Hello guys just a little qusetion

[udkwum]

Hi, Im quite new here. Have a question about robotics. I was playing in 1.7.3 really long time. The updated to 1.9 and now 1.10. My question is how to lock hinge. I mean, i cant do it in any ways. I am activating lock the hinge, cutting power anything. But it not stays stable (cause of this, i had to de-orbit an single launch station that launching was total retard). I want help!

[James Kerman]

Hello and welcome to the forum @udkwum, your question has been moved to gameplay questions.

[udkwum]

Just now, James Kerman said:

Hello and welcome to the forum @udkwum, your question has been moved to gameplay questions.

ooh. I am sorry. I just tougt this will be an discussion. 

[James Kerman]

2 minutes ago, udkwum said:

ooh. I am sorry. I just tougt this will be an discussion. 

No need to be sorry and I hope it is a discussion, it's just that yours seems to be more of a specific gameplay question where KSP discussion is for more general aspects of the game. 

[king of nowhere]

every hinge has a certain resistance level, if it takes too much force it won't stand still. in that case, use more hinges or use bigger hinges.

i know there are ways to lock hinges better, though i do not know them.  but regardless, there will come a time when you will just need stronger hinges.

[AHHans]

Hi @udkwum, welcome to the Forums.

The overly simple answer to your question is that you lock hinges - and other robotic parts - by telling them to activate the lock, e.g. by clicking on the lock button. (SCNR)

The real answer to your question depends on what your problem actually is: do you have problems activating the lock, or that the robotic parts still move around even when they are locked (unfortunately both are issues with the robotics parts). In my experience activating the locks is an issue if the game thinks that the part in question is still moving, e.g. because the whole structure is still oscillating a bit after changing configuration. In that situation you will get a message and the lock will just not set. When you want to set the locks on multiple parts, then it will usually set on some of them but not on others, that makes using the "toggle lock" functionality an exercise in frustration. So what I do is to put "engage lock" for all robotics parts on one action group, that way I can hit that button as often as needed until all the locks are set

The other issue is that the robotics parts are rather weak and prone to permanent deformation, even when they are locked. There is no magic bullet to solve that so you'll have to engineer around that. The best tool here are struts, autostruts and regular struts. IMHO the biggest advantage of locking a robotic part is that this will allow autostruts to traverse the robotic part. So if you place a hinge or so between two sturdy parts and then set autostrut to "grantparent" on the downstream part then this will transfer a lot of the forces around the hinge and thus make the whole structure so much more sturdy. (You can also use the other types of autostruts, but they have problems of their own that are unrelated to robotic parts.) Regular struts can help you keep your craft together during launch before it has to move. I often place dedicated decouplers on my craft that then only have struts attached to them that connect to different parts of the craft. While these struts are in place the robotics parts cannot move, but once the launch is over - and thus the main stress on the craft is over - I can fire the decouplers, get rid of the struts, and allow the robotics parts to move.

Does this answer your question(s)?