Largest landed legs exploded while landing at 2m/s

[allanp11]

The largest landing legs exploded while landing at 2m/s at Lathe. I had 4 of them and they looked stupidly large on my lander. They were helped with 24 radial parachutes (the weight of those alone reduced my delta V by a bunch) plus careful throttling of the vector engines to slow down at the end.

I'm really am losing the will to play this game now.  Refund perhaps? I am spending 95% of my time fighting against bugs or so called intended behaviors and not much time playing what the actual challenge of the game should be. I have tried for several hours to get a few good landing attempts. I tried saving while descending under parachutes but when I reloaded in that case the whole lander just came apart in mid air. Apparently saving and loading under parachutes is another bug. A previous design I made had the ruggedized wheels instead of landing legs, they survived fine but couldn't move the craft at all because they are far too weak, it just rolled into the middle of a very shallow valley. I got this game on sale and I'm feeling ripped off.

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, allanp11 said:

The largest landing legs exploded while landing at 2m/s at Lathe. I had 4 of them and they looked stupidly large on my lander. They were helped with 24 radial parachutes (the weight of those alone reduced my delta V by a bunch) plus careful throttling of the vector engines to slow down at the end.

I'm really am losing the will to play this game now.  Refund perhaps? I am spending 95% of my time fighting against bugs or so called intended behaviors and not much time playing what the actual challenge of the game should be. I have tried for several hours to get a few good landing attempts. I tried saving while descending under parachutes but when I reloaded in that case the whole lander just came apart in mid air. Apparently saving and loading under parachutes is another bug. A previous design I made had the ruggedized wheels instead of landing legs, they survived fine but couldn't move the craft at all because they are far too weak, it just rolled into the middle of a very shallow valley. I got this game on sale and I'm feeling ripped off.

How heavy is the lander? 2 m/s should not destroy anything.  I landed at 9 m/s with an 80 ton Eve lander on 4 of the largest legs without problem except the terrain was to steep so it tipped over. 
With 24 parachutes it had to be massive. 

I tend to land on struts or H beams for heavier stuff in KSP 2 it has only been the 300 ton Duna lander but my Eve lander has H beams and struts as an backup mostly as I will retract the landing legs after landing, this to reduce risk of lander jumping then I return to it. 
Yes game is very buggy, not run into something gamebreaking, ships explode on takeoff, you can not time warp on surface on many airless worlds or you drop trough the surface, error in dV of craft, yes its buggy but nothing who stopped me from completing my missions. 
Except an weird docking port bug who I set up for. 
 

[Infinite deaths]

My lander exploded using the big legs. I always use struts as legs now. A bit bouncy but the impact tolerance is good. 

[allanp11]

Thank you very much for the replies. It was 97.34t. So is that is on the heavy side?

The thing with Laythe is that I find it very difficult to land at a specific spot. I am trying to do the mission where you get to the creature of laythe, but as landing within only a few km, or even hitting land at all is going to be tricky, I built a small detachable rover. Then added the main 2 seater command module plus the usual ancillaries (reaction wheels, battery, solar panels etc) then I just built it out from there to have enough TWR and delta V to get back into lathe orbit to be docked with the mother ship. 

To get the rover centered (so not to throw off the center of mass) and low to the ground for safe deployment, I built the command module above it with fuel tanks, a detachable heat shield below it (you can just see it in the picture under the rover) then put a vector engine either side straddling the rover. Seems logical right? I thought it looked pretty sweet as well! It ended up at 90ish tons. It doesn't look excessively large or heavy, especially not for these large landing legs. You can also see that I have left plenty of room under the engines and rover (after heat shield is detached while under parachutes).

I kept adding parachutes to slow it down. I actually had 32 main and 8 drogue parachutes at this point, which slowed it to about 13m/s, I guess Laythe's atmosphere is thinner?  So I throttle the  vector engines to slow down in the last 10 seconds. It was 2m/s and looking beautiful with these large landing legs, then KABOOM! Oh, and the heat shield on the top, which is only there to keep it pointing the right way during entering the atmosphere is saying it's extended but I can't retract it, that's another bug. I guess if the mission was successful I'd have to detach it from the docking port before taking off, which is a shame as I planned to use the retracted heat shield as a nose cone during the ascent through Laythe's atmosphere.

 

Edited March 24 by allanp11

[allanp11]

2 hours ago, Infinite deaths said:

My lander exploded using the big legs. I always use struts as legs now. A bit bouncy but the impact tolerance is good. 

