How do I merge a rover with a ship?

[JebForPrez2020]

So i'm trying to connect a rover I've made into the cargo bay of a separate rocket and I cant figure out how to get them to connect. The rover (which was built separate and merged in) just stays red and even though I have docking ports on both the rover and the ship it refuses to connect to it. I know many people have done it so is there something simple I'm missing or could it be a glitch?

[Kelderek]

I'm not sure about the merge feature, but you should be able to do it using a subassembly. For the rover, set the docking port to be the root part and then save it as a subassembly. Then load up your rocket and try to add the rover subassembly to it.

[G'th]

More than likely you can't put your rover in the cargo bay because its clipping up against a wall, or because you're just falling prey to how the part connections work in the post 1.0 KSP. If you pull up the cheat menu and disable part restrictions (or something like that) you should be able to connect the rover.

[Nothalogh]

Merge is completely broken.

Set the connecting part on the rover as root and save as subassembly

[cup a joe]

Put on a decoupler in the cargo bay and a docking port on another part of the ship/cargo bay. You can adjust the ejection force of the decoupler by right clicking it so it has the same force as a docking port. You can dock later by using a separate docking port somewhere else in the cargobay/ ship. I know this may not be what you wanted origonally but it still works.

Take the rover and connect it to a decoupler, make the decoupler the root part by using the blue root tool next to the offset tool. Remove that part once you have done that.

Save the rover as a subassembly by clicking at the top left of the parts menu to get another menu, and selecting the green rocket icon at the bottom, and dragging it over.

Load the other vehicle.

Load the subassembly and place it on the decoupler, and save it (as a new name so you can access each component separately in the future).

Now you can dock later in the game (provided the ports are facing the right way (male side up) with that docking port in the cargo bay, it just wont be what connects the rover and vehicle at the start.