Joining fuel tanks

[Lanternman]

Hi,

New player here and I'm in need of some advice with rocket building please. I'm trying to stack fuel tanks (jumbo 64 and a rockomax 200)and even though they are a tight fit at the build stage I'm not getting any fuel transfer between the two on launch. Have I got the wrong end of the stick or are you not meant to be able to do this?

Thanks

[Dispatcher]

You should be able to stack tanks. Are you putting anything between them, like separators? If so, don't. The fuel will be drawn from the upper tank first. Just in case, you do attach an engine directly under the (lower) tank, without separators too. I'm also not aware of a stack limit, except for the size of the VAB. But stack too much and it may be too massive for the engine to move.

If you are attaching tanks radially, that's not stacking and I don't think fuel will flow laterally. For that you'll need fuel pipes and you connect to the source tank first and the receiving tank to complete the connection.

If you still have problems, a photo would help.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Dispatcher
spelling error.

[Specialist290]

Hmm...

Are you sure it's not draining from both tanks? In theory, fuel should be drained from all tanks that an engine has access to (EDIT: And like Dispatcher said, generally from top to bottom). Do you have any other parts between the fuel tanks in question, like structural panels or girders? Not all of those can crossfeed.

In general, a few additional details about what's going on might help us make a more accurate diagnosis, as well as a screenshot of the craft in question.

[Lanternman]

Thanks both, its a vertical stack I was going for, nothing in between the tanks to get in the way. No screen shot I'm afraid as I went back to the drawing board and over wrote the save with a new design just stacking x-200's. Odd, it must be a glitch as when I tried to join them with Jumbo tanks the lowest one simply drained with the engine not tapping the two tanks above it.

The x-200's stacked with no jumbo seems to work fine so will stick with then.

Thanks again

[KvickFlygarn87]

If you could post a screenshot, that would help everyone solve your issue.

[Kasuha]

That's strange, I have tested it and it works fine for me. I guess your small tank got separated from the large tank by vibrations. The engine keeps pushing the tank against rest of the ship but does not draw the fuel from the large tank because it's separated.

Press F3 and check the mission log for structural failures.

To prevent that, use struts to join the two tanks together.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited October 9, 2013 by Kasuha