Anyone else having problems?

[OrionAurora]

Sorry in advance if this is in the wrong thread.

Alright, so I've been playing 0.16 and whenever I try to launch a rocket, everything just breaks. So far, one of two things keep happening:

1. The rocket loses and spins out of control and I don't have any control over the current rockets being fired.

2. The current rockets being fired detaches from my ship and everything explodes.

If you guys need pictures, I'll try to get them.

I have no clue what is going on. At first I thought it was my fault, that somehow I created a faulty rocket but I no longer buy that. I recreated one of the youtube user's, Kurtjmac's, successful rocket designs and it too suffers from the problem above. I've only ever got to the Mun once during this update and all of my other attempts failed to leave Kerbin atmosphere.

Is there something I am not getting at? I know this game requires some trial and error, but I feel like the game is glitching out on me. I am sorry if this is coming off as a butt-hurt complaint, I don't mean to. I just want to enjoy the game again.

[Vanamonde]

Are you trying to fly the 3-man rockets? Because I'm having a lot of problems with those. I don't have any advice for you right now, though pics might help.

[KAO]

are you using the large decouplers? I don't know if this is the problem, but I heard that those large decouplers tend to glitch out and cause seemingly random destruction of your vessel

[Khrissetti]

See if it's a glitch or a specific problem with your designs. Try building a simple parachute/CM/fuel/rocket design and see if it falls apart, then add a decoupler and another rocket stage, then try adding a couple of SRBs

Let's see if we can find out when you start having problems.

[Flowz0r]

MORE STRUTS!

Seriously, the large rocket engines have some insane kick to them, they'll tear anything apart that's not wrapped in 10 layers of aluminum duct tape.

[boolybooly]

There are some bug reports on this.

One suggests this...

When parts crash together, the higher the mas of the part, the more damage it does. The lower the mass of the part, the more destructible it is. This means that rockets using parallel staging are almost guaranteed to destroy themselves.

Possibly related, I've noticed that Kerbals will die from very low speed collisions if they collide with one of the new large parts.

Another suggests this...

I launch, and even on very low thrust, my aircraft will basically just turn left/right, tip over and then fall to pieces.

.

To which C7 replied with some interesting info...

We have found some issues that have been fixed in .17. Namely the gear use a toggled collider which resets its collision layer.

Also, the shudder has been largely eliminated by the krakensbane system. It was essentially the lesser known atmospheric kraken causing that jolt.

I'm looking into rewriting the gear as a module as well. Which should really improve things.

So I think what you are seeing is real and people are discussing it in the bugs forum.

Edited August 7, 2012 by boolybooly

[Flowz0r]

...So I think what you are seeing is real and people are discussing it in the bugs forum.

Yeah, it's a bug, but you can avoid it by making your rocket wobble as little as possible.

Steer clear of the new radial decouplers too, they tend to place parts too close to each other.

[boolybooly]

My own experience is that the new radials work fine with the new parts as long as the stack is short and simple and a strategic strut here and there can help prevent wobble. You usually need two sets of struts, a single radial brace per radial stack as far as possible along the stack from the decoupler and one circumferential brace per stack around the outside between stacks to prevent wobble. Point of attachment further out is more stable for these ie around the outside of the craft.

Getting these struts absolutely symmetrical and for circumferential struts horizontal, prevents rocket spin and can be achieved using the snap to system by placing a reference strut on the snap-to line at the destination point before you place the actual reinforcing strut starting at the snap-to line at the origin point. Then remove the reference strut. If you use the textures to measure vertical displacement you can achieve near perfect symmetry.

If you try to edit the struts' XYZ (angle) values in the craft file you can sometimes win out, since the struts seem to be drawn from a starting location at an angle and raytraced to the destination where they attach themselves. But this only works for very small adjustments eg making them absolutely horizontal, more often than not adjusting angles breaks the craft file. Though adjusting decoupler and tank heights works pretty reliably which can help with multi-radial designs.

To be honest its a bit too fussy the way it is but it looks like the Squad crew are working on it so I hope these tips will help in the meantime. IMHO snap-to option on the destination placement would help a lot, oh and a vertical snap-to would help too.

And kerbals do die on contact with the big tanks, the only way round that I know of is to give them ladders.

Edited August 7, 2012 by boolybooly

[Khrissetti]

The new radial decouplers are a world of fun. I think the majority of my decoupled boosters have turned almost instantly into fireballs, when the rocket survives it's a very entertaining way of staging.

[boolybooly]

well you need to get the decoupler in the middle of the long boosters or they tumble and the end clips the vehicle

[togfox]

I'm an accomplished designer with the small stock parts but I'm having persistent problems with the larger parts. My design concepts simply don't scale up well. I'm yet to determine if I have to fire my lead kernel engineer or if the alpha parts need tweaking.