What causes the launch pad to blow up?

[thereaverofdarkness]

I am noticing that a lot of rocket designs I never had trouble with are suddenly causing the launch pad to explode merely by resting upon it. I have tested a wide variety of designs and cannot find a clear connection between any particular ship statistics, not even ship mass, that will specifically trigger the pad to explode.

KSP version 0.25.0

Edited December 17, 2014 by thereaverofdarkness

[LABHOUSE]

Rocket too heavy.

[thereaverofdarkness]

That can't be all there is to it, as I've had a 230 ton rocket blow it up, and a 578 ton rocket stack of fuel tanks not blow it up.

Edited December 17, 2014 by thereaverofdarkness

[thereaverofdarkness]

Found a correlation: having engines under the rocket.

When I was stacking fuel tanks up to see how much weight would break the pad, it seemed that no matter how much weight I put on, it wouldn't buckle. But I put engines under the tanks and suddenly it explodes.

I had to reduce my fuel tank stack to 337 tons (including engines) and did not have it destroy the launch pad, while my 230 ton rocket still does. So it's partially the mass of the rocket, but there is more to it.

[Claw]

It's not exactly tied to having engines on the bottom, because I have a test ship that blows up the launch pad which has no engines on it.

It actually has more to do with the physics onset. If a heavy craft is too high up off the launch pad when physics kicks in, it registers as a high impact against the launch pad. The reason why it seems random is because different parts cause vessels to drop further than other parts. Also, they affect how the impact happens.

That being said, there are a couple things you can do.

1) Use more launch clamps. This will keep the rocket from resting on the launch pad.

2) Turn on Indestructible Buildings.

3) Use this link to download a series of stock bug fix modules (still compatible with 0.25). One of the modules addresses this problem.

4) Upgrade to 0.90. This has been fixed in the most recent version.

Cheers,

~Claw

[thereaverofdarkness]

Thanks, Claw. I guess I'll upgrade. I narrowly missed it, having downloaded my latest copy of the game just two days ago.