[1.12.x] Anatid Robotics / MuMech - MechJeb - Autopilot - [2.14.3] [4th March 2023]

[Loren Pechtel]

(Latest release version)

Possible bug with advanced transfer to another planet:

I have seen this many times, logs show nothing:  It burns as it should and when the burn is complete it tries to do the same burn again immediately.  Of course the result is generally catastrophic.  I've tried as hard as I can to make sure it's only one click and it doesn't act like it has multiple nodes scheduled.

Definite bug with advanced transfer to another planet:

When you're in the transfer window rather than a time it says "any time now"--and takes it too literally.  Click that, it often burns immediately, not waiting for the right spot in the orbit to burn.

[softweir]

It's always a good idea to upload logs even if *you* can't see anything wrong: the developer may well be able to see that something that shouldn't be happening. In any case, as per the OP - "No logs => No support."

A video showing the behaviour and links to craft affected are also useful: developers can't always reproduce bugs like this without that data.

And finally, Are you running mechjeb alongside any other logs? If so, how about a list of your mods? It may be that another mod is changing objects that Mechjeb assumes won't change, and this interaction is causing the bug. Bugs caused this way are impossible to fix without that data!

[sarbian]

10 hours ago, Loren Pechtel said:

Possible bug with advanced transfer to another planet:

Did you saw the node jump in the map view ?

[Loren Pechtel]

7 hours ago, sarbian said:

Did you saw the node jump in the map view ?

The node doesn't move.  The burn time jumps.

[JeanRenaud]

I've got mechjeb for KSP 1.1.3.  I would love to use data plotted by "Flight Recorder" but it's impossible - There is no units shown for vertical axis !

When one develop a graph function, the first thing is to put a way to read the graph scale... even if there is no output to CSV, just a print screen would let me to estimate values...

is there anything i forgot about this ?  Some undocumented option ?

Edited April 16, 2017 by JeanRenaud

[sarbian]

32 minutes ago, JeanRenaud said:

I've got mechjeb for KSP 1.1.3.  I would love to use data plotted by "Flight Recorder" but it's impossible - There is no units shown for vertical axis !

When one develop a graph function, the first thing is to put a way to read the graph scale... even if there is no output to CSV, just a print screen would let me to estimate values...

is there anything i forgot about this ?  Some undocumented option ?

 

While I agree with the sentiment of "no scale is terrible" I have to deal with the mess that is Unity old UI. There will be a scale when I am done rewriting the UI to the the new modern UI.

[JeanRenaud]

3 minutes ago, sarbian said:

While I agree with the sentiment of "no scale is terrible" I have to deal with the mess that is Unity old UI. There will be a scale when I am done rewriting the UI to the the new modern UI.

Any way of ripping the data by code / kOS ?  Or must i get the source code then program some CSV writer ?

[New Horizons]

What do you guys get, when KSP crashes? Are your Mechjeb setting still there? I just lost all my custom windows and settings (e.g. for the ascend guidance) after the last crash of my game. The save itself works fine.

 

 

[Bornholio]

25 minutes ago, New Horizons said:

What do you guys get, when KSP crashes? Are your Mechjeb setting still there? I just lost all my custom windows and settings (e.g. for the ascend guidance) after the last crash of my game. The save itself works fine.

 

 

I've had MJ configs corrupted before.  Its pretty heavy handed with write access during gameplay.  Fixing it in one of my careers involved deleting all the ship .cfg files. Another time I just deleted the whole MJ install and fresh installed it.

[sarbian]

That's something that should be fixed in the current dev release. I did not get much feedback however (and I would love some because this will be the base of MJ for KSP 1.3)

[smotheredrun]

10 minutes ago, sarbian said:

That's something that should be fixed in the current dev release. I did not get much feedback however (and I would love some because this will be the base of MJ for KSP 1.3)

I pretty much only ise MJ for info readouts, but I do have a few "B-Team" missions upcoming in my career save.  I'll give MJ free reign on the autopilot for those. Any issues come up and I'll report here

[VaPaL]

@sarbian I have to say that I liked very much the scripting function. Haven't used it yet until couple of days ago, very useful!  

