Markarian421

Here's a craft file and log for a really simple (3 unique parts) stock craft with the same landing gear that exhibits the same behavior. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zgcfx1n1kh3u4md/AAC2f7c-8Bwgt12Ncok3INTDa?dl=0

The one I'm using now originally had 6 landing gear, although I've tried many combinations now. With 12 it slides less, but still goes nuts when I turn on parking brake. I do have some mods and I'm using a Near Future Spacecraft pod and Tweakscale on some of the landing legs (only 110%) -- tonight I'll see if I can make something stock and see if it does the same thing.

I just started playing again recently after a long time away, and on Eve my vessels keep slowly sliding. So I installed this, and same as you when I engage parking break it causes my craft to start jumping around and shaking violently. KSP 1.11.1, on MacOS.

Does this work with 1.2.1 or does it need an update? I just read the last few pages and I didn't see any mention.

What's the file format? .cfg or something else?

How/where do I apply this patch? Does this go in the config file?

I'll try f4 next time. When it happened earlier today, I could right click on the part but there was no option to set it as a target.

Something that often happens to me when I'm trying to rendezvous or dock with another spacecraft (or grab a craft on a stranded astronaut mission) is that I'll suddenly lose my target in the final stages. And I'm so close I can't select it as a target in map view, I can only see my own ship. Is there a key for this? A control I'm missing? It would be nice to have some way to select the closest craft as a target. I've searched Google and these forums, either the answer is too obvious for anyone to mention or there are too many target questions for me to find this answer. Thanks!

I updated the plugins and so far I've been unable to reproduce the problem. I also don't see the mechjeb error you'd noticed in the log. I'll let you know if the problem turns up again. Thanks for the help.

I sent another log, and I'll update the Zodius rework pack. The only time I see it is when I exit the game and then come back in, then the legs are rearranged.

I sent you a link to the log. I'll try to get better screenshots. I'm not sure how to reproduce it yet -- the ship was in orbit around the sun, I exited the game, then next time I opened it, the parts were reconfigured. Edit: before and after screen shots

The quote got messed up . . . this was originally about the weak legs during physics warp. Quantum struts solved that problem. Plus I switched to just using the legs to keep the craft from falling over. I ran into a different problem though. I left the game one evening, when I loaded it the next, the landing gear parts had collapsed in one dimension (x or y?), the hinges were disassembled, and if I tried to articulate them they rotated from the center, not the ends. The first time I loaded the game the part of the hinges attached to the craft were still there, but on my second load (this morning, to take screen shots) those had vanished (probably inside the ship now). This is with version 2.0.1. In the VAB (legs extended): What it looked like on the last load (legs weren't extended -- I should get a better pair of screen shots, but no time right now):

Physics warp. Craft file: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72953992/Test%20%20Craft%20003.craft

I'm wondering if the following is a known problem: I made some landing gear out of these, and while testing I noticed that, once landed, if I accelerate time (4x) the joints lose all strength (and the craft just sits on the ground instead of being held up). I've seen a few comments about the joints becoming weak, maybe this is related / a side effect of the same thing?

boostRatio seems responsible for some of the strange behavior. I've been trying to scale up the LT-1 legs, and it appears I need to adjust: groundHeightOffset (to keep it from shooting into the air) springRatio (to hold up more mass) and then damperRatio and boostRatio to try and get things back under control with the suspension once I've upped springRatio. The boostRatio parameter almost seems like a "superball" adjustment -- I cranked it up on one try, and the legs would bounce higher with each landing. In general I'm finding I need to reduce both damperRatio and boostRatio to keep larger landing gear stable.

@GoSlash27 I haven't had a chance to retest, probably won't until the weekend, but can you explain the changes you made (and maybe point me to your latest rev LT-1/LT-2 config files)? One of the first things I usually do is make scaled versions of the landing gear (I think I usually end up using 2x LT-1's) and it's clear that's going to be more complicated in 1.1. Hints would be appreciated! (And before anyone suggests it -- Tweakscale wasn't doing this right last I checked, and I prefer not to install Tweakscale anyway. It's a really nice mod when it works, and doesn't break anything else . . . but it either doesn't work or breaks something else a little too often for me.)

