rotor subgrids not sharing mass with primary ship.

[Blaank]

When I use rotors for solar panels it doesn't matter if I lock them or not, my ship handles strange and rolls when yawing and sinks while hovering over a planet. Ship gyros and hovering doesn't take into account mass contained within rotors and this makes many many ship designs impossible to use (anything using rotors). Is there any planned fix for this or way to work around it? It's been a bug for at least 3 years.

Before you suggest it, thruster override doesn't work as it won't fix the orientation issues and will cause lateral movement if the ship is not 100% level.

[Psojed]

So there's a bug, you know about it, yet you never report it to the devs. Why are you surprised that bug still exists?

"Your ship" is very much a useless description. Start by posting screenshots of your setup
OR
Post steps how we can easily build our own ship and see the bug in action.

[Blaank]

It's a well known issue the devs are aware of. Rotor subgrids don't add mass to a ship, thus the hover force and gyro force don't compensate for it. I'm asking if there is a workaround. previously locking rotors would stop it but they don't anymore.

To reproduce, take any ship, put a rotor on it, attach 8 refineries to the rotor. Your ship now can't hover or turn correctly.

[Blaank]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1768755168

This ship pitches forward and will quickly descend from a set altitude with no inputs. This happens with the rotor locked or unlocked.

[Blaank]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1768756276

This ship hovers forever and moves perfectly with no oddities and is stable.

[Blaank]

Not being able to use rotors in ship design is quite crippling. Via atmospheric or space, it will handle horribly, sometimes to the point of being unpilotable or otherwise unusable.

[Psojed]

I found one bug on the support site matching your description. It has three votes total, and it is 9 months old -> not an important bug.

I'm pretty sure there are designs on the workshop that use rotors, so its6 not like you can't use rotors.

Anyway, I'll have a look at what's going on when I get home.

[mid endian]

Have you tried to extend out a line of blocks put the landing gear on the end towards your sub grid? Or try a connector lock between the main ship and a sub bread?

[Psojed]

I was able to build your contraption on the screenshot and it's able to fly in any direction, turn in any direction, and slows down to 0 as required. When left unattended, it hovers.

https://imgur.com/a/Ss477JQ

The only difference is, I used Large Atmo thrusters in all directions. Small ones are not powerful enough.

PS: about the mass thing. If I check the info panel, note down the mass. Then add a fourth refinery on the rotor, and check mass again, the number goes up, so it definitely counts mass of the stuff on a rotor too.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Yeah its not that the mass isnt added its that its a seperate entity with its own com that dosent inherit the thrust from the main grid. Anything with weight on a rotor will slowly pitch or roll in atmo if left long enough, no matter the ammount of thrust.

There currently is no way around it appart from having the extra grid perfectly balanced with your ships COM. Even then your creation will fall slowly. The painfull thing is that this is intended behaviour. Its the new versioon of safety locks that "fits better with the new physics". The old version "welded" the two grids together and solved it :(

[Blaank]

Psojed, give it an hour. The ship will be on the ground. The more thrusters you use and the more mass is on the thruster side of the rotor, the slower it happens. Putting large atmos thrusters shifts the mass balance far towards the ship side so the effect is much slower. And besides, if the small thrusters weren't enough, then why did the ship with no rotors hover perfectly?

So that's why locking rotors no longer fixes it. I tried logging into the support thing but it gave an error. 500 Error Call to undefined function exif_read_data() . I did register but it keeps telling me my password or email is wrong then I go to register again and it says I can't use the same password. So.... the support site is busted pretty hard.


It doesn't just affect hovering, it affects everything to do with mass such as gyros and braking. A ship with mass on rotor will damper to stationary slower in space than a ship with the same mass and no rotors since the damper doesn't take into account anything on the rotor.

You either build a ship with no rotors or you deal with all the problems having a rotor causes. In-atmosphere, rotors are unviable. In space, rotors are a nuisance. It's killing my fun and creativity.

[Psojed]

Originally posted by Blaank:

Psojed, give it an hour. The ship will be on the ground. The more thrusters you use and the more mass is on the thruster side of the rotor, the slower it happens. Putting large atmos thrusters shifts the mass balance far towards the ship side so the effect is much slower.

If there was any meaning behind "mass balance" you described, then you wouldn't be able to build a 20-block long line of heavy armor plates, place a thruster only at one end and lift it up. Yet you can.

Originally posted by Blaank:

And besides, if the small thrusters weren't enough, then why did the ship with no rotors hover perfectly?

Well, I'm no expert on rotor mechanics, but seeing how the refineries kept spinning around as I moved the ship to the sides, I would guess the spinning refieneries generated sideways movement, which was applied to the whole grid mass (because again there is nothing like "mass balance" that I'm aware of), so it was moving something heavier than the small thrusters can move.

Rotor lock stops the spinning. Also, if you're going to hover for an hour without actually using the rotor, did you try turning the rotor block off?

Originally posted by Blaank:

So.... the support site is busted pretty hard.

Yeah it is busted, you can't register to keen forum either.
Luckily I had an account on the support from a previous time, so I can still report bugs. You can also try emailing one of the devs and asking them directly how are the rotors supposed to behave.

[Blaank]

Nah, my rotor was locked, no spinning refineries, just wonky handling and sinking ships and tilting over. I've never been able to fly a single ship with rotors on it without poor handling and tipping over and descending into the ground.

It's a known bug. Confirmed. There's no question that gyros and hovering don't work when your ships have rotors on them. It all depends how much of the mass is on the rotor subgrid vs how much mass is not on the rotor subgrid. the higher the ratio of grid to subgrid, the less you get affected by the bug.

I am unable to state any more clearly that it is a known bug with 100% reproduceability rate. Make a ship, put a rotor on it, you have the bug.

[Psojed]

Well, its not going to change anything, but I made a simple test. Same contraption, but I tripled the amount of refineries on the rotor, and built a block below the ship to see where it's going to move. See you in an hour

[Psojed]

So it's been 50 minutes, and I observed a single effect, a slight tilt towards the ground. But the ship didn't move from its spot. When I got in and leveled it back with the horizon (= only gyroscope movement), it was still in the same spot above the block I placed.

https://imgur.com/a/wQNfcYS

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Originally posted by Psojed:

Originally posted by Blaank:

Psojed, give it an hour. The ship will be on the ground. The more thrusters you use and the more mass is on the thruster side of the rotor, the slower it happens. Putting large atmos thrusters shifts the mass balance far towards the ship side so the effect is much slower.

If there was any meaning behind "mass balance" you described, then you wouldn't be able to build a 20-block long line of heavy armor plates, place a thruster only at one end and lift it up. Yet you can.

This is because that all belongs to a single grid. When someting is on a rotor its a completly new grid. It has its own COM and wants to fall in geavity. That wanting to fall produces a force on your ship at the point the rotor connects pushing down on it.

So if the rotor is at the front it will pitch down slowly. If the rotor is at the back it will pitch up slowly. Either side it will roll slowly.

Originally posted by Psojed:

So it's been 50 minutes, and I observed a single effect, a slight tilt towards the ground. But the ship didn't move from its spot. When I got in and leveled it back with the horizon (= only gyroscope movement), it was still in the same spot above the block I placed.

https://imgur.com/a/wQNfcYS

It only moves when it pitches enough that the thrusters cant hold the weight. Most ships dont have the thrust to hover while nose down, or when upside down. So if the force from the rotor pitches you enough you will eventually reach the point you cant hover and fall.

If you had enough thrust for your ship to hover in any orientation it may be able to maintain altitude but would still constantly and slowly spin :)