tfabris

I've tried it several times and my ship keeps getting ripped apart. All the times that this happened, I didn't do the group-action deployment below 500m, so that wasn't it. The ship was in the neighborhood of 2000m altitude above ground, over the space center. The ship really wasn't going that fast either, maybe 100m/s vertical speed. Having a lighter craft overall might have something to do with it, as Rhomphaia suggested. So I thought, maybe what I need to do is to slow down my speed significantly with my main engines, before deploying. So I did that: I slowed to within 10m/s vertical speed and deployed the chutes with the group action key. That worked, the chutes didn't rip the ship apart, but then something different than usual happened. Because I was using my engines, the ship did a little climbing, went up slightly past 0m/s vertical speed, so I cut the engines. The parachutes were still deployed (not popped open yet) and they had swung below my ship. As my ship gently crested and slowly started descending again, the parachutes started to drift upwards above my ship again. But then suddenly, just as my ship went from slightly ascending to slightly descending (at the 0kph crossover point), all the parachutes vanished, and I had no more parachutes all of a sudden. Plummet. This is a maneuver that I've done dozens of times in "normal stagin" mode with this ship, both in testing on Kerbin and also during a real flight to Duna, and I've never had the chutes disappear unexpectedly at slow speed like that. When I deployed the chutes with the staging key, they always stayed attached, even if the ship was tumbling (it wasn't tumbling in this case, it was a gentle transition from ascending to descending). I know there were times in the past that if I was going massively fast I could rip the chutes off, but that wasn't the case this time. Here's what I'm wondering: Is this somehow related to the fact that, after the ship lands, the parachutes disappear? Maybe there's a bit of code saying "delete the parachutes if the ship is going zero kph and it has at some point in the past touched the ground". Would that explain it?

Okay, I tried that. I assigned "deploy chute" for all the chutes to the Custom Action 1 action group. I didn't try going all the way to Duna and back, I just landed my lander near the space center to test it out. First, I climbed to several thousand feet, cut the throttle and let the lander drop, then used the regular staging key to pop the chutes and land the first time. Landed perfectly, gentle touchdown. I disconnected my rover from the lander, then I EVA'd and repacked all the chutes (there was a lot of them), and took off again. Basically simulating what I would have done on the surface of Duna. I got up to a few thousand feet, going about the speed I was going when I popped the chutes the first time. I pressed the Custom Action 1 key (the 1 key on the keyboard), and.... My lander instantly exploded and ripped apart in mid-air. :-( I'm pretty sure that I wasn't going any faster than I have gone before when popping the chutes. Is there something different about the physics when you use an action group versus when you use the staging?

Thank you! I will try that!

Thanks for the quick reply! Can you give me more details about how to put the parachutes in an action group, and how that action group gets fired off when I'm on the mission? As in, step by step instructions and which keys to press? I've never done that before. I have too many parachutes in this design to manually trigger one by one.

