Shouldn't this work? Why won't it work???

[James_Eh]

Fairly simple thing I would have thought. In testing for the "mission-of-a-lifetime" , I launched a ship which was meant to hit Ap way out of the atmosphere. This would allow me to blow the little lander cans off of the depleted drive section individually (or all 3 at once which was my plan) and then individually establish a non-decaying orbit with each one using either "]" if it was close enough or map view if not.

I seem to lose the ability to flip back to the two uncontrolled ships as soon as I blow them off. I know the atmosphere rule... but I'm in space!!! (Left the KER stats in there to avoid that question.)

It gets worse - I can control the ship that I wind up focused on, but all of the menu options stop working so I can't revert, can't exit to the Space Center, etc - but I can still fly the ship in the focus. Can't even click on the thing that shows me fuel, electricity, etc. Staging totally disappears, but the throttle controls still work and I can manually deploy the chute. I can go to map view and watch as the other two cans slowly plummet to Kerbin, but can't switch to them. (Not a huge sample size here, I've tried it 3 times with wildly different Ap's... but every time same behaviour, every time happening WAY out of the atmosphere.)

I am using .25 x64, with only the very latest KER installed. All I am hoping somebody can tell me, is - do I put this down as another glitch either caused by x64 or mods (in this case ONE mod, and a very widely used one at that), or is there something fundamental about controlling multiple manned crafts (OUT of the atmosphere!!) which I have never managed to see on the forums???

Edited November 15, 2014 by James_Eh
Answered!

[Caelib]

Those lander cans are "crewed" vehicles so you will need to place a crew member in each one prior to launch in order to control it. This can be done via a toolbar icon at the top. Also be aware that craft with suborbital trajectories may "disappear" when you're 2.5km away from them.

Edit: just noticed the three crew in the screenshot so you're doing that already. My only suggestion is to launch all three separately

[Master Tao]

IIRC, this is a stock bug that happens when you decouple multiple crew capsules simultaneously.

Try decoupling them by hand: right click on each decoupler and click Decouple.

[James_Eh]

Those lander cans are "crewed" vehicles so you will need to place a crew member in each one prior to launch in order to control it. This can be done via a toolbar icon at the top. Also be aware that craft with suborbital trajectories may "disappear" when you're 2.5km away from them.

Edit: just noticed the three crew in the screenshot so you're doing that already. My only suggestion is to launch all three separately

Yah, it was a struggle to make sure all 3 capsules were crewed, every time I turned my back the outer two depopulated but I finally managed to keep them there. You've touched on the heart of my question though, which is why I took great pains to mention that I was out of the atmosphere. Is it sub-orbital that causes things to evaporate outside of 2.5 km? I thought it was flight-in-atmosphere.

[James_Eh]

IIRC, this is a stock bug that happens when you decouple multiple crew capsules simultaneously.

Try decoupling them by hand: right click on each decoupler and click Decouple.

Alrighty, will try that next. As soon as I can reboot the game. (Crashed again.)

[psyper]

what happens if you quick save and then reload? I sometimes get the odd bug here and there and find that this method fixes a few. Also, you should only loose the craft when they are out of physics range (2.2km from the craft you're controlling) AND, on kerbin, below 20k asl. so you should be okay even if they drift too far from you whether in or out of atmosphere. I believe its a certain pressure so on airless worlds its until they lithobreak, on eve its a lot higher altitude etc.

[John FX]

I would suggest trying this on a 32 bit install. You never know.

[Claw]

Master Tao is 100% correct.

IIRC, this is a stock bug that happens when you decouple multiple crew capsules simultaneously.

Try decoupling them by hand: right click on each decoupler and click Decouple.

You'll have to decouple each one at a time. Either manually or by adjusting the staging.

[James_Eh]

Thanks to all for the answers, finally got a chance to try tonight, and switching the staging to blow off one each time adds some keystrokes, but completely fixes the issue. (space - ] - space - ] ] - space) Good to know before I watched 'em hurtle back to Eve.

Then, sigh, I couldn't take the excitement and left my son to crash 'em into each other. Which he did. With panache.