PSA: Don't Mess With 2000+ Part Ships

[Redrobin]

So I saw GusTurbo's old Munstrosity: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/32817-0-20-Munstrosity-I-Russian-N1-LOK-LK-Lander%21?highlight=Munstrosity

And I decided, I can try to make it myself.

Bad idea.

The ship has 2098 parts and takes 5 minutes to load. After it loads, I can't add or remove any parts. It just doesn't work. So, don't mess with large part count ships. Unless you are Whackjob, then you need to tell me your secrets.

Only image Imgur wanted to upload:

[Whackjob]

I've run into that bug so many times... hate it. It killed my Arkingthaad Nadir Lite. I suspect it's a limitation of the parts tree hierarchy. I could be wrong. It's a best guess, that's all.

[goldenpeach]

2098 parts?!

How can the kraken not attack your ship?

Also, out of curiosity, what is the size of the .craft file?

A random though: I wonder what is the biggest ship ever built in KSP, does anyone know?

[Kasuha]

I was playing with high part counts a little (just to check the bug with them) and my only experience is: save often, load often. Right after you load the ship, it is more willing to accept further parts. I could make a working "ship" with 3000 parts this way. When you don't save/load, the ship breaks without notice and when you then save it, it's already broken.

[sal_vager]

Ascensiam made some massive craft, but he rarely posted them.

[Whackjob]

A random though: I wonder what is the biggest ship ever built in KSP, does anyone know?

Don't know for sure, but I'll submit a contender.

I was playing with high part counts a little (just to check the bug with them) and my only experience is: save often, load often. Right after you load the ship, it is more willing to accept further parts. I could make a working "ship" with 3000 parts this way. When you don't save/load, the ship breaks without notice and when you then save it, it's already broken.

I've tried incremental saves. Bug still hits eventually.

[Redrobin]

I just looked up the size of the craft file, and it was over 2 megabytes (2687 Kb). That is over 3 times as large as my next largest craft file.

[Javster]

Looking at this thread made Chrome crash

[Kasuha]

I've tried incremental saves. Bug still hits eventually.

You're the one most experienced here, no doubts about it

[earth]

This. Part count is almost 3000 :

It never made it to LKO though, the orange tanks always snap. I have no idea how to make the structure hold the flex, the orange tanks always snap at some point.

Edited March 9, 2014 by earth

[Redrobin]

you all make me laugh :

EDIT: NVM you fixed it.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Redrobin

[Whackjob]

Woohoo! Part count thread!

4,800 if memory serves. And I'll see if I can find my old 10k part ship attempt. Only got to just shy of 8k parts.

[Whackjob]

You know what? It's been ages since I last did an AEIA MkX type craft. You know.... firey wheel of doom. I've learned a heck of a lot of engineering tricks since then.

Perhaps it is time for a new one.

[The Destroyer]

Gilly mothership.. in one launch. 5K tons, 1,000 parts, half of that invisable struts. Biggest thing I ever made that worked.

[Whackjob]

My biggest actual functional success:

Forget the part count, but the tower lander in the middle there I think was 1,200. Made it to the Mun and Duna and back again.

#EDIT: No, this is the one where I drunkenly overwrote the save to start a new career mode after I'd gotten it back into Dunal orbit. Darn it! So this don't count.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Whackjob

[rholtsla98]

Gilly mothership.. in one launch. 5K tons, 1,000 parts, half of that invisable struts. Biggest thing I ever made that worked.

http://i.imgur.com/rijmNlK.png

Gilly mothership...

It looks like you're going to try and move Gilly with that beast.

[IrRedemption]

The secret bait to capture a wild Kraken.

[GusTurbo]

So I saw GusTurbo's old Munstrosity: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/32817-0-20-Munstrosity-I-Russian-N1-LOK-LK-Lander%21?highlight=Munstrosity

And I decided, I can try to make it myself.

Bad idea.

The ship has 2098 parts and takes 5 minutes to load. After it loads, I can't add or remove any parts. It just doesn't work. So, don't mess with large part count ships. Unless you are Whackjob, then you need to tell me your secrets.

Only image Imgur wanted to upload:

Looking back, Munstrosity was a perfect name because it looks nothing like the N1. Yours looks great.

[Redrobin]

Looking back, Munstrosity was a perfect name because it looks nothing like the N1. Yours looks great.

Except it doesn't fly, and probably never will. Like the real N1.

[NGTOne]

I've hit this bug a few times myself - the only correlation I ever saw was in ships where I abused the "symmetry of symmetry" effect (where I created a symmetrical object, then used symmetry to copy it). Might just be because the ships that I did that with were huge to begin with, I dunno.

[cantab]

How do the craft files handle symmetry? Do they actually list a part once with a flag to say #x symmetry, or do they list each time and the symmetry is just handled by the UI.

[problemecium]

I think parts are just saved wherever they happened to end up in the editor, and that symmetry only has an effect during part placement.

Edited March 9, 2014 by parameciumkid
typo

[Wooks]

I've run into that bug so many times... hate it. It killed my Arkingthaad Nadir Lite. I suspect it's a limitation of the parts tree hierarchy. I could be wrong. It's a best guess, that's all.

Lite? The "Lite" version had too may parts?

[Whackjob]

Lite? The "Lite" version had too may parts?

The actual Arkingthaad Nadir had seven core tank columns. The lite had just the one.

[Mephane]

I think parts are just saved wherever they happened to end up in the editor, and that symmetry only has an effect during part placement.

I don't think so, otherwise you could not pick up one of a set of symmetrically placed items on an existing file you have loaded and have the editor grab the entire symmetrical set.