pre 23.5 ship breaks apart when switched to.

[CrashTestDummy]

I have a saved game from pre 23.5 where I have a very large ship in orbit of Jool. When I upgraded to 23.5, the save would load fine. However, when I switch to the ship, the four nuclear engines that are attached to the back of the ship begin to oscillate and eventually break off. Is there anything I can do about this?

[Claw]

Possibly.

Can you please provide some pictures and (maybe better) a save file? There are a variety of reasons this might be happening, so we would need more info to narrow it down.

[CrashTestDummy]

Hi Claw,

Thanks for the response. Are these files sufficient or do I need share more?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109035154/persistent.sfs

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109035154/quicksave.sfs

I removed everything but the ship in question (The Colossus) - well that and Jeb and his lander, I couldn't bring myself to remove Jeb!

Thanks.

[Starwaster]

I have a saved game from pre 23.5 where I have a very large ship in orbit of Jool. When I upgraded to 23.5, the save would load fine. However, when I switch to the ship, the four nuclear engines that are attached to the back of the ship begin to oscillate and eventually break off. Is there anything I can do about this?

Download this and drop it somewhere in your GameData folder. Preferably in a folder dedicated to Module Manager tweak files if you have one. (requires Module Manager)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uj3i4i6c488otca/breakingforce_fix.cfg

Explanation. Those engines and many other Squad parts use the default breaking torque/force values of 22 which is not enough even for phantom forces that tend to strike ships, especially (but not limited to) ships in solar space. (literally, ships in Kerbol's SOI)

Edited July 14, 2014 by Starwaster

[Claw]

Those should be sufficient but it will be a little bit before I can dig through them. Thanks for stripping out the extra stuff. I'll let you know if I find anything.

Something else that will help me out (due to computer problems atm) is if you are able to post a couple pictures, especially up close of the engines. I have some suspicions, but seeing pictures will help.

Cheers,

-Claw

[CrashTestDummy]

Starwaster,

Cheers mate, I'll give that a look.

Claw,

You can see the engine setup there between the two orange tanks.

Lv-N Atomic Engine attached to a FL-T800 Fuel tank.

There are four of these attached to a TVR-400L Stack Quad-adapter.

The wobble seems to be sourcing at the points of connection to the TVR-400L.

They start to wobble about the point of connection until they break off.

[SRV Ron]

"The wobble seems to be sourcing at the points of connection to the TVR-400L."

Something like this.

This is likely the newer version resulting in this issue.

A set of struts at the LV-N or base of the FL-T800 will fix this. Even the 7 segment mod from the example above worked just fine once stabilized with a ring of braces at the base.

[Claw]

I haven't had the chance to check your file yet, but based on the pictures I tend to agree with SRV Ron. Unfortunately it's a bit difficult to add those after the fact.

Here's something wacky to try in the mean time.

Go to your ship and toggle the SAS and make sure it eventually goes off. If it's already off, then turn it on and back off. Sometimes that buys you a little bit of time.

Then try to quickly right click and deactivate any torque modules.

If that stops the motion long enough, try transferring some of the fuel out of those tanks. Sometimes disrupting the mass distribution is enough that whatever causes the phantom wobbling to stop.

Hopefully that makes sense, although it's a lot of smoke and mirrors.

[psyper]

This happened to me too - I assumed it was the KAS mod as the parts that started going crazy had KAS struts on so I undocked them and removed them from the game - stopped the station going crazy and I just sent up a replacement part. I can't see your screenshots as my work block imgur (if you uploaded them there) so I can't tell if you have KAS or not. If you do it might be worth removing the parts from your persistence file?

[CrashTestDummy]

Thanks all for the suggestions. I've tried quite a few things at this point, including messing with my save files. It is a while since I have tried flying this ship and I think it may be to do with structs that were present, holding the four engines together mysteriously vanishing when the ship is switched to.

I think I will just have to bid a fond farewell to the Colossus. Maybe a rescue mission for the rescue mission of the rescue mission is in order!

Thanks again all. Your input was much appreciated. Happy space-faring.