SAS not working properly

[montyben101]

Is it just me or does SAS do very little now? I mean sometimes it just stops working all together. Not sure if this has anything to do with my joystick though

[The_Rocketeer]

Well, if there's any joystick-based trim control, that could have something to do with it. KSP has built-in trim hotkeys, so any signal from the joystick would count as manual input and would disable the SAS.

SAS has changed quite a bit over the last several releases. If you're relying on the cockpit alone, it almost certainly won't have enough torque on it's own for anything more than a smallish probe or very lightweight vessel. Try adding more reaction wheels (for space) or control surfaces/fins (for atmo). The SAS should take advantage of the resources you give it to increase it's steering power.

As a side note, even a good amount of torque won't be enough in the face of a poor design with badly misaligned or unbalanced CoL, CoT and CoM. I guess you probably know that

[Crown]

The SAS is less aggressive than is used to be (until 0.17.x, I think). This makes a vessel shaking less (or not at all) but on the other hand the SAS doesn't keep it pointed exactly where you told it to point.

I don't know the specific issue or if this is just a question for clarification. I usually point a vessel (in orbit) to where I want it to be while the SAS is off, then (sometimes) I use time warp to stop the last bit of motion and then I activate SAS to hold that position. Depending on the time I have for the alignment, the torque from the probe body mostly is enough.

[tsotha]

If it stops working altogether you may have run out of power.

[montyben101]

No, I have been playing this game for years, I have not run out of power

[Vallius]

Are you holding orientation with an SAS module, an RCS System, fins or some combination of the three? I'd recommend checking the following for troubleshooting.

1. In any case your attitude systems should work much better if they are close to your center of mass for the current stage. (Note that this will change as you go from the launch pad to orbit).

2. Sometimes if you have multiple SAS modules, they will compete to orient your spacecraft.

3. Larger vehicles respond more sluggishly to an SAS lock than smaller ones, unless you're using well-placed vernier engines.

4. If none of these things seems to work, or you've accounted for them already, then I'd probably try to use the keyboard for a change.

[DeathSabre]

I'm pretty sure its your joystick.

I've had this sometimes if i launch KSP while my Xbox controller is plugged in. sometimes it picks up some kind of 'trim'/'phantom input' from the controller and even perfectly ballanced rockets won't go up straight. close KSP, unplug my Xbox controller, relaunch and it works fine.

I'd suggest running KSP with your Joystick unplugged and see if you still have a problem.

They did change SAS a little while back to make it less 'absolute' this helped a lot with spaceplane flapping that used to happen. that was about the same time they let normal command pods use SAS. (can't remember the exact update sorry)

[herbal space program]

Are you sure your reaction wheels aren't running out of juice somewhere along the line? Not all engines produce electrical power.

[montyben101]

I think it must be because of my joystick as unplugging it made it a bit better (not great though)

The shuttle has more than enough reaction wheel power and RCS power to maintain stable flight. I have said before that I am not running out of electric charge too