Vessel control problems?

[PickingUserNamesIsHard]

Hey, guys

I played KSP a while back, but stopped for a bit, so maybe there have been some changes I'm unaware from.

The first thing I noticed is that unpiloted ships are insanely hard to control without automated SAS. They just buck wildly and go crazy constantly. What's the workaround for that? I tried using the inline reaction wheel but it didn't really make a measurable difference. Is there some advanced automated SAS in the tech tree somewhere that I should research before I can start doing satellite missions?

My other problem appears to be a bug, but it may be working as intended and I'm just missing some vital detail. My piloted ships will fly fine, presumably because piloted ships are automatically given SAS. However, after I complete an EVA, say, a moon landing, the ship stops acting as if its piloted and begins bucking wildly out of control like it does with satellites. This has so far ruined two otherwise perfect moon missions because of the sheer amount of fuel wasted trying to get the ship to fly in a straight line for any length of time. How do I fix this/work around this? It's pretty frustrating.

(PS, while I'm here, how do I get the maneuver mode these days? I can't find it and I miss it. Did they remove it?)

[cantab]

SASless flight of rockets is indeed hard. So far as I can your options are don't do it (use pilots until you unlock the OKTO), practice it, get a joystick or controller and practice it, or make an aerodynamically-tuned rocket that hardly needs control input.

If the pilot gets out and no other source of SAS is available, it will be turned off. But you should be able to turn it back on once you get back in. Be careful not to bump an empty ship in space with your EVA kerbal!

To unlock manoeuvre nodes in career you need to upgrade both the Tracking Station and Mission Control to level 2.

[PickingUserNamesIsHard]

SASless flight of rockets is indeed hard. So far as I can your options are don't do it (use pilots until you unlock the OKTO), practice it, get a joystick or controller and practice it, or make an aerodynamically-tuned rocket that hardly needs control input.

If the pilot gets out and no other source of SAS is available, it will be turned off. But you should be able to turn it back on once you get back in. Be careful not to bump an empty ship in space with your EVA kerbal!

To unlock manoeuvre nodes in career you need to upgrade both the Tracking Station and Mission Control to level 2.

Yeah I figured that's how it was supposed to work, but it seems like SAS isn't turning back on when my Kerbal gets back in the seat. The ship just goes wild whenever I try to take off of Mun or whatever. Could there be some other reason why my ship is losing control on Mun when it made it up there fine? I've been brainstorming ideas but I can't come up with anything.

[Srpadget]

Yeah I figured that's how it was supposed to work, but it seems like SAS isn't turning back on when my Kerbal gets back in the seat.

When the pilot gets back into the ship, SAS becomes *available* again, but it will still be turned off. You need to command SAS on after your pilot gets back into the ship, just as you do on the launchpad during preflight.

Also, in regards satellites (this was alluded to in an earlier response, but it should be stated explicitly): As of 0.90, the Stayputnik (the first and most primitive probe core) does not have SAS circuitry/programming built into it--it's basically a radio relay that lets you pilot the vehicle completely manually. A few people welcome this as a challenge to their piloting skills, but most of the community consider the Stayputnik to be nerfed into unusability. The usual tactic seems to be to avoid unkerballed satellites/probes until a better, SAS-capable, probe core is available.

[Renegrade]

Yeah I figured that's how it was supposed to work, but it seems like SAS isn't turning back on when my Kerbal gets back in the seat. The ship just goes wild whenever I try to take off of Mun or whatever. Could there be some other reason why my ship is losing control on Mun when it made it up there fine? I've been brainstorming ideas but I can't come up with anything.

I've actually had a bug where SAS refused to do anything after a brief power outage ended on a probe (HECS based I think). It would turn on, but it wouldn't provide ANY input to stabilize the heading. Restarting KSP cleared that issue. I haven't seen it happen since.

The usual tactic seems to be to avoid unkerballed satellites/probes until a better, SAS-capable, probe core is available.

Waiting an entire tier. The OCTO core is literally just one step above the Stayputnik.

That being said, Squad really phoned in the command pod/probe core stuff. I'd love to be able to add/remove features to pods and cores with tweakables after unlocking upgraded components from the tech tree (ex. upon unlocking advanced flight control, all probes and capsules can then have a SAS module added to them for 50kg extra mass, and as progression increases, the mass penalty goes down and the option for additional features goes up)