Nuke engines keep cutting out now!

[psyper]

I had a previous problem where a jet plane of mine kept having one of its jets cutting out. After ruling out flameout it wasn't really solved. I ended up recreating the plane from scratch and living with the fact that at any point my jet will just randomly tumble to the ground - problem is that its a rare event so I can go a whole mission and recover the craft with no ill effects happening. Anyway I upgraded twice and have switched from 64bit to 32bit versions of the game. I'm getting stuck in to a new career game and now all of a sudden one of my craft is getting the same issue. This time however it a nuke engine which is having the problem!!

The ship has managed to make various manouvers in LKO. Then transported itself all the way to minmus - its been alive and well and performing perfectly for over 9 days. Now in minmus soi - circularising my orbit one of the engines suddenly start to cut its thrust. Reducing its twin to about 50% thrust balances it out but thats hardly a solution to the issue. Its really random as I would've thought that if there were problems with the craft it would have this issue straight out of the VAB.

If I monitor the engine it seems to flicker between these two points: (as you can see its twin is working perfectly so it just spins like crazy!

My previous problem with my old 64bit version of the game:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/91673-Jet-engine-cuts-out

[Engineer of Stuff]

Intake problems maybe?

[Technical Ben]

Might be a fuel flow problem. I hit a cross feed problem on structural parts once. For some reason no matter what I did, I'd get 3 out of the 4 engine groups fed fuel, the other got drained. Had to rebuild the craft.

[Jouni]

My initial impressions:

• It may be a problem caused by some of the mods you're using.
  
• The engine may have run out of fuel. Have you disabled the use of LF or O asymmetrically in some fuel tanks?
  
• The yaw indicator is off center. Is there a fuel imbalance in the ship?
  

[LethalDose]

I's really had to even see the ship you have posted since the dialog boxes are obscuring portions. Can you please provide some pictures of the vessel in the sun or in the VAB and also provide a list of mods and versions you're using? There's a lot of information that you haven't provided so its really impossible to give any advice on whats going on.

[Pecan]

The thrust is really low (2.4KN) - is that deliberate or have you still got jets active there and MJ 'preventing flameout'? If so, it'll be reducing throttle/thrust on ALL engines in the stage, which may be causing the problem. Since the status says 'nominal' I can't think of anything else.

If it's stock and you want to post the .craft file on dropbox or somewhere I'll download it and have a look for you.

[sdj64]

It might just be because your throttle is set so low. Sometimes the engine simply cuts out after a certain point. You could try setting the thrust limiter down on all the engines and putting the throttle higher, turning 2 of the 4 engines off, or simply just thrusting more. As said before there might be a fuel balance issue especially if you have Crossfeed Enabler (it comes bundled with many mods so you might have it without realizing).

[psyper]

Intake problems maybe?

lol

Might be a fuel flow problem. I hit a cross feed problem on structural parts once. For some reason no matter what I did, I'd get 3 out of the 4 engine groups fed fuel, the other got drained. Had to rebuild the craft.

All the small tanks are still full and are being fed from the main tanks which has about 0% and 40%ish fuel in them. (the 4 other radial tanks are separate for fuel transporting when required - they are empty).

My initial impressions:

• It may be a problem caused by some of the mods you're using.
  
• The engine may have run out of fuel. Have you disabled the use of LF or O asymmetrically in some fuel tanks?
  
• The yaw indicator is off center. Is there a fuel imbalance in the ship?
  

I'm thinking mod too but I would've expected this to have turned up in one of their forums but I've been unable to locate anything.

see above regarding engines

yaw indicator is off center as I took the photo while it was starting to spin - its the thrust imbalance not a fuel imbalance that is causing the spinning. If I set its twin to 50% the ship flys straight.

I's really had to even see the ship you have posted since the dialog boxes are obscuring portions. Can you please provide some pictures of the vessel in the sun or in the VAB and also provide a list of mods and versions you're using? There's a lot of information that you haven't provided so its really impossible to give any advice on whats going on.

Nope you're quite right I didn't give much in the way of info - Sorry about that. Heres the ship (mod list below)

The thrust is really low (2.4KN) - is that deliberate or have you still got jets active there and MJ 'preventing flameout'? If so, it'll be reducing throttle/thrust on ALL engines in the stage, which may be causing the problem. Since the status says 'nominal' I can't think of anything else.

