why do you play this?

[putnamto]

its just a series of bugs after bugs after bugs, every single action even done a thousand times becomes a headache.

does squad even have a Q and A department?

sorry, ive only been playing for a little bit today and the headaches have already started.

but anyways, besides things randomly not working why havent you put the game down yet?

i keep playing because of tthe amount of satisfaction i get from getting something done after days of failure even though the last time i did the exact same thing it took ten minutes.

Edited May 1, 2018 by putnamto

[Bill Phil]

It's fun. Sometimes. It can get tedious really fast though.

[AVaughan]

TBH I haven't noticed any serious bugs with 1.4.1 or 1.4.3 (I skipped 1.4.2).  There is some texture fighting, the re-entry effects are weird, and I've decided I need to turn the spring dampers on landing legs up higher than default (and Squad I really should be able to tweak that setting in flight, not just in the editor) but none of that is anything that significantly affects gameplay.

 

Edit: @putnamto what bugs in particular are you talking about?

Edited May 1, 2018 by AVaughan

[kBob]

Because I'm a masochist. 

Seriously because I enjoy it.  Just took a long break, now it all seems fresh and fun again with new things to learn.

[AngrybobH]

29 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

.... and I've decided I need to turn the spring dampers on landing legs up higher than default (and Squad I really should be able to tweak that setting in flight, not just in the editor)....

Unless you have magneto-viscous(ferrofluid) dampeners (or other available technology) you cannot change that in real life without actually changing the dampeners, which is hard to do in flight. Of course real life springs self-dampen quite a bit more than KSPs. So, I have to agree with you.

OT, I play because I really enjoy building things and solving problems....and science....and space....well pretty much I feel like they built this game specifically for me. It scratches an itch that my job(that involves solving problems, a bit of science, and occasionally building things but, no space) just can't.

11 minutes ago, putnamto said:

....some stuff about hating docking......

the first mod I downloaded was Docking Port Alignment Indicator and there is a reason for that. After playing for many hours I can dock even the most horribly designed junk together without assistance. It takes practice, also why I like this game.

[Cunjo Carl]

3 hours ago, putnamto said:

[Why do you play this?]

Cause it's fun...

Look, here's a 5 stage plane. Why? KSP!

 

On a more serious note though, you are right about bugs. It's not just KSP though, any program that's complicated has them, pretty much without exception. I do work with CAD and physics modelling, and my thousand-dollar-a-year software is even riddled with bugs. You really can't escape them! As a fun experiment, try naming 10 groundbreaking games from the last 20 years, and let's see how buggy they were at release. We can actually do this experiment, it's kinda fun. On Youtube, there's the GamesDoneQuick group, which uses useful bugs to play games as fast as possible. Check out your games! It can be pretty surprising if you're not used to it.

KSP is kinda in a state of constant release, so it's also in a state of constant peak bug, which is a bit unfortunate. There are exceptions to the rule though, I had been finding that v1.3.1 was really quite stable relatively speaking. Sure it doesn't have the latest and greatest, but if stability is a must, I'd go with that over the v1.4 stuff for now. Of course, we're lucky that SQUAD is still developing, so the bugs of today will be eventually be gone, and replaced with the bugs of the future. I personally enjoy it, but everyone's different.

Edited May 1, 2018 by Cunjo Carl

[putnamto]

1 hour ago, AngrybobH said:

Unless you have magneto-viscous(ferrofluid) dampeners (or other available technology) you cannot change that in real life without actually changing the dampeners, which is hard to do in flight. Of course real life springs self-dampen quite a bit more than KSPs. So, I have to agree with you.

