Cant Deploy While Stowed is BACK?!?

[Red Iron Crown]

Dial it back a notch or two please, both of you. No need to be hostile.

[RA3236]

Possibly try turning off SAS??? Or dropping the throttle.

[AlamoVampire]

@RA3236 When the issue first happened, i was in orbit. Engines were offline, throttle was 0 and SAS was offline. 

In some of the supplied pictures above you can see where i had tried a manual deploy of the nose gear. If you look at the little window with the wheel options on it, it shows the wheel thinks its blocked, but its not. The wheel is set in only as far as it goes when first attached when you first choose it and go to place it. 

I was requested by Arsonide to provide a stock parts only craft exhibiting this behavior and I have. I believe he will be passing it out to the experimentals team for further investigation. 

 

[cfds]

So the only actual improvement between 1.0.4 and 1.1.2 for a linux player is actually broken? Nice to know...

[AlamoVampire]

@cfds i wouldnt know about that as I know nothing of linux. I can provide you the same craft I provided to Arsonide and the experimental testers if you wish to test for yourself.  

[cfds]

I believe you that you did not edit in the error message. When I heard that this issue was fixed I assumed that this whole check was just removed (because: Why does anyone need an automatic check for occlusion when activating a part? If you do not want to activate shrouded engines/antennas/landing gears just do not activate them.), but now it looks like it was just patched around. With predictable results.

Edited June 14, 2016 by cfds

[kBob]

Just curios, were you able to fly and land it by pulling that gear forward a bit or did that unbalance things too much?  I still haven't tried until I get my joystick out.

[awfulhumanbeing]

I like to put the gear on a little cubic octagonal strut, pretty much fixes the thing.

[The_Rocketeer]

@AlamoVampire have you confirmed that the gear does deploy if you open the cargo bay? It would be good to have a causal link between the two parts.

[AlamoVampire]

@kBob Havent tried that yet.

@The_Rocketeer Yup, confirmed that cargo bay bit day before yesterday which kinda points at @cfds being right that the check was patched around and not removed as stated which is curious

[Red Iron Crown]

I don't think they ever said they were removing the check for stowed status, just refining it (and in particular removing the check once separated from the module witht he bay/fairing). It makes some sense, as there are parts that shouldn't be activated while stowed (landing gear come to mind in particular, but also solar panels and RCS ports, too).

I think there's a tradeoff at play here: Make the check for stowage too generous and it starts including things that clearly look like they're outside the bay/fairing, make the check too stingy and stuff that appears to be in bays/fairings starts to behave as if unshielded.

FWIW I sympathize with your frustration here, your design does seem to have been bitten by the stowage check being on the generous side. 

[AlamoVampire]

@Red Iron Crown Thanks  As I said before, the devs have my all stock parts tester that show this issue. I can only hope it gets refined and clears this up. I did build the thing with chutes for the contingency of gear getting blown out but id rather not rely on that for all time lol.

[The_Rocketeer]

@WildLynx can u substantiate this with screenshot and .craft file examples like AlamoVampire has? I've never seen or heard of this happening on a craft without some sort of stowage area or fairing.

[AlamoVampire]

@WildLynx I gotta ask what mod or if not mod how do you get blueprint pictures like those? 

Also, i looked at the pics on my phone so i may not be able to see it but, i didnt see the orange error message of it refusing to deploy and to which part. But if i had to guess, its the umbrella-ish antenna giving fits?

[Red Iron Crown]

@WildLynx You're playing 1.0.5 or previous, 1.1.x has fixed the check for fairings after they're separated from the craft that originally had them (pretty sure that's what's biting you there).

[The_Rocketeer]

@AlamoVampire it's Kronal Vessel Viewer.

@WildLynx the obvious origin is the presence of fairings during launch, but as to why they're still affecting things after fairing separation or even undocking/deorbit/delete I have no idea. On the other hand, your particular problem demonstrates details of this issue that aren't obvious in AlamoVampire's description but that might help to make a proper fix for it, so on that basis I would give a wave to @Arsonide here.

EDIT: not gonna argue with @Red Iron Crown, if ur playing 1.0.5.

Edited June 14, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[Red Iron Crown]

@WildLynx I was going by this pic which shows 1.0.x. I suppose it's possible that the stowed state got carried over when migrating to 1.1 but I wouldn't know where to find it in the persistence file, sorry.

[Red Iron Crown]

@WildLynx I'm afraid that being a lowly forum moderator does not grant that sort of access. Though I do recall some discussion of the occlusion check for cargo bays from HarvesteR here, which as I understand it is the same algorithm for checking if  apart should be stowed.

[AlamoVampire]

@Red Iron Crown But why is an algorithm to prevent things from doing things in cargo bays hampering things clearly not in cargo bays. 

I think its time to just remove the check completely.

[Red Iron Crown]

8 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

@Red Iron Crown But why is an algorithm to prevent things from doing things in cargo bays hampering things clearly not in cargo bays. 

I think its time to just remove the check completely.

I guess the algorithm is being too lenient in this case for what it considers stowed, or that the landing gear have their center in an odd place (I'm inclined to believe the latter in this particular case given that the wheel were just reworked).

As for eliminating the stowed mechanic altogether, I would be fine with that but I can see there are some cases where it's helpful. 

[AlamoVampire]

@Red Iron Crown Could you provide some examples of how its sometimes good? All I can see is how its needlessly hampering things.

[DuoDex]

9 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

@Red Iron Crown Could you provide some examples of how its sometimes good? All I can see is how its needlessly hampering things.

I'm not Red, but I do see how it could prevent catastrophic unplanned disassembly by preventing the wheel mesh changes from forcing apart two otherwise connected parts.

I think it's a fine feature personally, have never experienced untoward behavior with it, and it seems like fixes/workarounds are pretty easy anyways.

[AlamoVampire]

@DuoDex I shouldnt need to work around a bad mechanic by say opening my cargo bay while trying to land just to deploy a wheel so i dont crash. Its an unwanted extra complication.

As to unplanned rapid disassemblies? Whats more kerbal than that? Having a game deliberately prevent you from making such a mistake, especially in a game where thats half the fun is ridiculous. It also robs you of an educational experience.

[Red Iron Crown]

56 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

@Red Iron Crown Could you provide some examples of how its sometimes good? All I can see is how its needlessly hampering things.

Prior to 1.1 the only real benefit for an experienced player that I saw was disabling RCS ports for payloads inside a spaceplane bay, so that they didn't mess up the carefully balanced RCS system on the plane itself. For new players it offered some disaster proofing from staging errors and such, though I don't consider that a strong argument as explosions are excellent teachers for new players.

Since 1.1 the case that DuoDex alludes to of having landing gear destroy a craft if they are accidentally deployed inside a bay, even if visually they appear outside, became an important one even for experienced players. The craft shown in the OP was inconvenienced by not being able to deploy the gear and was saved by doing a water landing, if the stowed check didn't exist it would have broken the nose off if not worse. In a manner of speaking this mechanic likely saved your crew.

[AlamoVampire]

@Red Iron Crown Prior to this poor mechanic harming my ship it was able to land quite nicely. It made a water landing because i lost my wings and deployed the chutes. The wheels attach point is on the bay, the OUTSIDE of the bay. On the nose it could break off. This mechanic just needs to go or completely get reworked.