Crash on Docking

[jfjohnny5]

KSP: 1.12.3

Problem: Game crashes upon docking two vessels together. Heavily modded install. Have already gone through logs from previous instances of this reproducible crash and cleaned out a couple suspects, but the crash persists. Looking for a fresh set of eyes and ideas.

Mods: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hsfz5miqkg01ivz/JFJohnny5 Mods.txt?dl=0

Log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oaem52sok1d1z1v/Player.log?dl=0

Notes: I'm really stumped here.. There are some errors related to EVE, but they haven't been an issue. The game seems to be running fine even as the vessels start to dock. The ports connect. The view shifts to the Auto Camera view of both craft attached. Then after maybe a second, it freezes and crashes. The Player.log file shows the docking happening at Line 115901 which reads "Docking to vessel Ra II" and there are no errors in the log after that. 

Edited April 6, 2022 by jfjohnny5

[darthgently]

Until you get a better answer, maybe try this.  If you have advanced tweakables enabled and have autostrut set to "heaviest" on the dock ports involved, try setting them autostrut to  "off" prior to docking.

[jfjohnny5]

I had high hopes for that working.. but it didn't. Fwiw, I didn't have autostrutting enabled for the docking ports, but I did have it for the capsules themselves. I disabled all autostruts on both craft.. still crashed.  Any other ideas?

[darthgently]

38 minutes ago, jfjohnny5 said:

I had high hopes for that working.. but it didn't. Fwiw, I didn't have autostrutting enabled for the docking ports, but I did have it for the capsules themselves. I disabled all autostruts on both craft.. still crashed.  Any other ideas?

This might be one of those situations where you have to remove suspect mods until things work, but given the craft likely depend on some mods this may not be a valid path.  I see errors regarding some procedural parts.  

Also, sometimes craft that are stable with regards to SAS will become unstable after docking, so turn off any SAS on the dockee when you are within 5 seconds of docking or so, the turn it off on the docker a split second before docking (use '[' ']' to cycle between craft quickly).

Can you be more specific about "crash"?  Is  the craft wiggling around and blowing up?  Or does the game completely die?

Could you put up your KSP.log also?  Is will be in the same directory as where you run KSP from.

[jfjohnny5]

So the crash plays out like this: The vessels dock and the camera shifts. Then visually the scene hangs - I can see the craft have stopped moving, all readout numbers stop updating. I can move the mouse for a couple seconds, and it's still the KSP mouse cursor (not Windows default cursor), but the mouse framerate is very low, sub 10fps I'd guess. Then the whole thing drops to desktop. Monitoring Task Manager during the crash I see CPU drop to 0%. No change in RAM - I've got 64 gigs and I'm well below that while running KSP.

Here's the latest KSP.log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ip8p1wc1rgowq3x/KSP.log?dl=0

Some more info: I did some testing in a Sandbox save. First I created two identical Probes with the same Mini Docking ports I'd been using. They docked together in orbit without issue. Then I created two basic manned capsules with the same docking ports. They docked without issue. Then I copied the .craft files of the vessels from my Career save that I'd been trying to dock, this time flying them in my Sandbox save, and THEY docked without issue as well. I then went back to my Career save. I even went so far as to terminate the two flights in orbit, reload the craft on the pad, and launch them fresh. When I go to dock them.. the same crash. So the obvious difference here is Career vs Sandbox - which kind of has me even more stumped.

Edited April 7, 2022 by jfjohnny5

[darthgently]

Interesting.  KSP.log ends while MJ is creating buttons, no error.  You might need to set the "flush logs to disk" or whatever the setting is so that log writes aren't buffered.  The career vs sandbox thing is fairly salient.  There are a lot of '[ERR' and '[EXC' in KSP.log but I don't see anything that would only affect career unless it would be related to the 'scenario' errors. 

