Clamp-o-tron Sr. won't dock

[colin_in_space]

I have been having intermittent problems with my clap-o-tron Sr.'s. Sometimes they jsut won't dock, even at a nice, slow, precice approach. I have even tried machjeb autodock, and multiple ports on the target ship. It seems that redoing the launches fixes the problem, but I am not prepared to do that for my 6 part Extraplanatry 2000.

Here is an example screenshot from an attempt today. No matter how precise I position myself I get no magnetic attachment at all, even with 0.1 m/s approach. And the active ship is not that heavy.

Any suggests? Help apprecieated! Landing and relaunching this space plain will be a pain in the old posteriori.

Edited December 3, 2014 by colin_in_space

[Leszek]

Make sure they aren't on backwards, when you first click on the part it is right side up. In the picture the one you can see looks fine, can't tell about the other one.

[rodion]

could you please post a screencap with the end faces clearly shown?

[Claw]

Good and bad news.

Assuming your docking ports are indeed oriented the correct direction (Sr's are notorious for being backwards), then you're probably hitting a fairly common bug. Your ports look okay to me from the pictures, and it sounds like you've been successfully docking in the past.

So the good news, there's a fix. The bad news, it requires some save file editing. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/78863-FIX-Dock-Undocking-Bug-in-0-23-5

It's a daunting post at first, but it's pretty straight forward. Let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers,

~Claw

[colin_in_space]

I guarantee they are on correctly. Triple checked.

Space Plane, in SPH for good lighting:

Could the landing gears be clipping the docking post and causing a problem?

And the port on the main ship's hydroponics bay (kourtesy of kolonization)

This port looks fine to me. Best guess is maybe the plane's port is messed by other parts too close. But I have had this docking issue a few times recently and it does not seem to be just bad ports, I think.

- - - Updated - - -

Thanks Claw, I'll check into that!

[rodion]

the fact that parts are partially clipped into the docking port body of the smaller ship might be giving the game problems, but that's just a guess based on what i can see.

[RexKramer]

I've had issues with docking ports with nearby/clipped parts. So, yes, the landing gear could be the issue.

[colin_in_space]

Victory!

Thank you Claw!!

Though my space plane is facing the wrong way : p I messed u the RCS a bit and translations are a real pain, so I took what I can get and I will fix it before we set off for Duna... AND BEYOND!