Pacca

As it turns out, 5 files failed to validate! It seems to work now, thanks for the head up :3

Toggling crossfeed doesn't appear to do all that much; even when I attempted to disable it so that the ISRU could only refuel the miner itself as a workaround, it still didn't do anything. The difficulty options are set to whatever the default "normal" settings are. I'm not sure how to mess with them mid game... It should be able to feed at least Liquid Fuel to the docked craft; if not that, then the lander itself still has a half filled tank connected directly to the ISRU that can accept both Oxidizer and Liquid Fuel; shouldn't it at the very least refill that? This is very confusing...

There are no fuel cells, both probes are powered entirely by solar panels (and engine alternators, when those are running). I might run some tests later (although I'll have to redock these exact two craft again anyways to make up for the lost fuel, so I'll test that out first).

So I recently sent a Mining rig to Dres, to act as a refueling gateway between Kerbin and Jool. It's a pretty simple thing; just a lander with a big fuel tank, RCS stuff, various ore containers, etc. Here's a pic if your interested. I successfully landed it on Dres, and it was able to mine and fill up it's Liquid Fuel, Oxidizer, Mono-propellant and Ore tanks without much issue. To make use of it, I built a really heavy probe to explore Jools various moons. It's the largest payload I've ever gotten off Kerbin before, so I'm pretty proud of it :3 It has four detachable landers that can individually deorbit and do science, and it's composed out of lots of different kinds of tank to attach the NERV rocket to the Kerbodyne tanks without making it look ugly. While the redundancy added by the landers is helpful at times (functioning as emergency boosters if I need to do quick maneuvers that the NERV can't pull off in time), it also makes the probe rather complicated. It has lots of individual tanks, some of which accept liquid fuel and oxidizer, and some of which only take liquid fuel (as I limited them for use with the NERV). After getting the heavy Jool probe in orbit around Dres and rendezvousing with the lander, I docked them successfully. Afterwards, I reopened the Mining landers Solar Panels and thermal gear (turned off during the rendezvous to avoid accidental damage) and turned on the ISRU, to finish processing the leftover ore (which at the time was nearly full, over 1000 units of it). The ISRU reached it's optimal temperature and stayed there, and the ore started to get depleted. The overall stats in the corner said that ore was getting used up, and that Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer was being added to the ship... But none of the tanks showed any signs of gaining any fuel! I checked all of them, and they all seemed to stay at the same levels. I used time warp up to ten times (I couldn't do any more due to my orbit being very close to the surface), and while the overall counter said more fuel was being added, none of the tanks showed it. So I left the ISRU on, went to the tracking station, and time warped at full blast for a couple of seconds to let the ISRU do it's thing. When I went back after that, the ore tanks were completely empty, and none of the fuel tanks had gained any fuel at all Is this some sort of bug? Is it possible for generated fuel to simply be banished to the void? Or am I missing something here? Thankfully it's not the end of the world for me, I can simply land the mining rig and get more, but it'd be really obnoxious to have to process the ore only when undocked... EDIT: Neither craft has fuel cells installed. They're both powered solely by Solar Panels and engine alternators.

After having the beginnings of my first space station wobble into my own personal Kessler Syndrome, I've decided to look at other options to keep my creations stable. I previously only used EAS-4 Strut connectors, and they did just fine for keeping rockets and landers together. But my space station, having been composed entirely of Sr. docking ports and pieces which are entirely stable on their own, did not have this option. My searches suggest that Autostrutting may be the answer to my problem, but I'm having trouble getting clear info on it; Does Autostrutting dynamically change what an object is "attached" too depending on circumstance (docking/undocking, decoupling, explosive spontaneous deconstruction, etc.)? If not, what happens when the object strutted to is disconnected or destroyed? What do the various options do, and when are they best used? "disabled" is obvious of course, but the rest confuse me, especially since I'm not sure about the above two questions... Should Autostrutting be used to replace EAS-4 Strut connectors or supplement them? How effective is it at keeping space stations and other large docked up structures from destabilizing and damaging or destroying themselves? I've heard people sing it's praises, and I'd like to know why, but I'm just not sure how to make use of the feature, or even where to get good info on it. Also, I'm trying to go vanilla for now, so I'm avoiding mods; I've only just started, so simple things like bringing one-way payloads to planets and moons are still a real struggle to me. I'd like to really get to know the game before I mod it...

That could easily be worked around by having it only target debris, so potential bases and other vehicles would be left untouched. I think debris should be subject to more special cases, actually; I once had to sit and watch a shard of antenna slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean, with no way to save, switch off, recover it, or go back to the KSC because it was "moving on the surface". I understand the limit there for vehicles and whatnot, but having physics protections for debris seems silly...

You have to RCS carefully; never use it when your already going down, only when you bounce up. You use it to kill the springs energy, if you RCS while the springs are already going down, it will make things worse. It takes careful observation and quick timing, and it is somewhat easy to mess up a bit. A bit of a hassle for some maybe, but I like doing it.

I usually live with the landing legs, but I do have to compensate for them bouncing around and knocking spacecraft over. My Minmus landers tend to be very tall and easy to tip, so I actually use the bounciness as a feature; if I land on a hill by mistake, they can give me a cheap method to get to flat ground without burning fuel, provided I have SAS available. Once you do find a nice landing spot, you can make up for the springiness by using RCS thrusters to push them into the ground when they bounce up, if you have them. If you don't, SAS is usually enough to keep things steady while you wait for the bounciness to settle, although obviously that depends on how the lander is built. It can be quite frustrating though, I've tipped many a lander to it. I usually make a save before landing, so I can redo it if necessary (unless your in hard mode, you can't make them there)...

I'm running 1.5.1.2335 according to the pause menu, and version 1.5.1 of Making History. I got the game off steam a few weeks ago and have simply been using that, if that's any help... Aw, that's a shame. At least I know I'm not going crazy; I couldn't find anything about the issue myself.

I've been trying to use Sm-25 Service Module (Pretty sure it's a part of the making history DLC) for a couple of things. However, it's shroud seems to be bugged. Although it visually always works as intended, the game seems to "forget" what state it's in. By that I mean the selection made by the mouse starts behaving as if the shroud is closed, even when it's open! In the editor, parts will attach to the exterior of the module instead of the interior. This can be worked around by toggling the shroud off and on; it works, but this issue can be very confusing with perspective and the small door areas, where a placed part might look like it's in the right spot until the camera moves or the shroud is visible again. Where this really trips me up is in space though! I like to stow extendable Solar Panels or Science parts (the later seemingly it's intended purpose, given their use in the Apollo missions) in the side doors. however, when the game messes up the hitbox after the shroud is opened, there is no way to put it back on! Switching off of the ship after the shroud is opened seems to trigger the problem, and results in everything I put in the doors being unselectable under any circumstance, rendering them useless I'm starting to wonder if I should even bother using the shroud portion of this part now, given how unreliable it is. Is there a fix for this? I'd really love to use those side doors, it's very unique and a concept I quite enjoy it! The problem has occurred without mods, and continues to occur with a sound only mod, so I can only assume it's a consistent vanilla issue... EDIT: I'm running 1.5.1.2335 according to the pause menu, and version 1.5.1 of Making History. I got the game off of steam a few weeks ago, so I'm using whatever Steam threw at me. I bought the game and Making History together; I've never run the game without Making History installed.