Small Ship Large Thruster Damage

This is a bug I've had for a long time and was hoping it would be fixed in an update but it still isnt.

With large thrusters on small ships they seem to be destroying themselves and occasionally other blocks that are no where near the flame or damage area. Blocks along its side get destroyed from what seems to be a slightly to large damage area, IE outside the thruster.

This isnt an all the time thing, it only happens on some ship (new and old) and even then not all the thrusters do it, a ship i use with 4 large thrusters randomly destroys themselves, not even other blocks, just themselves BUT its random, sometimes there will be 1-2 thrusters left.
It isn't my block placement as I have another ship, completely different other than block proximity to the thruster and it has never destroyed itself before.

This is REALLY annoying so please KEEN fix it already, Ive had this issue for a few months now.

 

I've experience this myself.

For the past week on dedicated server, i have a heavy armored fighter with 3 large thrusters.

It happened quiet a few times that one of my thrusters would just destroy himself.

At first i though it was my fault so i re checked and redid the layout, but then it happened again and again and again, without any reasons for it to do so.

 

+1 on this. I also have a heavy fighter with 3 Large Thrusters at the back. Sometimes they blow up and damage a few blocks around the. I tried attaching the to other Thrusters, Heavy armor, Light armor etc. and it still happens. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. It also happens to the 1, 2 or all three so it's not the same block that blows up. It seems to happen on activation.

 

Same issue here.
happens on dedicated server, and on my SP creative map.

It seems that when you try to protect the thruster nozzle, any of the blocks round it will get damaged. I have a small ship with multiple large thrusters. Those that are inset by 1 block will damage the surrounding blocks. Those that are not inset (the thruster nozzle is completely exposed) do not damage the surrounding blocks.

 

The large thruster needs at least 8 blocks free space in straight direction in complete height & width for its blue flame, what must not collide to anything (this is given if you fly next to a base, asteroid etc.). If there's everything free, then it's really a bug. The last time I destroyed my large thrusters on a small ship having the free space after the thruster left too small (6 or 7 blocks wide), so the thruster barbecued itself. On the left and right, there is no need for vacant blocks (but remember the heat will splash if the beam encounters any block). I also grilled large thrusters on my drilling ship, that was due to too long thrustering onto an asteroid's wall, so I built a new one the flame cannot touch anything next to the ship.

Small thruster need 5 blocks, large 8, regardless of block type (large or small).

 

It's the armor. I don't know why, but any armor directly adjacent to the BODY of the thruster will spontaneously deform INTO the body, destroying it. When I say body, I mean not the nozzle, but the large block supporting it.

I was becoming extremely frustrated with this issue myself as my mining ship's main thruster kept blowing up, leaving me stranded far from home, having to strafe my way out of narrow tunnels and other difficult spots. I tried many different positions and orientations for the thruster, but nothing helped until I replaced the armor protecting the body of the thruster with small thrusters. Once there was no armor adjacent to the thruster, it stopped destroying itself.

The problem seems to originate specifically on the sides and bottom of the body of the thruster as I have since reconfigured to have armor along the top and still have no problems.


Small thrusters left and right, battery below, armor above.

 

i think it would be much easier for the devs to reproduce this bug when u distribute a save with a ship that will destroy itself... so if u have a backup or something maybe u should upload it and link it here

 

Hi,

thank you for report. We are working on it.

 

I turned thruster damage off due to this.

 

Update: this is not fixed yet and even my workaround seems to have limits...

In this picture you see the same ship as the last picture, except it's missing the large thruster because it has just destroyed itself. You can see how the armor from on the left side below the engine block deformed itself into a spike very specifically to reach up toward the thruster and destroy it. This happened after a brief mining trip where the ship sustained VERY MINOR scrapes to the exterior.


As you can see in this shot, the block that deformed actually received no damage at all. Really odd is that neither the battery to the right of the deformed armor block, nor the thruster above the deformed armor block were affected. It somehow reached between the two and specially targeted the large thruster. This is a weird bug, please squash it soon.

 

This sounds like it could be related to a problem/learning moment i had with a small backwards thruster pointing towards a generator with 3 blocks in between.
3 blocks is enough to not generate damage but whenever i bounced into an astroid to mine, my generator would blow.
It turned out that the thrusterdamage experiences some type of momentum, and that in case of astroidbouncing, i required more space between thruster and block then in a static environment.

If thrusterdamage has indeed momentum, then it will probably also have this sideways and inwards momentum, and although a small thruster might not do quick enough damage to damage itself while accelerating/braking or making a turn, a large thruster probably could.

 

The momentum idea is interesting, but doesn't explain what we're seeing here. If that were the cause, any blocks in the aformentioned positions would take damage from the large thruster wash, but that's not the case. Only armor blocks react in this way, and the reaction is totally unique.

I ran some collision tests and when armor blocks deform normally from impact, they only change shape on the side that makes contact with the foreign object. What we're seeing here is the opposite, as the armor blocks remain completely intact on the side that makes contact with the asteroid and instead deforms on the opposite face and always directly toward the body of the large thruster.

Also note, I've had large thrusters destroy themselves this way without making contact with anything.

 

'momentum' was probably a poor wordchoice, as thats just how it felt like to me and has probably little to do with whats really happening in the background.
If this theory is correct and these situations are indeed related, then i think what happens in the background is that there is a synchronisationproblem between thruster- and armor/ship coordinates.
If this is the case, then you'd risk losing your engine when the ship is decelerating while the large thruster is either full on, or in bursts.
When a desynchronisation occurs, the thrustdamage would then be behind the thruster, resulting in a broken thruster, and if a block would be in front of the thrusterdamage, it would also show the spikes in the direction as is the case in your pics.
if you experience the problem also when going straight foreward at steady speed and without turning, then this possibility is nomore.

