Advanced Grabbing Unit: Can't complete mission.

[Woodsielord]

Hello everyone, this is my first post here. I should introduce myself accordingly in the correct section...

I'm going straight to the issue: I'm having problems with the "save X kerbal and recover X scrap on kerbin" missions. The AGU is definitely not attaching to the object to be recovered. It works with other parts or ships.
The king of thing that frustrates me most of this game is rework, so the game kind of teaches you to rethink objectives and designs so you don't have to load previous saves often.

I've made an SSTO with a cargo bay and a movable grabbing unit.
I'm quite new but I have 239 hours on steam plus hours and hours of youtube (including Scott Manley) videos. I've googled enough so I came to you asking for advice!

I tried jumping from one ship to another, reloading, time warping a little, quitting the game and loading from scratch. Arming and disarming the Arm. I don't know what else to do.
If required, I would gladly share some screenshots with you... although I be grateful if you could pinpoint a free image hosting service!

 

Thanks in advance!

[bewing]

Welcome to the forums.

imgur is the free image hosting service that we all seem to use most.

Klaws (the AGU) are very tricky to use. You may have just gotten lucky in the past. For a klaw to grab something, the klaw has to touch the surface at close to 90 degrees. A klaw can grab anything except a wheel. So I guarantee that it can grab the pod that contains your rescue kerbal. If the pod has a flat surface on it, try grabbing it right there. If it's spinning, you can turn on a little bit of timewarp and then turn timewarp off again -- that always cancels all spin. It's harder to grab a curved surface, because it's much harder to touch it at 90 degrees -- but it can be done if you have patience and try many times. You do not have to jump between ships. I think you have to rearm the klaw between each successful grab and the next one, but you only have to do it once.

Making your approach so that you touch at 90 degrees is just generally difficult. It is necessary to quickly memorize which keys move the klaw in which direction. It is usually necessary to move the camera around a lot so that you can see the approach from several directions. It is often necessary to start your approaching craft rotating slowly, and time it so that at the moment the klaw touches it happens to be as close to 90 degrees as you can judge by eye.

 

Edited November 13, 2018 by bewing

[Geonovast]

I have seen where the missions would spawn parts that simply couldn't be grabbed... like wheels.  That bug was supposed to have been fixed though, but I gotta ask.

What part are you trying to recover?

[Gargamel]

I've also seen people recommend closing speeds of 1-1.5 m/s, but I've had better luck around 3m/s.  Usually if the part has to spin a bit to be grabbed, this faster impact will still carry enough force to grab it. 

 

[Woodsielord]

Thanks everyone for your answers,

I kept trying and I think I got it when the claw was 90º (almost perfectly 90, not 85 to 95 as I thought it was enough)
I Took some screens:
https://imgur.com/a/Fna4ELi

Regards!

[Tibrogargan]

On 11/13/2018 at 4:48 PM, Gargamel said:

I've also seen people recommend closing speeds of 1-1.5 m/s, but I've had better luck around 3m/s.  Usually if the part has to spin a bit to be grabbed, this faster impact will still carry enough force to grab it. 

 

When I was playing a few versions ago it seemed to only work at speeds above about 1 m/s, but the behaviour seems to have been updated - you can now go as slowly as you like and as long as the angle is reasonably close to 90º it should connect at very low speeds.  ("0.0 m/s").  Haven't really tested it, but it seems that going too fast doesn't work now - but perhaps the few times I tried that the angle was the issue.