Merge blocks sometimes don't convert their grid back to a ship when detaching from a station grid

As the title says, I have been googling, testing and rebuilding so many times, tried to track down the cause of this issue but I can't seem to find it. Most noteably, on another grid it just works fine so I though it was a design problem but as it turns out, a single piston with a merge block attached (as a ship) connecting to a station grid and then detaching it again remains as a station grid, with it being unable to be moved which is very bad for a piston's purpose.

On another grid it just works fine. Detach, auto convert to a ship, move the merge blocks back and go one level deeper with that prototype of a drill.

I have uploaded my world to the steam workshop here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1905390787

The white drill(s) are perfectly fine and work flawlessly, they are from a previous prototype version and don't feature much gimmicks such as blinking lights etc.
The dark grey/red drills are the flawed ones. Their merge block grid(s) don't convert back to a ship grid when detaching whereas the white drills do.

If you'd take some time to help me solve this mystery I'd highly appreciate your contribution.
Thanks in advance.

 

Welcome to Space Engineers.

In order to understand, you must know what the merge block is actually for. It is essentially a tool to make one grid out of two separate grids. For the most part this was to be a one-time deal. Once the merge was completed the merge blocks would be removed and replaced with regular blocks. Un-merging was not really part of the plan. In order for a merge to work at all, the smaller of the two grids had to take on the identity of the larger grid. There has never been any way to restore the previous identity to the smaller grid once it detaches. Thus, if you merge a ship to a station that is larger than the ship, the ship will become a station and will remain one after the merge is reversed. When you un-merge two ships, your only problem will be that the smaller of the two will have lost its identity and will believe it is the other ship.

My advice: don't merge anything to a station if you intend to un-merge it. Use connectors or landing gear.

 

And yet since the merge block was added Keen have always included ships and stations within the stock game (encounters) that have merge blocks and connectors alongside each other ... is it any wonder that new players are confused ?

 

Especially because since standard connectors are taller than merge blocks, that setup does not work.

 

Connectors are my connector of choice. Once I connect, I add or remove ore, ingots, ice, gas, and/or components, and/or I can recharge the batteries on my ship (if connected to another ship and/or station that has surplus power, and/or I can jump two or more ships that are connected with connectors. Did I use enough "and/or" occurrences in my sentence? I tried. I really did.

 

Yeah, @Roxette. The problem is the fact that they included so many community builds and didn't actually check this - or didn't bother checking it. More likely the latter than the first. Also I think Keen hoped that it could be used this way even though it wasn't really designed for it. Evidence has proven otherwise... and I don't think there are any such encounters in the vanilla game any more? Or is there?

 

There are many of them still, including some newly introduced ones.

 

@Roxette Great. But not really surprising.

 

Thanks a lot, this explains the weird behavior. I will need to do some testing and change my design on that drill but with that information now available, it should be entirely possible.

 

Well, as you know, because I say so every chance I get, my fleet is designed to merge together into a single unit. The trick is to make sure that the only parts of the two ships that actually touch are the merge blocks themselves (tip: don't bother using more than one. Using multiple merge blocks does not make the merge any stronger, and it actually complicates things if one merge block connects before any of the others.). If you are going to insist on standard blocks, your connectors will have to be on pistons so that you can compensate for the differences. Personally, I have found a number of modded conveyor blocks that have a mergeless end.

For a lot of reasons I don't trust connectors to hold my multi-million kg ships together during hard maneuvers, locked or not. Merging means all the gyros and engines work as a single unit and there's no phantom movement. The downside is that grids that detach from the main grid still think they're the main grid. In the grand scheme of things, though, I haven't found that to be a real problem.

 

The connections I make aren't meant to be permanent. I should have clarified what I said.

 

And/or permanent?

 

Nah, I rarely use merge blocks to join together smaller pieces into larger pieces. Wacky thinking, I know.