Strange EC/Charge Issue

[Nori]

TL;DR: EC/s seems to go down when you have a alternator engine.

So in my main heavily modded game I launched a ship and was really surprised when much of my EC charge wasn't showing up.

Started looking into it and discovered something really weird. I can't believe I'd be the first to notice this, but didn't see anything.

All of the following pictures are of a vanilla 1.0.4 install.

Here is a picture of a four part test ship, 2 solar panels, a lander pod and a battery. Notice the panel shows a flow of 1.38EC/s which is reflected in the Resources list.

In the next picture the only change is that there is now a skipper engine on the bottom. It isn't activated nor is there any fuel.

Lastly, the previous ship when left for a while ended up losing even more EC/s

I'm super confused as to why when I add a engine my EC/s gets cut by as much as half. Seems to only happen with engines that have alternators.

Am I missing something? Has it always been this way and I'm just now noticing?

I haven't tested these specific setups in space, so I don't know how that would change things. But my other install did have a ship in space showing odd numbers.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Nori

[Tex_NL]

Did you turn on SAS?

Since you're resting on the engine nozzle any gimballing will induce a wobble in the lander pod which the reaction wheels are trying to counteract.

[Nori]

If only it was that simple.

To verify I toggled SAS off but it was still screwed up.

Here is a picture of a engine without a alternator:

Picture with SAS toggled off:

Picture of another engine with a alternator:

It honestly wouldn't be much of a issue in the base game, but in a modded game...

[Nori]

Did some more testing last night and I'm still not seeing why you get less charge if you have a alternator enabled engine. The really annoying thing is that it isn't just a set amount like 0.5EC/s, it appears to be a percentage. After the last image I posted I deployed two solar panels. Instead of getting 2.4EC/s like I expected I only got 1.2EC/s for a 50% decrease.

In my main modded game I discovered that if I put a electrical lock on the engines (using the mod "ModActions") then I lose less charge. Instead of 50% it is only 20% or so. At least I'm able to continue my mission.

Oh and I also completed deleted the game and redownloaded it with default everything and still had this happen. Is it a bug? Or some apparently undocumented thing?

[sal_vager]

It does not look like this has been reported to the bug tracker yet, well done Nori on catching this, please create a bug report here with your findings, you can find info on making reports here.

If you don't already have a tracker account you may need to PM Ted to have one activated.

[Nori]

Thanks. I created a account and PMed Ted. I'll make the report when my account is accepted.

[Padishar]

This is caused by a known bug in the resource handling in KSP. It has been reported to an internal Squad bug tracker. It occurs any time you have something that is using EC, something that is generating EC and any enabled EC storages (the engine can store a small amount of EC) that are full.

By all means report it to the public tracker as it may increase the likelihood of it being fixed in the near future...

[Nori]

Thanks for the info guys. I got the report created: http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/5350