I really don't know.  But given the errors in KSP.log, several mods are not completely happy.  Then again, there is so much philosophy that its "ok" to have error and exceptions messages for code that "works fine" among some mod devs that can be a difficult thing to parse.  It kind of removes the value of having error messages at all.  Boy who cried wolf kind of thing.  Still, some of those errors do seem to indicate corrupt installs to some degree (missing resources etc)

[darthgently]

Any mod that only makes sense for Career might be a suspect.  I think Kerbal R&D is Career only, right?  And I did see errors for KRnD in the logs involving "scenarios".   This is not to say that this is causing your problem, just something to rule out.  If the docking has implications for KRnD, like reaching a milestone unlocks some tech nodes or something (I don't know how KRnD works) then it might be related.  I don't know.  This advice worth exactly as much as you paid for it, lol

[jfjohnny5]

In agreement with you on all counts really. And thank you for the back and forth - always helpful to have another brain to bounce these things off of. I do have "Verbose Logging" enabled - which I think is the setting you're referring to. I don't feel like it helped much, as you can see - there's no "smoking gun" error at the end of the file that would pinpoint the problem. 

I removed Kerbal RnD during my testing last night (after uploading that initial Player.log that you're seeing). Actually, here's the full list of mods I've tried removing so far:
Final Frontier
Kerbal Research and Development
Connected Living Space
Hide Empty Tech Tree Nodes
Action Groups Extended
Procedural Parts
Career Evolution
Contract Configurator
Contract Pack: Bases and Stations Reborn
Contract Pack: Clever Sats
Strategia

At this point I'm wondering if there's something corrupt about my save file. Something from who knows when earlier in the Career that is only now showing its ugly head. I love and hate the variety of mods that Kerbal has. It makes troubleshooting so difficult..

I've uploaded fresh versions of Player.log and KSP.log to Dropbox, if you care to take a look at them again. I think my next step is to try a fresh Career save, cheat myself enough funds and science to unlock the parts I need, and try docking in that environment.

[jfjohnny5]

And on a fresh Career save, cheating myself the resources needed to unlock and build the same .craft files from my main Career save, orbital docking of the two vessels.. works. I'm not sure how I feel. There are still a LOT of variables that I can't account for - all of the advancement that goes on as part of developing a career. The only thing I can say is that it's probably not the mere existence of a given mod that is causing the crash. It's almost undoubtedly the result of something some mod did at some point. That's.. less than useful. Any new thoughts?

[darthgently]

Not verbose logging, but that is good.  There is another setting, I think in the pre-game settings prior to selecting a savegame to load, that is related to making all log writes to disk rather than buffering them.  This will make it so you get the last log message prior to a crash rather than the last log message buffer that was written (unwritten log entries will be lost on a hard crash).  

You are probably right that there is something that changed during the progression of the game that is leading to this crash; something related to career progression.  I personally got weary of investing in a game only to have it dead-end in scenarios like this.  The bottom line is that even if a mod is perfectly coded, its only "API" to KSP is limited to what KSP is willing to share and play nice with.  Given all the ways that mods are coded out there I can't image any KSP dev team that could accommodate all the possible ways a mod dev may try to interact with KSP code.  My mod list is much shorter than yours, but you've tried removing the mods that I would have tried removing first also mostly.

Are you on windows?  You could try that save file editor that is out there, it gets rave positive reviews from ppl who it worked for, but I've never used it

 

[jfjohnny5]

I think I'm throwing in the towel on this one.. Honestly, I was getting a little tired of the TETRIX Tech Tree I was using. It felt overly tedious to me. Time for a new tree I guess. ((shrug))

I'm right there with you on getting weary of investing in playthroughs because they often seem to end in unrecoverable states like this. Definitely hoping the "more robust modding support" they're claiming with KSP2 ends up being true haha. Until then, I guess I'll just start a new Career, because apparently my enjoyment for this game outweighs the frustration - or I'm just a glutton for punishment. 

[darthgently]

For future reference, you should find that "flush logs to disk" ("sync logs to disk?"; something like that) setting.  It really comes in handy.  Good luck in your next game!

Edited April 7, 2022 by darthgently

[jfjohnny5]

Found that option. It's in the debugging menu under Console > Debugging > Immediately Flush Log File to Disk. I'll definitely keep that in mind if (when) I find myself debugging crashes again. Thanks again for the help!

Edited April 8, 2022 by jfjohnny5

[id_pyro]

Hey I think I found the issue. I was having the same problem until I uninstalled restock and restock+ if you have those mods. I think maybe it has something to do with the redesigns that restock does the the base game parts.