The Landing Legs & Gears Is Killing Me!

[Superfluous J]

22 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Am I the only one who never has any of these issues with stock legs?

You are not. I too have never had issues as described in this thread.

[linuxgurugamer]

55 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

You are not. I too have never had issues as described in this thread.

Neither have I

[Tonka Crash]

I see them, but not to the extent described here. If I have a bouncy lander I toggle the USI ground tether on and off a couple times and that seems to calm it down.

[g00bd0g]

All the people who say "I've never had this problem" have never tried to land a large ship on a small body. It is utterly and totally broken. Please show me a video of successful landings and loadings, of a large ship with large landing gear on, let's say gilly.

Additionally, landing gear on small aircraft are basically broken also. Combined with a ridiculously bumpy runway, early game aircraft are basically impossible to operate. Again, show me a video of a basic small aircraft, or almost any of the stock aircraft taking off and landing with reasonable behaviors.

It's borked...

I posted bug reports when 1.1 came out and squad literally denied the issue existed .... They did finally "confirm" one of the reports. and it's at 10% after 2.5 years. The other they claim "needs clarification". Seriously? Squads team can't load a stock aircraft and try it and see for themselves?

https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/9557

https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/9561

C'mon Squad, put on your "big boy" pants, and issue an official statement on the issue (unless it exists, I've never seen it?). At the minimum say, "yeah, there's a problem but we can't fix it". Or *gasp* maybe make an effort at least equivalent to what several mods have done to make it better.

Edited September 30, 2018 by g00bd0g

[Superfluous J]

5 hours ago, g00bd0g said:

All the people who say "I've never had this problem" have never tried to land a large ship on a small body. It is utterly and totally broken. Please show me a video of successful landings and loadings, of a large ship with large landing gear on, let's say gilly.

How large is "large"? I'll admit I don't build ships with room for 30 and enough fuel storage to do 8 grand tours, but I have this on Ike and on a reload it does not even shake.

I didn't put it on Gilly. I will next time I load the save but you said Ike originally so that's where I landed it.

EDIT: Okay I landed the same ship on Gilly and yes, it did not land happily. It kept bouncing into space. However I fixed the problem by retracting the landing gear.

I've never had this problem because for the past 2-3 years I've realized that landing gear is about as necessary on Gilly as parachutes so I never used them.

Edited October 1, 2018 by 5thHorseman

[OHara]

 If anyone who has avoided the oscillating landing legs knows exactly how they avoid it, that information could help new players (who don't yet know that the cool kids land on engine bells and don't bother with light aircraft).
A current bug-report (https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/19427) has craft-files attached , or just see if a basic light plane bounces on the runway in version 1.4.5.  An easy way to test your install on Gilly, where everything is light, is to start the Scenario "Exploring Gilly" and toggle the landing gear on the mother ship the "Vules Jerne (sic) Kermin" to bounce it 4m/s into the space; then try to land it on its legs.

Edited October 14, 2018 by OHara
write out the links

[AVaughan]

9 hours ago, g00bd0g said:

All the people who say "I've never had this problem" have never tried to land a large ship on a small body. It is utterly and totally broken. Please show me a video of successful landings and loadings, of a large ship with large landing gear on, let's say gilly.

113 ton ISRRU lander on Minmus and Gilly.  (This design can lift off from the Mun's surface, rendezvous and transfer 1.5 orange tanks of fuel to another vessel, and still have enough fuel to land safely back on the Mun.  2 orange tanks worth of fuel on Minmus or Gilly).

Landed on Minmus at about 1 m/s.  The springs in the landing gear compressed, and then extended and managed to push it up about 1m before it settled back down.  No problems on vessel load after switching to space centre.  (it did have a slight problem that the drills were located a little low on the body, and lifted the vessel off the landing gear when deployed, so I slightly tweaked the Gilly lander).

Landed on Gilly and the lander did rebound in a somewhat unrealistic manner.  (It would have been fine in arcade game, which is probably a more common use case for Unity than something like KSP that want realistic physics).  On the second attempt I landed fine at 0.1 m/s.  Again no problem after switching back to the KSC.

