Set as target no longer working

[Oddible]

At some point in my Minimus insertion something happened and it was no longer set as my target. I shrugged and landed anyway. However, in my planning to return to Kerbin I cannot get Kerbin set as a target either - or any other body at this point. I click, select Set as Target, get the green target set message but nothing turns green and it doesn't actually get set. What's going on here? Bug or is this something I can resolve?

[lammatt]

alt f12 check the debug to see if anything went wrong

[GeneralPolaris]

Target never worked from moon to planet sort of way. Its not really that big a deal since to get to planet orbit you just go to escape the SOI and your in Kerbin's SOI. Its like trying to set The Sun as your target while orbiting Kerbin. It doesnt make a lot of sense to do that.

You can only target objects that are orbiting in your SOI.

[kiwi1960]

If you are using mechjeb, use the "return from moon" option....

You don't need to set kerbal as the target in that case....

[keoki]

I'm trying to tune my approach using mechjeb, to a planet I'm trying to aerobrake on, and I can't do that once I'm inside SOI. That seems like a bug to me. You should be able to have the object you are within the SOI of as the target, otherwise half of your tools stop working right when you need them most.

[Murph]

I'm trying to tune my approach using mechjeb, to a planet I'm trying to aerobrake on, and I can't do that once I'm inside SOI. That seems like a bug to me. You should be able to have the object you are within the SOI of as the target, otherwise half of your tools stop working right when you need them most.

It's really not needed, to be honest. You can quite happily adjust your approach after SOI transition, by simply doing a change periapsis, 0s from now, using MechJeb, or the same thing via manual burns or manual nodes. No target is required, and the entire target system is coded around doing an orbital rendezvous, which is quite different to what you need here, which is likely why the system does not support that usage.

[Sirrobert]

You don't really need to target Kerbin to return from the Mun though. Just burn out of Mun's SOI and get the periaps down

[Kasuha]

You can only set target to things which have trajectory. When you enter Minmus SOI, it stops having a trajectory, it becames the center of your frame of reference. That's why you cannot select it as target.

The same goes for Kerbin because you're inside its SOI, too. You can only target Kerbin when outside of Kerbin's SOI.

[SRV Ron]

You don't really need to target Kerbin to return from the Mun though. Just burn out of Mun's SOI and get the periaps down

Just set your Add Maneuver Mode to escape Mun retrograde, then fine tune to get an aerobraking into Kerban.

[Taki117]

Once you are in the SOI of a planet you cannot set that planet as a target. This is not a bug! The reason for this is because the planet is now the center-point of your orbit, and as such there is no need to target it. The same goes with moons, once you are in the SOI you can't target them. As far as not being able to set the planet as a target from a moon, There really is no need because you are close enough to not need to anyway. It just takes some maneuver node fiddling to get a return.

Kashua explains it more simply.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Taki117
Damn you Kasuha...

[Soda Popinski]

While it's easy to get back into the SOI of Kerbin, he should still be able to target it, as he's on Minmus, and not in Kerbin's SOI. Correct?

Any chance you may have switched to another craft in Kerbin's SOI?

[Taki117]

While it's easy to get back into the SOI of Kerbin, he should still be able to target it, as he's on Minmus, and not in Kerbin's SOI. Correct?

Any chance you may have switched to another craft in Kerbin's SOI?

Even at minmus you are still inside Kerbins SOI. (Hence why Minmus doesn't fly off into nothingness)

[Kasuha]

While it's easy to get back into the SOI of Kerbin, he should still be able to target it, as he's on Minmus, and not in Kerbin's SOI. Correct?

Any chance you may have switched to another craft in Kerbin's SOI?

There's no reason. The game wouldn't be able to display things usually displayed with targets, such as intersection points, ascending/descending nodes, or closest approaches because Kerbin has no trajectory at that point. The only thing it could do would be to display direction towards Kerbin on navball. And I find that kinda pointless because if you want to get to it or from it, burning towards or away from it is the worst way of doing so. So you don't need that indicator on navball for any practical purposes, too.