OT, I play because I really enjoy building things and solving problems....and science....and space....well pretty much I feel like they built this game specifically for me. It scratches an itch that my job(that involves solving problems, a bit of science, and occasionally building things but, no space) just can't.

the first mod I downloaded was Docking Port Alignment Indicator and there is a reason for that. After playing for many hours I can dock even the most horribly designed junk together without assistance. It takes practice, also why I like this game.

sorry, i was extremely agravated.

ive tried with and withought docking port alignment indicator, i can line up the ports just fine. they just randomly decide when and if they are going to attach, last night i litterally pushed another ship around by its docking port because i got mad and just slammed the accelleration after they kept bouncing off of eachother.

most of the time the ports magnets catch eachother and they slowly start to drift together then they touch and bounce off, no matter what my velocity is. but sometimes, just sometimes they decide to stick.

last night building my space station one module would dock fine, then nothing else would ever dock, then today i go to pick it back up thinking maybe it was a colider issue so i flew up a bunch of mk1 cabins with ports on both sides to move the docking port away from any obstructions.

the cabins docked fine and dandy, only a little bit of a headache out of the three ports i extended i only had problems with one, but then as soon as i try to dock any of the three other modules to the now extended docking ports they just bounce off.

ive tried save editing, their was no problem with the ports their, ive tried moving the ports farther out from obstructions, ive removed all lights\struts\anything close to the port that i could think would get in the way. ive tried changing all of the settings on the port(these are contstuction ports) and none of them make a lick of difference the ship ports just bounce off of eachother.

and now here i am for the hundredth [snip] time thinking "well maybe i did this wrong" and urging myself not to launch the game because even if i was right, and this one part does dock, i know that their will be another problem trying to dock the rest of the modules.

Edited May 1, 2018 by Vanamonde

[AngrybobH]

I have had issues with ports not working with extremely high parts count and very low FPS. I have also seen a video of an extremely long station having a physical limit. The limit is 1km I think. Also, docking ports seem to hit performance more than other parts. There is a reason things are not working out. Some of it may be game limitations and some may be design or other things like mod clashing. Try posting a pic of the station and a list of installed mods maybe someone here can help or has seen this particular problem before. In situations like that I actually use KAS/KIS to remove the docking ports and reattach the parts I know will not ever be separated. On high part count ships, I edit the cfg so that 1 kerbal can move all the weight from a great distance because FPS lag is not fun. Not sure if any of that helps.

[putnamto]

it randomly decided to work after i made that last post, after i destroyed half of my solar panels.

its the construction ports, if i change any of the settings on the port at all the ports wont acquire anymore.

[Vanamonde]

The posts with all the cussing have been removed. Also, the replies to the posts with cussing. 

[putnamto]

2 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

The posts with all the cussing have been removed. Also, the replies to the posts with cussing. 

sorry i just get soooooo frustrated, been trying to build this station all week.

i should probably find somewhere else to vent.

[Vanamonde]

1 minute ago, putnamto said:

sorry i just get soooooo frustrated, been trying to build this station all week.

i should probably find somewhere else to vent.

Venting is fine. The cussing is not.

[putnamto]

7 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Venting is fine. The cussing is not.

gotchya, part of me wants to argue about words just being words but thats for another forum.

so what do you guys do? just put the game down for a day, week, month, year?

and a quick question, if i typed loveing and excrements all the time would everybody else think im cussing up a storm? lol.

 

Edited May 1, 2018 by putnamto

[AVaughan]

I've had Konstruction installed a few times, but I don't recall ever actually using the weldable ports.  I generally don't assemble stations in orbit.  I'll dock ships to stations, or to other ships, but typically I'll launch a station all in one piece.  Anything too big for a single launch tends to have too many parts for my old pc to handle at reasonable fps, and attempting to dock at 5 fps isn't fun.  (Trying to control anything at 5 fps isn't fun).  If a particular docking was giving me particular trouble I'd make a named save when I was lined up and about to start the approach, then press F5 to make another quicksave at about 5 metres or 15 sec from contact.  That way I could at least F9 and try again without needing to spend lots of time on it.

