can't activate my engines while they are 'stowed'?

[mrklaw]

Just took off and flew to minmus. Detached my lander, but only one of my engines will light - when I staged it, it said 'cannot activate while stowed!'. Same thing happens if I right click on the engines and activate. The other engine seems fine. All three were put on in 3-way symmetry when built.

Edited May 24, 2015 by mrklaw

[Rhomphaia]

Service bays can be funny like that. My guess is that the two engines that are over the door portions are the ones that don't light while the one that is between doors is ok?. Normally you cant attach things on the door, unless symmetry puts it there. If you can open the doors without blowing the ship up you may be get them lit through activate, but it is not a good idea to build like that.

[Mister Dilsby]

I bet you can recover this with a bit of save file editing--I have not looked personally but maybe the 'bad' engines have some kind of state = STOWED (or something like that) that you can edit to be the same as the 'good' engine.

[Rhomphaia]

I bet you can recover this with a bit of save file editing--I have not looked personally but maybe the 'bad' engines have some kind of state = STOWED (or something like that) that you can edit to be the same as the 'good' engine.

Not quite. It is the Service Bay that detects what engines are "inside" it. It is not quite right.

You can edit the engines, find the ship in the save file then look for

Staged = False

and

EngineIgnited = False

Change them both to True and it should work a treat.

[mrklaw]

Opening the doors let me activate them. Was trying to use the bay to save space. Will try adding a rockomax small tank as a mounting point, and empty it of fuel. Shouldn't make it too much heavier.

[Zyffyr]

When building something like that, use the Offset tool to move the outer stuff down a little so that it no longer touches the bay. The problem will go away then.