Nuclear motors falling off ?

[Kersplattle]

Anyone else having problems with the nuclear motors dropping off when in flight ? Usually while in deep space and trying to turn the ship around, one or more of the motors just fall off. Nothing to collide with, and they have about 4 struts attaching each to the relevant fuel tank. Ruined several perfectly good missions before making rendezvous.

Thanks

[Qumefox]

it's the space cthulhu. (cousin of the space kraken)

The problem is due to timewarping.. It's one of the things being worked on in .17.1

if you change timewarp increments in sequence (use , and . keys) instead of jumping around, (1x to 100000x back to 1x, etc by clicking the warp arrows at the top) the problem usually doesn't materialize.

[zarakon]

Damn, just had this happen to me twice on what could have been my first successful Jool mission. Now I've lost ~12 tanks of fuel, and my only remaining engine is on one of the outer cores so I can only burn at about 7% without destabilizing, and I'm pushing around 4 full tanks of dead weight fuel in the center core that I can neither use nor jettison. I might still have enough usable juice to complete the orbital insertion, but it will take forever at this ridiculously slow burn rate.. around 0.2m/s^2, and I need to lose around 2000. Is there any way to force time warp while burning?

[Vanamonde]

Twice for me now. Both times, at normal speed (no warp, I mean), while I was looking at the map view, in deep inter-planetary space. (I was lucky; in both instances I had recent quicksaves, and just went on with the missions.)

Edited October 14, 2012 by Vanamonde

[ramses]

Same here. On my way to Eve, went into map view at normal speed,heard a noise and NERVA had decided it didn't want to continue with the mission...?

Painful isn't it!

[Qumefox]

Damn, just had this happen to me twice on what could have been my first successful Jool mission. Now I've lost ~12 tanks of fuel, and my only remaining engine is on one of the outer cores so I can only burn at about 7% without destabilizing, and I'm pushing around 4 full tanks of dead weight fuel in the center core that I can neither use nor jettison. I might still have enough usable juice to complete the orbital insertion, but it will take forever at this ridiculously slow burn rate.. around 0.2m/s^2, and I need to lose around 2000. Is there any way to force time warp while burning?

It's happened to me before as well during a solar orbit rescue.. the rescue ship almost needed to be rescued due to two of the outer fuel/engine stacks just decided to fall off in mid mission (they were normal LFE's not NERVA's though) leaving the two remaining on one side.. I managed to get a kerbin intercept and them back to the surface but like you said, it wasn't fast, or fun.. luckily though I had LOTS of RCS fuel and thrusters.. so I could manage to compensate for higher asymmetric thrusts for most of the trip back than you were managing.

[Znath]

Finding one Kraken proves that there's a breeding population of them somewhere. My guess is beyond Jool somewhere.

So you'll just be flying along and you'll break up for no good reason.

[Qumefox]

I've only noticed it with really long stacks of things attached radially to a central body myself. Though it always seemed to happen after time warps for me (and other people have reported similar issues)

[samstarman5]

Can't say I've had the problem of parts spontaneously popping off to go to another party, but I have had instances where my craft would go out of control much like a wild mustang and it would be a bugger to get back under control. Usually it happened in trans-planetary flight, but once it did in Kerbin sub-orbit with most of the stages still attached. It created quite the fireworks display I hadn't seen in a long time beyond the launchpad.

While it might be the Space Cthulhu, I would rather write it up to the kerbals going space-mad and trying to wrest control of the ship from me. Might be a good time for the KSC to find a new pharmacy for sedatives.

[Qumefox]

I learned something useful tonight about dealing with tumbling ships.. Using it is really a 'cheat' but.. time warping stops all ship rotations. if you tap . then , to go to 5x then 1x, your ship will automagically stop tumbling.

[blurrr 2]

This is why save-loading can be so helpful.

[Gunhed]

I'm not playing KSP any more, before this bug has been fixed. They should have fixed it right away, instead of creating a big patch that takes weeks to finish.

[mustwinfull]

I'm not playing KSP any more, before this bug has been fixed. They should have fixed it right away, instead of creating a big patch that takes weeks to finish.

