PSA: Don't Mess With 2000+ Part Ships

[The Destroyer]

Gilly mothership...

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

Welll....

It's more of an invasion

[spudcosmic]

You could always use the welder mod to make sections of the side panels into one part, significantly reducing the part count.

[Deathsoul097]

This is the largest thing ever made in KSP, AFAIK. I think each side was over 5000 parts.

[davieholgate]

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.

Wait, a 'Lite' version of your creation? surely not whackjob?

Edited March 10, 2014 by davieholgate
oops

[Whackjob]

Wait, a 'Lite' version of your creation? surely not whackjob?

I've had a number of them. Most I don't publish pictures of. I use designs like that to figure out engineering issues before I tackle the big project.

This is the largest thing ever made in KSP, AFAIK. I think each side was over 5000 parts.

If that's ten thousand parts total, then he must've hacked reality itself. I get that kind of framerate slowdown at only two thousand parts. WTB: His machine.

[Benjpalmer]

Didn't Whackjob once brick KSP from sheer amount of parts?

[mnemon]

Whackjob one bricked the UNIVERSE because of excessive part count.

Luckily, he managed to reboot, so nobody took notice. But if we ever found out, he would have to kill us all and restart.

[Whovian]

I get that kind of framerate slowdown at only two thousand parts.

I get it at 40.

[Blaster]

This. Part count is almost 3000 :

http://i.imgur.com/kPb0hwx.jpg

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.

Add Cubic Struts (the little ones) to both sides of the tanks, then attach a Strut Brace to the Cubes. This is the most effective way to strut orange tanks.

[Xaiier]

Sadly my best is 1600...how do you guys manage to build such large ships in the tiny VAB?

[phunk]

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.

They list each individual part in the craft file, and if I remember right, each has a field listing the other's it's symmetrical with.

[ScottyDoesKnow]

It's basically just too many parts, you can see it obviously when you load up and your struts and fuel lines are going through parts they should collide with. I'm currently working on a 2700+ part ship (starts screwing up around 2000) without major problems. All you need to do is recreate the parts. For me most of the screwed up parts are in the launcher, so I just grab one of the launcher symmetries and replace it (which recreates all the symmetries other than the one I grabbed). Then I grab a different one and replace it to recreate the original one I grabbed. But it really sucks if you use symmetry and then add single parts to only one of them (like ladders) because you'll have to redo that. It looks like the issue happens to parts at the bottom of the file (it's mainly my launcher, but I added a few new parachutes up top and then they screwed up). You can open the debug menu while loading in the VAB (Alt + F2 I think?) to see when it happens:

This can only go so far though. For me, once I get up above ~3200 parts the ship just won't load on the launchpad.

[Rowsdower]

If that's ten thousand parts total, then he must've hacked reality itself. I get that kind of framerate slowdown at only two thousand parts. WTB: His machine.

Frame this quote up on your wall, Deathsoul097.

[Whackjob]

Luckily, the 'Whack is getting a monetary award from the office on Thursday for meritorious adequacy. Gonna pick up a motherboard, proc, and case. Will get the rest of the parts as budget and reality permits.

[Whackjob]

Ok, apparently I'm some sort of idiot. I've been busting my arse, building the biggest things and launching them in one piece from Kerbin. Which worked fine... but maybe I have been going all about it the wrong way. I've been hitting that part limit bug all year so far. I wonder if I cannot built an absolutely titan sized Arkingthaad tower lander in fat Whackjob sized chunks... and land it on the Mun? 5xVAB in height? Part count bug can't hit me if each launched chunk is done under that limit. Right?

[Xaiier]

Ok, apparently I'm some sort of idiot. I've been busting my arse, building the biggest things and launching them in one piece from Kerbin. Which worked fine... but maybe I have been going all about it the wrong way. I've been hitting that part limit bug all year so far. I wonder if I cannot built an absolutely titan sized Arkingthaad tower lander in fat Whackjob sized chunks... and land it on the Mun? 5xVAB in height? Part count bug can't hit me if each launched chunk is done under that limit. Right?

It's probably the same code for saving vessels as it is in the VAB. Worth a shot though, as docking Kraken attacks on those monstrosities would be entertaining.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Unfortunately, since my comp's not the best out there, my framerates slow down often and I can't go any further than 500 parts.

Which isn't good since my average part count is around 381. Not something Whackjob would be proud of, but certainly enough for my comp to have trouble with.

[SuperBigD60]

I clearly don't dream big enough, as most of my designs stay below 200 parts.

Although I also don't have a very solid computer, so I guess I've possibly just been conditioned to build smaller rather than bigger.

[NGTOne]

I just noticed something - when I load a vessel that hits this bug, the debug output gets SPAMMED with:

[Error]: Unable to create broadphase entity.

The sheer number of these outputs implies that it's spitting out one per part.

[Redrobin]

It is amazing how quickly the part count runs away from you...

Here is some Apollo-LK that I am working on that has about 1200 parts somehow.

[Motokid600]

This is the largest thing ever made in KSP, AFAIK. I think each side was over 5000 parts.

Theres no way that was live rendered by a pc. Theres a way with fraps to make an image out of every frame and out of those images you make a movie with a smooth framerate. I forget the exact process, but I used to do this in the CrysisSandbox a long time ago.

[NERVAfan]

I almost always stay under 100 parts... but then, I haven't gone beyond Minmus yet, I'll probably need more to do serious interplanetary stuff.