De-krakenify Mun Base

[slender patrol]

I have a Mun base that has been on the ground for 10 days, and in that time it has developed a lot of issues. Time warping sometimes causes it to spontaneously self destruct, flying a new lander to the base causes it to self destruct, and undocking the 3 landers can vary wildly in effect depending on how the kraken is feeling at that moment. All parts originally docked together with each lander on their legs with docking port Jrs. A stamp-o-tron was added to keep the base from sliding down hill, but has been deciding a random height to float at each hour, possibly making the issue worse. Attached are picture of the whole setup, do I have to use cheat to replace each lander to fix this, or is there an editor/method that will tame this mess?

[supple lintel]

It can help sometimes to lower the force on anything connected so they dont jolt when decoupled.

[slender patrol]

In the current state, everything is frozen at these angles pictured, even after undocking after cheating the structure into orbit. Most of the force comes from the ships clipping into each other, causing a violent ejection when they suddenly stop being the same vessel. Docking ports are attached to the robotics parts still despite being 2 meters away from the node they are attached to.

[supple lintel]

Yeah on the Mun, lower all the torque off the robot parts too...Hinges, rotation servos and telescopic pistons aswell, all exert force on things. It always anightmare with the Kraken. I save the game before and after touching them. Like, if I get one thing uncoupled and its ok...hard save...try the next motion..it works...hard save...if kraken bites...reload...and change something.

[slender patrol]

Are you saying the torque over time is what's causing the drifting of attached parts? If so, perhaps an action group to power down all robotics components would be useful....

[slender patrol]

I was locking everything into place after it was in a good state, as well as adding struts between the docked vehicles in hopes of the rigidity resolving the issue

[supple lintel]

Thats not a bad idea in fact. Maybe bind all the torque settings and stuff to KAL maybe or action group if its not needed. Gonna keep that in mind. Its a pain clicking on everything to on some of my robot arms, cos I use so many pieces. Typical robot Klaw arm starts with a Rotation servo, a hinge, another hinge, telescopic strut, servo, hinge, hinge, strut servo, hinge and then the klaw. And is sometimes 4 sets of that one a drilling rig.

[supple lintel]

Its not so much the drifitng...a couple of reasons on the Mun and Minmus...they push into the other craft...you can see it if you undock and then the robot parts violently swing up and away or whatever from the hinge thats been set to an angle that doesnt quite match its actual position. They bend and flex and push and pull and its real hard to tell when the motor is perfectly synched with their posistion, so backing off the torque ensures, that no unwanted pushing and pulling is happening, then when you undock the parts dont move much at all.

[slender patrol]

The parts drifting causes most of the issues, like with the lab and the floating but still rigidly attached lander can, or engines moved away from the nodes they were built on no longer balanced through the vehicle's COM. If the vehicles just placed themselves at odd angles and the robotics that are all locked in place to rectify the position, it would be all well and good. Because they are locked and all still thinking they are in the intended orientation, undocking does not bend the arm in any way as a consequence.
The case with the lab is that it can undock just fine despite the parts not being placed correctly, but flying it after is no longer possible, and the issue with the ISRU is that there is a large amount of clipping from the center lander causing the ejection issue with only the parts that are clipping, the arm stays rigid amid the explosive undocking, but once again, engines and parts no longer being in their assembled location renders the vehicle much less useful.

[supple lintel]

I get all the same issues cos I connect my bases in a similar way. Its a piece by piece situation sometimes whether I want to set a part to be either locked or not. Depends on how they are slipping and drifting around. But, when disconnecting, I find that taking the torque off a critical part is what can save the day. Each of these are connected via a robot arm.

[slender patrol]

Aside from the disconnecting issue, the part drifting is my biggest concern. I decide to cheat in a single replacement. Left is the Kraken's chew toy, right is what it looked like before it docked. Note the floating jr in between them is actually currently attached to the hinge/arm/hinge that is still sticking out. Smaller items have been consumed by sinking below other surfaces, engines, etc.

Back side

[slender patrol]

Ugh, in the process of unloading the new one to discard the old, the docking arms on the new one warped out of place. Hinges are all disengaged, now I'm going to take this chance to see if turning all torque off on the hydraulics too makes a difference. The original didn't do this until after it had docked, this new one is teleported straight from the launch pad...

Nope, reducing all torque after quickloading then repeating the action has not benefitted the vessel