Personally if I was having that much trouble with a mod not working, I'd ask for help in the mod's thread.  (Make the mod author's life easier by supplying a proper description of the what you were trying to do, and what happened.  For something like this a short video could make it clearer.  Provide the information he will need to help debug things, ksp version, mod version, mod list, ksp.log and output_log.txt).   From memory konstruction ports have rotation settings, and getting those wrong might cause problems with docking, so be sure to double check that.  

 

1 hour ago, AngrybobH said:

Unless you have magneto-viscous(ferrofluid) dampeners (or other available technology) you cannot change that in real life without actually changing the dampeners, which is hard to do in flight. Of course real life springs self-dampen quite a bit more than KSPs. So, I have to agree with you.

I'm pretty sure you can buy adjustable shocks that can be electronically adjusted whilst driving, eg https://www.knowyourparts.com/technical-resources/ride-control/electronic-adjustable-shocks-struts/ .  In real life NASA probably wouldn't use adjustable dampers, but NASA landers are always specially tuned for landing on a particular planet/moon.  In KSP I often don't simulate missions first, and I might want to use the same lander on both Tylo and Bop, so lots of reasons why I might want to adjust landing leg settings in flight. 

[putnamto]

38 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

I've had Konstruction installed a few times, but I don't recall ever actually using the weldable ports.  I generally don't assemble stations in orbit.  I'll dock ships to stations, or to other ships, but typically I'll launch a station all in one piece.  Anything too big for a single launch tends to have too many parts for my old pc to handle at reasonable fps, and attempting to dock at 5 fps isn't fun.  (Trying to control anything at 5 fps isn't fun).  If a particular docking was giving me particular trouble I'd make a named save when I was lined up and about to start the approach, then press F5 to make another quicksave at about 5 metres or 15 sec from contact.  That way I could at least F9 and try again without needing to spend lots of time on it.

Personally if I was having that much trouble with a mod not working, I'd ask for help in the mod's thread.  (Make the mod author's life easier by supplying a proper description of the what you were trying to do, and what happened.  For something like this a short video could make it clearer.  Provide the information he will need to help debug things, ksp version, mod version, mod list, ksp.log and output_log.txt).   From memory konstruction ports have rotation settings, and getting those wrong might cause problems with docking, so be sure to double check that.  

 

I'm pretty sure you can buy adjustable shocks that can be electronically adjusted whilst driving, eg https://www.knowyourparts.com/technical-resources/ride-control/electronic-adjustable-shocks-struts/ .  In real life NASA probably wouldn't use adjustable dampers, but NASA landers are always specially tuned for landing on a particular planet/moon.  In KSP I often don't simulate missions first, and I might want to use the same lander on both Tylo and Bop, so lots of reasons why I might want to adjust landing leg settings in flight. 

ive tried, with all the mods i have problems with i post in the topic, they ask for a log, i post the log then my post gets lost in the sea of posts.

i just wont mess with any of the settings on the ports from now on and only use them for welding.

[Gargamel]

3 hours ago, putnamto said:

been trying to build this station all week.

Simplify your design.  I've thought your stations overly complicated for a while now, but haven't said so, cause we all play our games the way we want to. 

But break it down into a simpler design.  I'd recommend jumping over to sandbox for this.    Get a simple, orbitally constructed station in space.  Figure out what else you want to add, add a few of them, work out the bugs.  Work these bugs out when there's only a couple bugs to work out.  If you go for the grand design, then you'll have a harder time figuring out what exactly is the issue. 

But also, In my experience, I've learned that high part count stations are bad.   Annoyingly bad.   I've made beautiful, complicated stations with 300 parts.  Lights, science, antennas, moving dohickeys, etc.   It may take a bit to load, and the FPS isn't that great, but it works.   Then I dock the first 50 part shuttle to it.  Ok, I can deal with this.   Then a 60 part ISRU.  Umm this is getting ugly.  Then another 40 part shuttle.   OK, this is unplayable now.     Keep the stations simple.   They don't need many features, a lot of the ships that dock with them will bring redundant items with them.     Set a simple list of goals to accomplish with your station, and see how simple of a vessel you can make, while still reaching those goals.   It will make launch and construction easier, and improve overall gameplay. 

