I cannot get staging to work right and I'm getting frustrated.

[astrosteve]

I'm pretty new to this (one prior attempt to play about a year and half ago resulted in me rage quitting after every single launch resulted in a catastrophic failure. I didn't pick the game up again for a very long time. ie, today) I'm now having trouble getting staging to work correctly.

I'm playing a brand new career game, all I have available to me is the starting parts. I put together a fairly simple rocket: a nose cone, 4 fuel tanks, liquid fuel engine below that. I put a parachute on top of the nose cone. Then, I used a modular girder segment on each side of the main rocket body and stuck a solid fuel booster on each, so two solid fuel boosters in total. Then I stuck a parachute on top of each fuel booster.

Stage 0 is set as the two solid fuel boosters. Stage 1 is the liquid fuel engine. Stage 2 are all three parachutes. Since I need to get to 11,000 meters for my mission, I figure the solid fuel boosters will take me most the way, then I can activate liquid fuel to get me the rest of the way.

However, the only way to get the engines to fire is to go through all three stages, then, on the final stage, all the engines fire at once and the parachutes deploy. As you can guess, this does not work very well. So, to be clear: throttle up, hit space to activate the solid fuel boosters. Nothing happens. Hit space again, nothing happens. Hit space a third time, everything fires at once and the parachutes deploy.

What is going on here? I've messed with the throttle (though I don't think the throttle matters for solid fuel boosters) on the first two stages, but it doesn't make a difference. I imagine if I took the parachutes off, I'd be launching with little problem... but I'd prefer not to destroy the entire ship every time when it falls back to earth.

Also, this would indicate a lack of knowledge of some basic function of the game. If I don't figure out why it isn't working now, it's just gonna come back and bite me in the ass when I try to make more complex ships. This is why I'm just not taking the parachutes off and launching without them. Plus, I have a mission to test the parachutes so I have to figure out what's going wrong.

Any help? Based on everything I've read this should be working perfectly, but it's not.

[Dr. 󠁳⁧⁧󠁳Coomer]

You have to manually choose which engine fires at what stage. Here is a good tutorial playlist Here

[TheWhiteOwl]

Hey, when you are making your rocket in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) you might have seen on the right hand side of the screen a staggered list of icons, these icons represent the parts of your rocket that you will be controlling when you actually fly it. So for your example what you would want is the solid boosters icon in the bottom or 'stage zero' tab, then in the next tab you will want the liquid boosters, then finally the parachute. It is very important that the icons are in separate tabs because each time you 'stage' or press spacebar it simply activates the stage that is next in the queue.

Im sorry if you already knew all that but as far as I know that is why the stages might all be activating at once, make sure they are not in the same tab for staging. Also you can make it to 11000m just with 3 boosters if you fire them all at once and have them at about 60-70 percent power (Which you can ajust in the VAB while making your rocket).

Hope this helped and if not, get back to me with a more detailed description and I will try to help you out.

[Manwith Noname]

Erm, the way you describe your rocket build, do you have any form of control fitted? Like a command pod or drone part?

[The_Mell]

Originally posted by astrosteve:

I'm playing a brand new career game, all I have available to me is the starting parts. I put together a fairly simple rocket: a nose cone, 4 fuel tanks, liquid fuel engine below that. I put a parachute on top of the nose cone. Then, I used a modular girder segment on each side of the main rocket body and stuck a solid fuel booster on each, so two solid fuel boosters in total. Then I stuck a parachute on top of each fuel booster.

Sounds already complicated.

My advice:
1) Start a new science only career
Little amount of parts avaible so no unneccessary confusion and no problems with funds.

2) Built an absolut minimalistic rocket
Command pod, parachute on top, some tank below and one engine.

3) Test it.
The staging should then contain only 2 parts. Divide them into 2 stages (if not already). Launch test. Go back, swap order of those 2 staged parts, try a launch again and realise difference.
Whenever you activate a stage, the symbols of the stage should react. Engines show fuel next to them, parachute symbol changes color.

4) Add more boosters
Once those absolut basics work, fun can start!


If you still have trouble, come back and ask for help again - best with some screenshot of your built so we can spot problems.

[Istaitsu]

your staging is backwards, the solids should be on stage 2, liquid on stage 1, then the parachute on stage 0

[dunbaratu]

KSP names the stages backward from how actual space agencies name them.

People think "stage 1" is the bottom one that falls off first. KSP thinks that "stage1" is the topmot stage that stays around the longest.

That simple thing might have a lot to do with it. If you're expecting the stage called "stage 1" to go first, rather than last, then it's going to really not go the way you expect.

[Vahko]

Yep, sounds like yer reversing your staging.

[Applesauce]

The previous three posts are correct: your stages are set up in the reverse order of what you wanted. The staging sequence starts from the bottom of the list (in your case, Stage 2) and works it way up to Stage 0.

It may not have been obvious that they were firing in reverse because parachutes don't deploy while the rocket is not moving. They'll just sit and wait for it to lift off, and then suddenly pop out to join the party. Their icon in the staging sequence will be a light blue color while in this waiting state.
(Note: they will also do this at higher altitudes where there is not enough atmospheric pressure and will wait for it to increase before deploying)