Struts get deleted on reloading

[king of nowhere]

I've been spending the last few weeks building a large, orbitally assembled ship in a caveman run. Now the ship is hold together entirely by weak clamp-o-tron jr. joints, and i need to reinforce it with struts - autostrutting did no good. I can send a kerbal in orbit in a cargo bay to place those struts; but then, as soon as I move away from the ship, when I reload the ship into physical range, the struts are gone.

here are the struts i placed. i put some in various positions to see if it depended on how they are placed

 

and, after going to tracking station and returning to the ship, here's what I find. the struts are still there, but they lost their connectivity.

 

this is why autostrutting does not work: all struts are placed to a near part, none of them crosses a docking port. not that trying to put a manual strut between parts already connected by an autostrut prevented the strut from disappearing.

 

i tested on a different ship, and struts worked just fine.

any suggestion on how to fix this mess? i'd hate to lose four weeks of progress

[Echo__3]

Struts will not stay connected when placed across docking ports using EVA construction. This seems to be an annoying oversight by the developers.

[king of nowhere]

47 minutes ago, Echo__3 said:

Struts will not stay connected when placed across docking ports using EVA construction. This seems to be an annoying oversight by the developers.

the strut on the right is not crossing any docking port, and yet it also got removed