Once you've gotten a knack for station building, take those lessons you've learned over to the career game. 

Edited May 1, 2018 by Gargamel

[AVaughan]

3 hours ago, putnamto said:

ive tried, with all the mods i have problems with i post in the topic, they ask for a log, i post the log then my post gets lost in the sea of posts.

If you are not getting a reply it might be because your initial post doesn't clearly describe what is wrong, what you have done to try to fix it, or doesn't include basic info like ksp and mod version.

I went to the Konstruction thread to see if anyone has reported similar issues, and saw your earlier post about another issue there.  No mention of what KSP version you are running.  (But you do provide a log file, which says you are running KSP 1.3.0).  No mention of which version of the mod you were having trouble with.  Then less than an hour later "i fixed it by uninstalling the ckan version and installing version 1.2 from spacedock".  Well ok.  If it is fixed then there is no reason for Roverdude to investigate, and no need for him to reply.   

But you stated that you fixed the issue by installing version 1.2 from spacedock.  According to ckan, there is no version 1.2 of Konstruction.  Spacedock has a version labelled 1.2, but from what I can tell that is version 0.1.2 for KSP 1.1.3 and probably won't work with KSP 1.3.0. 

According to ckan the latest version compatible with 1.3 is 0.2.2.0.  You can get it from https://github.com/BobPalmer/Konstruction/releases .  If you are still running that spacedock download on 1.3.0, that might explain why docking ports aren't docking properly. 

Now back to that log file you posted.  As far as I could tell, the konstruction.dll was never loaded in that log file.  There also didn't appear to be an UmbraSpaceIndustries or Konstruction folder in gamedata, so it looks like either Konstruction wasn't installed, or wasn't installed properly, when that logfile was created.  

I'm wondering whether you launched all the various bits of your station using the same version of Konstruction that you are using now.  It is at least possible that Konstruction docking ports launched whilst konstruction isn't properly installed won't work properly, or that Konstruction docking ports from different mod versions might not dock together, especially if you downgraded from 0.2.2+ to 0.1.2.

[putnamto]

2 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Simplify your design.  I've thought your stations overly complicated for a while now, but haven't said so, cause we all play our games the way we want to. 

 

Its  only 365 parts. How  would  I  get  around  redundancy  though? Each  module  needs  batteries, monoprop, reaction  wheels, monoprop  thrusters,  probe core and  solar  panels.

I  wanted  to  get  a  kerbal  up  their  and  was  the  redundant  items  out  into  space, well  that  was  the  plan.

I  had  low  fps  when  I  built  it  on  kerbin  but  I  assumed  that  being  in  space  the  fps  would  go  back  up  due  to  not  rendering  the  planet  and  such.

[Dafni]

26 minutes ago, putnamto said:

...  but  I  assumed  that  being  in  space  the  fps  would  go  back  up  due  to  not  rendering  the  planet  and  such.

Not related to your problem, just a usefull bit of info to pass on:  apparently the planet (or just the oceans?) renders in a lesser quality when you are above 250km IIRC. Hence that altitude minimum if often chosen for station. Just in case you haven't heard that.

As for your problem, @Gargamel and @AVaughan both have good points that you should take to heart.

Good luck

[AVaughan]

In KSP low fps is normally caused by too many parts for the physics simulations.  (You can probably also cause it by adding visual mod that your gpu isn't powerful enough to handle, but if that is the case you would notice that with even simple 5 part reach the Karmen line type rockets).

