Crew transfer seems borked, pls help

[Stheno]

Hey guys. I've been reading the forums for a long time but this is the first time I've actually posted anything. I did a quick search to see if my question had been answered, but there was nothing obvious (as you can imagine, searches for "crew transfer" come up with a whole big mess of results).

I've flown a fuel tanker full of kerbals out to Minmus for the collection of science, and to serve as a fuel depot for missions outside of Kerbin's SOI. I managed to dock this terrible monstrosity, but now I can't seem to transfer crew from one section of the station to another without using EVAs. This is a problem, since kerbals leaving the command pod of my fuel tanker can't seem to do anything other than re board (it looks like their heads spawn inside the RCS wheels!). Without crew transfer I won't be able to use the lander or the orbital lab until I fly even more crew out here!

So my question is: Is the crew transfer interface buggy? Am I using it wrong in some way?

Here is what I do:

Left click the crew hatch, get the crew transfer window.

Select a kerbal to transfer. Interface changes, full modules appear orange, not full modules appear blue, as expected.

Left click on a blue module to transfer kerbal to a seat in that module.

Nothing happens, whatsoever.

Try right clicking, option clicking, double clicking, etc...

Nothing happens.

Cry.

Is there a known bug? Is this a side effect of running TAC? Are kerbals not able to transfer through non contiguous crew spaces? WHAT IS HAPPEN?

Many thanks.

[nfpinto]

you need to use a mod for it. "crew transfer" or "ship manifest" do the job

[Starwhip]

Huh, this is strange. I'd presume it is an issue with one of the mods you run. Can you put up your log file?

[ScottyDoesKnow]

you need to use a mod for it. "crew transfer" or "ship manifest" do the job

You don't need a mod, it's now part of a base game. I have a different issue, where other modules appear blue but only flash with the "selection" blue when moused over, so it takes like 30 clicks to make it work. Don't have a solution for you OP, just seems buggy in general.

[pandaman]

AFAIK it should work in stock unless the 'rules' have changed.

Unless I am just wrong, it has been known on occasion:)

Edit. Ninja'd

[RexKramer]

Stheno, I have noticed this occasionally also, most often when I'm transferring within a fairly large vessel, with a high part count. For me, the problem eventually works itself out.

Sometimes double-clicking on the destination capsule works. Other times, I have ended up canceling the transfer, clicking on other parts of the vessel, and then trying the transfer again, usually successfully.

I play completely stock, so this is not really a mod related issue. Unfortunately, I am not sure what is causing the problem.

[StrandedonEarth]

"Give it a kick!" By which I mean quicksave/reload, or go to the Space Center then back to your vessel.

[Snark]

I've run into this problem myself. It definitely seems worse at some times than at others. I've played around with it a little bit, and I have a theory of what's going on:

- I think that when they coded it, they didn't code the "click" event very robustly: that the mouse press and mouse release have to happen right on the same spot, i.e. you can't press down, move the mouse slightly, and then release.

- When the game slows down (e.g. if you have a big craft with high part count, or your video card is having trouble keeping up with a high-def render of planet's surface), so that the frame rate is lower, it checks for mouse-down and mouse-up more slowly.

- This results in the impression that your clicks aren't getting anywhere.

- However, you may be able to make it register if you press the mouse down, are very careful not to move even a millimeter, wait a moment or two, and then release the button.

YMMV. I haven't had the patience to try controlled experiments with this, since it's pretty sporadic and hard to reproduce. I may have even gotten some of the repro steps a bit wrong.

However, what I can say is: It's definitely a thing, has been around since 0.90, and I think it's possible to work around with careful mouse technique.

[Duke Leto]

This bug is the absolute BANE of large scale Tourist missions. (It is functionally impossible to move tourists from a station to a docked lander when this crops up.)

I'm going to try Snark's suggested workaround.

Or possibly slam the EXPLETIVE mouse through the EXPLETIVE monitor.

[Oafman]

On a few occasions I've lost kerbals through the transfer system. Especially with big laggy ships.

I click, nothing happens, I click some more, and get an error message repeated 4 times (4 lines of yellow text) which says something along the lines of 'Cannot transfer xxxxxx kerbal, crew transfer in progress'. Normally nothing has happened, and the kerbal is where they started, but sometimes they just disappear. The crew count drops by one, and the kerbal is MIA. Got lost in the bowels of the ship I guess...

So I stick to ship manifest.

Anyone else seen this?

[Warzouz]

I never had that specific problem, but the "mouse stoping clicking" : quite often (mostly on the map)

For transfer, I noticed I sometime have a hard time clicking on the crew hatch. On occasion, the click-active zone is off and I need to find it...

[tbarcello]

Never seen such a bug.

It seems like a problem specifically for this ship. A screenshirt would go a long way here. Writing this huge post and not taking time to take a screenshot seems like a waste to me.

[genericeventhandler]

I've never had a kerbal go missing during a transfer. One thing to make sure of is that the hatch is not obstructed, on the science labs there are two doors and both doors need to be unobstructed for it to work correctly.

[Clipperride]

I've had a similar problem with larger stations, where the game seems to miss my mouse click. It seems to work better if you rotate your view to make the relevant module closest to you. It may be coincidence, but it does seem to work for me. I've never lost a Kerbal through transfer.

The other thing to check (and I'm sure you have) is that you aren't using the Jnr docking port as its too small for a snack ladden Kerbal to squeeze through.

[Tarheel1999]

Dont Necro. Think of the children.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Tarheel1999