Noob Help

[pdog1111]

I have recently built a ship that can take me to Minmus. I have been able to fly to mun and land on it (successfully) and tried Minmus as the next move in KSP. But as i neared Minmus i suddenly had no control of my ship and I slammed into it losing 3 kerbles . Is there something I need to have included on my ship when going into "deep space". And before you ask yes I had enough electricity to run the pod and enough gas for the engine.

[sal_vager]

It's hard to tell from what you've posted what the issue might be, we'd need to know more about your craft so a pic posted to imgur.com then linked here would help a lot.

Maybe you didn't have batteries, sometimes you need those as well as solar panels, or maybe you've installed an addon that caused your game to glitch.

[JayCheetah]

If you say you had enough electric charge, my first guess would be that you somehow turned of the reaction wheels.

There is basically nothing else in the game that could cause something like that ( apart from rare bugs )

[capi3101]

Lack of solar panels would be my first guess; my second would be "not fully out of time warp". That one gets me more often than anything else when it comes to control issues. Third might be "ran out of monoprop", fourth would be "left SAS on when trying to turn". I'd need to see your ship to be able to tell you for sure on any of these.

[Rusty6899]

The only time I have run into that problem was when I had run out of electric charge. Aside from that I really can't think of why you would lose control. Maybe you ran out of RCS and your craft was too heavy to use SAS for torque.

Effectively there is no practical difference between landing on Minmus and Mun, just a matter of distance and differing gravity for landing. I would try to replicate the failure and try to work out what went wrong.

You may also have a structural failure on your craft, which messes up the level of control you have (although when this happens to me it is usually obvious and can be avoided by lowering the throttle of you craft wherever possible). I think that you should have another look at your craft if you think this may be the case, as this sometimes happens to me when I have had to build a structurally insecure craft (normally when I want to transport a 12 wheel rover).

[Dave Kerbin]

You may also have had time warp on. How quickly did you crash into Minmus? If it took less then 2 minutes to go from orbit to the surface you where definitely still in time warp and needed to slow down before you could control your ship.

[Sirrobert]

Lack of solar panels would be my first guess; my second would be "not fully out of time warp". That one gets me more often than anything else when it comes to control issues. Third might be "ran out of monoprop", fourth would be "left SAS on when trying to turn". I'd need to see your ship to be able to tell you for sure on any of these.

Nah, the fixed SAS a pritty long time ago already. You can now control it with SAS on, it simply takes over again as soon as you let go of the controls (making rotating a small craft in orbit much smoother, as SAS automaticly stops the rotation as soon as you let go).

So that leaves timewarp (I quite often have my ships in 5x warp without noticing, if it's in deep space. Once I tryd to put a manouvernode 1 minute ahead, and it kept hitting the node so quickly, and I just couldn't understand why. Took me like 5 trys before I figured it out).

Or maybe a mod

[capi3101]

Nah, the fixed SAS a pritty long time ago already. You can now control it with SAS on, it simply takes over again as soon as you let go of the controls (making rotating a small craft in orbit much smoother, as SAS automaticly stops the rotation as soon as you let go).

I didn't want to discount it as a possibility though - a large, heavy craft is very difficult to steer in the game if you leave SAS on, especially if you have a command pod on it that doesn't provide a lot of steering authority (like a probe core).

I suppose a "manned Minmus lander" generally wouldn't fall into the category of a "heavy craft" or one with poor steering authority...

[sojourner]

I didn't want to discount it as a possibility though - a large, heavy craft is very difficult to steer in the game if you leave SAS on, especially if you have a command pod on it that doesn't provide a lot of steering authority (like a probe core).

Leaving SAS on has nothing to do with it since SAS deactivates during any kind of input.

[Deadweasel]

DO NOT WARP when transitioning from one sphere of influence to another. Almost every time I've done it, the ship becomes completely unresponsive and frozen. No throttle or positional control, no access to context commands on antennae or fuel tanks etc. It's almost as if the command pod is losing its position in the hierarchy of the ship if it's time-warping across the SoI.

Jumping out to Space Center and back to the ship almost always corrects the problem though.

[Kerolyov]

As others have said things that could cause this are timewarp, toggling off command pod torque (hard to do accidentally) or running out of electric charge.

If you're using mods that can sometimes cause loss of control if the mod has input focus.

[JohnIbizu]

Actually happened to me once or twice (places where you can time-warp near the surface).If battery is not an issue, its most likely you are on a time-warp but can still move your craft even though its technically impossible(possible bug/glitch?).

It's really nothing to be worried about and you'll mostly likely never encounter it again, but just to be on the safe side, you should always quick save whenever you're doing something "drastic" because there are other bugs other than the one mentioned.

[sojourner]

It could also be related to this bug:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/58625-Electric-Problem-using-Batteries-outcome-Bug

Is your command pod out of power?

[TheGeoninja]

I imagine that there was some sort of warping issue. Your trajectory might have been straight into Minmus resulting in the crash.

[FlamedSteak]

I'm 99% certain you're running out of electricity. This problem drove me crazy when I first started. Right click your command pod to get a read on your electricity levels.

[Deadweasel]

I'm 99% certain you're running out of electricity. This problem drove me crazy when I first started. Right click your command pod to get a read on your electricity levels.

Except OP already stated:

"And before you ask yes I had enough electricity to run the pod and enough gas for the engine."

The way it was described, it sounds exactly like a glitch from warping over 5x when changing spheres of influence.

[capi3101]

Leaving SAS on has nothing to do with it since SAS deactivates during any kind of input.

It does not deactivate automatically; it simply switches over to dampening mode. While the user's trying to turn, the game is dampening their input. That's what makes it harder to steer. And once the user has finished their input, if they've left SAS on, it will automatically try to turn the craft back to its "original" attitude (so you have to toggle SAS off and then back on to get it to hold the new attitude). The game does this regardless of the mass of your craft. If you turn SAS off before turning, both of these problems are avoided.

[Deadweasel]

It does not deactivate automatically; it simply switches over to dampening mode. While the user's trying to turn, the game is dampening their input. That's what makes it harder to steer. And once the user has finished their input, if they've left SAS on, it will automatically try to turn the craft back to its "original" attitude (so you have to toggle SAS off and then back on to get it to hold the new attitude). The game does this regardless of the mass of your craft. If you turn SAS off before turning, both of these problems are avoided.

Actually, dampening only starts when the controls are let go, and SAS won't return to the point at which the manual control was initiated, it only cancels the rotation and tries to return to the point at which the controls were let go. It will no longer try to return to the point at which control started.