Refueling Station gets Kraken'ed

[Misguided Kerbal]

So, I was testing a new crew vehicle and I decided to go visit my refueling station. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until we got close. Around the station there was a cloud of various debris, and a quicksave + reload wouldn't fix the issue:

I decided to go and dock with it anyway, and nothing else seemed wrong. I wasn't getting any errors or anything. However, the station is supposed to look like this:

The station is missing 2 of the fuel modules, one tank is weird, the other tank is missing the lower half, and one of the tugs docked to the bottom had completely lost it's engine module. I have no idea what happened, as it was usually fine and all of the parts were auto-strutted to heaviest part. I don't exactly know how to reproduce this either, as it was like this when I arrived. A previous occurrence of something like this has happened in this save before, with one of my EV-class interplanetary vehicles losing the entire NERV engine module (very similar to the tug), but not as serious as this, as it only lost the adapter containing the engines and 2 antennas near the front.

 

I'm playing on 1.9.1, and my mods are below:

 

KSP.log:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CyMGoCR-iP_kRLr-r5Ql7JwIJFYUp0Ef/view?usp=sharing

 

I can provide a version of the affected save file if necessary. Thanks in advance for helping.

 

[Serenity]

On 2/10/2021 at 4:22 AM, Misguided Kerbal said:

I have no idea what happened, as it was usually fine and all of the parts were auto-strutted to heaviest part.

Well, i am not saying its that but thats definitely a way to call the Kraken.

NEVER autostrut to Heaviest part, always use grandparent.

If you want to use heaviest part its extremely difficult and very unpredictable especially when you dock and undock because

the game tries to reroute the struts(you can try turning heaviest off before docking/undocking but its time consuming and needs a lot of quicksaves).

Use extreme caution and i advise your station to have always the heaviest part no matter what docks in it if you still want to use 

a heaviest type of anchor autostrut system.

You can virtualize autostruts with *edit* debug/cheat menu Alt+F12.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Boyster

[Misguided Kerbal]

8 minutes ago, Boyster said:

Well, i am not saying its that but thats definitely a way to call the Kraken.

NEVER autostrut to Heaviest part, always use grandparent.

If you want to use heaviest part its extremely difficult and very unpredictable especially when you dock and undock because

the game tries to reroute the struts(you can try turning heaviest off before docking/undocking but its time consuming and needs a lot of quicksaves).

Use extreme caution and i advise your station to have always the heaviest part no matter what docks in it if you still want to use 

a heaviest type of anchor autostrut system.

You can virtualize autostruts with F12.

That makes some sense, sure, but I hadn't docked to it when I found it in this current situation. But alright, I'll keep that in mind.

[Kerminator K-100]

On 2/10/2021 at 5:04 PM, Boyster said:

You can virtualize autostruts with F12.

I thought that was Aerodynamics Overlay

[Serenity]

2 hours ago, Kerminator K-100 said:

I thought that was Aerodynamics Overlay

Ops yes you are right, its Alt+F12 for the debug/cheat menu, i click Alt so many types my brain forgot it 

[swjr-swis]

On 2/10/2021 at 3:22 AM, Misguided Kerbal said:

and a quicksave + reload wouldn't fix the issue

Have you checked whether any of the backup saves still have an intact station? Should be in your saves directory, under the save name, in a folder called 'Backup'.

The game only keeps a limited number of them (5, I think) and deletes the oldest as time goes on, so if it's been like that too long it won't help. But it's worth checking.

[Misguided Kerbal]

28 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

Have you checked whether any of the backup saves still have an intact station? Should be in your saves directory, under the save name, in a folder called 'Backup'.

The game only keeps a limited number of them (5, I think) and deletes the oldest as time goes on, so if it's been like that too long it won't help. But it's worth checking.

Yep, I checked that at first, but I had no backups with this station left. It's been a while, and I've been constructing my interplanetary ships, so yeah. 

[swjr-swis]

2 hours ago, Misguided Kerbal said:

Yep, I checked that at first, but I had no backups with this station left. It's been a while, and I've been constructing my interplanetary ships, so yeah.

Sorry to hear it.

You could recreate the station as it should've been, and cheat-menu it into the orbit the corrupted one is. The game cheated/bugged you out of a perfectly good station; seems fair to cheat it back into working order.

 

[Misguided Kerbal]

2 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

Sorry to hear it.

You could recreate the station as it should've been, and cheat-menu it into the orbit the corrupted one is. The game cheated/bugged you out of a perfectly good station; seems fair to cheat it back into working order.

 

I've thought about that, and I think I'm going to do it, yes. I would like to know exactly why this happened though, as I build a lot of big structures.

[maddog59]

On 2/10/2021 at 3:04 PM, Boyster said:

Well, i am not saying its that but thats definitely a way to call the Kraken.

NEVER autostrut to Heaviest part, always use grandparent.

Interesting ... I use 'autostrut to heaviest part' almost exclusively and have only had one Kraken attack on any of my refueling stations, despite having several craft of various sizes and configurations docked at any given time. And that one attack happened before I'd even docked a ship ... I was on approach and was still 0.5km away when suddenly the station decided to do a tarantella and shook itself to smithereens. 

I'm not saying you're wrong, just expressing my own experience.  

[Serenity]

3 hours ago, maddog59 said:

I'm not saying you're wrong, just expressing my own experience.  

Just curious, do you have like a really good computer?Do you use any mods that help with physics loading etc?

I wonder if these types of krakens somehow relate to how fast/easily the pc can pass through the physics ease process.

That tarantella effect is exactly what happens when i go big and use heavy autostrut, grandparent very rarely but still here and there causes the same disaster.

Edited March 1, 2021 by Boyster

[maddog59]

20 minutes ago, Boyster said:

Just curious, do you have like a really good computer? Do you use any mods that help with physics loading etc?

No to both, I'm afraid ... just an HP Pavilion i7 (can't remember the specific model), and only a few mods like KIS/KAS, MJ2, Astrogator, and such. Nothing that I'm aware of that would have an impact. Tweakscale is present but I've not been using it ... really should get around to unloading it. I try to play with as little variation from stock as possible. 

[Serenity]

18 minutes ago, maddog59 said:

No to both, I'm afraid ...

Huh, maybe its the opposite then, maybe the Kraken wants to load but gives up after a while 

[Lisias]

On 3/1/2021 at 6:21 PM, maddog59 said:

No to both, I'm afraid ... just an HP Pavilion i7 (can't remember the specific model), and only a few mods like KIS/KAS, MJ2, Astrogator, and such. Nothing that I'm aware of that would have an impact. Tweakscale is present but I've not been using it ... really should get around to unloading it. I try to play with as little variation from stock as possible. 

I'm playing on a MacMini 6,2 - I7-3615QM, Intel HD 4000 and 16GB . It's way from being a beefy machine, but it does the trick as long I keep the Textures quality at 50% and the Anti Aliasing low or off to save memory bandwidth.

Try to lower the Texture Quality, it will probably help.

About TweakScale, it deactivates itself on unescaled parts, so if the blowing craft has no part scaled, I can tell you for sure TweakScale is not the culprit.

There're a recent bug fixed on B9 Part Switch (still unpublished, sadly) that was injecting bad contexts on TS (and many more too, but TS is sensitive on this problem because it needs to call Unity on that calls), leading it to bork - but this is only a problem if you have the Forum's B9PS installed.