Emergencies and Systems Dashboard

Emergencies and the Systems Dashboard

While you fly, the bridge runs an emergency watcher that checks your craft once a second. When something goes wrong, the pilot makes the radio call, the autopilot does something sensible about it, and the dashboard lights up. When it's sorted, you get one "resolved" line instead of a wall of spam.

Sidry: MAYDAY MAYDAY! Engine 2 flamed out! We're losing thrust!
[autopilot: wings level 30 s; relight tried on Engine 2; throttle kept on the remaining 1 engine]

[INTERCOM] Bob (Sci): Is MAYDAY good? It sounds festive.

What it watches for

Problem	What the bridge does
Engine flameout (including air starvation and running out of fuel)	Wings level for 30 s, tries a relight, opens intakes.
Parts falling off (without staging)	Names what's gone ("left main wheel", "nose wheel" or the part's title), wings level. A kerbal climbing out of an external seat doesn't count.
Overheating (a part at 95% of its limit)	Warning, and eases off any override that's pushing it.
Low fuel (under 5%)	Warning.
Stall (high angle of attack while sinking)	Nose down. With nothing engaged: SAS on and full power.
G-force blackout	With crew aboard, control lost and high G: "Sidry blacked out!", wings level and gentle pitch. When control comes back: "Sidry is back - resuming the previous command."
Reverse thrust in the air	Throttle held at idle and the reversers switched back to forward. (Reverse on the ground or during the landing rollout is normal and ignored.)
Upside down	Planes: rolled past 120 degrees for 2 seconds is a MAYDAY. With an autopilot engaged it rolls upright the shortest way, elevator neutral, so it doesn't trade altitude for speed. On the ground it's a funnier line and an INVERTED light.
One prop out	A side's rotor slows down a lot or its motor disengages: MAYDAY, wings level, rudder trim toward the good side.
Helicopter rotor RPM loss	MAYDAY. Autorotation (collective down, flare near the ground), or, if the rotor is set to "On Power Loss: Locked", a glide on the side props and wings or a controlled descent, and it tells you why.
Helicopter spin / lost tail rotor	MAYDAY, then land.
Vortex ring state (sinking fast at low airspeed)	Limits the descent and adds forward speed to fly out of its own downwash.

Tamper detection

The watcher remembers how your controls were set up when the autopilot engaged and notices if something changes mid-flight: control surfaces losing their pitch/yaw/roll duty, an axis inverted, authority changed, reaction wheels switched off, an engine shut down or switched mode, intakes closed, a rotor brake applied, or a rotor's torque dropped to zero. It assumes the worst ("Who shut down an engine?!"), flies safe, and puts things back where it can: rotor brakes are released and rotor torque restored automatically. Changes made by the bridge's own tools are ignored for a few seconds so it doesn't accuse itself.

[COMMS] Bill (Eng): It wasn't me. It's never me. ...Okay, it was me once.

Control check

The first time an autopilot engages on a craft (and after a control change), once it's been flying level for a while, the bridge gives a tiny pitch and roll nudge and checks the craft responds the right way. An inverted axis gets flipped for the autopilots; a dead one means flying safe.

The Systems dashboard

Open it with the systems button in the AICS menu header. It's a window with:

• MASTER WARNING (red) and MASTER CAUTION (amber) lamps that flash during an active emergency, with the alert text. Click a lamp to acknowledge it and stop the flashing.
• One light per system: green = OK, amber = caution, red = failure.

During an unacknowledged MAYDAY the craft's lights blink (your Light action group), and go back to how they were afterwards. Turn that off with the checkbox in the Systems window (or "mayday_lights": false in bridge_settings.json).

What you see depends on what you're flying. Only the rows that apply are shown:

Craft	Rows
Planes	each engine (thrust %, mode, REVERSE), intakes (open, air %), each control surface (axes, inverted, authority, deployed, CHANGED since engage), reaction wheels, gear, brakes, chutes, props (RPM, torque, blade pitch per side), rotor brakes
Helicopters	a HELI mode row (layout, rotor RPM, collective, vertical speed, heading vs. track and drift, "Locked on power loss"), rotor brakes per rotor
Rockets and landers	engines with gimbal state and NO FUEL when starved, fuel of the next stage per resource (LF, OX, Mono, Xenon, SRB), power (charge %, solar panels and flow), RCS, SAS and mode, what's in the next stage
Rovers	wheels (on the ground, motors on, BROKEN), battery, speed, SAS
Stations and probes	power and solar, resource totals, comms (connected or NO SIGNAL, signal %, antennas deployed), RCS, SAS
Everyone	hottest part, G-load, pilot (conscious or BLACKED OUT), any control adaptation

Amber and red thresholds: fuel under 15% is amber and under 5% red; electric charge under 25% is amber and under 10% red; no signal is red on an uncrewed craft and amber with crew aboard.

The STATUS window

The status button opens a window showing what the autopilot is doing: autopilot and phase, altitude, speed, heading, bank and pitch (current -> target), throttle (auto or manual %), live orders, overrides with their authority marks, the pilot's state, distance and ETA, the running Flight Plan step, and active alerts.