[New Horizons]

5 hours ago, sarbian said:

That's something that should be fixed in the current dev release. I did not get much feedback however (and I would love some because this will be the base of MJ for KSP 1.3)

I will inform you, when my SSD seems to malfunction again. Maybe I have bad sectors in it, which lead to total crashes.

[dlrk]

Sarbian,

I can't change the name on any windows in the custom window editor.The cursor will move, but nothing changes when I type. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qid50jqqc8q22c4/output_log.txt?dl=0

[maculator]

^Had this problem too. Are you using the devbuild? Because reverting to the normal version fixed it for me. @dlrk

I got a smal question:

Can I disable the option to save profiles for every craft? I have more problems with it then benefits.

thanks

[sarbian]

The new build should fix it. It was a stupid copy/paste error.

I will think about the profile thing. It's not that easy to disable without any impact. You want your config to be only on the gobal settings, or to be saved in the ship themselves ?

[maculator]

@sarbian thanks for the quick reply.

I have like 1000 configs for different vessels and on launch it always selects stuff I can't remember to have setup that way. I'd love to have just a global config. One for everythig. Because I basically use it to create my own HUD and to plan maneuvers or hold my planes on course, therefore I don't really need to remember different configs for each ship. It would be nice if it just saves the window position and what was open for the next time I'm in flightscene.

[Loren Pechtel]

Feature request:  Maneuver planner:  Capture

Changes the periapsis to be above the atmosphere, then changes the apoapsis to be just inside the SOI.  Burns only happen if they are needed.

[xxSpikeZZxx]

Hi Sarbian,

I have tried at least 4 times with 3 separate ships to use the landing guidance to land on the Mun and Minmus but the landing guidance keeps trying to perform course corrections by spinning the ship backwards and forwards until either the ship crashes into the ground, or it somehow stops and moves on to the final descent stage where it performs its final burn which isn't enough to stop the ship from crashing into the ground anyway. The ships are simple landing pods with one fuel tank and a simple thruster. They all have RCS and SAS and are capable of rotating quickly and precisely in each case but MechJeb isn't quite happy with their directions and tries to correct this each each second (Mechjeb tries to warp between these corrections too). The landing guidance used to work before i updated it to match KSP 1.2. I tried your most recent dev build but it still won't work. I have attached the log. I hope I have provided enough information. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p0oe9u90km5g0oz/output_log.txt?dl=0

Many thanks

[ss8913]

1 hour ago, xxSpikeZZxx said:

Hi Sarbian,

I have tried at least 4 times with 3 separate ships to use the landing guidance to land on the Mun and Minmus but the landing guidance keeps trying to perform course corrections by spinning the ship backwards and forwards until either the ship crashes into the ground, or it somehow stops and moves on to the final descent stage where it performs its final burn which isn't enough to stop the ship from crashing into the ground anyway. The ships are simple landing pods with one fuel tank and a simple thruster. They all have RCS and SAS and are capable of rotating quickly and precisely in each case but MechJeb isn't quite happy with their directions and tries to correct this each each second (Mechjeb tries to warp between these corrections too). The landing guidance used to work before i updated it to match KSP 1.2. I tried your most recent dev build but it still won't work. I have attached the log. I hope I have provided enough information. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p0oe9u90km5g0oz/output_log.txt?dl=0

Many thanks

 

Landing guidance only works (for me) under the following circumstances:

1. Only engines with instant response are used.  Anything with a graduated response (such as any KSPIE engines except the ATILLA thrusters) it doesn't handle correctly
2. You don't use KSPIE electric engines such as magnetic nozzles or ATILLA (which countermands #1, so therefore no KSPIE engines can be used - electric engines, MJ2 will always immediately burn and not wait for the correct time, it's like the burn-time calculation doesn't work for these engines?)
3. You have JUST ENOUGH RCS authority.  Too much and it will overshoot and wobble indefinitely, too little and .. well, obviously it can't turn fast enough to make maneuvers in time.
4. No atmosphere is present; this is triple-true if using FAR.  You said Mun and Minmus though so that's not an issue.

