maddog59

Not sure if this was obvious to everyone else, but it took me by surprise, so I thought I'd offer it to the community. Not sure if it falls into 'Gameplay' or 'Tutorials' ... you be the judge: I was offered a contract to expand the infrastructure: the condition was to expand the capacity of an orbital station, one that I'd built earlier for a contract, from 7 Kerbals to 30. Then, right below it, it showed that the capacity was already at 31. What had happened was that I'd built the station with a mess of docking ports, and was using it as a refueling station. I happened to have several ships with various capacities docked to it already. All I had to do was accept the contract, go to the Tracking Station and switch to the station, and bob's your uncle - easy money! Must've been the easiest contract to fulfill (in my game, anyhow)!

Thanks for taking the time to respond; not sure what I did, whether restarting the game enough times or what, but things seem to be behaving again. I imagine it was really just a problem somewhere in the chair-to-keyboard interface!

Right, I learned that a while ago ... but no matter how carefully I'm placing the strut ends (from nose to tank, or vice versa for instance, in my asparagus staging), it's just not working. I've rebuilt it a couple of times now from scratch, restarted the game a couple of times, and just can't see what I'm doing wrong.

And thanks for moving the question... I misunderstood the title of the Tutorials section...

Thank you; on both points!

That's pretty shallow, but I suppose I can give it a try... I've seen YouTube's of people coming in at 45-90 degrees, and I've tried manually between ~10-20; and once I tried letting it follow the SAS set to prograde, without any difference. But maybe there's a sweet spot. I'll look at the mods you suggested as well; thanks! Nice idea, but my planes are small, with just a single tank, so there's nowhere for me to put them. On a related note, is there a way to see where the CoG and CoL currently are, while in flight? That would really be handy...

Is there a way to change the order in which different components act when an Action Group is activated? I have a hinge attached to the body of my ship, with a landing strut attached to the hinge. I want the landing strut to extend first, then the hinge to activate, but even though I select the landing strut first, then the hinge, the hinge action always appears before the strut, and is activated first. I've checked the various menus associated with both parts, and I don't see anything that seems to control priority or placement.

I'm sure I'm missing something in my construction or maybe re-entry technique: My spaceplanes have a nasty habit of getting to about 40-45km from the surface, then suddenly they start to tumble, usually ending up facing backward (maybe they're wanting to get back into space? ). I've used SAS along with manual efforts to try to maintain the direction and heading, to no avail. I'm usually able to get back control by around 3-5km, but I'm getting really tired of the drama, as well as cleaning up the crew cabins. I've tested each of my sp's from the runway and they fly decently enough; the CoG and CoL's are overlapping both with and without fuel (I'm usually entering with a fair amount of fuel on-board). The RCS clusters I've installed seem to be ineffective in either maintaining or recovering during the re-entry. Any and all suggestions are welcome. Help me, Obi Kerbal Gods; you're my only hope!

I've noticed this in both the SPH and VAB: sometimes the 2nd end of a strut will jump to another point on the ship ... sometimes reasonably close to where I've placed it, sometimes quite some distance away. This happens regardless of what mirror/symmetry mode, and whether or not Angle Snap is on or off. Sometimes they don't even attach: I click to start the strut on one part; drag the end to another part where I want the end to be (the second part turns green); when I release, the end of strut might not even appear, just leaving the starting 'nub' of the strut in it's place; other times the end jumps to another part that's connected to the part I release. And sometimes the end attaches where I want it to attach. Even more maddening is that sometimes the struts look right (or acceptable) on one side of the ship, while on the other, the corresponding strut (placed w/ symmetry) is completely off. I can understand this happening when I've inadvertently placed a part slightly off-center (for instance, strutting a nose cone to the body, when I've got a probe core between them the core is off-center). But my question applies to ships where I've used symmetry to build the parts I'm strutting. Why don't the end of the struts attach where I click? What 'rules' am I missing? Thanks!!