Now I never said that there were no problems with landing gear, but at least for me, they aren't a significant problem.   (Better damping of landing gear would probably reduce rebound, and would be top of my list of possible improvements.  No idea how easy that would be to implement)

9 hours ago, g00bd0g said:

Additionally, landing gear on small aircraft are basically broken also. Combined with a ridiculously bumpy runway, early game aircraft are basically impossible to operate. Again, show me a video of a basic small aircraft, or almost any of the stock aircraft taking off and landing with reasonable behaviors.

Small craft landing gear seem to have been much improved since 1.1, and so has the bumpy runway.  

Edited October 1, 2018 by AVaughan

[AVaughan]

45 minutes ago, OHara said:

If anyone who has avoided the oscillating landing legs knows exactly how they avoid it, that information could help new players (who don't yet know that the cool kids land on engine bells and don't bother with light aircraft).
A current bug-report 19427 has craft-files attached , or just see if a basic light plane bounces on the runway in version 1.4.5.  An easy way to test your install on Gilly, where everything is light, is to start the Scenario "Exploring Gilly" and toggle the landing gear on the mother ship the "Vules Jerne (sic) Kermin" to bounce it 4m/s into the space; then try to land it on its legs.

Part of the problem is First.craft is a little too heavy for that landing gear, the rest is another case of not enough damping.  Removing the fuel in the centre tank, and increasing the damper on all 3 wheels to max removes most of the oscillation for me.  (There is still some, but it takes off and lands fine for me).

Landed on Exploring Gilly without any problems if I just left the landing legs retracted.  (As 5thHorseman says, you don't need landing gear on gilly.  Indeed, provided you come in slowly, and have a wide enough base, you don't need landing gear anywhere in KSP).  Landed on the landing legs after a lot of minor bounces.  Not a craft damaging bug, but again better damping would be good.

[invision]

i dont really have many landing leg issues, i have encountered them a few times over the past 2 years tho. what still  happens tho is crafts like to bounce upon load or spawn 200 meters from the ground and smash apart. this has kept me from building surface bases as i fear they will just blow apart one day randomly like they all have. craft wobble is rare but does happen when the ship is quite large.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

17 hours ago, g00bd0g said:

All the people who say "I've never had this problem" have never tried to land a large ship on a small body. It is utterly and totally broken. Please show me a video of successful landings and loadings, of a large ship with large landing gear on, let's say gilly.

How much bigger ya' want it? (I even made it absurdly tall for a lander so it would be inherently unstable.)

Landed fine, no bouncing, settled right down and is quite stable. A re-load resulted in a very mild bounce, that just barely lifted a few of the landing legs off the surface, I did not touch the controls; and it settled back down with no harm done. Still needs some work? Yes of course, it shouldn't bounce at all when it loads in a perfect world. "Utterly and completely broken?" I'm not seeing it. (On my end at least, I'm not denying your issue, just pointing out that it's doesn't seem to be a universal one.)

On an interesting side note; it wouldn't settle down at all the first time I tried it and I was like "Wow, maybe it's worse than I thought?" However, I quickly realized my Xbox controller was still plugged in, and after removing it and attempting again it went perfectly. Might sound like a stupid question but you guys don't have controllers of some variety you keep plugged in maybe? The rogue inputs really made the gear go nuts on Gilly but are hardly noticeable at any other time. Just a thought.

Edited October 1, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[klgraham1013]

Well.  I have a little more hope that it's less of a problem.  Still, seeing it bite EJ_SA and watching him work around it gave me pause. His ships and bases are massive.  Much more so then yours @Rocket In My Pocket.  It may just come down to play style, whether it affects you or not.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

10 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Well.  I have a little more hope that it's less of a problem.  Still, seeing it bite EJ_SA and watching him work around it gave me pause. His ships and bases are massive.  Much more so then yours @Rocket In My Pocket.  It may just come down to play style, whether it affects you or not.

