Docking Problem

[alexman142]

Hi all.

I recently built a nice looking space station in Kerbin Orbit. I have several Dragon V2 pods docked on it from Lazteks Space X mod, and everything was great until I decided to delete some mod files from the FASA mod. After realizing that that option wiped the station, I re-downloaded the whole mod and everything seemed to work again, that is until I tried to undock one of my pods. Nothing happened.

I can dock and undock newer crafts that I put on the station, the offending pods are the pods that I docked before I had to re-install the mod. Is there a way that I can fix the pods to make them undock from the station correctly?

[JAFO]

Having had some issues in the past with a docking port that refused all docking attempts with it*, I'd suggest checking in your game-save's persistent.sfs file for mismatched uid numbers.

Each docking port on the station will have a uid number assigned to it, as will the docking port on each pod. The docking ports of docked vessels should have matching dockUId numbers of the other vessel associated with them.

My guess is that when you un and re-installed FASA, possibly some of the uid numbers got out of whack. Depending on how many docking ports and docked modules you have, it may be a bit of a chore to figure out which ports are which. If/when you are sure you've found a problem, you'll need to edit the uid numbers to match. If you can identify a pair of ports which are functioning properly, it should provide you with an example for setting things right. Odds are it would take quite a bit of detective work, so I'd suggest you back up the persistent.sfs file, undock one (working) pod, save and back up again, then compare the two backed up files to see what's changed. You may need to do this a few times to get a clear picture of which ports are which. Be sure to only edit the backups. When you think you've got it fixed, swap the edited backup in, in place of the original persistent.sfs, and see if it works.

It really can be a bit of a PITA to sort out, especially if you have lots of ports to check, so good luck with it.

* In my case, somehow the dockUId number on my station did not get reset to 0 when I'd undocked earlier. The result was that the docking port thought it was still docked with, so it ignored all attempts to dock with it.

Edited March 8, 2015 by JAFO
edited for clarity

[alexman142]

Thanks.

Thankfully, there are only two ports that I have to deal with. The rest seem to work perfectly.

[JAFO]

Yes.. but the tricky bit is figuring out which one is which in the persistent.sfs file. There's no simple way to ID a particular port.

[Vanamonde]

Moved to support.