I unwillingly discovered a new Kraken... and lost one hour's worth of a Duna flight

[Commissioner Tadpole]

In my career save file, I finally decided it was time to kick things up a notch and send a trip to Duna. The rocket was a bit over-the-top, but overall managed to do it just fine. At least into solar orbit. The rocket then just simply disassembled itself and exploded, killing the three Kerbals boarded in it. When I went into the map screen, it told me that the vessel was on the Launch Pad:

Essentially, I had been Krakened.

I had an earlier quicksave, but upon loading it, the LaunchPad Kraken would just strike me again once physics kicked in. Thankfully, I was able to acess the menu before that, and I could easily go back into KSC. From the safety of the Tracking Station, I could simply select the vessel and even time warp ahead, and it would continue its' trajectory safely, but if I control it, then LaunchPad Kraken immediatly attacks it again.

Fortunately, not all work is lost, as I have a backup quicksave from in case the Duna trip went wrong(I always do this when I do career-mode explorations), but still, I am pretty bummed.

MOD LIST:

-Toolbar(stable, old)

-Load on Demand(stable, old)

-Active Texture Management(stable, old, outdated)

-Crew Manifest(stable, old)

-Kerbal Engineer Redux(stable, old)

-Real Roster(not working, old)

-FinePrint(stable, old)

-Image Viewer(unknown, new)

-Kerbal Joint Reinforcement(stable, old)

-HyperEdit(stable, old)

-KPseudonym(stable, new)

-NavBall Docking Aligment Indicator(never used, old)

-PreciseNode(stable, old)

-RealChute(stable, old)

-Stock Scaling Bug Fix(unknown, new)

-Texture Replacer(stable, old)

-Time Control(stable, old)

-Trajectories(stable, old)

-Kerbal Alarm Clock(stable, old)

Edited November 14, 2014 by Commissioner Tadpole

[Stickyhammy]

I have had stations do that, and rockets with probes on it that break apart as soon as they reach space. Whenever it happens I take it as a sign that I should have used more struts. My last probe core gas can with one full stock 6400 fuel can made it only because I used 24 struts to keep the top 4 sections attached to each other. Its ugly but it does prevent runaway part krakens. No workaround for a kraken station though. Other than don't dock anything to it.

[worir4]

It is not the Kraken that is causing it, it is your kerbals. They simply got bord and thought it would be good fun to blow up the ship. Next time keep them entertained by periodically spinning the ship really fast. They seem to like it.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

I have had stations do that, and rockets with probes on it that break apart as soon as they reach space. Whenever it happens I take it as a sign that I should have used more struts. My last probe core gas can with one full stock 6400 fuel can made it only because I used 24 struts to keep the top 4 sections attached to each other. Its ugly but it does prevent runaway part krakens. No workaround for a kraken station though. Other than don't dock anything to it.

I thought the Strut Necessity had been eliminated in .23? And adding more struts will just lag everything.

It is not the Kraken that is causing it, it is your kerbals. They simply got bord and thought it would be good fun to blow up the ship. Next time keep them entertained by periodically spinning the ship really fast. They seem to like it.

But it's pretty impossible to spin a ship while you're time warping...

[merendel]

I thought the Strut Necessity had been eliminated in .23? And adding more struts will just lag everything.

Depends on the craft design. Long and spindly sections with lots of mass on the end tend to cause problems particularly if the controll is out on one end. if the ship is floppy just a little bit of wobble can amplify as the SAS tries to correct it. You still need enough struts to keep things somewhat ridged on larger craft, theres just many more situations where you can get by without now.

I've also had a few bugs (normaly mod related) where some part just decides it does not want to go beyond a particular speed or altitude. Once the part hits that limit it just decides its going to stop in place and pout reguardless of what the rest of the ship is doing. Unplaned dissasimbly follows as the rest of the parts keep going at orbital velocity and shatter on the imovable part. Strangely the game often reports this as impacting the launchpad of all things.

[Robotengineer]

I have had this happen with a probe in a mid-to-high Kerbin Orbit. Collided with launch pad. Might want to check the situation of the craft in the persistent.sfs file?

[Commissioner Tadpole]

I have had this happen with a probe in a mid-to-high Kerbin Orbit. Collided with launch pad. Might want to check the situation of the craft in the persistent.sfs file?

Seems to be nominal; it recognizes the ship as being in an escape trajectory out of Kerbin, as per the quicksave I mentioned in the OP.