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I'm kind of stunned that an artifact of the original game's game engine limitations were carried over to the sequel. Wobbly rockets were always a bug. The KSP1 devs spent years trying to minimize the problem, even bringing on new members to work on the issue. Most people don't like them, and they introduce an un-intuitive stumbling block for new players or people that want to learn space. eg. Rocket veers off course on launch. Why? The control part wobbles away from the heading, resulting in SAS shenanigans and off COM thrust. Furthermore, everyone gets rid of wobble to the best of their ability by adding struts, resulting in a higher part count. So you have a feature, that only produces greater part counts. Why? To keep the destructive effect, just define stress tolerances for parts at which they explode, disconnect, crumble or shear. Also, real rockets don't wobble. Scott talking to KSP1 devs about the wobbly rocket bug. They go off on tangents but almost the entire rest of the interview is on the topic. KSP1 dev describes his next gen parts physics sim in which wobbliness is not a feature. --- If you're new to KSP, wobble is that wet noodle, jello rocket thing. Please get rid of wobble all together. Thank you. Development on the issue:

Don't remove the wobbling of rockets entirely but make it a better gameplay feature; let us adjust every joint between two parts. If we want to minimize wobbling between two parts, we increase joint strenght between those two parts, and that joint will weigh heavier. Or if we want to save weight, we reduce the joint strength at the cost of wobble. Weights of each joint should be calculated by the parts in which it connects. Heavier the parts results heavier joints. Then the player's adjustment of joint strength would modify the weight. If this is not a viable suggestion. Make the struts (and autostruts in the future) weigh according to the parts they connects. If struts connect heavier parts, they should be heavier.

So, I've made a small space station (skylab) which has an Advanced Reaction Wheel Module on it. When I dock an Apollo sized ship and disconnect the pod reaction wheels everything seems normal. When I switch to IVA, the ship starts to wobble, only to stop if I switch back to external view. Doesn't happen if the pod reaction wheels are working too. The ship is docked with a Clamp-O-Tron Docking Port Jr.

never mind, found the guilty one

The Joint between the Terrier Engine and the TR-18A Decoupler wobbles when I try to do the Gravity Turn to my rocket. Already Did: Strutsss Placing a stabilizer below the Decoupler. Distributing torques to the first stage and second stage. Not having a second stage at all. (But hey, It worked) Its just annoying when I try to do the Turn and the whole rocket wobbles and oscillates, then the mission fails.

I built this probe to fly into the sun, but upon decoupling the second to last stage, this happened-https://youtu.be/DEPa5NtZqgU Please disregard my video recording skills, I recorded it with my phone. Anyway, if anyone has advice or knows why this is happening, please comment.

Had a question about small craft in orbit. Trying to design a craft to land on Moho so I am trying to keep it considerably small and compact. Using a Mk1 lander can and putting most of the fuel tanks, batteries, etc. inside the can to limit physical size. The problem arises when I try to use RCS thrusters for any type of docking or maneuvering the craft literally goes crazy, and all the RCS thrusters are firing to keep it steady. I've basically done everything in the game unmodded, never had an issue with larger craft and docking, maneuvering etc. but have issues when I go small. Also have issues with it when I build HECS2 probes that are compact. I try to mess with the reaction wheels, turning them off and what not, but then lose the ability to easily dock and what not, should I just put a separate reaction wheel on the craft and turn the reaction wheels off of the lander can?

I pushed the sliders to the max but it isn't enough to satisfy me.... I want more wobble! Can it be done? How?

This is a problem that has been plagueing me since the beginning of KSP time. Whenever I build a space station is ends up shaking itself apart. This particular time All I did was add a mk3 fuesalage with a docking port at both sides. Only 3 parts and a station that was completely stable then shook itself into oblivion. My space stations have no reaction wheels or stability addons. SAS is not enabled (though it makes no difference if it is).

