Anyone know of a mod or trick that tells you which part is failing?

[mikeb30165]

Hi guys & many thanks in advance for your suggestions.

I'm building a monsterous 212 seat "star-liner" using the the Mk3 16-seat cabin parts.

There are 13 of these pups & some (one?) of them break(s) apart at the joints on landing, causing the thing to blow up rather spectacularly! It happens about 1 out of every 3 landings. The F3 log is useless as it doesn't tell me which one (or ones) are failing so I don't know where to strengthen the weak joints with struts. I dont want to put them on willy-nilly, because the lag is already pretty bad & too many more struts will make the game unplayable. (anyone else notice the joints on the Mk3 cabins appear quite weak - especially when attached to fuel-tanks).

So, my question is, are there any mods, CFG/logfile hacks or other tricks that can help?

Cheers! Malc

Edited April 17, 2015 by mikeb30165

[Starhawk]

As far as I know, all the Mk3 parts have an issue with attachment strength and come apart very easily.

Kerbal Joint Reinforcement is a mod I've read of which can alleviate this issue.

Happy landings!

[Randazzo]

It's not precisely what you asked, in fact I don't know if there is such a mod, but my suggestion would be to try Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. It makes everything stiffer and sturdier, allowing you to cut down or eliminate struts.

You could also give Ubiozur Welding Continued a shot to help reduce part count, though it's limitations may apply here.

[Lindy]

At the point of disaster you can press F3 it will show you a breakdown of events... This part crashing into that part sort of thing.

[NoMrBond]

You could grab the TimeControl mod and watch the touchdown very very slowly?

There was another mod which put effects where joint breaks happened, but depending on speed it might not be possible to differentiate that explosion from the, well, rest of the explosions

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

You can offset the mk3 part away from the part in front of it, then strut it to pieces and then offset it back.

[Chaos_Klaus]

You can just press F3 in the stock game to see a log of events - including part failiur.

[jarmund]

You can offset the mk3 part away from the part in front of it, then strut it to pieces and then offset it back.

Never thought of that. Have some rep.

[celem]

F3 doesnt spell it out for you maybe, but you can fish some intelligence out of it.

Much like computer compilers it shows a chain of events, and the most interesting is the first. What hit what? And most crucialy, was there a part between them? If so thats the break.

You also mentioned this happens on landing, without seeing the rocket its hard to diagnose, but if your legs are mounted to radial tanks rather than a core tank then its likely the radial attachment flexing and possibly knocking two cans together. I like to use girders to space things when this is happening, it also gives more parts for f3 to squawk about. Parts that are clipping into each other can also react with violent disapproval when they are loaded like this, just because they dont mind being merged in flight, doesnt mean they wont blow if 1 shifts and the other doesnt.

[Stone Blue]

Take a look at this. I found it only a couple of days ago, so havent tried it yet:

Exception Detector

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/109463

[xrayfishx]

You could make several copies of the part that fails, then in the cfgs give each copy a different name. Then replace the parts on your craft with the renamed copies, each a different copy. Now try it again and it will show different names for each of those parts in the F3 log. That's one way to do it at least.

[tg626]

I had a puzzler with exploding core stages when separating parallel boosters. I finally did what the big boys do. Since I had Open Broadcaster Software installed, I used it to "film" the launch, then replayed the video and advanced it one frame at a time in Windows Media Player. I found that the seperatrons that I had used on the boosters were spending a long time blasting the sides of the bottom core tank and concluded that was where it was going wrong, as that was the first part kerploding.

Problem solved.

[mikeb30165]

Cheers guys for the help, much appreciated - FYI, its a spaceplane (SSTO) not a rocket.

Think I might go for the Joint Reinforcement Mod, 'cos the Mk3 parts seem really flimsy, as StarHawk mentioned. Moreover, at 850 parts lag is becoming a real issue (struts are one of the biggest culprits here), so i'm loathed to put to any more on. Feel a bit of a failureusing mods though (I only use Mechjeb).

I did an earlier 180 seater BTW using 11 Mk3 parts (even docked it), which worked fine after lots of strutting. It maxed out at 756 parts, but the extra couple of Mk3-ers are causing a lot of trouble.

Below are some picks of the beast - that last few being the successful 180 seater

http://imgur.com/a/Zp6Qq#0

- - - Updated - - -

Note to tg626, just read you message - deffo give that a go many thx!