What could be done is, when no target is selected, the game could display ascending/descending node of your trajectory relatively to the current SOI center's equator. That would be definitely useful. But you don't need to select it as target for that.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Kasuha

[keoki]

So of I'm in "orbit" (even though I'm going way too fast to be in actual orbit) why I don't get to see my periapsis flag, I end up having to shift to using different tools, because adjusting a maneuver node for a aerobraking maneuver is impossible without something that can tell me the resulting altitude. I mean I have found work arounds, but in many instances when you are on approach from a long transfer, or a transfer to an object with low gravity, having most of your tools suddenly stop working when you have only seconds to make adjustments and maneuvers is annoying. I mean I understand what you are saying, but it is bunk. The SOI isn't a finite sphere in space that suddenly changes physics close to a planet, it is simply the threshold where the planet is the dominant source of gravitational influence. Every planet's gravity can reach across the entire solar system, the only thing diminishing the influence at that distance is the presence of stronger influences. I understand that in the game, the SOI is a point where the local influence is strong enough to where representations of your relative vector is better expressed locally rather than in the context of the SOI of the sun. But in the game, the SOI of the sun seems to be partially ignored.

Speaking of the sun's SOI, how come it doesn't count as an SOI for any of the tools? Many of the tools refuse to work because you and the target must be in the same SOI, when in fact you and your target are both in orbit around the sun.

I realize that some this has to do with the modal way different aspects of gameplay are being represented for simplicity. But in orbital dynamics the modes are not exclusive, and one doesn't stop when the other starts. But I guess that there is a lot about the orbital dynamics that have been simplified in order to make the math appear to be able to run in real time. To make people like me happy, the modally exclusive tools that use the word "target" should shift to using the name of the SOI central object, and should continue to work in the new mode, even if their function is now somewhat limited by the fact that the target is assumed. Perhaps not all of the tools could keep working, of course, but they shouldn't all stop working. I get it that for usability, the game needs to simplify physics, and ignoring external factors outside of the SOI is a way to economize the math. But I disagree with the tools simply stop working because their "home mode" is no longer in play. I'll just remind myself that this is version .22, and we don't even have aerodynamics yet... So there is an implied 78% of the software roadmap missing from the game, based on the idea that version 1.0 is the first "complete" version.

I found that you can sometimes use orbital tools instead, but sometimes the orbital tools assume you are in an actual closed orbit, so they can do really bad things to you, or apply math that produces the incorrect result. Flying by hand is fine when you have a simple ship and everything is working in real time, but when you are seeing half a second of physics per frame, flying by hand simply does not work for finer movements, the tools are the *only* way to produce fine grained results when it takes .1DV of change, and the 3 seconds it takes for the ship to respond to your throttle up and down can yield results ranging from 0 to 20DV. Only using the tools can I get that small adjustment to get my interplanetary heavy cruiser packed full of parts packaged for multiple moon destinations around Jool into the correct aerobraking altitude, so that I can save the bulk of my mass for the fuel needed for other maneuvers. I can and do use the orbital tools for this, but I have to inspect each action, because half of the time an action will do the opposite of what it is supposed to when my orbit is still open.

I realize I'm just a beginner, the people that have been doing this a while had to spend a lot more time without the tools in the first place. I'm also causing some of the problem, because when I fly a ship with 21 mapping probes, my parts count is about 4 to 6 times the parts count that I see people complaining about in the forums. My engineering workstation is able to make the game work slightly beyond to the limits of the software, and I'm exceeding those limits enough that gameplay is difficult. Sometimes after I load my ship in the VAB, the VAB can't finish drawing the walls, but that is mostly for big missions like the Jool mapping mission. Once I complete my first aerobraking maneuver, I break the ship up into smaller sections, and gameplay is normal once again when the mission vessels are far enough apart from each other.

But at some point, I may want to build a space habitat, for colonization or galactic travel. Exceeding a couple thousand parts that can't be welded into single assemblies is likely on such a vessel. So I'm hoping that the game's part matrix efficiency can be improved over time.

The point is I realize I'm my own worse enemy, and I could avoid some of the bugs and needing the tools as much if I stuck to smaller craft. But there is no challenge if you make everything easy.

Not really expecting any answers here...

[SpacedCowboy]

Is this a Kracken thing?