Strange uneven fuel consumption rate problem

[Newnard]

Hi all. I have a strange problem that I can't decide if it's a bug or if I did something wrong somehow.

My craft has five LV-909 engines, each below a FL-T800 fuel tank. One of the five is in the center, and the others are arranged in a + shape around the center engine. I'll call them North, South, East, and West.

North has a fuel line pointed at East.

South has a fuel line pointed at West.

East and West have fuel lines pointed at Center.

In other words, a standard small asparagus staging setup. I've done it a hundred times or more, never had trouble until now.

When I throttle up the engines, the fuel in the North tank is consumed at a faster rate than the fuel in the South tank, leading to a weight imbalance and my craft starts tumbling. After shutting off the engines to figure out what's going wrong, I examine the fuel levels in each tank and find that the center, east, and west tanks are all full (as they should be, since I didn't burn very long) and the north and south tanks are both partially used, but NOT by the same amount. North is significantly emptier.

All five engines appear to be burning, it's not like one of them is turned off or something.

Is there anything I could possibly have done wrong to cause this behavior, or does it seem like a bug? Has anyone else run into this kind of problem with .22?

I have only one mod installed, it's the chatterer mod that adds background radio transmission noises to the game. I don't think it does anything to modify the actual game mechanics.

Edited October 21, 2013 by Newnard

[Monty845]

I have run into that problem a number of times, post pre and port .22. It usually fixes it if I just re-do all the fuel lines.

[Newnard]

Thank you for your response, Monty845. I'll go ahead and try deleting all the fuel lines and re-installing them in the VAB. Too bad that leaves Bill Kerman stuck in Munar orbit.

I guess this qualifies as a bug... do you (or anyone) know if it's been reported yet? I don't feel like I have enough information to file a quality bug report, although I do have a save file that demonstrates the problem.

[ccik]

Sometimes the fuel lines attach to a port other then the one you intented. This happens if there some part "in the way". I had this happen to me a couple of times before.

Look at the fuel line running from south to west. If it is connected to the engine rather than the tank, Fuel from the south tank is consumed by engines south and west, The fuel from the north tank is consumed by engines from the north, east and center engine.

[Newnard]

Sometimes the fuel lines attach to a port other then the one you intented. This happens if there some part "in the way"

Aha! Looking closely, it appears that the fuel line from west to center may be connected to an RCS block rather than the tank itself. That pretty much explains it, thank you for helping me know what to look for!

Edit: Sorry, newbie question: How do I switch the label on this thread to [Answered]?