Disappearing ships and limit to docked modules?

[EdFred]

So, I'm building, or attempting to build, an extensive Mun colony. I had about 20 different ships/bases/probes on the Mun. I had performed a quick save, and of course being on the Mun, one of my rovers flipped over, because apparently that's all rovers are good for on the Mun - even at 5m/s. I reload the quick save, and suddenly I'm missing about a quarter of what I put up on the Mun. I thought it may have been classified as debris (I have my debris set to 0) but some of the units that vanished, were the same as ones that remained - and all the vessels that disappeared had probe cores. And of course the persistent file updated after the reload, so I can't even find the missing craft there.

Another issue is I seem to only be able to dock a certain number of vessels together, and then I can no longer attach any more. I know the clamp-o-trons are at the exact same height, because I built a lower assembly to guarantee that, and some of the vessels that won't dock are multiple clones, so they have to be the same height. They will draw towards each other, suck together, but will not dock. All units do have a probe cores, maybe that's the issue?

Anyone else run into this sort of thing?

Edited April 28, 2014 by EdFred

[Claw]

What sized docking ports are you using? There seems to be a rash of docking problems.

[EdFred]

The ones that aren't docking are the standard clamp-o-trons. In 0.23 I docked probably 8 modules in a row. Same setup here, anything beyond 4 won't dock.

[EdFred]

Well, this weekend I dug through the persistent and quicksave files to see if there were any lines that prevented the docking from occurring, and can't find anything in the code that would do so. Any ideas?

[DrMonte]

No matter they are the clones try to change the docking order or sides. Images would be helpful.

It could be vertical rotation or mass change issue.

[EdFred]

No matter they are the clones try to change the docking order or sides. Images would be helpful.

It could be vertical rotation or mass change issue.

I tried that. The odd thing is, my rover which I use to move the modules around can dock with both of the "trouble" ports. I will put up some screen shots later - I'm at work, my laptop with KSP isn't.

[Claw]

I recently built a small (60t) space station assembeled via a series of regular and jr docking ports. I know there are more than four connections, but I'm not sure if there are more than four of each kind. (I'm also at work, and KSP isn't...) I didn't have any problems with those, but I was in orbit.

I was working on tracking down another Sr problem. I was using rovers on Kerbin and noticed that I had to be exceptionally close on the height and angle to get them to click together. In most cases, I had to hack gravity for just a second for them to have enough wiggle to stick. I wonder if reloading physics is just enough to knock the port loose, causing to to become debris and get deleted.

If it happens again, check the ALT-F12 debug log and see if it says why the parts were removed (and maybe make a copy of the log file). Like I said, there seems to be a rash of docking problems.

Perhaps also post a pic and what mods you are using (if any) to help narrow down the cause.

[EdFred]

Found the issue.

In the module section under the part DockingPort2 a couple of them had State = Acquire instead of State = Ready.

CTRL+H in notepad fixed that right up.

Still doesn't explain missing vessels however.