Mission "Failure" false positive

[AbacusWizard]

I've been playing with the missions built in to Making History, and while some of them are fun challenges, the whole mess is filled with problems.

The big one is that on two occasions I've encountered sudden out-of-nowhere "FAILURE" messages just before succeeding in the final mission objective.

• Munar 1: I designed an excellent replica of the Saturn V, flew it all the way to Mun, landed my LEM, re-orbited the top half, docked with the Command Module, transferred crew, flew the Command Module back to Kerbin, started re-entry, disconnected from the Service Module, and everything seemed to be going fine, when suddenly FAILURE pops up out of nowhere. I closed the message, continued airbraking, deployed parachutes, and landed safely. Why the sudden FAILURE? My only guess is that the no-longer-needed Service Module (not even part of my vessel anymore) had just blown up from re-entry heat, and the program thought "oh wait, a required part has just blown up! FAILURE!"

• Acapello 13: orbited Kerbin, went to the Mun in spite of the setbacks, landed Jeb in the lander, got Jeb back into the Command Module, returned to Kerbin atmosphere, got the "oh noes your parachutes have failed and you'll have to bail out and use personal parachutes" message, had all three of the crew bail out and deploy personal parachutes... and then suddenly got an "I told you you should've bailed out!" message from Gene Kerman and the FAILURE message out of nowhere. Again, I closed the FAILURE message and continued playing... Valentina (the one I was controlling at the moment) landed safely; the other two kerbals seem to have vanished into thin air (in spite of their parachutes having already been deployed); the crew capsule, ironically, made it to the ground completely undamaged! And yet FAILURE anyway. No clue why.

 

I've also been having problems with the Service Module part that is required to be used in the Munar 1 mission. I loaded it up with fuel tanks (of the 1.25m variety), and discovered when I reached the appropriate stage that they weren't feeding fuel to the engine (connected directly to said Service Module) at all. I started over, discovered that the tanks were attached to the ceiling of the SM, and tried attaching them to the floor of the SM instead--the "fuel overlay" view confirmed that they should both be feeding fuel to the engine. When I actually flew it, though, only half of the tanks (either just left side or just right side; I forget) fed fuel to the engine; the other half remained full and untouched throughout the entire mission--and untouchable, too, since apparently the "transfer fuel from one tank to another" ability has been disabled?? By some miracle of engineering and the Tsiolkovsky equation I made it back to Kerbin anyway, but, well, FAILURE; see above.

 

I hate to complain here, because KSP is such an amazing product and as a physics teacher I get so much use out of it both personally and professionally... but I'm getting really tired of these bugs. I'd expect to see this sort of problem in a hastily assembled mod, not purchased DLC that was in development for so long.

[klesh]

5 hours ago, AbacusWizard said:

I've also been having problems with the Service Module part that is required to be used in the Munar 1 mission. I loaded it up with fuel tanks (of the 1.25m variety), and discovered when I reached the appropriate stage that they weren't feeding fuel to the engine (connected directly to said Service Module) at all. I started over, discovered that the tanks were attached to the ceiling of the SM, and tried attaching them to the floor of the SM instead--the "fuel overlay" view confirmed that they should both be feeding fuel to the engine. When I actually flew it, though, only half of the tanks (either just left side or just right side; I forget) fed fuel to the engine; the other half remained full and untouched throughout the entire mission--and untouchable, too, since apparently the "transfer fuel from one tank to another" ability has been disabled?? By some miracle of engineering and the Tsiolkovsky equation I made it back to Kerbin anyway, but, well, FAILURE; see above.

 

I hate to complain here, because KSP is such an amazing product and as a physics teacher I get so much use out of it both personally and professionally... but I'm getting really tired of these bugs. I'd expect to see this sort of problem in a hastily assembled mod, not purchased DLC that was in development for so long.

 

Here is a thread where we were discussing the SM-25 and its mystery fuel situation.   Personally, I havent had any troubles with it in testing or in normal gameplay.  When I put fuel in it for flight I use only the bottom center node, and have been to the Mun probably 20 times without incident. I cant seem to recreate the problems theyre having, but it sounds like the exact same you’re experiencing.  

 

I also agree that with all the bugs this DLC had a very “early access” feel to it.  I think it was forced to be released per a time schedule rather than by a quality milestone.  Its nice that they are attempting to improve the mission builder and add more features (unfortunately not any more parts), but my bank was charged the moment this was purchased and not 3 months later when the product is “finished”.