Grabber Ship on Minmus, does it need Comms?

[Agent 86]

Does the little “Grabber” ship need a communication device to work on Minmus.  They worked independently on orbit around Kerbin.  But when trying to use them around Minmus they could not be controlled.  When I docked to another ship the RCS thrusters worked great. 

Why did they work around Kerbin but NOT on Minmus?

I will upload screenshots of the small grabber vehicles.   It docked to the main mother ship.  Also showing the thrusters working when docked to a smaller delivery ship.

Please help as I need to recovers some things in orbit and landed on Minmus. 

Can I bring communication devices to then attach to the “Grabbers” already in orbit of Minmus?

 

https://imgur.com/R0xMqaL

https://imgur.com/kAlEE96

https://imgur.com/UX5c9Ok

https://imgur.com/n5utEwk

[bewing]

If you start a career game with default choices for difficulty, then a ship without comms will have "limited control" (the commnet icon will be yellow). This means you can use SAS to control direction, but you cannot use WASD. You can use pulses of full throttle to control thrust, but you cannot "feather" the throttle. You can still control many functions through a part's context menu, but not all of them (specifically not thrust limiting). If you have good probe cores, and you set up all your context menus correctly while you still have comms, and if you are clever about using SAS then you will still have nearly full control of your craft even without any comms -- certainly enough to complete satellite contracts, and maybe even enough to perform dockings.

Yes, if you get the klaw device, you can add antennas to craft that do not have them. If you bring a powerful relay antenna into Minmus orbit, that will give full comms to all your craft.

It worked in Kerbin orbit because the default antenna that is built into all probe cores and command pods is just strong enough reach the ground from LKO.