Whats happening with my rovers?

[LordZowy]

Hi All,

I hope you can help... I'm not really sure why this is happening.

I've been playing this game for well over a year... very few times do I come to this forum looking for help. I'm pretty self sufficient and in most cases I never have a problem and if I do I can solve it quickly.

This one it throwing me for a loop: This craft: LZSSI-MunRoverDeliverer-MkI Spontaneously exploded upon reaching 6KM during the launch while the Rovers are attached. I've removed the rovers and the thing makes it into orbit...

WTF is going on and why at 6KM.

I'm fully stock, no mods.

Thanks All,

Lordzowy

[Epthelyn]

At a guess I'd say part clipping as the rocket gets faster and faster.

Will load up KSP and have a look though

EDIT: Holy [censored]. I was expecting something to fall off. That rocket just disassembled itself in flight...like...completely

Looks pretty stable too. Interesting. And yeah, just after 6km.

EDIT 2:

Staged the boosters early in case that was causing the problem, dropped the speed down to ~35m/s before crossing 6km. Game halts for a second and then the rocket explodes at exactly 6000m.

Also put the brakes on in case the wheels were doing something mysterious. Going to remove some of the parts of the rovers and see if that makes a difference.

EDIT 3:

Staged up to the Skipper and 909s and went slowly across the altitude; this time the rovers spontaneously disassembled themselves but the rocket was unharmed. This is odd.

EDIT 4:

I think I might've found the cause of the problem, or at least a symptom of it; I'm not entirely sure what's going on here and it's definitely something to do with the rovers (launched one with my own rover launcher with exactly the same result).

Imgur album:

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Image one shows the rocket as you provided it; nothing wrong with it as far as I can tell - The rocket itself launches fine. The rovers do not, regardless of what I use to launch them (used my own launcher to test).

The problem comes when you remove a part of the rover - remove the rear or front end of one of the two rovers and instead of losing the opposing symmetry as you should you lose the entirety of the opposing rover (well, the front and back of it, the middle part remains) and get a weird glitchy ghost which seems to break the VAB.

Basically when you built your rovers something went horribly wrong with the symmetry and you probably need to rebuild them from scratch. I can't be of much more help right now because it's getting late and I have an exam tomorrow

EDIT 5:

On closer inspection it would seem that the battery you've used as the central part of both rovers is causing problems; I couldn't remove it from the rover and messing around with it crashed the game :|

And now I really should stop. Hope this helps a bit; someone else will probably be able to shed some more light on what's going on.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Epthelyn

[Link]

Welllllllll that was a fun flight!

My first thought was you're exceeding terminal velocity. Slapped mechjeb on, and says terminal velocity is a whopping ~100m/s. So, used mechjeb to limit to terminal velocity anddddd.........

Hold on, I just launched

*@6km, 45sec later*

Same thing, different failure tho.

Im hooked, gonna hack at this to see what's happening. Be back soon!

Edit: I just took off that battery, and its definitely the problem. It saved itself as a new craft when I did :|

Edit 2: took the rovers off at the decouplers, and launched just the craft with trusses, passed 6km. Time for me to tear your rover down

Edited June 4, 2014 by Link

[LordZowy]

Well guys, I'm happy that you are investigating this. I think that Epthelyn hit it with the "something went horribly wrong with the symmetry" comment.

I've torn these rovers down to just the chassis and I still get the same. My rocket design is flawless and purposefully over powered to support lift testing of this craft. The original craft had many more stages but as a result of this failure its been scaled back. I will allow continued investigation into this craft and will continue to host it unaltered for those that wish to investigate. But I must push on.

As with most things in Kerbal land, when they fail so spectacularly one goes back to the drawing board. As such I must continue my mission to locate the southern monolith and have conceived of a completely new rover that may serve my purposes. If the monolith still can be located... multiple trips have revealed nothing. I only know about its existence from the easter egg list and approximate location thanks to the kerbalmaps.com.

thanks guys

Edited June 4, 2014 by LordZowy

[SpenSpaceCorp]

Well, I'm intrigued. I tested it. Best fireworks I've seen all day. At 6000m it lagged then exploded so violently there were parts over 4 km away in less than 5 seconds!

EDIT:

After the explosion, I staged the rocket through all the stages to open the chutes. Although very laggy, I DEFINITELY heard the decouplers decoupling on other pieces even though the capsule and one fuel tank was really all that was left that I was controlling. I then reverted the flight to launch, and this happened: (I could not launch, interact, or anything. The kerbal wasn't even there!)

