Satellites not communicating

[TheGamingVortex]

I'm having a problem making my Kerbin-stationary satellites communicating and routing other coms through them back to HQ. I have 3 geostationary satellites around Kerban (and 1 in a polar orbit at 2,868,750 ish). Each Comsat has one antenna dedicated to "active vessel" and one or more antennas pointed to the other Comsats. The satellites will communicate if they are specifically targeting each other, but if they are set to "Active Vessel" they will not synch up. I thought you could just set these things to "Active Vessel" and it would auto synch to any active antenna in range.

I tried sending a probe to Minus after my Comsats where in place in the hopes of constant communication. After I left the range of the space station the probe locked onto one of the Comsats, but I still lost communication to the space station. The map showed a communication line from the Minus Probe to the Comsat, but I had no control because it was not routing the signal back to the Space Station. I thought this was just a bug or glitch so I reload and re launched with the same results. The Comsat in question shows that it has a signal from itself to the space station, but it wont rout the Probes signal to the Space Station.

I dont know what to do anymore. I didn't think that setting up satellites would be this difficult. I am using all the mods Scott Manley is using in his Interstellar Quest videos, that that matters any.

Thanks for any help you guys can offer.

[Redjoker]

If this is for remotetech 2, then it belongs in add-on support. Active vessel causes the sats to point at the active vessel. If the sat that connects to mission control can't connect to the active vessel, then you won't have connection. To solve this either use the long range omnidirectional antenna or add two more dishes to each craft so that each sat will have one dish pointed at its neighbors and one at the active vessel.

edit: The problem mentioned in the second paragraph may be a bug and it would be helpful to the developer of the mod if your made a post in the mod's forum.

Edited January 12, 2014 by Redjoker

[Jimbimbibble]

To clarify the point made above, active vessel means whatever ship you are currently controlling. Since a dish can only point at one target at a time, you need dedicated dishes for each linkage you want to make. You would need at least 4 dishes per satellite (mission control, right and left com sats, active vessel) or 1 dish set to active vessel and an omni with enough range to connect with the neighbor satellites. Hope this helps.

[Soda Popinski]

You may be having the same bug I have. Typically, I release a probe from a mothership, have them point to each other, and control the probe. At some point when they get far enough, I lose control of the probe (green flight computer turns red), and the antennas target becomes "unknown target."

Easy fix for me is to quickly exit to Space Port (let it save the persistent file where it's at), restart KSP, and go back to the probe. It will magically reacquire the target.

[cmoody]

After I left the range of the space station the probe locked onto one of the Comsats, but I still lost communication to the space station. The map showed a communication line from the Minus Probe to the Comsat, but I had no control because it was not routing the signal back to the Space Station.

This leads me to think this:

To clarify the point made above, active vessel means whatever ship you are currently controlling. Since a dish can only point at one target at a time, you need dedicated dishes for each linkage you want to make. You would need at least 4 dishes per satellite (mission control, right and left com sats, active vessel) or 1 dish set to active vessel and an omni with enough range to connect with the neighbor satellites.

When first playing with RemoteTech, I had similar issues. However, for my Kerbin-orbit Comm satellites I aimed for overkill on the omni antennae. Oddly enough, this Kerbal-rigging fixed the problem. For what I have in the local Kerbin system, there seem to be too many antennae and not enough targets...time to expand.

[TheGamingVortex]

Well this has been very helpful, thanks everyone. So basically I need more dishes (or I could have a bug, which is not to likely). I dont mind building bigger probes with more hardware Now I have the fun task of knocking the existing satellites out of orbit and watching them burn up. Even when your best plans go wrong you can still have fun in this game