landers hopping

[Garthog]

I'm about ready to give up on KSP - every lander for the past week now seems to "hop up" when I open a save of a spacecraft/driller/anything on the surface of a planet/moon - sometimes they collapse onto the nozzles and blew themselves to pieces, but mostly I open the save and the vessel is launching itself into the space above the site completely out of control - if this can't be solved, I've wasted an enormous amount of time on this application for nothing.  Has anyone run into this before, and if so, can you advise me on how to stop this most recent "behaviour"??

 

garthog

[Rocket In My Pocket]

13 minutes ago, Garthog said:

I'm about ready to give up on KSP - every lander for the past week now seems to "hop up" when I open a save of a spacecraft/driller/anything on the surface of a planet/moon - sometimes they collapse onto the nozzles and blew themselves to pieces, but mostly I open the save and the vessel is launching itself into the space above the site completely out of control - if this can't be solved, I've wasted an enormous amount of time on this application for nothing.  Has anyone run into this before, and if so, can you advise me on how to stop this most recent "behaviour"??

 

garthog

It's a pretty well known bug in the most recent release.

Should be patched up soon, the dev's are certainly aware of it.

No real solutions that I know of, except not switching to said landers. If you are quick you could open the debug menu (Alt+F12) and either drop the gravity down to 00.1 or enable no crash damage, then just turn it back once the lander is safely on the ground.

Edited December 14, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Garthog]

wow - I hadn't heard about the bug - I like your suggested solution and may try it, but I'd rather the dev's fix it - any idea of when that may happen, and will we know or will I just try it one day and find that's it's now working properly?

 

thanks for the quick response - this forum seems to be filled with nice and helpful people!

[Rocket In My Pocket]

13 minutes ago, Garthog said:

wow - I hadn't heard about the bug - I like your suggested solution and may try it, but I'd rather the dev's fix it - any idea of when that may happen, and will we know or will I just try it one day and find that's it's now working properly?

 

thanks for the quick response - this forum seems to be filled with nice and helpful people!

Well I know the upcoming 1.4 update is going to upgrade the game to the newer Unity2017 engine. It shouldn't be too much further off? You can check the Daily Kerbal for more news on the progress if you like.

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/66-the-daily-kerbal/

That may fix it in and of itself really. Also, with such huge changes coming to the background workings of the game; I kinda doubt they will release a patch just to fix it between now and then sadly. I've heard the bug is more likely to strike with landing wheels/legs so I'd recommend that once you do get it safely on the ground, you retract those and just let it sit on it's butt for now.

No problem, glad to help! Yes, it is indeed. 

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

If you play on Steam it'll update automatically when you log in (once it's released and you have auto updates enabled). Otherwise, just keep an eye on the forum so you know when it's ready. I think you'll get the update from the KSP store (free, obviously). The expansion is supposed to be out early in the year (I'm hoping that means by the end of March), and the 1.4 update is required for it to work. So they'll either be released simultaneously, or 1.4 will be out just before the expansion. I think that's probably more likely, as they like to do a pre-release (which you can enable, if you like) to try to iron out the inevitable new bugs that are introduced. Seems to be a never-ending cycle but, as long as it keeps making the game better, I'm all for it.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

18 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Well I know the upcoming 1.4 update is going to upgrade the game to the newer Unity2017 engine. It shouldn't be too much further off? You can check the Daily Kerbal for more news on the progress if you like.

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/66-the-daily-kerbal/

That may fix it in and of itself really. Also, with such huge changes coming to the background workings of the game; I kinda doubt they will release a patch just to fix it between now and then sadly. I've heard the bug is more likely to strike with landing wheels/legs so I'd recommend that once you do get it safely on the ground, you retract those and just let it sit on it's butt for now.

No problem, glad to help! Yes, it is indeed. 

Guess I shouldn't be surprised a guy with a rocket in his pocket beat me to it. 

[Aegolius13]

Interesting.   I have noticed this on my Galilieo career, but thought it was just a mod bug. 

[Eric S]

Also, there's a mod that's working on fixing this bug, if that's an option.  I don't remember the name of it, however.

