Neilski

Update: I've now tried a similar craft in 1.9.1, 1.10.1 and 1.11.1. Outcome: things work perfectly in 1.9.1 and 1.10.1; they don't work AT ALL in 1.11.1. I suspect that all surface recovery missions are currently impossible until this is fixed. I will report it as a bug on the tracker shortly (and add a link here). Thanks for the assistance, folks! Edit: bug is now on the tracker here

It isn't happening for me. Weird that it's occurring for some of us but not others. In both a long-standing career and a brand new one, pods seem to have the correct SAS level for me. It's a super-minor bug in some senses, but also (in my view) worth fixing pretty urgently, before a load of newbies find that their craft which had full SAS suddenly have less or none... Has it been reported yet on the tracker?

Yeah, I have them too, though I don't really need 'em cos of the wheels. Very handy for translation while hovering though, indeed. Ahh, good ideas on both fronts there. Must check!

Ah, cool! I'm struggling to make sense of your picture but was the Klaw deployed vertically downwards on a piston? And was this in 1.11? I'm wondering what's fundamentally different between your ship and mine...

Actually the very first craft just had the hinged wheels and no piston, and I couldn't make that one work either. Yeah, certainly possible, but the weird thing is that the version of that craft that I used before buying BG was actually successful - it had no wheels and so it was a total bugger to get it to hover and land right on top, but when I got the alignment right, it just worked. No explosions, no "fake" grabs... Oh yes, this has bitten me several times already and it'll probably bite me again because I never seem to remember to edit the priority in the VAB! Thanks for the tip about the image URL - will try again next time.

OK, wow it's good to know that it's (or at least was) possible to make it work - were these successes in 1.11 or earlier? I'm thinking of trying my craft on an earlier version just to see if something broke in 1.11. Most of the time it doesn't explode (just acts like it grabbed, but the module doesn't stick to the Klaw despite offering me a release button) but when it does, it happens right at the point of contact. I have formed the impression that if the contact arises from the Klaw being moved into contact by the hinge/piston, it won't work (failure to grab, or bang). If the Klaw comes into contact from the ship itself moving, it's all good

Before my recent purchase of BG, I had tackled a few "surface recovery" contracts and had sworn off them. The way I approached them, it was just so damn painful to hover a craft with a Klaw above the module and try to land on it. What I really wanted was a way to lower a craft onto the module and then take off. Once I bought BG, I took the next surface recovery contract I was offered and had a go. I tried two approaches with BG parts: a wheeled rover, with the wheels on alligator hinges so it could lower its body (+ Klaw) onto the module, and a modified version of the rover with the Klaw on a piston to just lower the Klaw directly onto the module. Outcome: both approaches failed miserably, because either the whole craft blew up, or the Klaw appeared to engage (and the PAW offered me a "release" button) but the module didn't move with the rover. Very very frustrating. Many attempts, and not a single success. See pic below, if it works, for a flavour of things looked. Has anyone made these BG parts work for picking stuff up? (PS: the "Insert image from URL" function won't work for me. This forum is just plain odd :-)) https://imgur.com/a/kmOGybA

For info, I've just tested both of these issues with 1.10.1. Kerbals don't exhibit the "stuck to the ground" problem in 1.10.1. However, the LT-2 struts (and perhaps others) do exhibit the issue above. I may download an earlier version and see if it shows up there. However, both of these are pretty minor, as bugs go, so I'm not sure there's any point in reporting them at all given the severe bugs that are still awaiting repair. (Chief on my personal list: the asteroid mass bug which was actually made much worse by the latest fix.) Speaking of other bugs, the "ship accelerates when Kerbal goes EVA" one bit me last night during a satellite repair mission. I think this was the first time I realised what was happening (on a previous occasion I thought the game just needed a restart). When I played about with it, I spotted that just after EVA, the Kerbal was a long way from the hatch on the Mk1 lander can (about a torso-length - I can't seem to paste an image into this post) and when I moved him up and down with W/S, he got rather closer to the ship; when he got to the "normal distance" (basically touching the ship) the buggy acceleration stopped entirely, having reduced somewhat as he got closer.

Wow, that's already insanely low. How much dv does the probe have?

What tool do you use to help set these up? (I'm a total noob at gravity assists.)

Huh? This is KSP - making sense is optional Also, HECS2 have great features for the mass - huge battery capacity, decent reaction wheels, great SAS... But I will confess I can't think of a good reason to put two of 'em right under a HECS

I've struggled to find any instructions for this mode (somebody please post a link if any exist) but I found by accident that after you pick up a part (from a cargo module or just somewhere on a ship) you can hit "i" again and it's stored temporarily in a magical invisible fashion (but the Kerbal turns blueish as a hint that something is afoot). You can then EVA around, hit "i" again, and bingo it's on your cursor waiting to be placed. So, no need to ditch the jetpack. Ditching the chute does help tho cos you can store small/light stuff there to speed up the work.

We've all had this a few times I'm sure, and it's very frustrating when you feel like you've done nothing differently from a successful variant. I can actually see what looks like a strut from the left booster to the main stack. That still leaves a few of the issues pointed out above: lack of fins at the base, the timing (and severity) of the turn, and the possibility that the tanks are emptying from the top down. Definitely adding a few fins should help a lot. Once they are fitted, I would suggest starting the turn very early and then using prograde SAS. If the top tanks are emptying first, invert the priorities. (And yes, the boosters really do look like massive overkill )

Yeah, I can't find a way to directly grant them experience with Alt-F12 but I can of course cheat them to a solar orbit and weirdly enough, that does the trick in terms of getting them the "orbit around The Sun" experience (once I cheat them back to Kerbin). Perhaps it's something about my transfer orbit to Eve that it doesn't like... Unless I can find a way of reproducing this issue, I'm not sure there's any value in reporting it as a bug. I have however installed a copy of 1.10.1 now, so I can at least attempt side-by-side tests.

Ah, this reminds me of a painful RAM-related story from many years ago. Must have been the late 90s, and I was pretty cross to learn that a colleague had managed to convince a department manager to spend £10k on a 128 MB memory upgrade, to double the RAM in his favourite IBM RS/6000 workstation. It was annoying for a few reasons, but mainly because I had just spent the previous few months successfully demonstrating that Linux-based PC workstations ran all of our codes faster than the workstation in question, and the total cost of the PCs I was using at the time was around £5k with 512 MB installed. Facepalm time. Meanwhile, my PC now has 16 GB of RAM, and even though it has some left over when KSP hits 8 GB or so, I still need to restart the game at or before that point cos it just crawls (not thrashing, just damn slow). I only have KAC installed, along with BG and MH, so I guess this is just how it is.