How do I know if my parts are attached?

[Chik Sneadlov]

I've never run into this before. Usually when I do a butt joint on a couple of modular girder struts it fuses even if I don't bother to get the nodes facing each other. This time, I looked inside my payload area and not only are things not fused, they are also slowly rotating which results in my rocket rotating and as i get going faster the whole thing blows up. I take it to the VAB and everything looks fine. I thought I read that there is a key to hold down that shows you if anything is broken, but I don't remember what it is. Sounds like a great feature.

I also mounted an engine on a modular girder strut and then mounted that assembly on the bottom of an inline battery. Half of those are also floating around inside the payload area before launch. Yes. I put too many engines on and it gets hard to see. That screw up is a little more understandable, but it had been working fine. In fact this rocket had been working pretty good. I had it in orbit, but it didn't get there smooth enough. I had to keep modifying it. I used the subassembly thing. 

They have a thing in Scrap Mechanic. Its called welding. Works pretty nice. You can see sparks shoot out where all your stuff connects so you know its joined. You can take a thing and weld it to something else, which seems pretty obvious. Not in KSP. You can't pick up a part and pull it over to another and join it in a ring. 

 

 

 

[Geonovast]

It's gonna be reeeaally hard to help with something like this without seeing what you got.  Can you put up some screenshots of the craft, and possibly a video of the issue in flight?

[Rocket In My Pocket]

KSP craft are built like trees, every part has one parent part, and as many children parts as it wants.

So you really can't connect anything into a closed circle unless you use struts and/or autostruts.

Like @Geonovast said, a picture is worth a thousand words.

[Chik Sneadlov]

This is built like a tree. In my last lines I was thinking back to another incident in the last week where I was trying to build a ring out of Modular Girder Segments XL . The current problem is with xl modular girder segments attached radially to a fuel tank. The MGSs are almost horizontal and they appear to be touching each other. Both parts lit green, but on the launchpad they aren't attached and they're rotating around the rocket inside the payload fairing. It sucks. I spent a lot of time after watching a video on how to cure the rotating rocket problem. I very carefully attached struts so they're as close to centered and equal on each side of a part if necessary. The game fought me the whole way with the mysterious, "Oh sure we'll look like we're going to attach, but when you actually snap in place we won't or we'll attach to something else" thing that KSP likes to do. 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

11 minutes ago, Chik Sneadlov said:

This is built like a tree. In my last lines I was thinking back to another incident in the last week where I was trying to build a ring out of Modular Girder Segments XL . The current problem is with xl modular girder segments attached radially to a fuel tank. The MGSs are almost horizontal and they appear to be touching each other. Both parts lit green, but on the launchpad they aren't attached and they're rotating around the rocket inside the payload fairing. It sucks. I spent a lot of time after watching a video on how to cure the rotating rocket problem. I very carefully attached struts so they're as close to centered and equal on each side of a part if necessary. The game fought me the whole way with the mysterious, "Oh sure we'll look like we're going to attach, but when you actually snap in place we won't or we'll attach to something else" thing that KSP likes to do. 

I think you're misunderstanding somewhat, I'm not telling to you to build like a tree.

I'm telling you that's how the game engine underneath all the fancy graphics works, it only understands connections that are one-way. You literally can't make a circle. Unless you use struts to attach the first and last part at the end of the circle.

A part can only be technically "attached" to one other part. It's confusing to try to explain.

See this arch made of girders? (Ignore the strut) It's not actually connected, just two separate "arms" as far as the game is concerned. Just because it "looks" like they are touching doesn't mean they are "fused" or "welded" together.

See the strut at the top? That's how you make it connected.

Edited December 26, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Chik Sneadlov]

I understand the game thinks that way. That's not the current problem. The problem is shaking that wasn't happening a few hours ago. I have a lot of those nuclear electrical generators attached to a piece of structural tubing and the SAS on top with the capsule. I just put that with all its maybe 50 nuke generators attached radially and it just blows up from shaking so hard while sitting on the launchpad. I took off all the generators. I have a lot of engines that are clipping together under the battery. I do this all the time with different engines and it isn't a problem. This time the whole thing is shaking. 