Regarding part count, you can add the probe core, batteries, rcs etc to one end of your module, and just detach and de-orbit them after docking.  You will probably want a couple of hefty reaction wheels, and to set the rcs to only respond to translation, and let the reaction wheels cope with rotation.  You can also use a couple of detachable and disposable tugs near the center of mass.  Lastly you could use Kerbal attachment system to remove the excess parts after docking.   (It would be simplest to have a disposable tug at one end that you can simply detach, and just 4 rcs thrusters at the other end to be removed by KAS.  Don't just use decouplers to detach bits you no longer need, you want to deorbit them to make sure they stay out of physics range, otherwise they will still be simulated for physics calculations).

 

[AVaughan]

How I would go about testing Konstruction docking ports in your situation.  (Before starting you should make sure you are using the right version of the mod for your KSP). 

1.  Build a couple of simple but heavy docking probes.  Docking port, probe core, 2.5m rcs fuel, orange tank, another 2.5m rcs tank, rcs thrusters at both ends.  Attach them together, so you have 2 of them.  Use the cheat menu to cheat them to Minmus orbit or somewhere where they are out of physics range of anything else, and you have decent frame-rate.   Undock, separate a little then re-dock.  Then try that again but get further away and/or change the relative rotation of the docking ports.  If they dock fine each time, then the docking ports seem to be ok.  If they don't dock fine, then double check for alignment/rotations settings, and if they seem ok, then report the problem in the Konstruction thread.  (But be aware that there is a fair chance Roverdude will say use a more recent ksp, and a more recent version of the mod.  Sometimes it just isn't worth fixing bugs in old versions, if the newer versions work fine).

2.  Repeat that experiment 200 metres from your station.  (ie somewhere where you have a really bad frame-rate).   If you have problems here then the most likely cause is probably related to your poor frame-rate.  (Too low a frame rate probably means that the ksp physics engine is using bigger than normal time-steps, and that might mean that things which would normally dock successfully, might end-up bouncing off).   Probably worth doing this test a few times as well.  If docking is problematic due to poor frame-rate, then it might be worth trying to slow down time with the time control mod.  That might allow the physics time-steps to get back to normal levels and allow things to dock successfully.  Other than that probably the only thing you can do is reduce your part count to improve fps.  And probably nothing Roverdude could realistically change as part of konstruction either.  (Upgrading to a newer ksp might also help, but I assume you want to stay with your current version for a reason).

If things dock ok here, then there is probably something wrong with the docking ports on the station or station modules in your save.  Someone might be able to help fix that with careful save-file editing.  Alternatively removing the old docking ports with KAS and attaching new ones might work.

Edited May 1, 2018 by AVaughan

[JERONIMO]

I DO EXPLOTIONS , SPACE STATIONS AND kerbal creater of course

[Mark Kerbin]

Usually when something doesn't work for me, I go install hyperedit, turn on the cheat menu, and MAKE IT WORK!!!!! That or I turn of the game, swear at it for a few minutes, go watch a youtube video, forget what I was mad at, reboot, try again without remembering I'm trying again, and am suddenly very happy after it works.

As for painful docking, use Mechjeb if you just can't handle the FPS. You can also lower the quality, get a better PC, and or install Kerbal Attachment system and Kerbal Inventory system and remove extra bits. Theres also the option of having a dedicated tug for the station to help stick on new modules

 

[putnamto]

so after reading AVaughan's post im begining to think theirs something screwy with all my mods. 

so im going to thin out my mod list to only the ones i need, but i still want to keep my save file, i basically want to do a clean install.

so my plan
open game, terminate any craft that involves modded parts that im not going to carry over to the new install.
copy save file to somewhere else.
unninstall mods
unninstal game
reinstall game
reinstall mods
move safe file over.

does this sound like a sound plan?

 

[DeltaDizzy]

23 minutes ago, putnamto said:

open game, terminate any craft that involves modded parts that im not going to carry over to the new install.
copy save file to somewhere else.
unninstall mods
unninstal game
reinstall game
reinstall mods
move safe file over.

I dont think you need to uninstall your game, but other than that, it looks good.