How do I prevent a ship from being considered debris?

[Trekkin]

I keep running into a problem in docking. Unmanned ships can dock to unmanned ships well enough, but when I build, say, a manned ship with a probe core component on it and launch that, once detached the probe part (which has enough electrical power and everything) registers as debris--so I can't dock with it.

What does a ship need to be considered a ship and how do I separate and link them so that they're all considered ships?

[mac givré]

Just add a "control" element on the part of the ship you want to control, basically a little probe control pod will do the job

[Vanamonde]

I'm not sure what you're describing, but to be considered a ship, an assemblage of parts needs either a manned capsule or a probe core. If you've got that but it's showing up as debris anyway, that's a bug.

[capi3101]

You need to make sure you have a powered control unit on both ends - a probe or manned pod; if one part of the ship doesn't have such a unit after you separate the two ends, the game will consider the uncontrolled part debris. Make sure the power modules are on the same part of the ship as the control module, otherwise it will power down almost as soon as you separate them.

To seperate two parts and re-link them later, both will need to have Clamp-O-Trons of the same size.

[Trekkin]

I have a full crew capsule on one part and two probe cores on the other.

Having tested it more thoroughly, it looks like it just takes a bit of accelerated time for KSP to recognize the undocked section as its own ship.

[AceGamer]

If you have any type of capsule and right click on it i believe its says rename from here and click that and you can change the icon. e.g: Ship, station, lander.

[ThatBum]

Make sure the unmanned part has electrical power. Give it batteries and solar panels or an RTG.

[royying]

if you attached the probe core /crew pod

press [ / ] after decouple to set the vessel type