Almost no reentry heating, bug?

[Nachbarino]

After some intense testing of KSP's new heat dynamics I have never registred any fair bit of the reentry heating. For some reason, no parts explode or considerably heat up even at a 90 degrees 3000m/s reentry without heatshield, not even science parts or other things with low temperature tolerance, and not even to mention something like capsules. Heatshields do not lose more than 10-40 ablator units, even at extremely steep reentry angles and high reentry speeds. At first I thought this is normal, but then there's a friend of mine telling me about his reentry problems and how everything always explodes in his games, so could my problem possibly be a bug? I have already set the heating to 120 percent, reinstalled KSP and started a new world, but it didn't change anything. What should I do?

[TheXRuler]

As far as I have gathered (I haven't played a lot of 1.0.2 cuz I need my mods, ALL OF THEM ^^) they tuned down reentry heating so far because players started crying when their ships burnt up and they didn't want to relearn what is an essential part of flying. Either that or you have somehow turned reentry heating down, from what I gather this varies with difficulty settings but can also be adjusted later.

Edited May 12, 2015 by TheXRuler

[Streetwind]

I regularly get vulnerable parts like batteries burning off if I leave them exposed to the airstream, even from a low orbit return at 2000 m/s in a shallow angle. I play at 120% heat.

Not sure why you're not seeing anything happen. Try activating the display of thermal stats in rightclick menus via alt+f12, and then examine what happens to your parts during reentry.

[Warzouz]

Reentry from 75km orbit (2300m/s) :

- Winglets exploded.

- Rockamax adapter exploded, even with a heatshield covering the small size front.

[NASAHireMe]

You're not alone. I'm experiencing the same thing. Either it's as TheXRuler suggested, that Squad turned down reentry heating, or it's a bug.

I'm playing 1.0.2 on Hard. It's a clean install + RemoteTech2 and Kerbal Alarm Clock. I haven't fiddled with any of my settings, although I DID turn down aero graphics fx and other graphics settings so my computer would run a little faster. Don't know if that was it, but I assume that the graphics settings shouldn't be affecting the gameplay mechanics.

I've had 25+ ships reentries so far in this new install, and I think I've lost a grand total of one part to reentry heating. I haven't used heatshields on anything because, well, why use them if nothing is exploding? I just point my ship prograde (usually have a parachute or something at the tip) and let it reenter. A lot of the external components will heat up, some even getting close to the tops of their heating bars. But very rarely do they explode before my ship has decelerated to a safe speed.

[Sky_walker]

Yep. Got the same problem. I designed spacecraft specifically to be destroyed upon reentry, and yet the only thing that suffered any damage were solar panels and RCS thrusters.

As far as I have gathered (I haven't played a lot of 1.0.2 cuz I need my mods, ALL OF THEM ^^) they tuned down reentry heating so far because players started crying when their ships burnt up and they didn't want to relearn what is an essential part of flying.

Hope it's just a temporary measure and we'll get the game where re-entry heating is actually a factor you need to account for.