Z100 + Stayputnik = nogoodnik?

[Not Easy Being Green]

My Stayputniks count down from 10 power to 0 and die, even when there's a Z100 attached to the Stayputnik sphere itself. I've stuck up to four Z100s on the craft - same result. Clicking on the Z100 shows it still has power, but the Stayputnik is deadnik. What am I doing wrong?

[Streetwind]

Never had any issues with mounting batteries to a Stayputnik before. Are you running any mods? If not, can you provide a screenshot and/or craft file?

[kurja]

Only thing that comes to mind is that you might have accidentally set the batteries off, if you right click there's a symbol on the right that is either red or green and if it's red it won't allow power to be drawn from that battery, check that?

[Kasuha]

... and of course there's the obligatory question if you have any mods installed.

[Not Easy Being Green]

No mods in use. Straight download of the Mac version from just a few days ago. The batteries (and the Stayputnik) were turned on. (The off switch on the Stayputnik has kept my probe program in business - I now only turn it on for maneuvers, which stretches the 10 power a long way).

Streetwind: Thank you. I'll see about a screenshot. I have not yet tried to locate a craft file - guess I have to learn that.

[Streetwind]

Craft files can be found in your save directory. Unsure how exactly it looks off the top of my head, but there's probably a "ships" folder in there, with a "VAB" subfolder (for rockets) and a "SPH" subfolder (for spaceplanes). That's where the game stores all the designs you save ingame.

[Claw]

Wait, can you confirm that the craft become uncontrollable? Probe cores and capsules drain electricity while they draw from any attached batteries. Just because there is zero charge in the probe core doesn't mean it's dead. It may even momentarily flash "Not enough electrical charge" but should be controllable.

Counting down from 10 to 0 is completely normal, assuming you can still control it after that.

Screenshots go into the KSP/screenshots directory. Craft are in the KSP/saves/"save name"/ships/VAB directory.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Claw

[thereaverofdarkness]

What Claw said. Your probe core will drop 10 power in the same amount of time each battery does. They should all be at 90 when it's empty. It shouldn't cause any lapse in functionality.

I had an issue a few versions back in which engines would sometimes be unable to get power from the rest of the ship, and sometimes it would start during a flight in which they had previously been working. It would prevent me from raising the throttle. Scott Manly experienced this in one of his early episodes of his reusable space program series. But I haven't seen it happen at least since career mode was released, so either I learned how to avoid it or it got fixed, not sure which.

[Kasuha]

I tested the behavior and in I don't see any problem, it seems to work as intended. I did not test behavior with decouplers, but when the battery is mounted directly to Stayputnik, the electricity is drawn proportionally from all available sources. Meaning when Stayputnik's battery runs dry, other batteries also have 10 electricity units consumed.

I used SAS wheels to drain electricity faster but it behave the same if there was just the probe core and battery.

Edit: unlike monopropellant, electricity draining does not seem to be affected by stages.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited April 23, 2014 by Kasuha

[That guy who builds stuff]

Edit: unlike monopropellant, electricity draining does not seem to be affected by stages.

It is not, unfortunately.