Rocket won't steer.

[vhazrd]

Here is my rocket. It fly's stable. In fact it flies straight up every time. In flight there is NO comm indicator and it won't respond to any steering commands. The pitch roll yaw indicators during flight don't move at all. Staging works fine. Turning on RCS hasn't resulted in improvement.

I Added the fins later to no effect. in fact, when steering I don't see any movement in the fins or the gimbal on the engine.

It is commanded by this probe core. There are two other probe cores on board the payload. Not sure how those interact.

Adding more reaction wheels did nothing, turning on rcs did nothing, deleting the other probe cores did nothing. What's up with this rocket?

Edited August 16, 2019 by vhazrd
modified images to remove parts list; improved grammar

[Snark]

2 hours ago, vhazrd said:

In fact it flies straight up every time. In flight there is NO comm indicator and it won't respond to any steering commands.

So, if you've got no comms, then that seems likely to be your problem right there.  A few questions:

• What are your game settings for CommNet?  Specifically, do you have extra groundstations enabled or not, and have you checked the "require comms for control" setting?
• What sort of antenna do you have on the vessel?
• At the time that you're unable to steer, how far is it from the vessel to the nearest control point (i.e. KSC, or a relay chain connected thereto), and what sort of antenna power is on that control point?  i.e. do you have direct LOS to KSC?
• Are you running any mods that could conceivably affect the controllability of the vessel?

 

[StrandedonEarth]

Further to the no comms issue, depending on your settings and how fast your ascent gets, plasma (the re-entry effects that you can also get on a fast ascent) can also block comms. And no comms means no control 

[k00b]

i am guessing OP forgot to put an antenna on it OR not appropriate satelites in orbit.

otherwise running out of electricity because of all the probe cores... (are there solar arrays in shroud and are you deploying them when in orbit?)

(guessing because i have experienced both problems....)

[Aegolius13]

Further further to the comms issue, I think on the hardest settings, there's a gap between groundstations during the standard ascent.  This can be dealt with by building a set of relays around Kerbin.  But if you never get signal at all, it's probably not this.

Alternate idea - you could make sure you're not running out of electricity for some strange reason.  I believe dead probe cores show lack of signal.  This seems quite unlikely with batteries and an engine alternator going, but could be a bug or something.

Just now, k00b said:

i am guessing OP forgot to put an antenna on it OR not appropriate satelites in orbit.

otherwise running out of electricity because of all the probe cores... (are there solar arrays in shroud and are you deploying them when in orbit?)

(guessing because i have experienced both problems....)

The pods/cores come with a built-in lousy 5k antenna.  It's not good for much, but it should have no problem picking up a signal right at KSC.

[bewing]

With the default settings, no comms means partial (limited) control. Which means that only SAS works. What color is your CommNet indicator? Yellow or red?

I'm thinking that you may have gotten a slightly corrupted download on your game, and you may need to do a Steam File Validation.

[k00b]

3 minutes ago, Aegolius13 said:

The pods/cores come with a built-in lousy 5k antenna.  It's not good for much, but it should have no problem picking up a signal right at KSC.

i think we need OP to define what they mean by "in flight" (- i am liberally taking this to mean "far far away in space" on the basis their rocket design is way beyond "noob" level... (hence logically "either electricity or antennas or satelites problem" imho)

"human error problem".

[VoidSquid]

What does the engineering report (that little yellow-white wrench icon bottom right) say?

Edited August 17, 2019 by VoidSquid

[vhazrd]

Thanks for all the replies.

 

There is no comm on the pad. Since the probe cores are all inside the faring I couldn't look at them but I decided to pop the faring on the pad and see what was actually going on.

\

partial control from the probe core, and no kerbnet access.

[vhazrd]

14 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

What does the engineering report (that little yellow-white wrench icon bottom right) say?

Engineering report warns about the direction the control module is facing.

[FloppyRocket]

2 hours ago, vhazrd said:

Engineering report warns about the direction the control module is facing.

Do any of your probe cores have a built-in antenna? 

If not, did you add any antennas?

[VoidSquid]

So it's NOT like this, "No Control", "Missing antenna"?

[bewing]

4 hours ago, vhazrd said:

There is no comm on the pad. Since the probe cores are all inside the faring I couldn't look at them but I decided to pop the faring on the pad and see what was actually going on.

partial control from the probe core, and no kerbnet access.

Yeah, something is messed up with your game. It's either a problem with a mod, or your game is slightly corrupted and needs to be 'verified'. Do you know how to do a Steam File Validation? I'm not sure whether your KER mod could cause this. Did you copy this craft from a previous install of KSP? Or did you build it fresh in your current version?

[vhazrd]

I believe I found the problem

On 8/16/2019 at 7:34 PM, bewing said:

I'm thinking that you may have gotten a slightly corrupted download on your game, and you may need to do a Steam File Validation.

I ran the validations and removed engineering redux mod to no effect. reran the validation. even uninstalled and reinstalled the game. nothing

Here is how I Solved the issue:

As i indicated I had multiple probe cores attached to the payload in addition to the one I intended on controlling the thruster and so i could de-orbit after detaching from the payload.

in vessel naming I set the thruster's probe core type to debris. Mostly because that's what it most resembled. It has no other purpose than to get a payload up and then to crash into mun. I could have called it ship, but it wasn't carrying any person.

After I set the vessel type to probe and went to the launchpad, not having made any other changes, the vessel now has perfect comms.

Why didn't the other probe cores take effect?

I had 2 other probe cores attached to parts of the payload, these were so that I could fly these solar cell laden girder's into place onto my station. The naming priority on these were set very low, thus the entire vessel would be debris until these parts were detached. As i never left the atmosphere they were never detached.

 

Moral: Do not set vessel type to debris if you intend to fly it.

Edited August 18, 2019 by vhazrd
clarification

[VoidSquid]

Looks like this bug again, if I'm not mistaken?