Thanks, Service Bay!

[Agate]

This one goes out to the amazing service bay. Convenient storage system for small parts, destroyer of space ships.

Post your service bay fails here!

Edited May 19, 2015 by Agate

[Demon_82]

Clipping inside them hasn't destroyed yet any ship of mine, but rendered a couple of the firsty ones unable to control out of shakeing xD Now I mastered what you can and what you can't do. Be careful with things getting in the doors way, that was the closest to a sudden dissasembly i got.

[Jonboy]

They haven't actually shaken any of my ships apart, but they did launch me out of the Kerbal system at incredible velocity when I clipped something the wrong way in there. And some of my landers that used them started uncontrollably shaking like Jell-O until I opened and closed the bay.

The things are Kraken summoners if you clip the parts wrong

[zarakon]

I haven't had any problems with them

Now fairings on the other hand... those things always cause something to go wrong.

[r4pt0r]

Ive had phantom torque come from using a service bay, It almost murdered my minmus lander.

[nholzric]

I haven't had any problems with them

Now fairings on the other hand... those things always cause something to go wrong.

I was just launching a little probe, had just reached orbit and when I jettisoned the fairings I was suddenly "landed" at 71km and 2200m/s. There was a piece of fairings stuck to the probe. Of course I couldn't switch to the Space Center and back to try to fix things because I was "driving over terrain"... thaaaaaanks fairings.

[problemecium]

I've had the jitters myself, but fortunately I learned what was going on and what not to do before putting a service bay on anything large or expensive.

[Dedjal]

My Jebediah does not trust the service bay. He is insulted that it is better at wreaking spaceships then he is.

[Endersmens]

I've had it start shaking a ship and having parts very misaligned, but opening the bay has always fixed it.

Also, yes fairings cause the jitters too. It's really annoying cause the fairings root starts inside of it, meaning it will clip whatever is above it no matter what. I always have to offset the fairing root down a bit so it doesn't shake my launch to death.

[Sidereus]

So that's what killed my Eve lander....

I had it parked in LKO while I was waiting for the launch window. I had already had problems with the utility bay on that vehicle; two of my four solar panels were counted as "stowed" when the service bay was closed because apparently they touched it somewhere, even though they weren't mounted on it. Then I clicked away to time warp (since it was only at 75km), came back and half the solar panels were destroyed (probably the two that were touching the service bay), along with several other parts.

Anyway, I chalked it up to a random glitch. Guess it was the service bay wigging out.

Edited May 19, 2015 by Sidereus

[SkyRender]

Service bays are fun! Especially when you do things like this:

All sorts of fun things can come from this.

This is a tamer example. Earlier this same vessel crashed the game for me, and another time the Kerbal inside the inner bay became uncontrollable after he was forcibly ejected from it. Good times.

[magnemoe]

My first mun base lost one stack after landing

Had one ship where I had to rebuild 3 times, around 10 launches.

Looks like the 2.5 meter one is the problem, I have stuffed the 1.25 meter ones something insane and used them everywhere.

[Fraggle]

Indeed.

I had 1 issue with a service bay doing the old shake rattle n roll on the contents at take off once.

After that I use docking ports to nail that S*&t down in there.

My single biggest "ah, nuts" moment was landing and one of the door clipping the landing strut.... and the entire lander slowly going over and slamming to the ground in a massive crash n burn. Fun times.... 'oh the humanity' could be herd in mission control as the 3 drones involved in the mission were rendered into small pocket calculator sized chunks on the Munar surface. Jeb pointed and laughed yelling "it wasnt me this time!"...

[KerikBalm]

Hmmm.... don't part clip... problem (mostly) solved.

I had minor issues when there was something outside the service bay, obstructing the doors from opening on one side.

Did not destroy my craft, but made it shudder a bit as the bay opened and closed.

