docking causes decouplers to fire?

[Michel Bartolone]

I mentioned this several weeks ago in the MechJeb II forum, because, at the time, MechJeb was
the only mod I had updated in the prior few days. At that time I removed MechJeb, BUT
the problem remained, so I decided to do a completely new fresh install, and then add all
(or most) of my mods, and start a new game to try to reproduce the issue. It took until
now, to get to a similar point in the game.

The situation is, I have a station circling the Mun. It has several things docked (a lander, 
and a a crew transport ship). It has at least two more ports open. I'm using shielded 
clamp-o-tron Mr's on the station. At that time, I had stations around Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus. 
I was sending a new, larger, and more capable lander up to the station, to take a crew down 
to the Mun base. As soon as the new lander docked, something caused the radial decouplers
I had holding the outrigger LFO tanks, engines, and landing legs, to fire, rendering the new
lander, completely worthless.   

This time I was sending a new fuel tank up, to increase the available fuel storage. I bring 
the ship in, very slowly (0.10m/s or less) to make sure I don't impart any significant dV. 
This time around I had brought a slightly modified lander up first. It had the decouplers 
attached to the fuel tanks the legs were attached to, removed from staging. The decouplers did 
_not_ fire when I did that.

Then I sent up the fuel tank, and as soon as it docked, "thunk", "boom", "scritch"...
the TD-25 decoupler immediately below the heat shield on the crew transport ship had fired,
rendering the crew transport useless. It also attempted to fire the parachutes at the top of 
the command pod, but because it was not "going down",  the parachutes didn't deploy.

Player.log.zip and exported mod list (with versions) is available here:
Log and mod list here.

At this point I do not have a clue what is causing the decouplers to fire when another ship docks,
but it is VERY frustrating, working weeks to get to building some slightly more advanced surface
installations, only to have different docked vessels fire various decouplers anytime you dock!

[Michel Bartolone]

Wow, going on a week and not so much as a peep...

[jimmymcgoochie]

Your Dropbox link has expired.

Random guess- is the fuel tanker on a later stage to the crew ship when they dock (e.g. the tanker is on stage 0 but the crew ship is on stage 1)? Maybe a mod is getting confused by that and decides to make everything stage 0, triggering the decoupler and parachutes; but without access to the logs, mod list or screenshots (please include screenshots, they're very helpful- or even better, a video!) that's the best I can do right now.

If you replicate the designs and use the cheat menu to put them in orbit, then dock them together, does the same thing happen? Does docking something else to the crew ship trigger it?

[Michel Bartolone]

On 2/5/2022 at 1:23 AM, jimmymcgoochie said:

Your Dropbox link has expired.

Random guess- is the fuel tanker on a later stage to the crew ship when they dock (e.g. the tanker is on stage 0 but the crew ship is on stage 1)? Maybe a mod is getting confused by that and decides to make everything stage 0, triggering the decoupler and parachutes; but without access to the logs, mod list or screenshots (please include screenshots, they're very helpful- or even better, a video!) that's the best I can do right now.

If you replicate the designs and use the cheat menu to put them in orbit, then dock them together, does the same thing happen? Does docking something else to the crew ship trigger it?

I sort of see what you mean by the earlier vs later stage idea, but I doubt it, because it doesn't always fire the exact same parts.
I have no idea how to capture a video. I'll re-upload the logs and the screenshots that I uploaded previously. 

 

Here are the logs and mod list. It turns out I didn't generate any screen shots for this (I did for a different issue). I'll see if I can roll back to the proper point to generate a series of screen shots.

https://www.dropbox.com/t/vb2nCa1SLgKc5Uz2

 

[Papa_Joe]

The only thing I see from the player log is a failed game save and game save restore.  That could indicate a corrupted game save.  Don't know if that is the issue, but it certainly could cause what you describe.  In interesting problem indeed. 

[Michel Bartolone]

Here are the screen shots. 1 focussed on the tanker, pre-dock, one focussed on the station, pre-dock, and one post dock.

https://www.dropbox.com/t/vVUecvD4389oTwNp

 

 

2 hours ago, Papa_Joe said:

The only thing I see from the player log is a failed game save and game save restore.  That could indicate a corrupted game save.  Don't know if that is the issue, but it certainly could cause what you describe.  In interesting problem indeed. 

