Every craft I try to use falls apart

[ziame]

I have this seriously annoying and weird problem now. I have played KSP for 41 hours, with varying success ratio. I had a save, that was 3 years in-game. I had flags on mun, minmus, base on duna, satellites everywhere and two space stations around kerbin.

I decided to bring a refuelling station into Minmus orbit for convenience. And bragging rights, of course.

But I can't. It falls apart at launch pad.

I was confused, but I thought that, oh well, I made a mistake somewhere. I loaded my Kerbin Satellite design... but it fell apart on launch pad.

I loaded Stock Space Core and rebuild it.... only to see it fall apart.

I loaded my Dunadein, the Duna rocket... and parts randomly detached from it.

W.T.F.

I tried a new save, thinking that 18 flights may be too much for Kerbal to handle, or that 3 years time broke it. Didnt work.

I reinstalled the game, only to watch Jebediah plummet into launch pad.

I am seriously furious about the game right now, so I come here, to seek guidance from KSP veterans...

I honestly love the game, but I am unable to play it now. Maybe someone has similar experiences and somehow fixed it?

[Apollo13]

Can you provide a screenshot? Also, MOAR struts.

[Johnno]

We're going to need more to go on than "falls apart" or Jeb plummeting into the pad. The absolutely best thing would be actual craft files, if you could upload some somewhere. Failing that, then clear screenshots so we could replicate the designs. Also it would be easiest if it was a fully stock craft we could look/try, less hassle with mods.

Pressing F3 brings up your flight log, it'll have information. If stuff falls apart/breaks on the pad it'll likely say "structural failure between A and B", which means the connection was too weak or that whichever was ontop was too heavy. Struts as mentioned can solve most things.

[iBeej]

I have become sort of a master of disaster when it comes to the issues you describe. There are 3 very important things you need to be aware of when "disassembling" occurs on the launch pad.

1.) The more connection points between parts, the more flexible (wobbly) the craft gets. The FURTHER you build away from center of mass, exponentially increases instability. The solution? Make sure you use larger tanks of fuel instead of lots of tiny ones. (Less connection points) and make sure you use STRUTS.

2.) I found that decouplers or separators are very prone to failure. Especially if the center of mass for a rocket is off balance from its connection points. If its really bad, they fail before you even ignite. You need to use struts to support your decouplers and separators.

3.) Launch clamp placement. I found that these little buggers cause a vast majority of my launch pad explosions. If they aren't placed right, or if they overlap each other or if their frames pass through the body of your vehicle, the rockets shakes itself apart. Put your clamps on the center of mass for the vehicle and then watch its behavior on the launch pad.

Any piece that flexes, is either going to cause a catastrophic failure on the launch pad by shaking or it will inevitably cause uncontrollable unstable craft in flight. So watch for things flexing or moving. Or flat breaking.

The big trick to finding massive failures is by hitting F3 and looking at the list of failures. Look what breaks first and start there. It will even tell you if launch clamps fail. If those fail, it puts strain in everything else and it's a big domino effect.

Building everything efficiently and close to center of mass (and being well balanced when you do build further from center) is a huge key to keeping a craft stable and strong. And this needs to be considered when you go through your STAGES! because dropping mass, shifts your center of mass. So remember, you can fix all this and make it stable at launch but if your stages all drop off the bottom with a very heavy payload at the top, you can have serious pitching down when still in your ascent. This isn't so much of a problem when you are in transfer, but getting there... Is the key.

Struts, clamps, and center of mass with staging. Pay close attention to all of those.

Hope this helps!

Edited September 2, 2013 by iBeej
Typos

[tstehler1]

There's a very popular strategy that almost any experienced player will tell you right off the bat.

More struts.

Good luck!

[Runboy]

Its most likely a glitched .cfg part file in your parts folder,other than that it may be your decouplers malfunctioning.

[Moonfrog]

Curious why did everyone assume there was something wrong with his designs? He said they were all working, then one day they all started falling apart. Clearly that points to a glitch somewhere.

[blizzy78]

If he would just post a few pictures, we could tell.

[Amoun]

If I got it right, you are loading the same rocket that worked before and now it crumbles?

Hmmm...that is weird.

First question: are there any mods to the game?

Reason I am asking is that even if you do a "clean install", you HAVE to delete the old mod folders etc because those do not disappear.

I do find it strange though that the whole thing falls apart, especially on your old craft. A clean install should have fixed everything, and if it doesnt that just means there are left-over files somewhere.

Definitely post some screenshots and the flight log.....very curious to see what happens there.

[Spyritdragon]

If you go for a clean KSP install, then take a liquidfuel engine, a tank on top and a command pod on top of that, does it launch okay?

[Brevillance]

assuming most people skimmed the OP and didnt read that he loaded stock rockets/planes and old (duna rocket, that had to work at some point) and they all fell apart, im going to assume that your crafts are fine and its instead a game glitch/bug.

As one other said though, a clean install should have fixed it. My advice would be to go copy all your craft files, place them on your desktop and take every folder in the KSP folder and delete them. (computer -> C: -> prog. files (x86) -> steam -> Steamapps -> common -> KSP -> saves -> Brevillance -> Ships -> VAB (my set up to access ships, back up to the main KSP folder to delete the files)) Then, if your using steam verify the integrety of the game cache and let it re-download. Otherwise, download a new .exe and try again.

If nothing else works, post screenshots of ATLEAST the flight report, as it may atleast point us into the right direction.

Best of luck

[BubbaWilkins]

assuming most people skimmed the OP and didnt read that he loaded stock rockets/planes and old (duna rocket, that had to work at some point) and they all fell apart, im going to assume that your crafts are fine and its instead a game glitch/bug.

As one other said though, a clean install should have fixed it. My advice would be to go copy all your craft files, place them on your desktop and take every folder in the KSP folder and delete them. (computer -> C: -> prog. files (x86) -> steam -> Steamapps -> common -> KSP -> saves -> Brevillance -> Ships -> VAB (my set up to access ships, back up to the main KSP folder to delete the files)) Then, if your using steam verify the integrety of the game cache and let it re-download. Otherwise, download a new .exe and try again.

If nothing else works, post screenshots of ATLEAST the flight report, as it may atleast point us into the right direction.

Best of luck

I'm going to assume its not the game that is glitched, but that all his crafts are from a previous version and are no longer compatible. Without a lot more details, we really have no idea what's going wrong.

[capi3101]

Any of the above. And it's also possible that his instance of KSP was just having a bad hair day; that's happened to me before. Build a rocket, it works fine one day, try to launch it another day and it auto-destructs for no apparent reason, get out of the program and go back in and everything's hunky-dory...