 

[Not Sure]

I sent some pretty big spaceplane missions to laythe recently and this got me pretty fired up, but i kind of found a solution. Lower your landing gear. It sounds counter-intuitive but when the terrain jumps during load, so does the vessel equally if its just sitting on the ground. However if you are resting on landing legs, the terrain jumps, but the vessel does not, sending it exploding and spinning massively. We will all be happy when this is fixed.

[harrisjosh2711]

22 hours ago, Garthog said:

I'm about ready to give up on KSP - every lander for the past week now seems to "hop up" when I open a save of a spacecraft/driller/anything on the surface of a planet/moon - sometimes they collapse onto the nozzles and blew themselves to pieces, but mostly I open the save and the vessel is launching itself into the space above the site completely out of control - if this can't be solved, I've wasted an enormous amount of time on this application for nothing.  Has anyone run into this before, and if so, can you advise me on how to stop this most recent "behaviour"??

 

garthog

I haven't done many surfaces missions since 1.3.1 but I noticed if my lander wasn't sitting on it landing legs this doesn't happen. design your craft so that you can retract the legs once you land and it shouldn't jump

[Geschosskopf]

On 12/13/2017 at 9:41 PM, Garthog said:

Has anyone run into this before, and if so, can you advise me on how to stop this most recent "behaviour"??

This problem is caused by things with suspensions.  Wheeled vehicles suffer the same way.  Not much you can usually do about rovers but you have several options with landers:

1. Don't shift focus away from the lander while it's on the ground.  Of course, this only works for grab-and-go science landers, not miners that will require days to do their job, or bases.
2. Retract the lander legs before shifting focus away from the lander.  Of course, the lander then has to be designed to sit OK on its belly.  This is a tried-and-true method that has been standard procedure as needed off and on several times over several years.
3. Don't use lander legs at all.  Instead, use structural girders, wing panels, etc.  For bases, just have them sit on the ground, no supports at all.  The advantage here is no suspension at all.  The disadvantage is, these types of parts have less ground friction than legs so such landers tend to slide more on slopes.
4. Try locking the suspension (right-click menu, might require Advanced Tweakables)  before shifting focus away and see if that helps when you return.  There have been times in the past when this has helped, and other times when it hasn't.

I would not count on the 1.4 update solving this problem.  History has shown that every Unity update breaks legs and wheels.  They only worked right when KSP was 32-bit and using some antique version of Unity that was no longer being supported.  Thus, no Unity updates for a long time and wheels and legs were fine.  But around 0.9 or 1.0, they changed to a 64-bit version and have been keeping it fairly up-to-date ever since.  Since then, it's been nothing but problems that only are just starting to get overcome when the next Unity update breaks them again.

[Garthog]

Unfortunately, this has never happened until it began last week, and I have several machines on various moons/planets on "legs" that are now exploding (or sometimes "sinking" almost out of sight and then "springing" into the void) - I thought that a recent update (I'm on steam) must have caused it and hopefully it will be remedied soon - if not ... well, there's always Civ IV

 

garthog

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

8 hours ago, Garthog said:

hopefully it will be remedied soon - if not ... well, there's always Civ IV

 

garthog

Ah, the greatest Civ of all time. I think I'll still be playing the "Rise of Rome" and "Genghis Khan" scenarios 20 years from now.

As for your bases, do you have any screenshots of the troublesome ones? I see these threads all the time, and the bug is well known by now, but I don't really experience these kinds of problems. I currently have bases on Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Gilly (for God's sake), Pol, Bop, and Eeloo. With a large rover/mining base on Moho, and a little one on Tylo. I can use any of them without a problem. Since 1.3.1 I do see a tiny hop when I switch to them. I would equate it to the hop you see on large rockets sometimes when you revert back to the launchpad. Normally, when I see these threads, I assume it's one of the members of the Axis of Evil: autostrut, part clipping, or mods. I think changing the spring strength on legs can do this as well (as I saw someone in another post have this problem because of it). I wonder if I don't see it because I always have my drills in the ground? I'm not sure, really. It has me curious about the cause. Why some and not others?

[Garthog]

It happens with anything with legs, regardless of whether a drill is in the ground or not (it's impressive to see a vessel with long drillers below instantly emerge and take flight!) - if this just started with me as of 1.3.1, when did 1.3.1 come out?  Since I'm on steam it would have automatically updated me without my being aware.