Stuff falling off my plane on Eve

[Chritoph]

Hey there,

I got a bit of a situation with my solar plane on Eve.

The rotor's engines are falling off... I mean... without moving or anything, they just slide off my plane!

Every time I switch from tracking station to the plane or quicksave and quickload the game again, they move down a bit more. Similar deformation happens with the joints in the wings.

Anybody seen this before? Is that a bug? Or do I just hold it wrong?

Edited January 30, 2020 by Chritoph
fixed image share

[HvP]

Hello @Chritoph

If I had to guess as to the cause, I would say that autostruts are the likely offender.

It's normal for connections between parts to flex and stretch once gravity kicks in when you load in a vessel. But autostruts don't necessarily turn on quickly enough to catch those parts in their original places and they can switch positions depending on whether or not the heaviest part or root part have changed since they were turned on in the VAB. This can cause them to twist vessels into unnatural shapes and even sometimes causes ships and stations to shake apart. The extreme gravity on Eve can multiply this effect.

My recommendation would be to right click several parts and disable their autostruts if you have them turned on. Strut to "grandparent part" seems to be the safest option if you must have them, because that connection shouldn't normally change.

Many times turning off the autostruts then saving and reloading will fix misalignments, but I can't guarantee it.

[Chritoph]

Thanks @HvP,

Yes, I have been using autostruts/heaviest with that design.

So I will give your suggestion a try... but I guess it's easier to deploy a new version when the next transfer window comes up in my career save.
I assume I will just crash the plane next to my surface science thingy as I am about to evacuate everykerbal from Eve preparing to finally upgrade to 1.8.1.

[AHHans]

11 hours ago, Chritoph said:

Anybody seen this before? Is that a bug? Or do I just hold it wrong?

Yes, I think so, and probably not.

I also have that effect on my craft. I do use autostruts a lot, but always to "grantparent". So that won't safe you.

[Chritoph]

44 minutes ago, AHHans said:

I also have that effect on my craft. I do use autostruts a lot, but always to "grantparent". So that won't safe you.

Uaaaaaah!

So how can I make my design safe from falling into pieces?
I guess no autostruts do not make it better, either. I mean... it's a rotor engine, normal struts won't work.

[AHHans]

42 minutes ago, Chritoph said:

Uaaaaaah!

Ah, btw.: did you also have parts of your planes fall off on loading?
I mean literally falling off, not moving around for a while and the falling off or so. Just when you load a plane, a part of the wing doesn't attach to the rest of the plane and goes its own way.

Well, I have to admit this happens to me mostly when I saved the game in mid-flight, and usually if I load that same save again it does attach everything where it belongs - well, with the "usual" shifting around.

42 minutes ago, Chritoph said:

I mean... it's a rotor engine, normal struts won't work.

Well, you can attach struts to the - non-moving - base of the rotor. But I don't know if that works.

P.S. As one of my favorite youtubers likes to say "I'm fake laughing, only the tears are real."

P.P.S. I hope this will get fixed soon, but I'm not holding my breath.

Edited January 31, 2020 by AHHans
fixed typo

[Chritoph]

1 hour ago, AHHans said:

Ah, btw.: did you also have parts of your planes fall off on loading?
I mean literally falling off, not moving around for a while and the falling off or so. Just when you load a plane, a part of the wing doesn't attach to the rest of the plane and goes its own way.

Well, I have to admit this happens to me mostly when I saved the game in mid-flight, and usually if I load that same save again it does attach everything where it belongs - well, with the "usual" shifting around.

Nah, I did not experience that. The plane shown above was / is basically rock-solid... it's just all robotic parts slowly moving out of the place where I put them. I was so excited about them, but this - and one other bug - really renders them completely unusable to me.

The other bug: If you lock a piston on neither fully extended nor completely retracted and lock it (e.g. cause it is completely overloaded otherwise), save/load the game or switch to another craft or whatever, the piston comes back FULLY extended and locked. Since it does not fit into the position it had before, it is sticking out everywhere and the craft is nicely destroyed.

[AHHans]

2 minutes ago, Chritoph said:

The other bug: If you lock a piston on neither fully extended nor completely retracted and lock it (e.g. cause it is completely overloaded otherwise), save/load the game or switch to another craft or whatever, the piston comes back FULLY extended and locked. Since it does not fit into the position it had before, it is sticking out everywhere and the craft is nicely destroyed.

Not really, at least not always.

Locking pistons in a partially extended position works well in my heavy asteroid tug, which uses 5 Klaws at the end of large pistons to have multiple points to grab to an asteroid. This one doesn't really have any force on the pistons when it is being saved or loaded, the force is only there when I rotate or accelerate the asteroid. I guess that's why it doesn't experience these problems.

It didn't work so well on an Eve lander that used landing gear at the end of pistons to adjust its ground clearance (and pick up another craft that way). I don't recall what exactly went wrong, but it was extremely wobbly.

8 minutes ago, Chritoph said:

I was so excited about them, but this - and one other bug - really renders them completely unusable to me.

Well, a) it was better with 1.7.x, I think they still need to iron out issues from the change to the new unity version. And b) it doesn't make the craft totally unusable, it "just" gives them a limited lifespan. (And if you think about how well real life craft fare in Venus' atmosphere, then that lifespan is actually pretty good.)

[Chritoph]

Well, I had them on a craft to push the huge solar array out of the cargo bay.

After a few switches back and forth, the un-movable bottom of the piston stuck out of the closed side of the cargo bay.
Good enough for a landing - but not good enough for the round trip through the Kerbol system.
And that was "just" <= 0.7t (2 Gigantors + some structural element) attached to them, doing just Kerbin->Mun->Kerbin for a test.

And as mentioned above, I am on 1.7.3 still.

Edited January 31, 2020 by Chritoph

[AHHans]

1 hour ago, Chritoph said:

And as mentioned above, I am on 1.7.3 still.

Ah. That explains why you haven't encountered the "parts just falling off" bug yet. That one is new in 1.8.x.

[Chritoph]

2 hours ago, AHHans said:

That one is new in 1.8.x.

Hooray!

And I thought my bases exploding was the only trouble .

Edited January 31, 2020 by Chritoph

[Anth]

hmm. interesting bug to look at. any parts that seem worse than others?

[Chritoph]

On 1/31/2020 at 11:40 PM, Anth12 said:

hmm. interesting bug to look at. any parts that seem worse than others?

Hey, sorry for replying late.

Yes, I only found that with robotics parts, hinges and electric engines. I also thought about doing a bug report, but I guess nobody is interested in 1.7.3 anymore? 
I could not reproduce in 1.8.1... 'cause my stuff on Eve exploded immediately when switching to it.