Battery power...

[AlamoVampire]

Okay, this is going to sound stupid, but, I am going to ask anyway. I just sent a refueling mission to Eeloo and put it into its parking orbit. I kicked its cruise stage off and turned off its probe core, and shut down all other electronics on it. I went to check my resources thingy in the upper right of my screen and I saw it said it was STILL drawing 0.06 current. Is there a way to make it draw 0.00 current with out draining batteries to death? the only thing on this stupid tank that has power left is the probe core, but I turned access to ITS power to OFF so I can have SOME power when my manned mission finally arrives at eeloo. am I crazy and just missed something in my 200 or so hours of playing?

Edited December 28, 2013 by AlamoVampire

[Murph]

Reaction wheels disabled?

The battery will only drain when the ship is active, so you might be ok if you just leave it alone. Other than that, I'd personally always put at least a couple of the single solar panels on something like that, it's just easier. Even if it does completely drain, I believe that docking should still work, so it's probably recoverable.

Edit: Oh, you could probably also disable flow out of the battery itself. If it continues to drain when the battery is disabled, that would be a bug, I think.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Murph

[Tada]

Probe cores drain batteries.

[Dave Kerbin]

You can't shut off probe cores. What you shut off was the reaction wheel in the probe core, which only draws power if it is being used to change heading.

Remember that with the probe core off you can't do anything with the ship, not even extend solar panels or turn back on the batteries - all those operations where carried out by the probe core. There are only two situations where a probe core can shutdown and be brought back to life. One is if another ship docks to give it a power boost and the other is if the ship has solar panels extended and it passes into sunlight - if they are already extended the panels will charge the batteries and reawaken the probe core.

[Arran]

I allways have a spare battery fully loaded with its power set to off as backup, in case off..

Also with power drained, you allways can enable the engines, so you gain control again to turn the ship into the sunlight, if you dont have extendable solarpanels that are in the light, minimun thrust is enough to gain control.

Extendable panels somehow with me can be extended even with full powerdrain..

Also Probecores allways seem to keep draining power, so keep this in mind in designs, same counts if you use Remote Tech2, and have active Antennas, they keep draining power (except for the omni's)..

reaction wheels only use power when they are "working" so if a ship is in rest, they dont consume power even when they are engaged (something i dont think is right)

At least these are the things i allways calculate into my designs, and how to regain control.

[Ahmed]

The only way to make power drain to 0.00 when you send probes is switching to the other ship . Power drains only when You control vessel, so set your trajectory to Eeloo, burn, and switch to another ship and then warp time. Get back to your ship when you need to do some orbital corrections/ insertions /docking only. Dont need to switch off anything - just switch vessel.

It`s not a cheating or something. Your probe is hibernated- I.E. see Rosetta ESA mission. It wakes up after long planned hibernation!

[Kimberly]

It`s not a cheating or something. Your probe is hibernated- I.E. see Rosetta ESA mission. It wakes up after long planned hibernation!

I'd still call it cheating. Hibernation does not mean zero power drain; probes need energy to monitor their components and keep them at a proper temperature. A probe without power will soon break beyond repair. When Rosetta went on "standby", it was running off of battery power.

[Ahmed]

I'd still call it cheating. Hibernation does not mean zero power drain; probes need energy to monitor their components and keep them at a proper temperature. A probe without power will soon break beyond repair. When Rosetta went on "standby", it was running off of battery power.

Yes You are right, but in Kerbals world we don`t need to warm up instruments, because temparature doesn`t work there. Its just a factor, gives only digits and science. We can also imagine that vessel on standby (hibernation) takes so small amount of power (like clock battery on pc`s motherboard). It only count time for wake up from hibernation. I know its an own explanation

Edited December 27, 2013 by Ahmed

[BlackBicycle]

OP: The easiest way around this is to rightclick one of the batteries and shut it off. Then, when you need to control that particular craft, even if it's out of power, switch on the reserve battery and go from there.

[AlamoVampire]

Ive shut all reaction wheels and every conceivable electronic down and disabled flow from the core but it still had a 0.06 drain and it was in free orbit of eeloo. Ive the core disabled on flow awaiting my mission to arrive and dock for fuel...

[Tank Buddy]

Shut of ANYTHING that has power or power generation. I could only guess, but press the "x" on the capsule, probe, engine, batteries, or anything else that has the potential to store power.

[Taki117]

this may sound like a stupid question, but do you have solar panels on your vessel? if so just make sure that they are pointing roughly perpendicular to the sun, so even if you dont have enough power to make it past the dark side once it reemerges the batteries will charge. (im also thinking that the .06 usage rate is actually the batteries charging, not discharging)

[AlamoVampire]

Upon a stable circular orbit I jettisoned all external engines and solar arrays leaving only the central tank, 16 of the 400 charge batteries a probe core 8 heavy novapunch rcs thrusters a mechjeb and shielded port And 2.5m asas. I then did as stated above and saw the .06 draw on the batteries, i severed the flow to the core and accelerated time and it sucked it all dry. I will post a capture of the vessel with full parts listing later this eve.

EDIT:

as stated above in this post a few hours ago, I now give a full parts list PLUS a picture of how it is in orbit at Eeloo at this very moment.

1 Clamp-o-tron Shielded Docking Port

1 RC-L01 Remote Guidance Unit

1 MechJeb (AR202 case)

1 Large ASAS

1 Rockomax Jumbo-64 Fuel Tank

2 RCST-250 RCS Tanks

8 Yawmaster RCS2250 Heavy RCS thrusters

16 z-400 Rechargable Batteries

this is how it sits in its final configuration in orbit. I had to dump its cruise stage upon locking into a stable orbit as to not crash frame rates when my manned mission comes. I figured 16 batteries would be sufficient to sustain the refueling mission in the interim as I would NOT be giving any commands to the probe core, but, it continues to draw power when I restore its ability to pull from its on board battery in the core. As stated before, all electronics are turned off, all 16 batteries <not counting the tiny 30 charge battery in the probe itself> have been drained dry in my attempt to figure out why this thing was drawing current. The picture:

those things at the bottom or left edge of the tank <depending on which way you want to look at this> are nothing more than a few heavy struts and cubic octagonal braces that I used to steady the joint between the tank and the lifting stages.

EDIT 2:

I was forced into an F9 reload by a mistake I made at my space station which sadly resulted in my refueler being in orbit of Kerbin and making me resend that bloody mess to Eeloo. It DID teach me something, and I found a way to take my electrical drain down to 0.00. All it took was shutting down EVERYTHING. Probe Core, batteries, RCS everything. I have full batteries and the thing is essentially hibernating in full powered down mode. Thanks to all who replied!

Edited December 28, 2013 by AlamoVampire