I tried the LT-1, off the launch pad I'm still having some problems but they are closer to working. They sink through the ground a little, and on one test seemed to sink right through after holding the surface for a second or so but I couldn't reproduce that on a later test. Retracting the legs while on the ground still results in the craft shooting into the air and/or landing legs exploding. On the launch pad I'm still seeing problems that result in the launch pad and/or craft exploding. After saying all that, it's frightening that I'd say these are much better than stock.

OSX 10.10.5, 64 bit, clean install, I'm seeing the same thing -- the two larger landing gear sink below the surface. If I retract landing gear while on the ground (while they are in the ground) it shoots me into the air and/or destroys things. Like the launch pad. This does seem kind of game breaking, it looks like I can't build landers unless someone has a fix.

I've been having similar problems in 1.0.5 -- RCS and parachutes anywhere on a vessel that has service bay may or may not work seemingly at random unless the service bay is open. It's sometimes a little tragic when only too late you see only one of your four parachutes will open and your ship is now headed at the ground too fast and sideways . . .

I should update: after playing yesterday I eventually saw this without OPM installed. It's just that if OPM is installed I see it right away. Highly speculative guess: it's an early sign of being almost out of memory, and installing OPM gets me there a lot faster. The 1.0.x OSX builds of KSP I've tried have some kind of really severe memory use bug, it runs out way sooner than it should. In short: probably not OPM's fault.

I just installed KSP 1.0.5 (clean install, OSX 10.10.5). When I install OPM & Kopernicus 0.5.2, there's a strange offset in the planets view in the tracking station -- planets, orbits and waypoint/spacecraft icons all have different offsets, so that orbits don't do around planets, and don't connect to the object in the orbit. If I remove them it's back to normal. Has anyone else seen this?

I just installed this on my 1.01 game, put a ship into orbit around Tekto, and the game won't let me load that ship from the space center -- it locks up the game if I try. Other ships around stock non-OPM bodies still work fine. (But in map view I also can't switch to the Tekto ship.) Is this a known problem or some unique mess I've created? Update: I restored from my last quicksave and it worked for a while, but I kept running into the same thing. I've uninstalled OPM & restored my pre-OPM save, I'll see if I encounter the same problem around any stock planets. Maybe 1.01 is just too old?

Thanks!

Yes, that is how they should work as long as they are flush with the surface. If you fly a brick wall, and put air brakes on the face of the brick wall, they should not add significant additional drag. Enough that I don't consider air brakes as implemented usable. But I think you're missing the point that it appears the problem isn't tied to normal stationary object drag, it's related to the variable drag air brakes are supposed to produce. Those appear to be different parameters. IRL I'm an R&D physicist working on scientific instrumentation, and I can't tell you how many times I've had a discussion like that with someone in the software group. "Well yes when it comes to using the instrument this code breaks everything, but it works the way we coded it so it's not a bug." So you just made my day! (Luckily their manager is also a physicist who also considers "doesn't do what it should" a bug.)

I'll have to take another look . . . probably not tonight. But following what you're saying, I think I did notice the problem is even worse if you mount an airbrake on a surface that's at an angle to the direction of flight. If an airbrake is flush with the surface it's mounted on, no matter what the angle of that surface, it should not add any significant drag. But it may be that the game is only looking at angle relative to flight as opposed to angle of deployment. (If so, that's a bug.) Even if that is the case, I was seeing problems with airbrakes mounted at no angle to airflow, they still act partially deployed. Maybe the angle isn't being calculated correctly? That or it doesn't go to zero drag at zero angle. The reason I mentioned the deflectionLiftCoeff is that in playing around with pretty much every parameter in the config file, that appeared to be the one related to the problem. Even zeroing out other parameters did not fix it, but increasing this parameter makes it much worse.