Kerbal Space Program

Looks like it doesn't happen when you undock or decouple something from the vessel.

Other workarounds:

Just enable timewarp so the game deletes those broken solar panel pieces. Or switch scene to the tracking station and back. That will also delete the pieces.

Anth12 wrote:

My theory is that KSP thinks the craft is landed on the surface because the broken pieces littered around on the ground are still counted as a part of the main vessel, they dont move when the craft lifts off so therefore...the craft is landed.

Good detective work.

I suspect you are 100% correct. The game probably does something like this pseudocode to detect that the ship is landed:

For each part of this vessel:
{
  Get all the colliders contained in this part, and for each of them:
  {
    if this collider touches a terrain polygon
    {
      set status to "landed".
    }
  }
}

What makes the extendable solar panel different from other Parts is that when an extendable panel breaks, it's not the whole part with all its colliders that breaks off or explodes. It's only a subset of the colliders that detach. The rectangular sections break off, But The Base Piece Remains Part Of The Vessel. It's still there and is still the same part in the vessel's parts tree. It's just now a part that has some of its colliders severed and laying on the ground, apart from the rest of it.

So the above pseudocode counts the solar panel as part of the vessel because that base piece is still connected, and those colliders laying on the ground are still being counted as part of that solar panel.

For the developer who works on this: Are there other parts besides Solar Panels that might have this same bug because part of it gets detached and left on the ground? The extendable heat radiators might have the same problem.

dok_377 wrote:

Other workarounds:

Just enable timewarp so the game deletes those broken solar panel pieces. Or switch scene to the tracking station and back. That will also delete the pieces.

There are easy fixes IF and only IF you notice the problem before you start taking off. Anything that reloads the scene, like going to the tracking center and coming back, seems to fix it. But once you start taking off you're helpless to fix it because the false "moving across the ground" message prevents you from doing things like enabling rails timewarp (it will force you to only be able to do physics warp).

Dunbaratu wrote:

dok_377 wrote:

Other workarounds:

Just enable timewarp so the game deletes those broken solar panel pieces. Or switch scene to the tracking station and back. That will also delete the pieces.

There are easy fixes IF and only IF you notice the problem before you start taking off. Anything that reloads the scene, like going to the tracking center and coming back, seems to fix it. But once you start taking off you're helpless to fix it because the false "moving across the ground" message prevents you from doing things like enabling rails timewarp (it will force you to only be able to do physics warp).

Those workarounds are aimed at people that see this report. We can't influence people that do not see this bugtracker, and we can't let all people know there's something wrong with the game if they're not going to see this report, obviously. We're leaving it here so other people that seek solutions may find what they need.

dok_377 wrote:

Dunbaratu wrote:

dok_377 wrote:

Other workarounds:

Just enable timewarp so the game deletes those broken solar panel pieces. Or switch scene to the tracking station and back. That will also delete the pieces.

There are easy fixes IF and only IF you notice the problem before you start taking off. Anything that reloads the scene, like going to the tracking center and coming back, seems to fix it. But once you start taking off you're helpless to fix it because the false "moving across the ground" message prevents you from doing things like enabling rails timewarp (it will force you to only be able to do physics warp).

Those workarounds are aimed at people that see this report. We can't influence people that do not see this bugtracker, and we can't let all people know there's something wrong with the game if they're not going to see this report, obviously. We're leaving it here so other people that seek solutions may find what they need.

Those were the very people I was speaking to. It's quite important that deleting the panel debris by time warping is not a workaround you can do in response to the bug, it's one you have to do ahead of time in anticipation of the bug, before you see it manifest.

A person reading this page likely came here because they are in the middle of having this bug affect them at the moment, and can't save the game properly right now. I think clarifying that we sadly don't have a good workaround for that problem is relevant. We can tell you how to keep it from happening the next time, but we can't do anything about the fact that it's happening to you right now.

The fixing of this might have caused #25744

For anyone still playing in KSP 1.9.x, another workaround is to use the HyperEdit orbit editor's "Set to current orbit" function to grab the active vessel's current orbit, and then hitting "Apply" to load the vessel onto said orbit; this doesn't change its orbit (since the orbit being applied is the same as its current orbit), but it forces the vessel's situation from LANDED to SUB-ORBITAL/ORBITING/ESCAPING (depending on whether the vessel is in a closed orbit and whether its orbit intersects the datum sphere of the current celestial body), allowing saving, timewarping, etc..