complete, and that's frustrating. I don't collect logs and I don't do crash reports because what's the point? I just restart and cross my fingers that it'll work this time. So, Devs, in the unlikely chance that you're actually reading this, you're doing good work. Keep doing good work. And then do more good work. Get this game to where it so deserves to be. We're all counting on you.

@NathanKell thanks for the feedback and the explanation. I wonder what the heck I had going on, if that's the case.

Not the solution, but I think I see WHY it's happening. @NathanKell I think you were working this, so maybe this will help you. So I had a station in a circular equatorial orbit at 350km. I docked a module with it at a right angle to the station, and presto... madness ensued. Just for fun though, I decided to crank that puppy up to 4X physics warp and watch what happened. Here's what I observed: The orbit isn't changing. It is, but actually it's not. I zoomed out and watched for a while and what I realized is that the apoapsis had actually become fixed in space, and the planet was pulling away from it. This accounts for the fluxuations, on one side of the sun, the planet will pull away from the apoapsis, on the other side, it's going to move back towards it. The orbit isn't changing, just the opposite. The apoapsis is almost acting like it's disconnected from the body it's orbiting, and the body is pulling away from it and moving back towards it depending on where you are its solar orbit, and the apoapsis is acting like it's tidally locked to the sun. So if I'm looking at the orbit of Kerbin from the top-down, and Kerbin is at the 3 o'clock position in relation to the sun, and my apoapsis is at the 3 o'clock position in relation to Kerin, then in half of an orbit, Kerbin will pull away from my apoapsis and my periapsis will be in the center of the planet, but it will appear in the micro scale that my craft has wandered several hundred kilometers off course by the time Kerbin gets to the 9 o'clock position in relation to the sun. As it continues to the rest of its orbit, Kerbin settles back into it's original position in relation to the apoapsis, and everything looks normal again. Well, except for the times the station re-entered before that happened, but it was all in the name of science, so Kerbal losses were expected. If you start at the 6 o'clock position, you have a much better chance of completing an orbit. Just to see if that was the case, I did the exact same experiment using RSS in sandbox, so that I'd have everything in a larger scale, and I observed the same phenomenon with a station orbiting Earth at 360 km in the same orientations (3 o'clock/ 3 o'clock), but much more pronounced due to the larger bodies involved. And more re-entries because the station had no hope of completing an orbit. So, hope that helps. EDIT: I'm not usually a fan of hyperedit, but I downloaded it to try it out. If I used HE from the tracking station to force the station back to it's normal orbit, then all of the weirdness went away. The station would stay in orbit, the ap and pe would behave as expected, and no phantom forces seemed to come into play - no random tumbling or other bizarre behavior. Is it possible that the act of docking in orbit somehow breaks the link between the station's orbit and the body it's orbiting?

*Puts on professor hat* In all fairness, your survey has only been live for 3 hours and collected 54 respondents (as I write this). To be statistically significant, with 95% confidence, you'll need 383 respondents. Additionally, in terms of survey design, for each independent variable (KSP version) you've grouped your positive respondents into one response group, while your negative respondents are split between two, with neither of them being a moderate response (as has been pointed out.) Several people have stated that they joined the positive response group, even though had there been a more moderate negative response option, they would have chosen it. The result will be a bias toward the positive group in direct comparisons. If the "bugs are killing me" option was intended to be a neutral compromise option between positive and negative responses, the phrasing of the option gives it a negative-slant, potentially pushing moderate responses into the positive option, again creating potential bias. It will be difficult to establish a trend, also, because you're not really comparing a rate, you're comparing snapshot data, and that data could be skewed by the respondent's last experience with KSP, or biased by attitudes on the forum. So this is less data collection and more opinion poll, and opinion polls are not really considered "data" because opinions are both situationally dynamic and subject to question bias. Lastly, while your goal is to collect data, you did not indicate what the purpose of the data collection is, or what you hope to prove or disprove. A better method of data collection would be to ask less subjective questions such as: Do you experience frequent crashes? Do you experience occasional crashes? Do you experience an insignificant number of crashes? Do you experience no crashes? Has the current state of the game affected your ability or motivation to play? Do you alter your gameplay because of the possibility of crashing? Would you say you've been generally satisfied or dissatisfied with KSP <version>? What version of KSP are you using? Do you use mods? What type OS are you playing on? What is the approximate age of your computer? This would enable you to say: Out of N respondents, X1 number of players of version A experience frequent crashes. Of that set, Y number report that it has affected their gameplay. Of those who continue to play, Z number report that they alter their gameplay due to those crashes. X2 number of players report occasional crashes... etc You would also be able to perform some basic regression to see if there are any significant trends among operating systems, computer hardware, KSP versions, etc. That would probably, actually be hard data that would be useful to the community and the devs. But then, on the other hand, if your goal is to run a biased opinion poll to silence the whiners, you're on target. ***Professor hat off On a lighter note, it's Towel Day. Don't Panic!

I just went back and re-read some of this thread. Good lord. Talk about peeing in someone's cheerios. What the hell is wrong with us? Let's put a stop to the ever-escalating hyperbolic arguing over just about everything (and that includes me). Welcome back devs. Do what you do. Glad to have you back, hope you can get a handle on things. Thanks for checking in, and for the updates. Looking forward to more of your best work in the weeks ahead.

We are at war with Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eastasia. There are no bugs. There have never been any bugs. KSP 1.1.2 runs smoothly and without any issues. People who report or complain about their issues are disloyal. KSP 1.1.3 will be amazing and bring incredible new features and an all new and improved gaming experience. Very good, Winston.

Were it me, I wouldn't release until I had a finished product. Then I wouldn't have to choose. If I did have to choose, I think bugfixing should always come first until your current version if feature complete, and that you shouldn't even think about new features until the current release is stable for the majority of users on all platforms. Critics have been VERY nice to KSP so far, but all it's going to take is one or two reviewers talking about an amateurish game that crashes frequently and has gameplay issues and your new customer base will drop off sharply. Word of mouth on KSP is good... so far, but judging from these threads, patience is starting to wear thin for a lot of people.

Sorry, I agree with @Alshain. Make the current version stable and feature complete before trying to add new stuff.

Have more than one? Align one to 5 degrees and one to 19. That way you can land your jets and crash your spaceplanes with the same precision!

Instrument approaches (fixed pitch) are planned at 3 degrees. Visual approaches (pitch for airspeed) are generally 5. KSP approaches are anywhere from 3 to vertical in my experience. It wouldn't have to have an external window, just let it be on all the time, but yeah, I get your point about being tough to see. I've been flying IRL now for 23 years and I'll freely admit that in KSP I let Kramax do my approaches.

Two words: Realism overhaul. It's like a whole new game.