Parts Manager does NOT like fuel tanks (on bugs and save game files plus oddly persistent game state)

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

One of the things I noticed way back in March/April was that Parts Manager did not like fuel tanks: clicking on a fuel tank in Parts Manager never / rarely shows anything in the tank, despite having a carrot/pull-down menu.

I've run into a fuel related bug in one of my Science! games that I tried to backtrack when it occurred by reviewing previous savegames.  And I can't.

Oddly, the gamestate is not entirely related to the savegame at the time it was saved.  It seems to me that there are various systems within the game that all have their own state.  i.e. they save things themselves w/o regard to the player's particular save.

To illustrate: last night I did an Apollo style mission - used a transfer craft to bring my lander to the Mun, undocked the lander, landed, lifted off and redocked with the transfer craft.  When I undocked both craft had plenty of fuel - and while I wasn't looking with any granularity (game had performed without a hitch to that point) - both craft should have had plenty of fuel when I redocked.  But upon docking?  No fuel bug.

I left the game to post a report - and in the VAB I created a simple pod + fuel tank so I could confirm how much fuel each X200-8 tank should hold.

Today, I went backward through my saves trying to backtrack when the bug occurred - and its a useless endeavor.  If I go back to the save where the craft was on the launch pad (Booster, sustainer, transfer and lander all in one craft) - the fuel bug still exists.  If I go in that early save from the KSC to the VAB - the little pod + fuel tank I did last night AFTER hours of play and several savegames down the line - the test Pod & tank are in the VAB.

That is odd to me.

I would expect the game to be in the state it was when I made the save.  It's not.  The VAB has its own state separate from where I left the game.  In other words - despite my having 'gone back in time' with the Kerbal & ship, the VAB was on 'a different timeline' and thought it was after I had left the Mun & docked.  (Or in actuality - it has its own save state that doesn't relate to the game save I made as a player).

All of which is a long winded way of saying - it looks like once you break a game / have the Fuel Bug appear - the entire game is broken.

I tried to go back and turn off KSP2, start a new campaign and see what changed... and Parts Manager still does not like the fuel tanks.  Parts Manager in the VAB is functional - but not on the pad.  Built a simple craft - pod tank and engine; no Parts Manager info on fuel at the pad.  Went back to VAB and added a decoupler and repeated the steps (pod, tank and engine) placing that ship atop the other - with zero fuel in the top craft.  At the pad?  No way to tell that one craft has an empty tank and the other a full one.  No way to transfer fuel.

So either I'm missing something fundamental - or there's still some big problems under the hood w/r/t fuel.

Appreciate any insights.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Okay - new info.

After googling I discovered that Fuel Transfers are NOT done via Parts Manager but via Resource Manager.  So I loaded up the new save and tried to do that - use Resource Manager to transfer the fuel across.  RM is bugged.  Hitting X to close a window / tank in one panel simply clones the tank window into the left panel.

So then I loaded up the bugged save from last night (ship has no fuel).  Map view will not let me create a maneuver node because ship has no fuel.

Going to the Resource Manager... there's plenty of fuel.

Somehow the systems are not talking to one another.  RM tells me there's plenty of fuel on the craft.  Game, however, thinks there is none.  Parts manager shows nothing when I click on a tank (designed that way?).

Color me confused.

[Spicat]

Indeed it's quite buggy:

[hatterson]

52 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Map view will not let me create a maneuver node because ship has no fuel.

Unrelated to the fuel transfer issues, is there some way to disable this?

I totally understand the design decision of not teasing a player by letting them create a node they can't actually complete, but there has to be some way to override it.

In KSP 1 I would frequently grab a random satellite I had in orbit that was nearly out of fuel in order to play around with maneuvers and see if I could do anything interesting like getting a Mun gravity assist to reduce the amount of delta-v I needed to get to Jool or something. Or "hmm, are things lined up that I could do a flyby of the mun and get me to minmus right now?" type checks.

I'm never intending to fly the mission with the craft I'm setting up the maneuver on but it lets me know that it's roughly possible and roughly the delta-v it will take if I do launch something. I know that it won't happen exactly, I'm just using what is effectively a dummy craft for a "what if" check.