Let SQUAD do what they want.

If they did that, they would get more people whining at them about how their bug hasn't been fixed so it's better to put it in a big patch.

Also, there is a temporary solution, don't jump straight down to 1x, do it gradually.

Thanks.

[BloodyRain2k]

I'm not playing KSP any more, before this bug has been fixed. They should have fixed it right away, instead of creating a big patch that takes weeks to finish.

So you're expecting and ALPHA to be bugfree? LOL

[Milo Kurtiss]

Looks like the Space Cthulhu is angry that they killed the Space Kraken.

[Kersplattle]

Let SQUAD do what they want.

If they did that, they would get more people whining at them about how their bug hasn't been fixed so it's better to put it in a big patch.

Also, there is a temporary solution, don't jump straight down to 1x, do it gradually.

Thanks.

Herr Doktor Kersplattle agrees with this sentiment, anyway he hasn't stopped.

I'd rather work out a better controlled way to get a large ship to make decent gravity turn and not go half out of control. Maybe a new Mac with a better graphics card is needed. Serious lag problem.

[Boris_T_Roach]

Dunabuggy1 actually survived having an engine bitten off during a mid course correction, because I use 3 NERVA engines attatched to 1 big fuel tank as an interplanetary stage.(as well as mechjeb)

Just sat there pulse firing the remaining 2 every time the ship came into alinement with it planned course, having the RCS firing helped a bit too... until it ran out... but got the ship into an aerobraking path and finally down to the surface,

but a lost NERVA engine orbits alone in the darkness between worlds as a sacrifice to the great Cthulhu

Boris

[ramses]

Can't say I've had the problem of parts spontaneously popping off to go to another party, but I have had instances where my craft would go out of control much like a wild mustang and it would be a bugger to get back under control. Usually it happened in trans-planetary flight, but once it did in Kerbin sub-orbit with most of the stages still attached. It created quite the fireworks display I hadn't seen in a long time beyond the launchpad.

While it might be the Space Cthulhu, I would rather write it up to the kerbals going space-mad and trying to wrest control of the ship from me. Might be a good time for the KSC to find a new pharmacy for sedatives.

Had that prob to from time to time. If you have any other missions you can click on in map view, do it and then click back on your current out of control mission. Seems to work for me.

[AlexL]

Is there any way to force time warp while burning?

Yes there is, hold alt when using time warp keys and you will enter "physics warp" you can go upto 4x speed while still having engines on and controlling your ship.

[UNSC]

But remember, physics still works during a time warp, so a misbalanced ship will still spin.

[Vanamonde]

Also, there is a temporary solution, don't jump straight down to 1x, do it gradually.

This doesn't apply to the nuclear engine shedding. I always step down my warp factor and it's happening anyway, and besides, both times it happened to me it was while I was at normal speed and hadn't been warping for at least several seconds.

[drwolf]

this has hapend to all my rockets sofar

[Werwolf]

I've only lost one NERVA during a trans-dunar coast. Happened just like many have said, when I went from 1000x time warp to 1x. I step my warp down gradually now, haven't lost another one yet. That lone NERVA is still orbiting the Sun though... irritates me every time I see it on my map, lol.

[Gunhed]

So you're expecting and ALPHA to be bugfree? LOL

No, but I expect bug fixes much quicker than in a release version of a game, for testing purposes and such.

That's what an Alpha/Beta is for testing, or am I mistaken?

[ramnrmeul]

Finding one Kraken proves that there's a breeding population of them somewhere. My guess is beyond Jool somewhere.

So you'll just be flying along and you'll break up for no good reason.

My instinct tells me those Krakens or whatever they are have moved into 'Kerbol', because that's where I've been having problems near. I use the time-warp function to get to my periapsis and then de-warp and come out of map view and find that everything below the command pod had broken off. It's happened to me multiple times.

Relevant info: Using Mk. I Command Pod, small Adv. SAS, Rockomax 'Mainsail' engine, and Mk. 16 parachute. Used debug bar for infinite fuel.