Edited June 5, 2014 by SpenSpaceCorp

[LordZowy]

I have, as an attempt to confirm Epthelyn's theory of horrible symmetry, removed and rebuilt the rovers in basic form Here: LZSSI-MunRoverDeliverer-MkII And yes it launches past the 6KM mark without issue.

What is the difference?

In MkI I created one rover, as a single entity. Starting at the front of the rover, and building on the parts that I wanted to duplicate on the rear. Then I removed that structure piece and added it back with symmetry. This seemed ok. I continued to finalize my single rover design. Adding the "single" item parts without symmetry.

Once I was happy with its design, I detached it, including the decoupler, and stored it as a new subassembly. Then I added this new assembly back to the main craft with symmetry.

In MkII I created both rovers in complete symmetry and ran a flight test... I held my breath as it reach 6KM and immediately yelled 'W00T!' upon surpassing that altitude without incident. But please by all means continue to investigate what actually went wrong here. I would also indicate that this may actually be a bug. I'm not sure given the steps I took that something of that nature would be considered in testing of the symmetry. But I do know that there have been issues with the system for some time now and not much has been done to directly address those items.

[LordZowy]

Well, I'm intrigued. I tested it. Best fireworks I've seen all day. At 6000m it lagged then exploded so violently there were parts over 4 km away in less than 5 seconds!

Hence my new Signature â–¼

[SpenSpaceCorp]

After fiddling around more, I tried using hack gravity etc but my most recent one I shut off my engines and coasted through 6000m around 80 m/s, and it was fine, EXCEPT the fronts of both rovers violently fell off. I checked the symmetry in the VAB and I took off the front of ONE rover, which also took off the front of the other, but the rear of the same one.

[Link]

Im glad you got it rebuilt. I've been messing and messing and hacking and slashing. Its most certainly that battery is somehow bugging it all up. Anytime you even hover over it, the thing spits out an error in the debug menu. I edited the craft file in every way I could think to get it working, and nothing. Got one hell of a light show on my last run!!

Very nice design tho, have fun on the mun with it!

[Claw]

I'm unable to view your craft file for some reason, but if it is shimmering as someone mentioned, then you probably have multiple parts clipped on top of eachother.

This can be caused by making a mistake while doing recursive symmetry. So if you built the rover on one side of that ship using symmetry, then pulled it off to reinstall it with symmetry to get 2 rovers, the editor sometimes messes up if you're not really careful. I'm guessing this might have happened based on the looks of the ship, but I can't confirm that inside the craft file at the moment.

Another way it can happen is if you are building with symmetry on and ALT+F12 part clipping on. This can cause multiple ghosting. And if you "undo" while this is going on, you can kiss that craft file goodbye. It can corrupt with multiple layers of the ship on top of eachother.

6000 ft? I'm guessing some of the physics calculations are changing slightly, but I don't know for sure.

[Korr]

I'm tempted to load this just for the explosion lol

[Link]

I'm unable to view your craft file for some reason, but if it is shimmering as someone mentioned, then you probably have multiple parts clipped on top of eachother.

This can be caused by making a mistake while doing recursive symmetry. So if you built the rover on one side of that ship using symmetry, then pulled it off to reinstall it with symmetry to get 2 rovers, the editor sometimes messes up if you're not really careful. I'm guessing this might have happened based on the looks of the ship, but I can't confirm that inside the craft file at the moment.

Another way it can happen is if you are building with symmetry on and ALT+F12 part clipping on. This can cause multiple ghosting. And if you "undo" while this is going on, you can kiss that craft file goodbye. It can corrupt with multiple layers of the ship on top of eachother.

6000 ft? I'm guessing some of the physics calculations are changing slightly, but I don't know for sure.

It does look like there is clipping going on. Actually, the battery I mentioned seemed to be duplicated onto itself. I seperated the rover from the rest of the craft to check for anomalies, such as parts duplicated, or the whole craft duplicated onto itself, but nothing. Everything that did strike me as anomalous proved to be effortless as it always led to the same results.

I'm tempted to load this just for the explosion lol

It's more than worth it. Just remember to F2 so you get it in all its glory! Different explosion everytime is great!

[Epthelyn]

EDIT:

After the explosion, I staged the rocket through all the stages to open the chutes. Although very laggy, I DEFINITELY heard the decouplers decoupling on other pieces even though the capsule and one fuel tank was really all that was left that I was controlling. I then reverted the flight to launch, and this happened: (I could not launch, interact, or anything. The kerbal wasn't even there!)

-snip-

That happened to me a few times, once crashing the game entirely and immediately making me wonder if I should regret having used my main save file for testing this (y'know, realistic surroundings 'n' stuff ).