If it's stock and you want to post the .craft file on dropbox or somewhere I'll download it and have a look for you.

if I set the thrust any higher the ship just spins out of control and I cant take a screenshot off it. Get the same issue at full thrust. I have to confess that I have 'upgraded' this design since its launch and therefore don't have the .craft file. I'm wondering if I could post the ship portion of my persist file that way you can see it with the same conditions as it falls past minmus!?

It might just be because your throttle is set so low. Sometimes the engine simply cuts out after a certain point. You could try setting the thrust limiter down on all the engines and putting the throttle higher, turning 2 of the 4 engines off, or simply just thrusting more. As said before there might be a fuel balance issue especially if you have Crossfeed Enabler (it comes bundled with many mods so you might have it without realizing).

Throttle is low because if I put it any higher the ship spins out of control and I cant get a screenshot

If I thrust limit its twin to 50% it balances out the imbalance and the ship flies straight with no problems but thats not a solution I'm looking for - especially if the pattern holds true on my old game where I limited its twin and one from the other set starts to have this problem!

Mods are:

Name Version

Toolbar 1.7.7

Citylights and clouds -

Kerbonite 0.4.2

Distant Objects -

Environmental Visual Enhancement -

FinePrint 0.59

Goodspeed Fuel Pump 2.14.1

Kerbal Attachment System 0.4.9

Lacuna Space Systems Greenhouse

MechJeb 2 2.4.0

NavyFish Docking Alignment Tool 4.0

RCS Build Aid 0.5.1

Research Them All -

Select Root Jul18

Stage Recovery 1.5.1

TAC LifeSupport 0.10.1.13

TriggerTech Kerbal Alarm Clock 3.0.0.4

TriggerTech Alternate Resource Panel 2.6.0.0

ModuleManager 2.5.1

Station Parts Expansion 0.2.0

Final Frontier 0.5.6b

Many thanks to all of you that have replied to help me out - sorry I'm not being very helpful with the craft file I honestly thought I had the old craft file kicking around somewhere when I posted this :/

[psyper]

ignore this - it didn't work

Edited November 14, 2014 by psyper

[psyper]

okay I managed to transplant the new version of the craft on to the old ones location in the quicksave file and its successfully put the new craft in place.

I suspect that this hasn't cured the problem so I might be back. In the meantime if someone wants to work out what is causing this problem heres the craft file that I've extracted from my persist file insitu

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8S2KVucoU9ceW9wakxkcXRodlk/view?usp=sharing

Edited November 14, 2014 by psyper

[Hodo]

Having this problem:

The issue is a fuel flow problem. I have encountered it before with some of my larger multi-engine ships. The trick is to add additional fuel lines between the engine nacells so you have more cross feeding.

At least that is what worked for me in the past. I haven't built anything like that in a long long time.

[Laie]

if I set the thrust any higher the ship just spins out of control and I cant take a screenshot off it. Get the same issue at full thrust. I have to confess that I have 'upgraded' this design since its launch and therefore don't have the .craft file. I'm wondering if I could post the ship portion of my persist file that way you can see it with the same conditions as it falls past minmus!?

Hit "V" a few times until the camera is in "chase" mode. Then you get a stable view no matter how fast it's spinning. Will also allow you to have a good view at every part of the vessel while things are going down the drain.

I strongly suspect that it's a bug, possibly mod-related. Thrust limiter is up, engines don't report being oxidizer- or fuel-deprived... You *have* restarted KSP in the mean time, have you?

[psyper]

Hit "V" a few times until the camera is in "chase" mode. Then you get a stable view no matter how fast it's spinning. Will also allow you to have a good view at every part of the vessel while things are going down the drain.

Not sure what that is going to do really? you want a screenshot of the craft spinning around?

I strongly suspect that it's a bug, possibly mod-related. Thrust limiter is up, engines don't report being oxidizer- or fuel-deprived... You *have* restarted KSP in the mean time, have you?

I strongly suspect its a bug too - don't think its part of the gaming experience unless squad put in random failing parts in to the 3rd from last version without telling everyone - and no I don't have that particular mod installed! Yes I've come out of the game fully and back in and still getting the problem.

[psyper]

Okay still not sure why this would help but I'd bite.

Another ship is now having problems - it has radial mounted engines like the OP but the fuel lines are connected to the side of the tanks not the top. I switched to chase view, put the engine thrust to maximum and took pictures. I really hope this helps because its getting really really annoying now

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