Physics/game menus go mad when ship rendezvous with base under construction.

[Duke Leto]

So I'm trying to build a nice critically over-engineered refinery in high Kerbin orbit to land on Minmus, and I've hit what amounts to a game ending bug. Basically, once a ship moving an ISRU unit moves close enough to the base under construction to get ready to begin docking, the universe goes insane.

First, the two craft undergo a constant small change in relative velocities (0.2 m/s^2) even though neither has RCS or engines running and they far above the atmosphere. This throws MechJeb into a bit of a tizzy. The base sometimes snaps back to its original position during this process, and does so if you cycle through the available craft with the bracket keys, but does not stay put afterwards.

Second, you lose the ability to go to the Space Center after hitting escape. The button appears active, but has no effect when pressed.

Third, the ability to switch to other craft either doesn't work or behaves strangely. Switching to the base via orbital view moves you to the center of an empty patch of space. switching via the brackets will cause the craft to snap back to their original positions if you move out of physics range, but the base just starts flying away again after you do so. You also cant rotate the camera view when the base is focused on. Eventually the base starts vibrating and begins to disintegrate.

This makes the base unfinishable as it stands since I really need to get that base operational to complete my contracts, and I'm going to have to revert to a previous save to see if this a freak occurrence or ....

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling everything but it makes no difference. I have not tried sequentially removing the mods yet since most mission critical craft contain mod based parts. For related reasons, I have no idea which Mod, if any is at fault.

KSP: 1.0.4.861 Windows 32 bit

Problem: Newtonian Mechanics Fails Critically

Mods:

Kerbal Engineer Redux 1.0.18.0

Kerbal Alarm Clock - v3.4.0.0

MechJeb 2.5.3.0

Kerbal Inventory System 1.2.1

Kerbal Attachment System 0.5.4

Save File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kzk5bg5w6ye9xy4/quicksave.sfs?dl=0

Reproduction Steps:

1.) Load quicksave.sfs

2.) Flying "Mining Review Assembly ISRU Unit", target "Minmus Mining Base". Rendezvous with the base however you wish.

3.) Watch physics stop working once you are within ~200m of the base.

Log:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/klhb5bomn89t0qc/output_log.txt?dl=0

[Wolf Baginski]

Mods are likely part of it. The first thing I would check is for excess memory usage, many of the specific problems have that feel.

I have had problems with recent WIP versions of a certain space-station parts Mod, it looks to have excessively complicated IVAs. When I was using it, I had some of the same problems with crazy rendezvous/docking. I'll see whether I can get anything from that quicksave, but I may not have the same parts available...

[Wolf Baginski]

Following-up. Your quicksave loaded OK, and I don't see any sign of the troublesome mods I have experienced.

You do have a lot of stuff in Kerbin orbit, and it would be worth spending a bit of time in the tracking station deleting debris. But the big jump is when you get close to something. On final rendezvous approach now. And it all starts looking familiar misbehaviour as the Mining thing comes close. I don't seem to be maxing out any of my processor cores, but both the debug window and my system utilities show very high memory usage.

And you're going to land that on Minmus? Wow!

No, I don't have the tools to be specific, but you look to have a situation involving huge spacecraft, and while memory isn't tight on my system, you look to be running into KSP limits. Eventually things just locked up. That is a very big mining rig you have there, and it might be that if you want something like that you're going to have to resort to "cheat" tools to get it into the target location. Eventually there will be a 64-bit Windows version, and while that might be a problem for some plug-in code, it might be the answer. As it is, I think you have a situation that is a bit too complicated.

It was an interesting test of my system, and I know I am getting better from it since I replaced the motherboard. But the end result from your situation is similar to what I was getting, or not-getting, from an overloaded system. And it certainly looks like the limits of what KSP can do.