I'm tempted to load this just for the explosion lol

You should, it's quite the spectacle; hardly an explosion really, just parts flying off in multiple directions and the F3 log saying every part had structurally failed simultaneously with every other attached part (which is really unhelpful when working out what's going on).

-----

Glad you fixed it in the end

[LordZowy]

I'm unable to view your craft file for some reason, but if it is shimmering as someone mentioned, then you probably have multiple parts clipped on top of eachother.

This can be caused by making a mistake while doing recursive symmetry. So if you built the rover on one side of that ship using symmetry, then pulled it off to reinstall it with symmetry to get 2 rovers, the editor sometimes messes up if you're not really careful. I'm guessing this might have happened based on the looks of the ship, but I can't confirm that inside the craft file at the moment.

Another way it can happen is if you are building with symmetry on and ALT+F12 part clipping on. This can cause multiple ghosting. And if you "undo" while this is going on, you can kiss that craft file goodbye. It can corrupt with multiple layers of the ship on top of eachother.

6000 ft? I'm guessing some of the physics calculations are changing slightly, but I don't know for sure.

Parts clipping was one of the first things I checked for. I don't use part clipping. If you were able to download the craft file and see for yourself you'd note these things.....

I will admit, it is a truly unique issue. Its one I've never come across before, which is why I shared the file. I was hoping that someone out there would have the ablitity to review the craft file on a text level and see what happened. I can read it but my brain starts to go mussy after about the 1000's line...

[LordZowy]

So here are the subassembly parts for the:

new rover

and

the old

I've done a compare on them using Notepad++ and I can't see a lot of differences. The order of build is different on the old... so I'm not sure if that is having anything to do with it.

I've continued to build on the new rover design find that here: Mun Rover MkII

Edited June 5, 2014 by LordZowy
Added Mun Rover MkII

[Kasuha]

One piece of advice:

When placing a subassembly (such as rover), try to prevent placing it with symmetry. You can prepare mounts for the subassembly in symmetry but then place each subassembly instance separately.

First, you'll avoid problems created by placing something created with symmetry in another symmetry (which is known to cause problems).

Second, you won't lose action groups you may have set up for that subassembly.

[Link]

Parts clipping was one of the first things I checked for. I don't use part clipping. If you were able to download the craft file and see for yourself you'd note these things.....

I will admit, it is a truly unique issue. Its one I've never come across before, which is why I shared the file. I was hoping that someone out there would have the ablitity to review the craft file on a text level and see what happened. I can read it but my brain starts to go mussy after about the 1000's line...

Thats why I seperated the rover from the rest of the craft......to have less text lol! And thats what I screwed with only to have the same results. This rover shouldnt be blowing up how it is. Im gonna mess with it more tonight, and hope I can find what's the cause. I haven't been able to reproduce it on anything I've built, so this is truely unique.

Edited June 5, 2014 by Link
quote fail

[LordZowy]

One piece of advice:

When placing a subassembly (such as rover), try to prevent placing it with symmetry. You can prepare mounts for the subassembly in symmetry but then place each subassembly instance separately.

First, you'll avoid problems created by placing something created with symmetry in another symmetry (which is known to cause problems).

Second, you won't lose action groups you may have set up for that subassembly.

Good advice!

[Master Tao]

I've narrowed it down to the four pieces that form the body of the rover. Here that is as a subassembly, which is still bugged even when placed on top of a new lifter:

ship = Minimal bugged subassembly
version = 0.23.5
description = 
type = VAB
PART
{
    part = trussAdapter_4293351930
    partName = Part
    pos = -5.896322,14.52026,3.810883
    rot = 0,0,0,1
    attRot = 0,0,0,1
    mir = 1,1,1
    istg = 6
    dstg = 6
    sidx = -1
    sqor = -1
    attm = 0
    link = batteryBank_4293351896
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    attN = bottom,batteryBank_4293351896
    EVENTS
    {
    }
    ACTIONS
    {
    }
}
PART
{
    part = batteryBank_4293351896
    partName = Part
    pos = -5.896322,13.99859,3.810883
    rot = 0,0,0,1
    attRot = 0,0,0,1
    mir = 1,1,1
    istg = 6
    dstg = 6
    sidx = -1
    sqor = -1
    attm = 0
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    link = trussPiece1x_4293351850
    attN = top,trussAdapter_4293351930
    EVENTS
    {
    }
    ACTIONS
    {
    }
    RESOURCE
    {
        name = ElectricCharge
        amount = 1000
        maxAmount = 1000
        flowState = True
        isTweakable = True
        hideFlow = False
        flowMode = Both
    }
}
PART
{
    part = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    partName = Part
    pos = -5.896508,14.08725,4.974684
    rot = 0.7071068,0,0,0.7071068
    attRot = 0,0,0,1
    mir = 1,1,1
    istg = 6
    dstg = 6
    sidx = -1
    sqor = -1
    attm = 1
    sym = trussPiece1x_4293351850
    srfN = srfAttach,batteryBank_4293351896
    EVENTS
    {
    }
    ACTIONS
    {
    }
}
PART
{
    part = trussPiece1x_4293351850
    partName = Part
    pos = -5.896323,14.08732,2.647087
    rot = -8.940697E-08,0.7071068,-0.7071069,2.980232E-08
    attRot = 0,0,0,1
    mir = 1,1,1
    istg = 6
    dstg = 6
    sidx = -1
    sqor = -1
    attm = 1
    sym = trussPiece1x_4293351870
    srfN = srfAttach,batteryBank_4293351896
    EVENTS
    {
    }
    ACTIONS
    {
    }
}