**
I just did some testing as well and find the deformations to be identical:




<table cellpadding="0" border="0" width="100%" class="post_body" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" colspan="2" class="post" height="100%">There is a bug in this design btw that alowes engine 2 to work without engine 1 exploding, so if you want to do the same test, set the second engine at full override, and remove the front engine, then replace it and it will be destroyed and the sidespike will appear.</td></tr></tbody></table>

 

I'm confused at what I'm looking at here. Is the middle picture the before and top and bottom the after?

 

Yes, The middle picture is the before, top and bottom are two seperate attempts resulting in the exact same damage every time. Tried 5 times or so.
And what you see is a simulation of what would happen if the flame of a large thruster would somehow end up behind the thruster.

*correction from previous post.. The problem should be most likely to occur not when decelerating, but when moving backwards, and then full throttle forewards.

 

I had one but it was 3 or 4 versions ago.
it was battery driven i.e. very small ship(with 1 large thruster, and minimal amount of small one in other directions, no armor at all), which blown up in 0.1 sec on accelerating with enabled charged battery.

 

So I've been working on LaForge's concept, which now that I understand it, seems to be playing a role here. However, I can't seem to repro this bug intentionally, at least not in any natural fashion. LaForge's setup of a thruster behind a thruster does recreate the damage seen with this bug fairly reliably, but there seems to be little to no consistency to the destruction when slight variations are introduced.

Before I go further with screenshots and an attempt to break this all down, I'd appreciate a heads up from Phand and the bug team. Is this info helpful to you guys, or are you already beyond us on this issue? Should we keep testing, or do you have it figured out and it's just a matter of time until the fix is implemented?

 

I also have this problem. Got one big thruster on my mining ship and it gets very often destroyed without any logical cause. I recorded the whole thing, below is the link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8TLZqZVOR4gcFlJNGozc0x0LTg/view?usp=sharing

It only happens, when I get on the ship and try to move forward. If it does not self-destruct at this very moment, then everything goes well. Sometimes moving sideways/up/down first helps, but it's not a rule, rather sheer luck.

Funny enough, my welding ship has 2 large thrusters and nothing like this ever happened to it.


PS: It's my first post here, so greetings to You all.

 

Yep, that's this bug, for sure. Armor deforming into the thruster block for no reason. As a workaround, just get rid of that armor there.

Interesting video, I've never been able to see the thruster destroy itself before. Are you able to reproduce this reliably?

 

I sure can. It's not like 100% inevitable, but the chance for this to happen is very high. It's pissing me of so much, that now I always save the game before taking this ship for a stroll, so that I can load it back whenever the thruster disappears (tired of replacing it, also it's a waste of resources).

 

Well, just as a frustration saving workaround, get rid of that armor. It only happens with armor blocks.

 

I am having the same issue with large Thrusters and modded thrusters destroying themselves. Seems like They are completely clear of all other blocks and will just vanish, no explosion no damage, the just vanish.

 

Hi,

it is also known issue. We are working on it. Thank you for report.

 

Wow this post got alot of attention. Just wana say the problem still exists with the Recent update.

I saw someone mentioning 3 block thruster damage, the minimum damage range of a small thruster is usually 3 blocks BUT is 4 when it goes into overload while stopping.
Also if needed I have several ships that can continuously reproduce the thrust damage at anytime if needed as they do it everytime I fly them :/

 

All it takes is an undeniable proof - a video.

 

Oops, i must have used the wrong search term and i didnt find this thread before posting my own. Will put my report here too for ease of access.:

Thruster hitboxes seem to be misplaced or something, and there's some kind of backblast effect that didnt exist when i first tested thruster damage that doesnt appear to be intentional. This bug has started to effect several of my old designs which previously displayed no problems, and new designs.


the above config was fine to fly with both engines at max power for quite a long time, neither were damaged at all.


(in this screen the engine in the way was moved one block lower, so the thrust from the other touched the nozzle of the one in the way) this config explodes both or one of the engines very quickly, tested 5 times. same thing happens if you lower it one more block.

This is also the fastest way to destroy an engine. just place some empty blocks behind a thruster and it will explode as long as they are attached to the same grid, you don't even need to weld them up. This is the backblast effect i mentioned.

Here is the design and here is the result after a bit of flying. Old designs with similar engine configs that used to work no longer work without detonating either.





Even more curious, after restarting the game,my ship worked fine for awhile without any engines exploding. As a test, i added a thruster base in the way of the top one as i did before, and upon thrusting, other engines that weren't involved exploded.

This is obviously very broken. Would appreciate a fix so i don;t have to disable thruster damage forever.





SE log file just in case it's relevant: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16970274/space%20engineers/SpaceEngineers.log

 

This is still broken. ever getting fixed?

 

I think I mentioned this in one of the Small Ship Large Thruster threads, but this is the first time I made an image:


The Small Ship version is actually a solid box. The Large Ship version is a cone-capsule thing stuck on a smaller box.

Note how the Small Ship Large Reactor is also a solid cube. The Large Ship version is a sphere with some extra details. Anything hitting the invisible portion of the box still counts as a collision (or thruster damage).

My theory is that the red thruster damage beam (shown using F11 debug view) clips the invisible edge of the adjacent offset thruster.

 

In my small ship I fixed this bug by replacing all engines. Also notice that hitboxes are getting a bit crazy when your ship is moving fast and you're trying to build on it.

 

Thanks a ton for this suggestion, replacing the thrusters on my ships fixed it, for now.

It must have been ninja patched in a more recent update, but didnt update until replacing it. because before, replacing didnt fix it.