Parachutes and Engines on Same Stage?

[Geschosskopf]

I'm trying to make a 1-stage lander that has both engines and parachutes. Idea is to parachute onto Eve or Laythe and launch back up, OR power down on airless moon and parachute back on Kermin. So basically capsule, fuel tank, engine, gear, parachute. But the engine and chute will fire simultaneously unless I do something, and nothing I've tried has worked so now I'm out of ideas. Here's what I already know doesn't work:

1. I tried creating a new "artificial" (as in no separator) stage and dragged 1 or the other into it depending on which I want to use first. This artificial stage looks good in the VAB and in flight, showing engine and chute separate. However, the game actually ignores it when I go to use it, so both engine and chute still fire simultaneously anyway.

2. I tried adding separator with chute on top to create "real" stage. While this keeps the firing separate, it means I can't use the chutes first which defeats the purpose. Worse, the separator fails when the chute fully opens, causing the rest of the lander to plummet to destruction.

3. I tried putting the chutes in an action group but they still fire with the engine so this made no difference.

Thanks in advance for ideas.

[MBobrik]

note the small + and - buttons at the margin of the staging column. You can add an empty stage bellow the one you are clicking on by + and add stuff to it, and remove the empty stage by -.

.

And also, you can still throttle the engine to zero before triggering even when chutes and the engine are on the same stage, and then when you need thrust just throttle up.

[Johnno]

Are you using Mechjeb autostaging or something? If you're just using the stock game with no mods then simply use the staging list, stuff stages when you press space. I've landed stuff onto Duna with engines and parachutes together, haven't had any issues, they stage exactly when I want them to and are re-arrangable midflight.

[Bunsen]

You can change staging behavior in the VAB -- look at the column at the lower right. You can add steps in the staging process with the little "+" buttons, drag elements between stages, and reorder stage groups, all without messing with action groups. Click one of those "+" buttons to create a new staging step, drag the parachute icon into it, and drag it to the top of the column. If you want to fire the 'chute before other things, then create an action group for it and you can activate it either way.

[Vanamonde]

As long as you don't call upon the stages they're in with the spacebar, you could set engines to one action group and chutes to another. Then they could be activated in any order.

[CalculusWarrior]

Additionally, you could just right-click the engines you want and ignore the spacebar entirely. I often have all my lander stuff on the final stage and right click to activate engines, deploy parachutes, etc...

[Geschosskopf]

I do have MechJeb on this lander but it's just sitting there. I haven't used it in the test flights, it's there for the actual mission. Don't know what difference that makes.

As I said in my 1st post, I created an "artificial" stage with the orange + thing and moved either the engines or chutes there. But when I hit the space bar, the game ignored this new stage I'd creatd. It treated everything on the lander as 1 stage anyway and fired chutes and rockets together.

I'll give the action groups another go, not using the spacebar. I'm only just now learning how to use action groups and had been hitting the space bar.

Thanks.

[Geschosskopf]

OK, I tried again with action groups. I set up 1 to toggle the engine, which I then worked with the L-SHF, L-CTRL, and X. I set the chute deploy on a separate action group. I never touched the spacebar at all. There was a MechJeb on the capsule but I never opened MechJeb or did anything with it.

So, I put my lander on the pad. I hit G to extend the legs. I hit 1 to toggle the engines on. I hit slowly L-SHF to throttle up. As I did this, I watched the stage display. I got the fuel meters for the engines and the parachutes were shown in normal white, not yet deployed. Eventually the throttle got high enough for the ship to lift off. As soon as it left the ground, the stage display showed the chutes turn green for fully deployed and sure enough, as the lander rose off the pad, it was dragging fully open chutes behind it. I didn't hit space or the 2 key that was supposed to deploy the chutes.

Thus, I'm still out of ideas.

[stupid_chris]

OK, I tried again with action groups. I set up 1 to toggle the engine, which I then worked with the L-SHF, L-CTRL, and X. I set the chute deploy on a separate action group. I never touched the spacebar at all. There was a MechJeb on the capsule but I never opened MechJeb or did anything with it.

So, I put my lander on the pad. I hit G to extend the legs. I hit 1 to toggle the engines on. I hit slowly L-SHF to throttle up. As I did this, I watched the stage display. I got the fuel meters for the engines and the parachutes were shown in normal white, not yet deployed. Eventually the throttle got high enough for the ship to lift off. As soon as it left the ground, the stage display showed the chutes turn green for fully deployed and sure enough, as the lander rose off the pad, it was dragging fully open chutes behind it. I didn't hit space or the 2 key that was supposed to deploy the chutes.

Thus, I'm still out of ideas.

There's a known bug with MechJeb2. If you have it on a craft, EVEN if you don't activate it, it will try to autostage almost everything it can until it finds an engine. Really it's as dumb as that, if you were to take MechJeb off your craft it would work. I think one way to solve this (sorta) is to uncheck the "autostage" feature in the ascent guidance, even if you'Re not gonna use it. Else it will work at all times. However this doesn't always work. Another way is to download the lastest dev build, The_Duck fixed this issue in the last dev build and now autostaging works properly. It's the only possible source for your problem, there's no way stock could stage on it's own.

EDIT: also, the parachutes don't fire as soon as you throttle up because they don't work under 0.5m/s, but as soon as you cross that line they will fire.

[Tiron]

There's a known bug with MechJeb2. If you have it on a craft, EVEN if you don't activate it, it will try to autostage almost everything it can until it finds an engine. Really it's as dumb as that, if you were to take MechJeb off your craft it would work. I think one way to solve this (sorta) is to uncheck the "autostage" feature in the ascent guidance, even if you'Re not gonna use it. Else it will work at all times. However this doesn't always work. Another way is to download the lastest dev build, The_Duck fixed this issue in the last dev build and now autostaging works properly. It's the only possible source for your problem, there's no way stock could stage on it's own.

EDIT: also, the parachutes don't fire as soon as you throttle up because they don't work under 0.5m/s, but as soon as you cross that line they will fire.

Eyup. Your problem is mechjeb2's autostaging: Even with all functions off, if autostaging is enabled (via checkbox), it will automatically stage through any stage that doesn't have a decoupler on it. I've got the latest dev build but I've been playing with Rovers so I haven't seen the fix in action, but the autostaging was allegedly fixed, and an autostage checkbox has been added to what used to be called 'Throttle Control' and is now called 'Utilities' (along with an 'autostage once' button, no idea what that does).

[Geschosskopf]

@ Stupid_Chris and Tiron:

That was it! MechJeb's autostage box was checked. Apparently it saves the last settings you put in it, even if it was on a different ship in a test saved game you've already deleted. So I unchecked the autostage box and the action groups worked like a champ. However, I need to add some stitching. I had parachutes on both capsule and big engine modules and when the chutes fully opened, the capsule pulled off. Landed right back in place once both were on the ground, though

OK, this has now been answered but I can't see how to change the prefix.