Is anyone else thinking that the buildings are not resilient enough?

[smart013]

It's not so much a bug as the normal and expected result of what is effectively suddenly dropping a huge mass on the underlying Launchpad.

Exactly THIS is the bug. Planes (or huge masses) shouldnt get DROPPED on the runway at start in the first place, they should STAND there ready to take off. As it is the case in reality where noone DROPS the plane on the starting point. Its a bug, and it should get fixed sometime in the future. There may be good reasons why it is not fixed at this time, but this is no reason to declare a bug a feature.

[Norpo]

Really, the force the VAB can withstand seems fine to me, but i've read that it's the strongest of all the buildings. If they were all like the VAB (kerbodyne booster going full throttle going straight at it CAN destroy it but unlikely, anything bigger yes) then I think it'd be okay, maybe if they were a little stronger it'd be better. Considering the outrageous cost of repairing, (Unless sandbox repair costs are broken, i've never seen a repair cost in career) you could spend an entire career without a science lab, and spend hours of gameplay trying to get the money to fix it.

(Out of curiosity, is it possible to destroy mission control, where the contracts are gotten? If so, then that seems broken, as it could completely disable your career if a stray booster goes haywire and you don't have the funds on hand to fix it, as you can't get any more funds without contracts, unless i'm missing something..)

I think a nice compromise would be to add another difficulty slider, or set of difficulty sliders, for all the buildings, to set the amount of destruction they can all withstand. From extremely weak (you LANDED on the VAB!? At 15 m/s!? BOOM!) to Extremely Strong (basically as long as you don't hurl a delta IV heavy lifter at it you should be fine).

Would be a nice feature to have, if only to prevent situations where you can either have weak structures or structures that don't explode at all. I like destructable buildings, but if you can destroy them just by launching a rocket, or a small booster accidentally just barely hitting it, then I may reconsider. I haven't built something big enough to auto-destruct the launchpad yet, but i'll be sure to always use launch clamps from now on.

Also another nice difficulty slider would be to have a choice in how much repairs cost. Are they a minor annoyance, or do they end your career?

Keeping all this in mind, I think it'd be nice to have difficulty sliders for all these, some people like easilly destructable buildings, and some people don't.

[Geschosskopf]

Exactly THIS is the bug. Planes (or huge masses) shouldnt get DROPPED on the runway at start in the first place, they should STAND there ready to take off. As it is the case in reality where noone DROPS the plane on the starting point. Its a bug, and it should get fixed sometime in the future. There may be good reasons why it is not fixed at this time, but this is no reason to declare a bug a feature.

The code is working properly so it's not technically a bug.

But hey, if you're annoyed, get the Joint Reinforcement mod. That spreads the physics load out over time so lessons the impact.

[merendel]

I voted too weak but with the caviat that its only too weak for the launchpad/runway. Anything else and ya if I crash something big into it I expect it to explode. On the otherhand I'd expect a launchpad designed to launch rockets to... you know actually survive launching rockets. If it cant why arnt we using an indestructible patch of dirt instead?

[r_rolo1]

The code is working properly so it's not technically a bug.

But hey, if you're annoyed, get the Joint Reinforcement mod. That spreads the physics load out over time so lessons the impact.

A bug is not necessarily code that does not work ( technically all code that compiles works properly ) , but code that does not work as intended. And I find difficult to believe that the launchpad or the runway exploding under the weight of a stationary ( or close ) load is the intended result of the coders in here ...

Oh , linguistic nibbles aside, the stress tolerance of the launchpad and of the runway seems to be somewhat low even without that erroneous behavior ... especially the runway because the collapsed area of runway is quite big compared with other parts of the KSC ( thus having much more material ), atleast to my eyeometer

[Vallius]

One way to fix this would be to cancel out Launchpad and runway collision effects until after the vehicle has been loaded. Or yeah, maybe make them a little bit hardier.

[Giggleplex777]

and think about structural panels to spread the load/take the heat from the engines

What's the flame trench for then?

[Franklin]

What's the flame trench for then?

Irony.....

[Majorjim!]

What's the flame trench for then?

Agreed, the launch pad is way too fragile.

A thing designed to launch rockets is destroyed by launching rockets...

[LexDavis]

What if you hit alt+f12 and did the pause on vessel unpack cheat? I wonder if that could fix it.

[dryer_lint]

Well, I just spent 15 minutes flinging planes and gigantic booster-trucks at the SPH. No dent.

[lordlundar]

Because, while fun to do so, this is what I ran into this weekend.

http://gfycat.com/ForkedTotalFirecrest

Well I agree that the destruction levels need tweaking, your gif is probably not the best example. The size of that thing could easily dwarf tanks in size and you had it going at a pretty solid speed. I would honestly EXPECT a building to collapse with that much inertia impacting it.

[Starbuckminsterfullerton]

Too weak. The various fuel tanks and storage towers make sense, but the launchpad shouldn't ignite when exposed to rocket exhaust, that's what it's there for! Right now it seems fairly flammable, which is the opposite of what a launchpad should be.

[SkyRender]

I decided to do a little experiment to see just how little actual force it can take to destroy a structure at KSC.

Turns out the answer is "not a whole heck of a lot"! Some of those collisions were sub-25m/s. Granted, I was hitting them with rapidly-spinning structural parts, but still.

[GusTurbo]

Buildings should be weaker, pad and runway should be stronger.

[SRV Ron]

Well, I just spent 15 minutes flinging planes and gigantic booster-trucks at the SPH. No dent.

It appears to be a function of total mass that hits it. This test design does nothing if I stage the SRBs to shower down on the complex like a cluster of individual bombs.

However, If I allow it to crash without staging the cluster of SRBs, the results are mass destruction.

[SubzeroSpartan7]

The only one I think is too weak is the launch pad and runway. They shouldn't explode from a rocket or plane sitting on them. It is kind of ridiculous.

[LethalDose]

Hasn't been established that the damage to buildings is cumulative? In the OP's video, he "bops" the tracking center and it blows up, which would be reasonable if it had gotten abused a lot before.

Just be more careful guys, you know Kerbals make everything out of explosive materials, even the runway

Don't forget those launch clamps, and think about structural panels to spread the load/take the heat from the engines

launch clamps, fine. But, unless I'm mistaken, structural panels are gained from a terminal tech node, making them basically useless through most of career.