I've had this happen several times now, so I'm pretty convinced that this is a 100% reproducible situation for me. Can anyone help me work around this? I have a fairly large lander with a rover that I've flown to Duna and back a couple of times. Sometimes, I've gotten it back to Kerbin with enough fuel left in its tanks to actually rocket-brake and land on its landing legs, instead of the more traditional method of separating and re-entering the command capsule. Part of the lander design involves a pretty big cluster of radial-mount parachutes. There's a lot of them because it's a fairly big lander with a lot of fuel for a lander (and eight poodle engines). The parachutes work perfectly when I get to Duna. They are in their own stage, and I pop them with the staging key, and float gently to Duna's surface. Then I EVA and walk around the lander and repack all the chutes. Works fine, all the chutes are visibly repacked. I have a little fun with the rover. Then I use the staging bar at the left side of the screen to put the chutes into a new stage, and put that stage in the proper sequential place for my return to Kerbin. Then I launch back off the surface of Duna, dock with the gas tank I left parked in Duna orbit (the gas tank was my Third Stage which had fuel left over when I got to Duna), top off my lander's tanks, undock from the now-empty gas tank, and burn back to Kerbin. When I get back to Kerbin, I triple-check that all of my staging is correct, and that the parachutes are in their own stage, they have been repacked, and are ready to use. I retro-brake to get safely into Kerbin's atmosphere, and I'm at a reasonable rate of descent. The Space Center is below me, I'm ready to make my triumphant return by landing on my lander's landing legs, back at the actual space center. It's going to be so awesome. I press the staging key to pop the chutes and.... Nothing. The chutes don't pop. In the staging bar, the chute stage combines with whatever stage was above it. I press the staging key again. The contents of that next stage work (in this case, it's the separator ring that connects my command capsule to the lander), but the chutes on the lander stage still don't pop. Luckily I had a couple unused chutes on the command capsule, and those were in their own, final, stage, and that stage works. But my lander body plummets to the ground and shatters. Important note: The "save a couple chutes for the capsule" design was a late-added feature. On earlier versions of this trip, I'd included the command capsule's chutes in the same group as the chutes on the lander body, and I had used those chutes in the Duna landing. I had repacked those chutes on Duna as well. When I did that, those chutes also failed to pop when I got back to Kerbin. Luckily, since there were only two of those, I was able, in the last few seconds, to right-click on them on my capsule and select "Deploy Chute" from the flyout menu. This got my capsule safely back to Kerbin. Barely. So what I'm getting as a take-away from this, is is that repacked chutes don't work in a *stage*, but they do work if you hand-deploy them. Does that sound accurate? Is there a fix for this?

I guess because the view from the cockpit for most of my lander designs means that my windows are pointing to the sky. I like to see the ground I'm heading for, and change my approach if I see that I'm heading for a steep slope.

Especially since landings without parachutes are pretty much only do-able in the Staging screen. It's quite nerve-wracking to watch those numbers count down and not know which number is the one that hurts. :-)

Thanks! I'm personally not looking for realism, just wondering if adding nosecones would help my crazy asparagus-staged Duna rocket get out of Kerbin atmo easier.

In the current release of KSP (which I think is 0.21.1?), is it still true that aerodynamic nose cones don't serve a functional purpose yet? I'd seen in older conversations that adding an aerodynamic nose cone will increase both drag and weight, resulting in no net benefit beyond aesthetics. Is this still true today?

In the KSP current release, stock no mods, is there a way to show the altitude on the staging screen as actual meters above cumulus granite, as opposed to meters above sea level?

The face on Duna is much smaller than you'd think. I don't think it's possible to see from orbit. I've had trouble finding it even when parked within a couple kilometers of it. Here's how I locate it. - The face is located in the northern hemisphere in a dark-colored depression (shown in the height map in this thread) with a hill in the center of the depression. - To the southeast of this depression, just below the equator, is a larger dark "sea" area. - Between the larger sea and the depression, is a canyon linking the two areas. - That hill in the center of the depression? The face is on the Eastern slope of that hill, facing the canyon. - If you draw an imaginary line from the mouth of the canyon to the hill, the face is approximately somewhere along that line, about half way (ish) up that hill. - The face is very small, it is object-sized, not mountain-sized. It is darkly colored. You're looking for a dark speck as you pan around. Just a speck. - I think you have to actually be landed on the surface near it, and panning around with the camera, to be able to see it. I don't think it's visible from orbit.

WHAT? WHERE DID THAT COME FROM!?!?!?!? I had no idea you could do that, never knew you could get that bar to appear in the Map view. I only knew that the bar was there in the Space Center. Being able to track the debris in the Map view will likely take care of my issue. Thanks!

