Kerbal dropship/dispersion vehicle

[Cordeos]

I have been playing around with the concept of deploying multiple Kerbals or probes from one vehicle however I have run into a fundamental problem. I have been using this ship to test this out:

When I release the smaller capsules they shoot off and their parachutes deploy, but when the reach a certain distance they simply vanish and the kerbals inside them are marked as MIA. I have checked to make sure I have persistent debris on. I have also attached probe cores, but this didn't solve it either. Is this type of dispersal method possible?

[Smidge204]

AFAIK anything that is >2.5km and in the atmosphere unlanded will be considered crashed and removed from the game. You need to stay within 2.5km until the capsule lands if you don't want them to vanish.

Alternatively, if you put that whole thing in orbit and drop one capsule at a time, and maintain focus on that capsule until it's landed, you'll be okay - a ship in orbit will not vanish.

=Smidge=

[Rhomphaia]

Nope, if they are more than 2.5km from the active vessel and lower than 25km(ish) from the surface of Kerbin then they will be destroyed.

[Cordeos]

thank you. now I just have to tweak the drop pods for autonomous landing.

[arq]

The Lazor mods have the option to extend this distance from 2.5km out to 99km, which may help. Even then, you will need to not split them too early (certainly not high in orbit), I'd say wait for 50km or lower to split.

[Smidge204]

thank you. now I just have to tweak the drop pods for autonomous landing.

This won't help because ANYTHING that is too far away - Kerbal, Probe Core, Debris... anything - that is not on the ground will vanish at 2.5km from the active vessel. You need to use a mod to increase this distance, stay in the area, or put the "mothership" into orbit (or at least out of the atmosphere) while landing each capsule manually, because you need to keep them in focus.

=Smidge=

[Cordeos]

I already tested dropping them at 25km and they made it all the way to the ground.

[Cordeos]

New Problem, the drop pods are not surviving landing, when I directly control one it lands just fine, but if I don't they vanish. Do parachutes not function properly when a ship is not in focus? I saw that they deployed just fine.

[Murph]

New Problem, the drop pods are not surviving landing, when I directly control one it lands just fine, but if I don't they vanish. Do parachutes not function properly when a ship is not in focus? I saw that they deployed just fine.

They get auto-deleted below about 25km (might be 22km) altitude, if they are more than 2.5km away from the active ship. The only way you can make this work with stock KSP is to keep the probe as the active ship all the way down until it is firmly landed on the ground. Switching away from it at any time below the threshold altitude will result in it being deleted.

The other side of it is that yes, parachutes won't work on anything other than active ships (i.e. the current active ship and any other ships within 2.5km of it). Physics is only enabled for a 2.5km radius sphere around the current active object, everything else in the game universe is "on rails", without any form of real physics, just simplified following of a static orbit.

[Cordeos]

shoot guess my dropship will have to operate from orbit :/

[Murph]

shoot guess my dropship will have to operate from orbit :/

That's basically the bottom line, unfortunately. It's possible to do it from a plane, but moderately difficult due to needing to fly in a pretty tight <2.5km radius circle around the probe as it drops, so really only feasible for a very low altitude, slow flying plane.

Personally, and nothing against the concept itself, I'd just go for doing individual probes, and drop the multi-probe complexity.

[Iridium616]

You can always launch all the pods at once and switching to one of them. They should be within physics range, but you won't get much dispersion.

[Skorpychan]

shoot guess my dropship will have to operate from orbit :/

It's not that hard to get away with, if you're in the right orbit. Getting to an aerobraking altitude costs virtually nothing from even a slightly elliptical orbit, so your dropships just need small engines on with a little fuel.