I've taught myself to land my spaceplanes manually... which basically amounts to, "set the landing target with MJ, tell it to show landing predictions, then on mun/minmus overshoot your target with the blue cross by at least 20km, maybe 30, set your smart ASS to SVEL- and burn to 0 m/s target relative when you're directly over your target, and allow the craft to descend vertically from there".  Timing can be tricky, esp. if you have less than 2G acceleration.

[xxSpikeZZxx]

1 hour ago, ss8913 said:

Landing guidance only works (for me) under the following circumstances:

1. Only engines with instant response are used.  Anything with a graduated response (such as any KSPIE engines except the ATILLA thrusters) it doesn't handle correctly
2. You don't use KSPIE electric engines such as magnetic nozzles or ATILLA (which countermands #1, so therefore no KSPIE engines can be used - electric engines, MJ2 will always immediately burn and not wait for the correct time, it's like the burn-time calculation doesn't work for these engines?)
3. You have JUST ENOUGH RCS authority.  Too much and it will overshoot and wobble indefinitely, too little and .. well, obviously it can't turn fast enough to make maneuvers in time.
4. No atmosphere is present; this is triple-true if using FAR.  You said Mun and Minmus though so that's not an issue.

I've taught myself to land my spaceplanes manually... which basically amounts to, "set the landing target with MJ, tell it to show landing predictions, then on mun/minmus overshoot your target with the blue cross by at least 20km, maybe 30, set your smart ASS to SVEL- and burn to 0 m/s target relative when you're directly over your target, and allow the craft to descend vertically from there".  Timing can be tricky, esp. if you have less than 2G acceleration.

The ship I used was all stock KSP parts. It had the basic "Reliant" engine and was very manoeuvrable. I have landed much more complicated aircraft on atmospheric bodies absolutely fine with Mechjeb before but no matter what i try with the update, i cannot get even the simplest ship to land successfully on the Mun or Minmus. 

[Loren Pechtel]

9 minutes ago, xxSpikeZZxx said:

The ship I used was all stock KSP parts. It had the basic "Reliant" engine and was very manoeuvrable. I have landed much more complicated aircraft on atmospheric bodies absolutely fine with Mechjeb before but no matter what i try with the update, i cannot get even the simplest ship to land successfully on the Mun or Minmus. 

While I have never seen the problem with too much maneuverability it sounds like you're falling afoul of his point #3.

[xxSpikeZZxx]

40 minutes ago, Loren Pechtel said:

While I have never seen the problem with too much maneuverability it sounds like you're falling afoul of his point #3.

The ship is so small that i don't need RCS. It can rotate very quickly on the reaction wheels alone and does so with a lot of precision. If i try a ship with RCS, the RCS thrusters fire off randomly and the ship wobbles all the way down until it crashes.

[Bornholio]

4 hours ago, xxSpikeZZxx said:

Hi Sarbian,

I have tried at least 4 times with 3 separate ships to use the landing guidance to land on the Mun and Minmus but the landing guidance keeps trying to perform course corrections by spinning the ship backwards and forwards ...

 

I'd re-install MJ and flush your configs if you find no immediate solution.

Things that can cause symptoms like this in my experience.

•  Too much gimble & Thrust (offset thrust worse)
• Throttle response lag engines.
•  Excessive RCS or Very Imbalanced RCS (Quick cure is turn it off)
•   Terrain, Slopes and drop offs with the landing estimate bouncing around because of them

It will be worse if you don't start from a good orbit and do land at target. Atmosphere can make it more difficult too. Drop staging during descent is very hard to account for as well.

I found that using the "Land somewhere" and controlling the insertion profile is better. Have "Time to impact" and "Suicide Burn Time" along with altitude (True) on screen during the approach so you don't give it an impossible task.

Few things that will really screw with MJ are controlling from a core/cockpit/port that is not forward facing relative to line of thrust.

 

[JayPee]

5 minutes ago, Bornholio said:

Few things that will really screw with MJ are controlling from a core/cockpit/port that is not forward facing relative to line of thrust.

for me this has made the difference between success and failure when landing on the Mun with mechjeb.