SAS vanishing on a probe with only RC-001S for attitude control

[Sharpy]

I was sending the orbital survey scanner to Minmus yesterday, and it seems I encountered a bug.

The probe was really cheap, bare bones thing. A trivial launch stage with Reliant and SRBs + fins, a decoupler, and the actual probe consisting of a nuke, one MK1 LF fuselage, the smaller of the two round probe cores (RC-001S Remote Guidance Unit), Z-1k battery, two solar panels, an antenna and the orbital scanner.

And the moment I dropped the launch stage, I lost all of SAS abilities - it became the equivalent of OKTO 1. No Target, no Prograde, no Node - all guidance by hand, just bare stability assist left.

It seems the game disables these when it loses all attitude control authority, and with non-swiveled nuke this might seem as such - except RC-001S has a perfectly adequate reaction wheel which is more than sufficient for the task. Still, I had to conduct the flight like in times of first orbital flights, a step above Stayputnik.

[sal_vager]

Hi @Sharpy, did you run out of EC at any point? There is a bug where probes lose their abilities when EC recharges after falling to zero, this can be fixed by quicksaving then quickloading to refresh the scene.

[Sharpy]

Nope, the probe had still plenty of EC at the moment of separation and lost the abilities the moment I staged the launch stage. It might have lost EC momentarily later (though it's dubious, two 2x6 panels on two sides, LKO and 1k battery, which would be way more than enough to carry it through the night side), but the abilities were gone right after staging, scarce minutes after launch, so the 1k battery was hardly affected. I'll upload a save when I have the access to my PC.