A few hours ago I launched this thing into a nearly perfect circular orbit. Now it just blows up on the launch pad. I take parts off it blows up again. It drives me nuts. I put so many parts on there because Xenon engines are so weak. I have to use a lot of them. I like xenon because its so efficient. I thought I was on my way to building a two stage rocket that could visit most of planets without needing more fuel. I thought I was using a lot less parts than other projects, but it just always ends in disaster and frustration with KSP. 

Earlier I thought the parts weren't connected. Now I think the violent shaking has broken the bonds. Its like my rocket yesterday that was parked on Gilly. I came back to it and it suddenly jumped up into space. It went up 12 km! thats after I made it indestructible with the cheats. Before that it just blew to smithereens. 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Ion engines in particular are very susceptible to collision problems when clipping them into things or near each other.

You need to give them proper spacing and room. I assume this was somewhat intentional on the dev's part, as other parts don't have as much issue with being clipped. Ion engines being so weak TWR wise I think they anticipated players trying to get cheaty and clipping a ton together.

I ran into the same issue when testing Ion clusters, you just need to re-evaluate your thinking and come up with a design that works around these limitations.

To give you an idea, this is about as close as you'd want them.

This one below is pushing it, but it does work. Any closer than this and you'll get the Kraken induced wobble of rapid unplanned disassembly.

 

 

Edited December 26, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Chik Sneadlov]

I didn't know ions were especially prone to this problem. I probably should try to scale it down. I just like to build in huge numbers. I've already got an idea in my head and It isn't compact. Thanks

[Rocket In My Pocket]

36 minutes ago, Chik Sneadlov said:

I didn't know ions were especially prone to this problem. I probably should try to scale it down. I just like to build in huge numbers. I've already got an idea in my head and It isn't compact. Thanks

Keep working at it, you'll get something you are happy with eventually.

I was toying with the idea of offsetting them on the deep axis, if you know what I mean? Like a cone shape, so each one is in front of or behind another, (Like a pyramid of engines) you should be able to make each coil tighter that way. Maybe give that a try?

I think ultimately this is an inherent problem with ion clusters, the rear end is going to be fat. Not an insurmountable problem though.

Edited December 26, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Chik Sneadlov]

I tried your pyramid or cone. I built sort of a wireframe of half a dome because it had to go out and then down and I didn't want the upper engine blowing on the lower engine. (I think that would cancel the thrust but don't know if there's a visual of that) I built 8 legs with 5 engines each. Then I built a tower and put on gigantor solar. I launched at night and got into the sun, but it wasn't enough thrust and I went into the dark side of the planet. Then I launched into the sun and against the spin of the earth. That worked better, especially since I added eight more legs full of engines. I could burn at a quarter of power and not run out near earth, which is pretty good, but I need more thrust and more electricity. 

The first important thing is that I got rid of the shaking problem by using a lot of struts and placing them carefully so that the radial parts don't start to twist. Saw a video of rockets with wide radial parts and the outer SRB's for instance will be at an angle to the vertical rocket. This catches the wind and turns the rocket into a huge air screw. The radial parts can also start to oscillate if it gets into a harmonic situation, which is what I think causes the shaking. I don't think that putting the engines too close together is the problem right now. Its putting them close together and having the frame of the rocket twisting and then the oscillating. 

My problem now is lag and the computer shutting it down because it can't handle the large number of parts. Once the first stage is away the computer works a lot better. I was thinking I needed actuators to make a frame that can unfold in space for my solar farm, but I'm now thinking I'd be better off building a space station with snap together parts. Build the long range xenon ship with tons of solar in orbit by sending up the parts in huge ships that just have to orbit earth. That way I won't have to deal with the computer crashing because the ship has so many parts on earth and I can build huge frames in space because there's no gravity or air resistance. All I have to do is plan and build everything perfectly, send it up, put it into precise circular orbits and think of everything and then go up there, learn to dock and assemble and then take off with a ship with enough solar that it runs on full power. Probably won't take more than 20 rl years.