[RoverDude]

As noted, don't part clip. Also those guys have about ten colliders, roughly in the shape of a hexagon and they are convex. And they move. If you're conservative you're fine (I use them on just about every ship I make with no ill effect)

[Rune]

Still, check them out on the pad with a few loads to make sure you are not summoning the kraken when it's too late to go back.

Rune. I wonder how long before someone tames them for K-Drives.

[samstarman5]

So far the most complex I have used a service bay for has been a couple of batteries, a reaction wheel or stabilizer, and a Communotron 16, as I am being a bit paranoid about what can handle re-entry heat. I do put the antenna at an angle, with plenty of room inside for it to fully extend, but it still requires opening the doors for the antenna to function. Which is fine during free-flight or landed.

As for clipping issues I have yet to see any, myself. But I am not in the habit of going with clown car engineering with my builds.

I love the service bay immensely, as I actually grew to loathe strapping batteries and the like on the crew modules or adjacent parts as it gave it more the appearance of a rocket built by a bandit group from Pandora (of Borderlands).

But if I ever do end up with wonky accidents, remembering this thread will give me ideas as to what to troubleshoot.

[KerbMav]

Clipping is a kitch - sometimes it works, sometimes it works at first only to cause problems later in the mission ...

Someone mentioned somewhere on the forums that a probe core should never be attached to the upper node inside the bay, always only to the lower.

Cannot remember having issues with this, but the person must have had enough authority for me to never deviate from this instruction.

[waterlubber]

I got some incredibly powerful torque from one when Jeb got out to move science around; I think it wanted control...

[soulsource]

I had several spontaneous disassemblies of my munar station, which I undid by force closing KSP before it could save, until I realized that the torque created by reaction wheels in the service bay caused the bay to clip into the fuel tank.

Disabling the reaction wheels seems to have solved the issue.

The parts in the bay aren't clipping into each other, as far as I can tell.

[3ntropy]

I had a space station in Kerbin orbit disassemble on me after using a small stack separator between a capsule and a service bay. No explosion, just every part on the station just detached. After I separated the capsule I ended up with about 40 parts floating around all still intact.

[DancesWithSquirrels]

"Someone mentioned somewhere on the forums that a probe core should never be attached to the upper node inside the bay, always only to the lower."

I find it almost impossible to get a probe core to attach to the bottom node of the 1.25m bay, and have defaulted to the (much more easily attached) upper node. I haven't had any problems with wobbling from that.

[Wesreidau]

Moments after docking the command module with my nuclear motor for a million-dollar station, my service bay tore itself free, launching the scientific payload into a debris cloud, pushing the station's orbit to a 68km peri and cutting the coupola free to float off with its probe core into space.

I assumed it was clipping inline docking bays into a three-way symmetry hub. So I replaced them with plain docking bays. The debris field is now twice as dense and posing a serious navigation hazard on my equatorial orbit.

I want $300,000 back.

[OddFunction]

I had no idea service bays existed or what they did until about a day ago.

Every single design I'd put sputnik on top (or the 2nd tier one in the middle), strap a bunch of batteries wherever they fit, and prayed on landing that the atmosphere didn't burn them all off and leave me out of control. I must have done 100+ launches like this.

Then I watched a random youtube video where the first thing he did was put a probodyne in the service bay... and my entire world shattered. My rockets are now 100x sexier and 10x more durable. And if you combine it with tweakscale things get even more interesting...

LONG LIVE THE SERVICE BAY.

[Prepper-Jack]

Heh, got krakened last night with the smaller service bay on a probe a few times. Unfortunately, I couldn't see the issue because the entire upper section of the rocket was under fairings. 11k up, I start making a gentle turn and BOOM. Service bay has collided with fairing. Every time. The fairing was 2.5m, and the bay 1.25m - that's quite a jump.

An hour earlier I had another small bay (configured in a similar manner) shimmy left and right on the pad half a meter in either direction like there was a pack of Gremlins in there. Wish I could say what caused that kind of behavior, but it seemed to be resolved by just putting a new bay in with the same configuration.