Trouble with recovering some things

[AstroBovice]

Hello all, 

I recently designed a ship with recoverable 1st stage liquid boosters, but im having trouble with one thing. During testing for these I would send an unmanned ship in Sandbox mode, and I would focus on one of the boosters after decoupling to make sure it was doing what I wanted. So I did this about 10 times, had 10 sets of boosters landed in the water and I felt like I was ready to take this into my career mode to start building my new space station. Now to the problem, when I dont focus on the boosters, they disappear. They decouple, I can see the AIRBRAKES deploy, and then i follow them on the map and they just disappear. And during a career mode test flight, I followed a booster to splashdown and everything worked perfectly. Im using the Smart Parts mod that allows me to put triggers for actions groups. AIRBRAKES are set to deploy at 500 m/s decreasing speed, and they usually pop right when they decouple, no problem with that. Parachutes are set to deploy on 1000m with altitude decreasing. Just seems like I have to have them on the screen for the action groups to work, which makes this whole thing pointless. Anything I can do about this or anything I am missing? Will attach a video of a successful recovery. Thanks!

 

[Corona688]

Well, yes.  They disappear just like any other unattended debris does when they re-enter unattended...  Action groups don't work when you're not in command, either.

I don't know an action group for 'deploy at 1000m' -- presumably a mod?  I think you can manage parachutes unmodded via staging them on release and 'min pressure', I'd aim for 5000m, but this doesn't help when they disappear anyway.

There, of course, is a mod for this, "Stage Recovery", but there's other ways to deal with it, like making sure your periapsis is enough minutes away to circularize later and following your booster all the way down, building boosters that release earlier and land before you're 20km away, etc.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Corona688

[LordFerret]

You'll need to add a 'brain' to each of the parts. I had a similar problem with this a while back, dropping a payload from a plane... after about 2km distance, it disappeared as debris.

[eddiew]

As above, not a bug nor a gameplay error. Unattended vessels in atmospheric flight get deleted and cannot perform actions.

+1 for Stage Recovery

Edited August 30, 2016 by eddiew

[AstroBovice]

Thanks, I figured it was as simple as just needing be in command.. Yes, it is a mod as I stated in the post called Smart Parts I believe. They are set to deploy at 1000m above the ground, with the altitude decreasing. Guess it will just be a little more work, but it does save a lot of money. It is interesting tho because its twin boosters, and when i control one, the other works fine.

Edited August 30, 2016 by AstroBovice

[Corona688]

3 minutes ago, AstroBovice said:

It is interesting tho because its twin boosters, and when i control one, the other works fine.

That sounds like the "swarm bug".  I've seen someone build a giant craft with a hundred probes, decouple the probes into individual craft, and control them as one like an orchestra conductor -- something I'm pretty sure is not intended.  I'd thought that'd been fixed already, as most bugs shown on youtube are super-old, but don't know for sure.

Could also be a side-effect of the mod.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Corona688

[LordFerret]

2 minutes ago, AstroBovice said:

It is interesting tho because its twin boosters, and when i control one, the other works fine.

That's because you're in close proximity to it (within 2km).

Throw an RC-001S Remote Guidance Unit on each of them, or an OKTO2.

3 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

"swarm bug"

...and then there's the 'Fly Together' mod..........

 

[AstroBovice]

6 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

That sounds like the "swarm bug".  I've seen someone build a giant craft with a hundred probes, decouple the probes into individual craft, and control them as one like an orchestra conductor -- something I'm pretty sure is not intended.

That sound awesome though! I just picture a hundred satellites lined up, moving in unison haha. Well as seen in the video, they stay pretty close to each other on the way down, maybe its just needing them to be on the screen. Its 100% automated so thought would be sweet to see all the boosters floating around after a series of launches. This sounds like a fun challenge to tackle though, i really appreciate the responses!

3 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

That's because you're in close proximity to it (within 2km).

Throw an RC-001S Remote Guidance Unit on each of them, or an OKTO

 

will that make the game recognize it as non debris and not destroy it?

Edited August 30, 2016 by AstroBovice

[LordFerret]

1 minute ago, AstroBovice said:

will that make the game recognize it as non debris and not destroy it?

Yes.

[Corona688]

1 minute ago, AstroBovice said:

That sound awesome though! I just picture a hundred satellites lined up, moving in unison haha. Well as seen in the video, they stay pretty close to each other on the way down, maybe its just needing them to be on the screen. Its 100% automated so thought would be sweet to do a bunch of launches and then see all the boosters floating around after a series of launches.

Reminds me of the time I tried to be super-clever and send a dozen probes aerobraking on Laythe with slightly different trajectories.

None of them aerobraked since they weren't in focus, and fell into Jool one after the other eventually.

[Corona688]

18 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

...and then there's the 'Fly Together' mod..........

The video specifically mentioned exploiting a bug, so it wasn't a mod.

I'm assuming a mod would have done a better job of keeping them flying in the same direction and all, too

[AstroBovice]

17 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Yes.