Well I mean, I just built that to test the landing legs; honestly I'd never even send anything that big to Gilly, given that the gravity is so low and something much lighter would do.

I can make something truly massive and test it again if you like? Just give me a target weight or a better description of how big it has to be to cause the issue. (Although to be fair at a certain point you are going way over what the largest folding legs were ever intended to hold.)

I'm honestly just tying to help sort the issue and it's cause out, I'm not being a denialist about the problem.

Edited October 1, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[I_Killed_Jeb]

5 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

On an interesting side note; it wouldn't settle down at all the first time I tried it and I was like "Wow, maybe it's worse than I thought?" However, I quickly realized my Xbox controller was still plugged in, and after removing it and attempting again it went perfectly. Might sound like a stupid question but you guys don't have controllers of some variety you keep plugged in maybe? The rogue inputs really made the gear go nuts on Gilly but are hardly noticeable at any other time. Just a thought.

I don't have other controllers plugged in, and I don't build huge stuff as you could see in my previous screenshot. Minmus and Mun are where I see it the worst

[FinalFan]

On 9/29/2018 at 5:56 PM, OHara said:

If you notice the oscillation while at KSP, you can go back to assembly and (selecting 'advanced tweakables') set a weaker spring and/or stronger damper.  

Just a quick side note:. I believe you'll find that advanced tweakables is not required for leg spring and dampener adjustments.  

[wumpus]

19 hours ago, FinalFan said:

Just a quick side note:. I believe you'll find that advanced tweakables is not required for leg spring and dampener adjustments.  

That's good, but I'm shocked it is needed to simply land a lander on the Mun.  I rarely play KSP anymore, but on a whim over the weekend built a munar lander.  The resonance thanks to the landing legs was so bad I was afraid to let my kerbal out and put up a flag, but instead returned home.

I can't imagine new players having to fight broken defaults simply to exit a landing craft after they finally made it to the Mun.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

6 hours ago, wumpus said:

That's good, but I'm shocked it is needed to simply land a lander on the Mun.  I rarely play KSP anymore, but on a whim over the weekend built a munar lander.  The resonance thanks to the landing legs was so bad I was afraid to let my kerbal out and put up a flag, but instead returned home.

I can't imagine new players having to fight broken defaults simply to exit a landing craft after they finally made it to the Mun.

Not to keep being "that guy" but it isn't needed.

At least not on my end, as well as others who have commented here.

I didn't even make any adjustments to the gear of the large test lander for Gilly (The cited worst case scenario) pictured above. Obviously, this issue is not universal and only presents itself under specific circumstances or using certain hardware. If you have any thoughts on what about your setup/install/play style that may be causing it that'd be really helpful in nailing this down.

Edited October 2, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Thygrrr]

In my recent 1.4.5 games, when I land a simple can style lander on the Mun, more often than not, one of the legs suddenly snapped off (at 3m/s vertical speed), and a phantom force launching the craft ~2km up from the surface again.

[Francois424]

Only had the problem in my current save when putting my first plane on the fully upgraded runway.  It kept bouncing and lifting off was near suicide.  Even not moving it would bounce around.
I think I modified the wheel's option with something I found on the forum, but since I never play planes for long I kind of forgotten about what I did.  Sorry.
Something to do with damper strength and wheel friction.

As far as plain lander flying off on reload, I haven't had any problem so far and I hope I don't (kind of game-braking)
wasn't there a mod to fix this... AH found it !

 

 

[Majorjim!]

On 10/1/2018 at 1:48 PM, Rocket In My Pocket said:

SNIP

That is a huge amount of SAS modules there mate. Remove them and see what happens.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Majorjim!

[Rocket In My Pocket]

29 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

That is a huge amount of SAS modules there mate. Remove them and see what happens.

They were just for convenience. I toggled SAS on and off several times and didn't observe any difference.

For the sake of being scientific about it though, I will make an RCS only version and test it when I get a chance.