Thanks for saying so, it's not just me then. 

[Flush Foot]

6 hours ago, allanp11 said:

the heat shield on the top, which is only there to keep it pointing the right way during entering the atmosphere is saying it's extended but I can't retract it, that's another bug

Not sure that jumbo, inflatable heat shield being ‘stuck open’ is a bug… that’s how it worked in KSP 1 as well.

[allanp11]

1 hour ago, Flush Foot said:

Not sure that jumbo, inflatable heat shield being ‘stuck open’ is a bug… that’s how it worked in KSP 1 as well.

You can normally retract them in KSP2. The little switch next to "heat shield extended" will be flipped the other way with the little green indicator showing. But as it's currently flipped the wrong way I can't retract them.

Edited March 24 by allanp11

[kdaviper]

2 minutes ago, allanp11 said:

You can normally retract them in KSP2. The little switch next to "heat shield extended" will be flipped the other way with the little green indicator showing. But as it's currently flipped the wrong way I can't retract them.

Try time warping then trying to retract it. Then get out of time warp and try again. 

[allanp11]

9 minutes ago, kdaviper said:

Try time warping then trying to retract it. Then get out of time warp and try again. 

Thank you for the suggestion, unfortunately it didn't work for me this time.

[KincaidFrankMF]

I've had problems with the biggest landing legs too, maybe it's the jointed "knees". I tend to just come down on my heatshield(s) at that point and stuff it lol The other legs seem fine though.

Spaceplanes are a popular option on Laythe - one of the few places you get to use them, and they're an efficient solution

[BechMeister]

I hate the big legs too... The rockets also tumble so easily if its not landing on the flattest of ground.. Sadly its the only legs we have that will allow us to land rockets with main engines that isnt tiny.

I have been struggling with them when returning 1st stages (like a falcon 9) on Kerbin.

I know its maybe a bit cliché to say.. but remember its early access.. and its very much still feels like a alpha build and not a beta

Edited March 25 by BechMeister

[allanp11]

On 3/25/2024 at 1:32 PM, BechMeister said:

The rockets also tumble so easily if its not landing on the flattest of ground

That is very also very true. And most terrain that you find is far from flat. It would be great if the legs could somehow compensate for uneven terrain, not just via suspension, but by actively moving/adjusting to the uneven ground.

[Flush Foot]

42 minutes ago, allanp11 said:

It would be great if the legs could somehow compensate for uneven terrain, not just via suspension, but by actively moving/adjusting to the uneven ground.

Especially on those humongous legs, I think that would be awesome!

Maybe even show in the VAB pre-launch "given the legs' placement and the size of the engine-bell, the craft can hold itself vertical on terrain with slopes of up to X-degrees". (of course assuming a reasonably-vertical landing)

I forget if it was stock KSP 1 (or a mod I began to play with between KSP 2's announcement and EA-release) but it'd also be splendid if once on the surface, legs could secure themselves to the ground, preventing sliding or tipping. (even if this was a 3-5 second action that would fail if there was too much movement, being able to hold steady, "plant the anchors", then shut down SAS [recharge batteries} and safely go on EVA would be excellent!)

[CFTeague2]

Ive had wierd issues with WHEELS (not legs) auto suspension in some places will spontaneously pop your tires.    (It kind of looks like the auto-spring strength and auto-dampener strength might get into some kind of self reinforcing oscellation and eventually the tire is pressed so hard vs the ground it just breaks.  but thats somewhat of a guess from the very quick visuals before it happens)

 

On LAYTHE specifically, I've had issues with the "shores" terrain, particularly near the <spoiler> area which the mission sends you too.     It seems like, there are 2 surfaces -- the visual surface, and then like 1 foot (not even a full meter) below that is a 2nd surface.     If/when the tires of my SSTO were on the ground for very long, they would sink from the top surface, to the subsurface, and then the game would act like the craft was stuck in a tar-pit.     Running my whiplash engines could get me moving, somewhat.    But in the time it took me to get to 9m/s, I would normally have expected to be going something like 50-70 m/s

 

The tires were also very sensitive to breaking, when transitioning from the "top" surface, to the "sub" surface.    And the "drag" would spin the craft around, if only 1 of the tires sunk in, before the others.   I think this is also how sometimes it broke my tires, by suddenly pulling on it too hard.