So its recognizes them as probes, but still are destroyed. Did a little more research and apparently anything that gets 20km away from your ship is destroyed, so looks I just need to do some redesign. Definitely changes a lot. but i've got the main concept of what I want to do and now know how to approach this next time. Again, really appreciate the responses! Cheers! 

[mrclucks]

To sum up everyones good advice: debris is any 'craft' without a probe core or a kerbal onboard, and will get auto deleted if at a certain distance away(I think it's 2km, but I'm probably wrong) away.  

If you install the mod 'stage recovery' then the mod will auto calculate if you can safely recover a 'craft' based on if it has enough parachutes and/or engines and fuel(must have a probe core or kerbal onboard to use said engines).  You can recover science this way, as well as kerbals( you can also lose science and kill kerbals if your trajectory is dangerous or if the craft is not made to go through re-entry).  

Edited August 30, 2016 by mrclucks

[Terwin]

Each time I see this thread I keep thinking it is about recovering a heat-shield from the mun or some such(I did not realize what it was when I took the contract, so I ended up finding some adequately sloped terrain and slowly pushing the thing around by walking into it until I finally got the klaw to engage.  Last time I ever took a contract to recover landed equipment...)

[Corona688]

44 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Each time I see this thread I keep thinking it is about recovering a heat-shield from the mun or some such(I did not realize what it was when I took the contract, so I ended up finding some adequately sloped terrain and slowly pushing the thing around by walking into it until I finally got the klaw to engage.  Last time I ever took a contract to recover landed equipment...)

How I dealt with that was sending a little WingNut craft -- a little thing almost nothing but grabber, RCS, and reaction wheel -- to land on / by the part, grab, and manipulate it docking-port up.  For difficult things you can use two -- one to grab anywhere and hold it up so the second can take a proper, central grip.

They don't have enough oomph to take it up, but they can certainly get it upright and prepped for retrieval.

 

Probably the closest you can make to a stock canadarm without joints.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Corona688

[AstroBovice]

Went from 

to

Looks like ill either have to design it for them to drop off earlier or way later. They are dropping at about 16-17 km altitude with a apoapsis of ~35k on  the rocket.  I put a probe core on and still destroyed after a certain distance away. Unless I'm missing something, doesn't appear to be a way around it. 

[LordFerret]

Hummm. Odd. I've had success with this previously. I'm going to have to give it a whirl myself now. I'll report back later.

[James Kerman]

This mod might help - It freezes time while you land your boosters.

 

[LordFerret]

20 hours ago, AstroBovice said:

... still destroyed after a certain distance away.

Yes, I'm encountering the same thing. I think "in atmosphere" is an issue. That, and one or the other ends up going on rails.

I almost lost Jeb in the testing process.

[AstroBovice]

5 hours ago, LordFerret said:

Yes, I'm encountering the same thing. I think "in atmosphere" is an issue. That, and one or the other ends up going on rails.

I almost lost Jeb in the testing process.

Yea, done a bunch more research on this and pretty confident there is no un-modded way around this.

16 hours ago, James Kerman said:

This mod might help - It freezes time while you land your boosters.

 

 

This is what I ended up going with, thanks! For anyone interested, it saves a point in time when you stage and the "main mission" keeps going. When I get my main ship in orbit I time warp back to the separation and land the boosters, then I click "return to main mission" and I return to my ship in orbit and the boosters are in the water. Cool mod, and I had a ton of fun making recoverable boosters.

Saves me about 60k a launch for the ship seen in video  

Thanks for the replies,all. Hope this helps anyone with the same problem!

[eddiew]

Glad you solved it  But the Stage Recovery mod is much simpler and imho more appropriate unless doing fancy piggyback launchers

[Deddly]

I guess you already got the answer, but I'll move this to Gameplay Questions.

[Palaceviking]

On 30/08/2016 at 4:38 PM, AstroBovice said:

Hello all, 

I recently designed a ship with recoverable 1st stage liquid boosters, but im having trouble with one thing. During testing for these I would send an unmanned ship in Sandbox mode, and I would focus on one of the boosters after decoupling to make sure it was doing what I wanted. So I did this about 10 times, had 10 sets of boosters landed in the water and I felt like I was ready to take this into my career mode to start building my new space station. Now to the problem, when I dont focus on the boosters, they disappear. They decouple, I can see the AIRBRAKES deploy, and then i follow them on the map and they just disappear. And during a career mode test flight, I followed a booster to splashdown and everything worked perfectly. Im using the Smart Parts mod that allows me to put triggers for actions groups. AIRBRAKES are set to deploy at 500 m/s decreasing speed, and they usually pop right when they decouple, no problem with that. Parachutes are set to deploy on 1000m with altitude decreasing. Just seems like I have to have them on the screen for the action groups to work, which makes this whole thing pointless. Anything I can do about this or anything I am missing? Will attach a video of a successful recovery. Thanks!

 

A mod called flight manager lets you go back in time to when you staged and fly the other stages one at a time then stitches the saves back together. 

Quite awesome really.