No SAS besides what the Mk1 provides and I turned that off. Still no issues, once I landed and was stable, it shows no signs of wobble, bounce, or jiggle. I'd be happy to share the craft file (Or you can just rebuild it, it's very simple; just a bunch of fuel tanks on top of a Poodle with some large landing gear) if anyone who experiences the issue would like to make a comparison test.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[I_Killed_Jeb]

@Rocket In My Pocket why don't you just try downloading the craft file one of the above poster referenced in the bug report and see for yourself.

[OHara]

7 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Or you can just rebuild it,

That lands easily on Gilly for me (in contrast to the large craft from the Exploring Gilly scenario).  
I can also use it demonstrate one of the un-physical behaviors that frustrate some of us.  If I land on >20° tilted ground while pointing vertically, or land tilted on flat ground, so that some but not all LT-2 legs compress when the Poodle's bell touches the ground, I am accelerated to 8 m/s upwards within 0.2s.   Learning to land parallel to the ground is part of the point of KSP, but when we do badly we like to be punished by KSP's usually-reasonable physics, not by un-physical glitches.

We shouldn't have implied that small aircraft or large landers on Gilly were impossible, or that every new player needs to always increase damping / spring-strength.  There seem to be serious-enough problems, though, to frustrate players.  To me it looks like the best advice is a choice of : use Kerbal Foundaries or stock landing gear configured to use KSPWheel, play version 1.3.1, or test craft and be ready to set higher damping

[AVaughan]

A couple of comments.  The ISRU landers I pictured above both had the landing legs at default spring and damper settings.  

The lower the gravity, the more important it is to come in slowly, if you want to prevent bouncing.  This is especially important for a discrete time step physics simulation (which is what most games use).

The low gravity also make it easier to control landing speed.  eg on Gilly I can touch down at less than 0.1 m/s by holding down control, and tapping shift anytime my velocity exceeds 0.1 m/s.  That is something that won't work on a higher gravity moon like the Mun.  

For people having trouble with landing on Gilly, what touchdown velocity are you using?  (As I said earlier for Gilly I had problems at 1m/s, but only minor bounces at 0.1 m/s).

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

16 hours ago, I_Killed_Jeb said:

@Rocket In My Pocket why don't you just try downloading the craft file one of the above poster referenced in the bug report and see for yourself.

Link it to me and I'd be happy to. Not sure which post you are talking about, didn't notice any lander .craft files.

On a side note; here's another test I did after the first two just for fun. This time I moved the Poodle's up so there was no chance the bell was interfering, made the craft 8 times as large/heavy, impacted at about 3 m/s instead of 0.1, and did it with the entire craft at a 45 degree tilt, and the landing area was a slope itself. (Also in the dark, but that's irrelevant lol.) SAS off, RCS off, I just watched. Slid a ways, bounced very gently a few times (about .50mm/s upwards vertical speed at worse according to KER) and landed safely.

Spoiler

 

Edited October 4, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Blasty McBlastblast]

I have also experienced problems with landing legs and wheels:

• small aircraft landing gear bouncing while parked (kind of like a pimped lowrider)
• landing legs exploding when docking rovers to bases (somewhat less explodey on lower gravity planets)
• wheel suspension fully compressing and sagging for no good reason when away from Kerbin
• radial placed landing legs providing uneven support, leading to rocket tilt
• landed vessels jumping when you approach them (I had a bad experience with a münar landed rescue contract where approaching the target caused it to jump & explode every time  )

Spoiler

Taken on Dres, the lander legs are unevenly loaded resulting in tilt (a little hard to see, but trust me it's there!) and the rover wheels are all smooshed down. (stock game + basicDv & basicOrbit, standard gear/wheel settings)

On Eve this time, again smooshed suspension (stock game, standard wheel settings)

These designs were tested thoroughly on Kerbin before launch and worked just fine, but act weirdly once delivered to a new planet.

 

Also I really miss having the ability to right-click retract individual landing legs from a symmetrical set, this was very handy for landing on steep slopes!

I hope that in 1.5 squad can fix some of these problems, because I really like making bases, rovers, and planes. For now I can work around most problems by using MKS for the tougher legs and logistics functions.