I can't reduce it any further because that causes bugs within the VAB, as in the craft silently fails to save. In any case, looks like the cause is that the battery and the adapter girder are both multiply attached to one of the girder segements. Don't know what would cause that to happen during assembly, but the end result is that you'll have to rebuild the rover from the ground up. Or just keep watching explosions. That's fun too.

[Claw]

Hmm, it's creating multiple links. This happens sometimes with the claw too, and that thing clearly has problems.

Can you outline the steps/order that you assembeled that minimal design? That is really awesome that you got it down to just a few pieces, but if you can explain how you assembeled it then you'll have a really excellent bug report.

[Master Tao]

Hmm, it's creating multiple links. This happens sometimes with the claw too, and that thing clearly has problems.

Can you outline the steps/order that you assembeled that minimal design? That is really awesome that you got it down to just a few pieces, but if you can explain how you assembeled it then you'll have a really excellent bug report.

LordZowy, that's definitely a question for you. All I did was remove parts from the Mk. I craft until I had something that still exhibited the bug and I couldn't remove anything more.

[Claw]

LordZowy, that's definitely a question for you. All I did was remove parts from the Mk. I craft until I had something that still exhibited the bug and I couldn't remove anything more.

As Kasuha and I have mentioned, I'm still suspicious of recursive symmetry. However, I'd like to confirm that, or see if this is a new bug.

[Claw]

Parts clipping was one of the first things I checked for. I don't use part clipping. If you were able to download the craft file and see for yourself you'd note these things.....

I forgot to mention, using part clipping and having it happen unintentionally are two different things.

When placing parts with symmetry on symmetry like Kasuha said (what I called "recursive symmetry") the editor can mess up and end up clipping parts together when you didn't mean to.

There are also some ways that the editor will do this to you and you can't even see it.

[LordZowy]

Hmm, it's creating multiple links. This happens sometimes with the claw too, and that thing clearly has problems.

Can you outline the steps/order that you assembled that minimal design? That is really awesome that you got it down to just a few pieces, but if you can explain how you assembeled it then you'll have a really excellent bug report.

I can't recall correctly but I think it was as follows:

Coming out from the ship in the original build it would have been (In order)

TT-38K Radial Decoupler
Modular Girder Segment
Modular Girder Segment
Modular Girder Segment (Rotated to 90°)
Modular Girder Adapter
Tr-sV Stack Decoupler
Modular Girder Adapter
Z-1K Rechargeable Battery Bank
Modular Girder Segment (Front facing) 
RoverMax Model M1 (Left side)
RoverMax Model M1 (Right side)
Then I clicked the Modular Girder Segment (Front facing w/ Wheels attached)
Enabled symmetry
Reattached the front, which than duplicated in the rear. 
Disabled symmetry
I continued to add the parts, Lights and so on. 
Once I was happy with it, I detached Tr-sV Stack Decoupler (Grabbing the whole Rover) Created a subassembly with it. 
Reattached the subassembly with symmetry... proceeded to basic testing on the launch pad. Decoupled boarded drove... etcetera. 
Then went onto launch test... 6 KM Boom Boom!

Any additional struts were added in post to ensure that stability was maintained to rule out stress on parts as being the cause for the Big Bada Boom.

[ThinkOutsideTheHangar]

You should change your rover design. I've found out from horrible, horrible experiences that rover like yours (octagonal struts and all)

are very easily struck by the Gyro kraken. Change your rover design to something less octagonal struty, and your ship will be fine.

EDIT: My thing exploded at only 6,000 m (mods mods mods) and I managed to get a photo of the flight log.

Image:

EDIT 2: Well, now my KSP is broken. I cant load ships anymore without intense lag, and the flight log keeps on spewing out gibberish.

Just a great day I'm having.

Edited June 5, 2014 by ThinkOutsideTheHangar
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