First big Kraken attack.

[cephalo]

So, I was trying to build a Minmus mining operation, and after two attempts at making a fuel lifter I came to the conclusion that even on Minmus flats, surface docking is just too fiddly and time consuming. Landing struts sink into the ground, and other crazy things happen that prevent the kind of perfection required for surface docking. I can't spend 45 minutes docking for every fuel run. So my next solution was just go with the claw for this purpose. Ah, so much easier!

So while my fuel lifter is filling up with fuel, I went back to put my over-extravagant, high part count mother ship into Minmus orbit from Kerbin. This thing is like a self sufficient ark, with about 9kdv, room for 20 Kerbals, great science lander w/ attached rover that probably can land and return from Duna, lab, a mining probe and ore converter, all powered by 24 nuclear engines.

As soon as I hit the time warp to the next maneuver, the ship comes apart and everything but the cockpit plummets toward Kerbin, triggering a spectacular chain of explosions and flying debris. Reloading doesn't help, but fortunately restarting the game did cure the problem until I could get to Minmus.

I haven't seen this before. My big mother ship has been fooling around in Kerbin orbit for a while with no issue other than the expected bad framerate. My question is, was this attack because of the claw? Is this something that will get worse while a working claw is in the game?

[Snark]

Impossible to say for sure, but I'd say that very probably yes, it's the claw.

Saw the title of your post and thought "probably the claw" even before reading the post.

[Prepper-Jack]

I've heard the claw is the go-to tool for summoning the Kraken, though I've never personally witnessed it. I've been careful, however, and only been using claws in low-part count cases like rescuing a single capsule or rocket part, and in short durations for refueling landers. General advice seems to be to keep claws away from terrain as a whole, and not use them for permanent connections.

I have had a large ship spontaneously disassemble, however. No explosions, but every connection just vanished. No existing claws at that time. I've also seen videos where this has happened, and caused explosions, but these ships usually had a lot of clipping - which may have been the catalyst. I'd guess the two issues are unrelated, other than being physics bugs. But, I'm not a Squad developer, and not privy to the code - so who knows?

[cephalo]

Yeah, same for me. All the connections vanished. I'm pretty sure the explosions were just colliding loose parts.

[Sharpy]

Yesterday the Kraken attacked my science lab in Minmus orbit. I'm in the map mode, at moderate warp, just waiting in the lab for arriving over a Flats not scanned so far, and suddenly everything asplode, I just see a fountain of parts with their trajectories towards Minmus.

And the waiting was to kill time waiting for morning for my miner craft. New fuel trucks arrived in the orbit, but they didn't have enough fuel left for landing (a freshly manufactured batch, flying empty to pick fuel), so an older truck that was currently receiving the fuel on the surface had to fly to refuel them enough for safe landing. And ovbiously it was docked to the carrier bringing the truck... by the claw. In an orbit at about the same altitude as the lab, except perpendicular to it (equatorial, while the lab is in polar).

[Snark]

On a practical note:

1. People want to build surface bases. It's fun and potentially profitable.

2. In the stock game, it is miserably difficult, tedious, and un-fun to dock things on the surface unless you use the claw.

3. The claw is kraken-bait. If you use it, pretty soon it destroys the universe, which is miserably frustrating and un-fun.

Which is unfortunate.

I've only been able to find two solutions that avoid frustration and un-fun:

- Just don't make surface bases at all. Focus efforts elsewhere. (Yeah, I know, not a very satisfying solution.)

- Use Kerbal Attachement System for building bases.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92514

KAS is really handy, it has "resource ports" as a part that can be mounted on anything (either at design time in VAB, or by engineer kerbals in the field). All you have to do to "dock" a new piece to your base is:

1. Land it within a couple of dozen meters of your existing base components

2. Have a connection port on both pieces (or if they don't already have one, use an engineer to attach one)

3. Kerbal walks to piece A, clicks on the port, initiates a link

4. Kerbal walks to piece B, clicks on the port, completes the link

...and presto, you've got a pipe connecting the two and now you can do anything you could do if they were docked. To unlink, just disconnect the pipe.

It's pretty straightforward to use and makes setting up surface bases much easier.

(It's worth noting that KAS can do a whole bunch of other cool stuff too, like building ships in the field out of spare parts, winches and cables, etc. Using all the features can be an intimidating learning curve (though it includes a pretty good PDF manual). But if all you want to do is build surface bases, you can just ignore all the extra features and just use the connection ports, in which case life is easy and you don't have to learn all the fiddly bits.)

Edited June 19, 2015 by Snark

[Geschosskopf]

KAS is really handy....

[cephalo]

The game as a whole has Kraken issues with anything involving docking, whether the docking mechanism is stock or mod, whether ports, KAS, or Claw. If you do enough of any of them, eventually something will go haywire. The odds increase the more parts there are in total, the more connections you've made, the more you warp (especially physical warp), and if the assembly is a base on uneven, non-level ground.

Does this imply that the game grows more unstable as things are docked/undocked? Right now, the solution seems to be to save often and if something happens it can be cleared up by restarting the game. Does it eventually just become unmanageable if you dock too much?

EDIT: KAS seems pretty fun. After I'm satisfied with my progress in stock, I'm going to play acareer with KAS and the life support mod and other part mods.