This suddenly falling apart when they didn't before

[Michel Bartolone]

I've seen this type of thing before, but it was always associated with updating a mod...not this time. 

I have a MK3 drone space plane. Yesterday I took it into orbit, was able to rendezvous with a target just fine. I did have some other issues...it was a part capture contract, I managed to maneuver the ship around with the cargo bay doors open, and captured the part in the cargo bay. Closed the bay. Of course, as soon as I tried to maneuver, the part casually floated out through the bottom of the cargo bay... I tried putting the Konstruction Krane in the cargo bay to grab the part, BUT the krane _always_ overheats and explodes during ascent, while stowed in teh closed cargo bay!! (I still haven't gotten to the weird part yet).

I decided to try attaching a heat shield to the front of the cargo bay to see if that would protect the krane. I launch the plane and it looks wobbly, but _not_ at the joints of the new heat shield...no, but other fuselage joints are now flexing unlike the launches yesterday. I tried to take off but about the time I reach take off velocity...RUD...wings fly off, landing gear explodes...it's just a mess. I thought OK, maybe it's an issue with the heat shield, and decided I'd try it with no heat shield again. Removed the heat shield and launched again. Before throttling up, everything looks just fine. The flexing has stopped, the plane is sitting on the runway, not bouncing or swiveling etc...engage SAS, stage the engines, so far so good. Throttle up, release the brakes, plane starts to accelerate as expected. Things so far still going great, until I get to around 80-90m/s, and suddenly, the flexing is back...just as I start to pull up...RUD...wings fly off, landing gear explodes, and the rest of the ship comes apart.

No mods have been changed on my system in the last 3+ days, so it isn't a mod that changed. 

I had something similar in spirit happen about 2 months ago...things that were completely stable started having issues, like stations in orbit that were having no issues started to disassemble whenever any new ship docked. As soon as the docking sequence was "complete", I start hearing the staging sound, and various different parts would suddenly stage...like parachutes on a ship, long docked at the station, or a stack separator or decoupler in the middle of some other docked ship, would suddenly fire. The fix at that time was to reload the game from scratch, including all of the mods in my (fairly) large mod list, and then pulling in a copy of my saves (all of the ships etc) and the stuff backed up by S.A.V.E.S.  The reload worked...just annoying to spend more than a day reloading and rebuilding the game.
 

Now the question:   Has _anyone_ else seen this sort of thing and does anyone have any suggestions, other than a reload, of what to try?

I sure hope KSP 2 doesn't have this sort of 'feature'!

 

[fleventeen]

Man, where to even start. 

I have seen similar things before, but maybe not exactly what you mentioned.

There may be some hope for your joint wobbling issues. If you haven't already, check out the mod Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, as It really tightens up the joints between parts. It is strange that your issues are happening so randomly, but it might help out since it changes the joint behaviors so drastically.

There are actually two different versions of KJR, and they each use different methods to tighten the joints. I guess start with KJR - Next since it seems to still be getting updates. That's at least the one that I use, but you also have KJR - Continued to try as a backup.

You can also try messing with "Autostruts" (an advanced tweakable option). I don't normally use these since KJR tends to work quite well. There is also a tweakable "rigid attachement" option, but I have no clue what that does yet.

As for your other issues...

17 hours ago, Michel Bartolone said:

krane _always_ overheats and explodes during ascent, while stowed in teh closed cargo bay!!

I have definitely seen this before, and think it is a bug to do with whether a part is considered "shielded" or not by the cargo/fairing part. I forget exactly what causes it or what the workaround is.

17 hours ago, Michel Bartolone said:

Of course, as soon as I tried to maneuver, the part casually floated out through the bottom of the cargo bay...

When you say you "captured" this thing, do you mean physically docking/grappling, or did you just close the doors and let it float around in there?

17 hours ago, Michel Bartolone said:

I had something similar in spirit happen about 2 months ago...things that were completely stable started having issues, like stations in orbit that were having no issues started to disassemble whenever any new ship docked. As soon as the docking sequence was "complete", I start hearing the staging sound, and various different parts would suddenly stage...like parachutes on a ship, long docked at the station, or a stack separator or decoupler in the middle of some other docked ship, would suddenly fire.

I have seen craft start flipping around when docked, usually related to some SAS weirdness, or I guess the autostruts can do some weird things too, but never randomly staging. I am not sure how this would even happen. Do you have some sort of mod that is controlling automation or something that is going rogue?

17 hours ago, Michel Bartolone said:

The fix at that time was to reload the game from scratch, including all of the mods in my (fairly) large mod list, and then pulling in a copy of my saves (all of the ships etc) and the stuff backed up by S.A.V.E.S.  The reload worked...just annoying to spend more than a day reloading and rebuilding the game.

Just a tip, I install most of my mods via CKAN. With CKAN, once you get your modlist together you can export it as a modpack and hold onto it, that way a wipe and reinstall is just a matter of importing the pack with a clean game install and away you go.

Some people don't like using CKAN though which I don't really understand, it saves so much time.

17 hours ago, Michel Bartolone said:

I sure hope KSP 2 doesn't have this sort of 'feature'!

They did claim in a recent video that they are "slaying the Kraken". I am skeptical...

Edited April 16, 2022 by fleventeen

[Michel Bartolone]

@Fleventeen:   I recently (a few weeks ago) had to uninstall KJR. I had used it for a very long time, but it was causing issues with parts taking on acceleration when a kerbal boarded a ship after an EVA. 

I am already using autostruts, and rigid attachment. 

As for the 'capture' yeah, just closed the doors around it since I didn't have my crane any more (blew up on ascent). 

No automation mods installed. I really think this was something in the install getting corrupted somehow, since the reinstall fixed the issue.

I'm already using CKAN...and yes I know about exporting a mod pack and reinstalling it.