Fuel Transfer Problem

[jbdenney]

I am having an really weird issue with transferring fuel.

I am on a Windows system (if I hit the MOD key I get a windows diag box)

Windows Player x64 1.11.1

Making HIstory 1.11.1

Breaking ground 1.6.1

I have an orbital station I use to convert Ore to fuel. I also have a Drilling Lander. I user\ the lander to harvest ore on Gilly. I then get into orbit and dock with the Station. At that point I can transfer the ore  from holding tanks on the Lander to holding tanks on the Station.

I then used a Convert-o-tron 250 on the station to produce fuel. When I produced Monopropellant if filled the tanks on both the Lander and Station. I then switched over to [Lf+Ox] and ran until I ran out of Ore. The process put fuel in tanks on both the Lander and Station. I.E. cross feeds worked.

None of my tanks were full so I wanted to top of the Lander tanks to make another run. At that point I was able to Click on and Pin one of the tanks on the Station and the Click and Pin one of the tanks on the Lander. I got the In/Out buttons on both of the tanks and I hit IN on the lander tank and the fuel filled the Lander Tank from the Station Tank.

So far no problem.

But idiot me had failed to "shutdown" the Lander engine and I accidently hit the Shift key which fired up the Lander engine. That put the whole station start spinning and screwed with orbit. The lucky thing was that I had a save from right after docking and loaded the save, shut down the engine and then I repeated the fuel production I listed above. The issue is that now I cannot move fuel from the tanks on the Station from the Lander or back in the other direction.  If I open multiple tanks on the Station OR the Lander I can transfer fuel. If I open the Tanks on one I get the In/Out buttons but if I open a tank on the other part the IN/OUT  buttons disappear. When I produced the monopropellant the second time it again filled both the Station and Lander Tanks. Also producing the Lf+Ox also put fuel in tanks in both the Lander and Station (none of the tanks were filled completely).

It is possible that did not get fuel transferred the first time as I thought I did. I got a little excited when I accidently started the engine and I loaded the save without taking good look at what I had.

I have exited the game and reloaded but no change.

Double checked the cross feed settings on all parts between the tanks and all are enabled (also fuel moved to ALL tanks when I converted the ore)

All tanks have a flow priority of (-10) but I have played with the priority and nothing changed/ 

I did activate the engines on both the Lander and Station - No change.

Is there a Hot key Combo that can screw with the Fuel transfer?

What on earth am I doing wrong - any ideas?

[jbdenney]

Ok - I found the issue - DUH! You can not crossfeed through a heatshield. The first time I did this I most have missread the results. I went into the Difficulty settings and disabled "follow crossfeed" settings and noe it works.

But that leave s big question. If you cannot crossfeed through a heat shield, how did the tanks receive fuel through the heat shield when I was converting ore to fuel? To me it seems both should follow the same rules.

[king of nowhere]

8 hours ago, jbdenney said:

But that leave s big question. If you cannot crossfeed through a heat shield, how did the tanks receive fuel through the heat shield when I was converting ore to fuel? To me it seems both should follow the same rules.

not sure, but it's fully possible that they don't. this is a game, uses a bunch of algorithm instructions, and those for fuel transfer and fuel production may well be different.

[AHHans]

9 hours ago, jbdenney said:

If you cannot crossfeed through a heat shield, how did the tanks receive fuel through the heat shield when I was converting ore to fuel?

Because the engineer on the station that is managing the ISRU is rigging a fuel line from the converter to the fuel tank(s) with the highest priority. That's my explanation and I stick with it!

On a more serious note: it is a well known (at lest to some) feature that freshly created fuel from an ISRU will ignore the crossfeed rules and just show up in the (non-full) tank with the highest fuel priority (i.e. the tank that would be drained first all tanks were available). I regularly use that to refill craft on the other side of a non-crossfeed part - e.g. the Klaw.

[jbdenney]

I also find it strange that I can push rocks and gravel (ore) through a heat shield but I cannot push fluid (fuel and Ox) thought the same shield. Oh well, Kerbals are strange.