Ship randomly exploding?

[Jeb42]

Hi. This is very perplexing. This morning, I updated to 1.0.4. When I tried to launch a routine shuttle flight, when I was warping to my apogee, there was an explosion and my ship broke apart. During the buildup of disintegration, I saw the 'durability' bars on the front of my ship.. This is really confusing me, since I have aerodynamic heating set to 0 and was decelerating. After messing about a bit, if I DON'T warp to my apogee, the ship is fine. However, when I try to separate my orbiter from the booster in orbit I see the same result.

I've just managed to get around this by using the debug toolbar to make joints indestructible and turn off crash damage. The durability bars still show up though, just no change. The only mod I have on my craft is Mechjeb- and is handling the warps.

As far as I know, Mechjeb hasn't been updated 1.0.4. Any ideas as to what's causing this? The toolbar workaround is working, but it's a pain having to remember to turn it on every time I load up KSP.

Will post a video later, thanks. Hopefully this is just another stupid bug thrown up. Still very annoying though.

NB- my different shuttles all worked perfectly before updating to .4.

Thanks

[steve_v]

Sure it's the 1.0.3 -> 1.0.4 change that did it? Reports are beginning to trickle in of the new (1.0.3) thermal system freaking out in physics warp... Turn on the part menu thermal data, if the flux values start leaping about when warping... I'm pretty sure it is indeed "just another stupid bug" No solid confirmation or fix yet though, AFAIK.

As far as I am aware, the 1.0.4 patch only addressed the save breaking / planet vanishing heatshield bug introduced in 1.0.3.

Also, if you have modified the physics settings previously, make sure they aren't too far off the new stock settings. This caught me out with 1.02 -> 1.03, stuff exploded violently etc.

Edited June 24, 2015 by steve_v

[Jeb42]

Sure it's the 1.0.3 -> 1.0.4 change that did it? Reports are beginning to trickle in of the new (1.0.3) thermal system freaking out in physics warp... Turn on the part menu thermal data, if the flux values start leaping about when warping... I'm pretty sure it is indeed "just another stupid bug" No solid confirmation or fix yet though, AFAIK.

As far as I am aware, the 1.0.4 patch only addressed the save breaking / planet vanishing heatshield bug introduced in 1.0.3.

Also, if you have modified the physics settings previously, make sure they aren't too far off the new stock settings. This caught me out with 1.02 -> 1.03, stuff exploded violently etc.

Alright, will try that out, thanks a lot. Will just sit tight until this is fixed.

(Noob question), how do I access the thermal data menu? I've turned it on in the debug, but I'm not sure where to look at them.

As for the physics settings; I haven't touched them at all

[steve_v]

Thermal data appears in the right-click part menu after you enable it in the debug window.

It might also show you where the heat is coming from.

Hotspot also provides a slightly more intuitive thermal overlay, using "weather map" rather than "black body" colours for temperature. If it's the bug I'm thinking of you'll see it as rapid, seemingly random colour changes at warp.

Do you run any (possibly outdated) mods? I know HeatControl from the Near Future pack makes the thermal system go slightly insane, there may be others.

Edited June 24, 2015 by steve_v

[Jeb42]

Thermal data appears in the right-click part menu after you enable it in the debug window.

It might also show you where the heat is coming from, if it's not the bug I'm thinking of.

Do you run any mods? I know HeatControl from the Near Future pack makes the thermal system go slightly insane, there may be others.

Yeah, I run HGR, Station Parts Expansion, Mechjeb, FASA and Chatterer. Apart from Mechjeb, none of them are on my shuttles (SPE is on my station though).

Edited June 24, 2015 by Jeb42

[steve_v]

I'm pretty sure none of those mess with thermals... but who knows, theoretically every part has changed somewhat to accommodate the new skin heat mechanic.

[Jeb42]

Alright, thanks a lot for the help

[Padishar]

The problem with the heat system freaking out is most often caused by mod parts (I don't believe there are any stock parts that suffer from it) with a very low mass. Anything under 12.5g (with the default thermalMassModifier) will definitely suffer from this and can cause serious issues. MechJeb is one such mod that suffers from this (the part is 10g). Sarbian has already modified this in the latest dev version. See the MJ thread for details.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Padishar

[steve_v]

Good to know that is. I patch MechJeb into the command module, so I haven't seen that one. 'tis pretty easy to test though.

Edited June 24, 2015 by steve_v

[Jeb42]

The problem with the heat system freaking out is most often caused by mod parts (I don't believe there are any stock parts that suffer from it) with a very low mass. Anything under 12.5g (with the default thermalMassModifier) will definitely suffer from this and can cause serious issues. MechJeb is one such mod that suffers from this (the part is 10g). Sarbian has already modified this in the latest dev version. See the MJ thread for details.

Hi, thanks a lot for the suggestion. Tried it out, still no change. It's going wrong at precisely the same time and in the same way. I've attached a video of the whole thing. Apology for the crappy frames; Macs seriously hate running Quicktime and KSP together. Hopefully you'll be able to make more light out of it than I am.

The main buildup to the issue starts at about 7:25 in the video- sums up how well KSP runs on (my) Mac.

[DeMatt]

Hi, thanks a lot for the suggestion. Tried it out, still no change. It's going wrong at precisely the same time and in the same way. I've attached a video of the whole thing. Apology for the crappy frames; Macs seriously hate running Quicktime and KSP together. Hopefully you'll be able to make more light out of it than I am.

The main buildup to the issue starts at about 7:25 in the video- sums up how well KSP runs on (my) Mac.

It looks like the explosion is of your Mk2 Drone Core, which is preceded by MechJeb burping the throttle during 2x physics warp. I suspect it's not "thermal" problems, but rather the part is getting crushed. The thermal bars (they're not durability bars) only show up after the initial explosion, when the separated cabin starts twisting in the airstream.

The flight log (F3) will tell you what was destroyed and how.

[Jeb42]

It looks like the explosion is of your Mk2 Drone Core, which is preceded by MechJeb burping the throttle during 2x physics warp. I suspect it's not "thermal" problems, but rather the part is getting crushed. The thermal bars (they're not durability bars) only show up after the initial explosion, when the separated cabin starts twisting in the airstream.

The flight log (F3) will tell you what was destroyed and how.

Awesome- removed the core and that's fixed it. Thanks a lot for the help.

[miyadaman]

I had this same thing happen the entire night tonight. It was very frustrating. I actually have shelved the game for the time being I'm so frustrated. Random parts blowing up, parts of my ship just detaching from one another, all sorts of random stuff happening.

The part that kept blowing up? Landing gear on my moon lander. I didn't know they packed those things with high explosives.

[monstah]

I'm having this with the inline batteries, when stacked to each other, both the small and large ones.

Do we have a new kind of Kraken here? A Dragon Kraken? A... Draken?

[rocx]

I have a similar problem, while still on the launch pad the radial decouplers start heating up rapidly without any reason, and reach 2000K in half a minute and explode. I removed the side boosters and put them on again at the exact same spot, and all was fine. Then in a next iteration of the rocket the radial decouplers heat up and explode again. This was in 1.0.3. I have just upgraded to 1.0.4 but I haven't checked yet if the problem is gone. It seems like some sort of weird feedback loop in the thermal system.