Planetary gravity acting strange?

[KiloZulu]

I built a ship with planetary landing in mind. When I took it out for a shakedown cruise, I decided to land it on a nearby planet as part of the test. The ship has 1357 thrust for the ship's mass of 998. Also, it can achieve 100% overdrive. My first surprise was that it could not escape the planet's gravity, or even get off the ground. The second surprise came in how it insisted on landing...on its nose.

The ship is 69m long, 47m wide, and only 14m high - physics suggests that the ship would not naturally settle sticking straight up in the air resting on a single block of glass. Even though I couldn't get off the ground, I could at least control the ship's orientation, so I kept righting the ship so it was sitting properly. The moment I let go of the controls, however, it sprang back up.

I eventually used my jump drive to leave the planet. I returned to base and cleared out some room for some stop modules to reduce the effect of gravity. The best I managed without tearing the ship too far apart was a 25% reduction in gravitational effect. I took it to another planet (by this time the third planet I had tried the experiment on,) and had the exact same problem. I was unable to lift off, and could only stare at the dirt in front of my viewscreen.

Is there some bug with planet gravity at the moment?

 

[AtraUnam]

Your ship's COM is based around the core rather than the area with the most blocks. If your core is at the front then your ship is going to end up balancing on it's nose.

 

[mgwerner]

Your ship's COM is based around the core rather than the area with the most blocks. If your core is at the front then your ship is going to end up balancing on it's nose.

Very good to know, that explains why my smaller ships rock and roll when I get out of them. Cheers!

 

[KiloZulu]

That's depressing. I always thought that the facings of the ship were simply determined by the core's orientation, and that the ship settled on the ground based on whatever blocks touched first. It's too bad, I made a sleek looking exploration vessel with a nice open view, and I hate having to look through cameras for everything.

 

[KiloZulu]

How much thrust to mass do you need to leave a planet now? It never used to be so hard, but now I struggle to get any of my ships off planet.