I believe the restore was restore so I could re-produce the docking sequence from before docking until just after. Note that the restore is from "S.A.V.E" rather than from the pause menu save/restore.

[Papa_Joe]

Looking at the mod list, I'm wondering if there might be an unexpected behavior from any custom action groups.  Just a thought, but that could be a possibility.  

[Michel Bartolone]

3 hours ago, Papa_Joe said:

Looking at the mod list, I'm wondering if there might be an unexpected behavior from any custom action groups.  Just a thought, but that could be a possibility.  

I'll have to confirm, but I don't believe I have any custom action groups for any of the vessels involved.

 

[Michel Bartolone]

On 2/6/2022 at 11:40 AM, Michel Bartolone said:

I'll have to confirm, but I don't believe I have any custom action groups for any of the vessels involved.

 

and I've confirmed I don't have any custom action groups created for these vessels...plus, I'm not using any scripting, so if I am not touching the keyboard, how would the custom action group get triggered?

 

[Michel Bartolone]

On 2/8/2022 at 7:44 AM, Michel Bartolone said:

and I've confirmed I don't have any custom action groups created for these vessels...plus, I'm not using any scripting, so if I am not touching the keyboard, how would the custom action group get triggered?

 

OK, I think I have to give up on KSP for a while.   I can't progress with my career game at all, because of the decoupler situation, which has now gotten worse. I was building a plane to do some kerbin side science. I have the plane built and tested, and it flies great. It is based on all mk2 parts, and in the middle I have a cargo bay with a nicely deployable rover. I tested the cargo bay with the rover in it, but the rest of the plane removed, so I could deal with clipping issues etc with a minimal craft. I just added some landing legs to the edges of the cargo bay. I tested it numerous times and the test module is working great...the doors open, the deployment arm moves the rover to the correct place, the wheels unfold, the decoupler holding the rove to the arm fires, switch craft, and the rover is good to go. Save the module as a sub assembly, load the plane, pull out its existing cargo bay, pull in the saved sub assembly, attach the for and aft plane sections and launch. So far, so good.   Plane is on the runway, brakes are set. Test the deployment sequence, everything looks great.   Revert to launch, start setting up the mechjeb aircraft autopilot...and guess what?   The farking decoupler fires then the bay doors open and drops the rover on the runway!

 

At this point I am beginning to suspect that keys, specifically number keys, being used to enter various values (heading, speed, climb rate, target altitude etc) , are being detected as if they were being used for action groups rather than data entry.   Yes, in this instance I AM using custom action groups, primarily to trigger the kal1000 play sequence to do the rover deployment.   about the only thing I can think to try that I have not yet, is to remap the keys, but I am not even sure you can remap the custom action group keys.

 

[Michel Bartolone]

When all else fails, try a reinstall!   

Other things started breaking about a week ago. Air intakes all had two mode controls (open/closed) and one of them would work, but the other one would not, so all of my jet engines refused to work as the system showed them as oxygen deprived. 

I decided to do a full reinstall of KSP 1.12.3, the latest Breaking Ground DLC and test. Jets worked there. Then I made a CKAN mod pack with all of my mods from the 'broken' game, and reinstalled all of them in the new install. I made some minor changes, removing one duplicated dll, removed one of the mission control mods since I liked the other one I was using better, but for the most part the exact same list of mods. Went in and tested jet functionality and jet engines were all working again. Then I copied over all of my ships, and my game saves, and I tested jets again...still working.

I just sent a new crew transport vessel to my mun station, in the copied career save I was playing where docking was causing other various stages to fire, and it docked flawlessly, and no other stages fired when the ship docked! 

So, somehow, the base game code got corrupted. It wasn't any of the mods, it wasn't something that got busted in the persistence file etc...since those all got copied over when I copied over the saves...

If this happens again at some point, I'm going to make a copy of the busted game, and try a reinstall of the game itself, into the same directory and tell it to overwrite the existing files, and I'll see if that works as a viable work around.