I'm curious about this. I've tried doing some research and find lots of info about wobble in large builds, but that has to do with the various parts of the ship flexing. This is not related to that, as my craft is only a small handful of parts. So, I've built a small, two-stage, sub-orbital probe using Procedural Parts fuel tanks, with a pair of reaction wheels (one 1.25m on stage one, and one .625m on stage two with the probe core). Stage one is a Swivel engine, stage two is a Terrier. Stage one launches nicely, and it flies quite well. This is actually the first design I've made that I have successfully executed a gravity turn with. I have to play with the throttle all the way up, otherwise it will go unstable and start flipping at around 25,000m. The problem comes in stage 2. For some reason, the SAS causes the craft to wobble endlessly, and I don't know why. It's wasting my electric charge from all the constant control inputs. If I turn off the reaction wheel, the craft just floats wildly out of control because the probe core doesn't have a built-in reaction wheel. I've had this problem before, but it was usually associated with having multiple active reaction wheels or RCS thrusters that were interfering with each other. This time, I have only the one reaction wheel active. Any ideas?

Hi there, my recent missions are failing cause of the solar panels that seem to become kinda instable. each time i LOAD my craft, the panels start wobbling until everything explodes - kinda phantom force. i did some tests and it just seems to happen, when the panels are NOT attached to the "main"-craft, but if i have some "arms" going out to different sides and attach them there. Its also not happening until i reload my craft or unfold the panels - so i assume it has something to do with suntracking - not sure. tried to detach one of these "arms" while this was happening, so my craft had just one arm with panels remaining => and became stable. there are no reactionWheels attached to these arms, just on the center. SAS & co disabled. even timewarp just holds it while warp, but in x1 its continuing. Edit: Pictures: Since i doubt logs are helpful, there are none yet - but if someone thinks there are helpful information in it, tell me. The panels are from the KOSMOS-mod.; i also tried the Single ones of this mod and it was even worse.- and i am pretty sure they did work before (in an old install). havent had time to try stock panels yet. - I am still hoping someone knows whats going on here. Nevermind, found it. seems it was caused by radial attached xenon-tanks that caused instability. Followup: definetly caused by the upscaled (Tweakscale) xenon tanks, that seem to behave problemativ when reloading the game. everything is fine after start & so on - until u reload the game and it seems to have problems with the colliders.

I'm playing KSP quite some time now. Since the most recent update I'm having trouble launching my stations. Sometimes in the launchpad, sometimes in space my stations start to wobble slightly, but the wobble gets worse every second and cannot be prevented until the station is just a lump of parts. The only relevant mod installed is Kerbal Joint reinforcement. I have prepared an example Video: https://youtu.be/TVWBvM3oiB0 What is causing this, it really is preventing my Jool missions!

When you're flying a tall, wobbly rocket, the trajectory lines jitter about and it's very hard to plan precise course corrections for distant intercepts and flybys. I initially thought the jittering was just due to rounding errors causing uncertainty, but today I found out it's caused by wobbling of the spacecraft, which really ought to have no effect on its trajectory since the wobble does not affect the center of gravity. Apparently, the projected trajectory lines (orbits) are based on the current speed of the cockpit (or root part) while they ought to be based on the speed of the CG. Apart from the obious annoyance from this jittering, this error can also be exploited to gain free energy because when you activate time warp, the currently displayed trajectory line is fixated and the craft ends up actually flying that trajectory. I used that trick today to get an escape trajectory out of Minmus using only the reaction wheels. I had a contract to activate an engine on an escape trajectory out of Minmus, but the previous stage ran out of fuel when I was still in orbit with a 1400 km apoapsis. So I started to wobble the rocket using "A"/"D", the apoapsis went up and down between 1450 and 1350, I did my best to press the period key at the right time and got a 1420 km apoapsis. Back out of time warp, wobble again, time warp: 1435 km. I got it all the way up to escape trajectory step by step (above 2000 km!), so I could activate the next stage in the required conditions and finished the contract. The time warp trick does not work if the wobble is too intense (cannot activate time warp during acceleration), but once the intensity of the wobble has decreased somewhat, it does work. I filed bug report 9131.