Mother ship destroyed.

SeregDuin · Jan 23, 2019

I dont understand. I am sitting in my SRV on a planet 12600ly from home.
I am on a flat plain nowhere near mountains. The planet i am on is only .5g.
There is noone else for hundreds of light years around.
I finish picking up the minerals i need and recall the ship.
Message Mothership hull critical
Emergency ship destroyed.
No reason. No warning.
I had hundreds of systems worth of scan data on board and still had a long trip planned. Hull was at 99% when i landed - gently.
Can anyone shed light on why this might have happened. Does it mean that now while exploring we cant afford to take the risk of landing to explore or ship will just explode for no reason.

Aashenfox · Jan 23, 2019

It's extremely rare, but the landing logic does screw up every now and then. Next time, what you need to do as soon as you realise something is going wrong (your ship is losing shields or hull), is close the game immediately, then at the game launcher, load the NON Horizons game. This will spawn you in your ship in orbit of the planet. Now exit and reload Horizons and carry on.

In the meantime, you can raise a ticket and any data or other losses should be restored if they are able to do so, including the rebuy price.

Dommarraa · Jan 23, 2019

Support Ticket

SeregDuin · Jan 23, 2019

In this case even if i had know it was a possiblity and was expecting it, the time between the first indication - which was " Hulll critical " and the ship destroyed was less than half a second.

Aashenfox · Jan 23, 2019

SeregDuin said:
In this case even if i had know it was a possiblity and was expecting it, the time between the first indication - which was " Hulll critical " and the ship destroyed was less than half a second.

I hear ya. Keep this method in mind though for any number of things that can go wrong on a planet, especially if you're a loooong way from home.

It's particularly useful for when the SRV gets totally stuck in a hole or merges with a rock or something like that.

Factabulous · Jan 23, 2019

Also worth pointing out that the bio / geo sites are handy for mats as they are small enough that your ship will stay landed. Though the SRV can get jammed on them, so recover to orbit is still useful.

Anyway, support ticket - that is an annoying way to end an exploration trip

Aashenfox · Jan 23, 2019

Stasis Wolf said:
How much power does your ship have and what were your power management settings? If you min/maxed your exploration set up this can happen.

Ooooh, yes, good point... if your power is on the edge and not prioritised correctly the NPC/AI will mess it up. Excellent reminder, I'd forgotten about that little nugget. Rep!!

Shir · Jan 23, 2019

Yeah, unless a bug, it could be a power handling issue. I've had it on occasions when in unconfigured ships. When the npc took over, shields or life support would go offline. Never had the ship destroyed however.

777Driver · Jan 23, 2019

Stasis Wolf said:
How much power does your ship have and what were your power management settings? If you min/maxed your exploration set up this can happen.

^This, I used to be able to trick my ship into not auto launching (2km limit) by setting priorities so the engines would remain offline. Quite possible that a power starved ship could run into problems on recall. Btw, any chance your power plant had any damage? A fault would certainly cause critical systems to go offline.

A friend of mine recently had the same issue on a planet (whilst he was in control) Power plant malfunctioned, he temporarily lost engines and shields, essentially became a 400 tonne rock falling to the surface.

SeregDuin · Jan 23, 2019

Stasis Wolf said:
How much power does your ship have and what were your power management settings? If you min/maxed your exploration set up this can happen.

Ship was set up to that it had plenty of power for everything on board at about 95% with weapons out (2 tiny little pulse lasers). Have never had a spec of trouble with power in this ship.
I've put in a support ticket - even just to know what happened.
All modules were at 98-99% health.

VR SenseiMatty · Jan 23, 2019

I think we're gonna read more of this. The engine pips bug is still not fixed.
You were on a 0.5G planet which is not a lot but I can imagine more ships getting destroyed during auto landing becuase there are no pips to the engines on high G planets.

Anyway did you have the chance to see your ship during the recall? Have you seen it falling or spawning at all? Or was it just a message with absolutely no evidence that your ship was anywhere near?

Andovar · Jan 23, 2019

777Driver said:
I used to be able to trick my ship into not auto launching (2km limit) by setting priorities so the engines would remain offline.

Now that's a cool little trick.

you say "used to". I guess that means this 'loophole' has been patched out?

777Driver · Jan 23, 2019

Andovar said:
Now that's a cool little trick.
you say "used to". I guess that means this 'loophole' has been patched out?

Unfortunately they did, thrusters now automatically go offline, they boot themselves up when the ship auto launches. Can't seem to do anything to keep them offline. No big deal, am not a fan of the 2km limit though.

Andovar · Jan 23, 2019

777Driver said:
Unfortunately they did, thrusters now automatically go offline, they boot themselves up when the ship auto launches. Can't seem to do anything to keep them offline. No big deal, am not a fan of the 2km limit though.

Not a fan of the 2km limit either.
I recently had a pucker moment when my ship was recalled, and it landed with a thud and huge dust up. I literally thought it popped. Jaw dropped, sad-face. Well there goes a few thousand ly worth of system data.
...then the dust settled. She's alive!

Now i always make sure to stay within 2km when exploring geological sites. ...just in case.

ALEX CAOS · Jan 23, 2019

launch elite without horizons mabe you spawn in your ship and your problem is fixed worth a try

...did this as i was stuck at a planet but mabe mechanics changed no guerante you not awake elsewhere

777Driver · Jan 23, 2019

ALEX CAOS said:
launch elite without horizons mabe you spawn in your ship and your problem is fixed worth a try

You just see a rebuy screen, at least that is what happened when I lost a ship whilst in my SRV

CMDR Carbo · Jan 23, 2019

There is a bug in the game since 3.3 that sets the ships pips automatically to 4-0-2 (0 pips for engine) whenever you deploy the SRV that could potentially lead to power failure / ship destruction.

aRJay · Jan 23, 2019

There used to be the problem that if you were in a deep enough canyon your ship would try to fly down to you and would crash into the walls as it circled looking for a place to land.

I think that was changed so they would try and land at some inaccessible mountain peak instead.

SeregDuin · Jan 24, 2019

SenseiMatty said:
Anyway did you have the chance to see your ship during the recall? Have you seen it falling or spawning at all? Or was it just a message with absolutely no evidence that your ship was anywhere near?

Didn't see the ship but did here the pop when it dropped in.
Thanks everyone for your input. I will wait to see what frontier come back with from the ticket and let you know. They are apparently very busy since 3.3 release.

IndigoWyrd · Jan 24, 2019

There are very few circumstances where I don't dismiss my ship while SRV'ing around.

Why?

1. You ship shows up on the SRV Fish Finder. This can block out finding other things.
2. Ever roll an SRV while under your ship? It's frelling annoying and all you can do is dismiss.
3. Other People. They are not to be trusted.
4. I'm probably going more than 2k away anyways, so my ship is going to head off to Raxxla anyways. Might as well give it a head start.