Kerbals detach from ladders in EVA

[ineon]

My Kerbals seem to forget that they need to hang on to the ladders in EVA. For example, I am in orbit waiting to go over a feature to get an EVA report and so focused on this loop:

10 Click EVA report

20 Still over the wrong place

30 Reset experiment

40 GOTO 10

that I don't see that my Kerbal is floating off into space. Am I doing something wrong, or do Kerbals just have a really short attention span?

Edited December 2, 2015 by ineon
Answered - thanks community!

[paul23]

This seems to happen to me whenever the craft I hold is "tumbling". The engine seems to fail to notice this speed, and only takes into account the speed of the center of mass (though the speed is slightly different further from the center of mass). Then at some point the kerbals always seem to let the ship go. (Already happens at really slow roll manoeuvres). Solution I found is to either watch it and grab the ladder/move around the ladder constantly so it updates the position of the kerbal more often, or just ignore it and use the eva controlls to move back.

[Snark]

The problem is that Kerbals on ladders have a really annoying bug: they "drift" (slowly move along the ladder), and if left uncorrected, they'll eventually drift off the end of the ladder and let go.

It's not just when the craft is tumbling, either-- I get this for craft that are quite stationary, and even when the craft is landed on the surface of a planet.

It's not consistent from situation to situation. Sometimes they don't drift. Sometimes they drift up, sometimes down. Sometimes it's a slow drift, sometimes it's faster.

However, for a given situation (i.e. "this particular ship, parked here, with this kerbal"), it stays consistent: e.g. "Okay, I'm landed here on the Mun, and every time I go EVA on this ladder my kerbal drifts upwards." Re-entering and leaving the pod doesn't fix the problem.

It's an infuriatingly annoying bug, it's been around since forever, and I wish they'd fix it. The whole point of having something for the kerbal to grab onto is to let them stay put.

No idea what causes it. My guess would be that it's some sort of secondary effect of ship motion calculation (e.g. "you're parked on a slope and standing on lander legs, so the ship sags slightly out of true by a microscopic amount which the SAS then corrects for, which results in a microscopic offset to the kerbal" or something like that), though that's just speculation. Maybe they need an explicit check for kerbals on ladders to keep them nailed in place relative to the ladder, unless there's an explicit control input from the player.

Anyway, until and unless they fix it, your only recourse is to keep an eye on your kerbals when they're on a ladder, and repeatedly make them climb up (or down) to keep them on the ladder so they don't "drift" off the end. You can't just leave them alone.

[maltesh]

Another option (assuming you're sufficiently far up the tech tree) is an External Seat; Kerbals in External Seats can take EVA reports, and (assuming that you have sufficient power, an antenna, and a link back to KSC) transmit them back immediately.

[Fwiffo]

<wishes his kerbals would stay put on the ladders>

[sardia]

The only bandaid I found so far is to add more ladders so the kerbals always have something to hold onto.

Maybe we should add ladders in a circle so they are corralled?