Launch Location Bugs

Well, I need the update. I launched from the location that yesterday worked for me and now it does not work, I hope 0.6.7 comes soon

@NathanMikeska Thanks! I solved my own problem with a workaround (just made a ship with lots of rcs and rotated it until everything worked). I hope next update don't break the saved location I have now, but based on what you tell here it should be easy to set a new location that works for me.

The 200m above sea solution seems a nice fix. I'll love to test launch locations more (but not this week and maybe not next week, I've had enough for this one hahaha)

Ok... I took a look at this today and made a few changes. First of all, there are a few things going on here and a few different problems...
 
When a launch location is created while not grounded, the location's heading will be based off the orientation of the current command pod. If a craft is loaded that uses a command pod with a different orientation, the launch location may not load how you expect it to. This is by design.
 
When a launch location is created while grounded, the craft orientation should always be pointing up, and the facing will be a 0 to 360 degree value. Unfortunately for now, this heading is hard-coded to zero (its a trickier problem to solve than it sounds like). So this is the reason why you can load a rover on the runway, save a location, then load that location and see the rover pointing backwards. This is a known problem, and one we would love to solve, but its gonna take some more effort. I've logged this as a separate bug report here. Please feel free to upvote it.
 
I believe one of the bugs you were seeing was an issue with new grounded launch locations using incorrect orientations until the game (or game state) is reloaded. This should be fixed in the next update.
 
There were definitely a couple bugs related to saving launch locations while above terrain that is under sea level. These should be fixed in the next update.
 
Another change I made was that now locations in water or above water and below 200 meters altitude are considered 'grounded'. This should cause these water launch locations to have an upward pointing orientation, which is probably what is wanted when it comes to using them to launch water-based craft.
 
I'm hoping these fixes/changes should resolve all of the issues you identified (except for the orientation bug I logged and linked to earlier). If you still experience trouble with the launch locations after the next update, please log another bug report.
 
Thanks for the help!

@AndrewGarrison thank you for this game :) I wanted to make something very similar after college, but now I get to enjoy it without having to expend 100s of hours :D

@pedro16797 Thanks for taking the time to submit this bug report and thank you for the additional info! This is a great bug report!

I've found a workoround, after 10 hours testing things I'm going to take a break, my head is about to explode.

I've made a quick ship to roll, yaw and pitch to test everything and I've saved a location with craft at 0 0 0, gone to menu, selected that location and launched, craft was at 90 0 0. Went to editor and rotated the controller to -90 0 0, launched and the craft was still at 90 0 0. I've been rotating the control in the different axis and it still spawns at 90 0 0

@AndrewGarrison about point 1, I'm always using ASL while doing this test, all of them in open sea (two main locations, near default water and near launch site continent at ecuator)

@AndrewGarrison about 5, what happened to me was that I had a cpu with rotation 0 0 0 and another one with rotation 90 90 0 (primary).
Saved location with the rotated one, went to editor, set primary the 0 0 0 one and launch. Craft direction was exactly the same as before. Went to the editor, made sure I changed primary and indeed I did, so I launched again and the craft was at 90 90 0 direction.

Then I went back to editor, changed primary to the 90 90 0 and launched, and craft direction was not 0 0 0 nor 90 90 0, but 0 90 0.

@AndrewGarrison I think 2 and 4 are related, because what seems to happen is that locations are not updated when you overwrite them, undo and relaunch. It's needed to exit editor, pick the location again and then launch.

Dev Notes:

1. Investigate launch locations over water and ensure they are using ASL instead of AGL

2. I was not able to reproduce this.

3. Easy to reproduce this with the SimpleRover, since its heading direction is weird. Save a location and then launch from that location and the craft with its nose pointing upwards.

4. I did not attempt to repro.

5. This is how SR2 currently works. The orientation of the craft is based on the orientation of the primary command pod.

6. I did not attempt to repro