I've made my first trip to Duna. My Kermen are on the surface with their rover having fun. But soon it will be time to send them home. Their lander has probably enough fuel to launch back into Duna orbit, but probably not enough for a full burn back to Kerbin. Not to worry! I parked a booster rocket with some fuel left (really, it was more or less my third stage) in orbit around Duna. It has a docking ring and everything. Before making the Duna trip, I practiced docking with it in Kerbin orbit. (Detach from the booster, rotate my capsule around, then dock with the docking ring on the booster.) Problem is, now that I'm on the Duna surface, I can't figure out how to locate it and rendezvous with it. I can see it using the Tracking station at the space center, it registers as a piece of debris. It's among a few pieces of debris currently drifting around Duna. A bit of trial-and-error and I can get the thing on my screen. Looks good, orbiting there, waiting for me to fly up and dock with it. What I can't figure out how to do is, when piloting the lander, how to set that thing as a Target. If I could do that then I could use the map view to time my launch and burn to rendevous with it. Problem is that I can't figure out how to mark it as a target. Is there any way to do this?

The stock ships handle fine if you press T, which gives rise to the idea that the designers perhaps intended for it to be turned on most of the time.

Even if I'd gone through the key binds, all I would have known is that T toggles SAS, but not known what SAS was, or why it was important.

I understand that turning it on by default would be a bad idea. But having it be made clearer in the documentation (the wiki) would have solved my problem. The preflight checklist you suggested is also a good idea.

This was with the stock built-in spaceships.

As a new player, I didn't know what RCS and SAS were, so I didn't know that those were the features I needed to activate to keep my ship from spinning out of control. I actively searched for that information. When I googled for things like "how to keep my ship from spinning out of control", all of the results were long threads about ship construction details, ways to build more stable ships. None of the threads started off with "did you press T?". So there should be something out there that makes that more clear for new users.

By the way, how do you change the thread title from "Unanswered" to "Answered"? When I posted the original question, it made me choose between the two. Now I don't see a way to change it to the other thing.

Thanks very much for the tutorial on strut placement, and thanks everyone for an interesting discussion. With this information, I was able to successfully place the struts to prevent my rocket from bending in the middle. It takes trial-and-error to figure out how to place both ends of the strut.

I see why making it the launchpad default would be a bad idea. Making it somehow more prominent in the Wiki was my other suggestion. I actively searched forums and the Wiki for this information and either didn't find it, or if I saw it, didn't clearly understand how it related to my problem.

Agreed that this information was already in a tutorial, and, agreed I should have run the tutorial. But I *also* think it should be in a more prominent place in the Wiki, and possibly even be the launchpad default. And I didn't mean it as a complaint, sorry if I came across that way. I meant it as a *suggestion* to the devs. (This forum is called "Suggestions" right?) I mean, it's a common enough mistake that a cartoon was made about it. Maybe that fact says something? I do software QA for a living, and sometimes the best suggestions are the ones made by the person who's laying their eyes on a piece of software for the first time. It's the newbies who are often the best barometer for the overall design and UI. Experienced users (and the Devs count as experienced users) will ignore the bad parts of the design once they know their way around it, and won't necessarily notice that there's room for improvement there. I'm just saying, hey devs, I'm a newbie, I tried your game for the first time, and here was *my* experience. The fact that I'm a newbie who didn't run the tutorial doesn't invalidate the suggestion, in fact, it gives the suggestion more weight. Note that I also happen to be a newbie who successfully designed more than one mun launch vehicle and performed a mun surface rescue, and multiple in-orbit rendevous and rescues without running a tutorial. I even did Hohmann transfers before I knew what the name was for it. The game *can* be played and enjoyed without running the tutorials. The "T" key was the *only* serious snag I hit in all of that. That's what I'm reporting.

Thanks, this looks like the information I'm looking for. I'm still not clear on how to get it to *do* what is pictured in the screen shots. Do I just experiment with different placements until I get lucky and it looks like the screen shot?

ROFL Excactly!!!!!

Agreed. However, I'm guessing I'm not the only gamer who skips tutorials. I'm making the suggestion from the point of view of a new user who's never seen the thing before. I'm relating what my personal experience was, and how my particular OOBE was. The information (out-of-control spaceship means you're a newbie who didn't turn on RCS/SAS) was hard to find, even when I was actively searching for the knowledge. I think the devs would be interested to know that. It's precisely the sort of thing that devs want to know, because they're usually shielded from that kind of experience.