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions and comments. You've given me some ideas so I'm going to keep messing around with it. So far, I've been successful with a single docking port, then sending out an engineer to use KAS bars and sockets to lock things up, but I'd like to have the knowledge/skill of using multiple docking ports as I've described. Much obliged to all!

Sorry, could you clarify what you mean by 'loops'?

I've built two identical ships with multiple docking ports - my idea was to link them up in orbit by having two of the ports on each ship aligned and locked together. I was able to get them together, and with one pair of ports docked (the bottom pair), but the second pair (the pair near the top), although they LOOK aligned, just aren't locking together. There seems to be enough play between the two ships to get them to line up, but all they do is pass thru each other. Any suggestions on how to get them together?

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and ideas, as well as the offer of the Rescue Force. Part of the problem (I think) is that I'm starting from Mun orbit, and not going for a gravity assist by diving into Kerbal's well; the other is that I may just not have sufficient dV (unless I'm willing to wait a year or so for the everyone to get back together. I'm patient, but not THAT patient!). And thanks for moving this to the correct forum, Geonovast! Oh yes, quite a bit .... I have a number of fueling stations in orbit around Kerbin and Mun that I use, and that was the original idea I was following when trying to catch up to my Solar ships. But I just can't seem to get to less than several hundred thousand km's ... and part of it is the lack of dV, as well as willingness to warp forward 2 or 3 dozen days.

The first time I successfully (as in didn't explode on impact) landed on the Mun, but the ship tipped over and rolled down the side of the crater. Seeing my ship reaching orbit after I'd spent maybe 30 tries rolling it around, slowly accelerate up the incline, and getting it off the ground nearly brought tears to my eyes!

I'm trying to figure out how reach a couple of ships that in a solar orbit that's slightly higher than Kerbin's, and I'm having a difficult time trying to get a good intercept. I figured I'd use the alexmoon launch window planner, but when I go to the 'add a body' window to add the vessel information, I don't know where to find all of the information it's asking for; some of it is clear in the Orbit Information widget (or whatever it's called, lower left corner under the staging icons), but other info is a mystery to me. If anyone can point me to where I'll find the following (or which fields in the Orbit widget has it), I'd be very grateful: Semi-major axis; Longitude of Ascending Node; how to correctly calculate the Time of Periapsis passage. Alternately, if there's another planner out there that will make this task easier, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Thanks!

Thanks for the info and links; I've looked them over and will try a few that might make sense. Much obliged!

Thanks again ... I didn't see this earlier response from you, only the second one. The information was very well presented and that site has earned an honored place in my bookmarks! I have MechJeb2, I just didn't think of it! I'll have to check out the Maneuver Planner, and the Astrogator add-in as well. Much obliged!

Thanks, I'll check it out ... but my question is really about how to use the information ... is there someplace where I plug in the numbers, inclination, etc.? Or is it a matter of waiting for a couple of hours before the departure day/time, creating a node, and fiddling with the values until I get something close to what was plotted?

I'm trying to get from Mun to Minmus, and decided to try using a dV planner (https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/). I see all of the values for inclination, phase and ejection angles, and so on, but now I'm not sure what to do with the info. I can't seem to enter values into the maneuver editor, besides the basics for pro/retrograde, etc. Am I missing something? Is there a different tool that will help me get to where I'm going? Thanks!!

Sometimes when I launch KSP all of the UI features are really small; other times they're larger and easier to read. I've not been able to determine a pattern. Has anyone else experienced this and/or know how to control it? I can fiddle with the settings of course, but it would be nice to know what to expect.

Aaaaargh! It was disabled ... so of course as soon as I enabled it life was grand and glorious again. Thank you!

I used MechJeb2 last night on a vehicle I landed on the Mun; this morning the MechJeb2 menu isn't appearing anywhere for that one vehicle. It appears as normal for other vehicles in the same game, as well as the VAB/SPH, and in the default game. I've tried restarting KSP as well as reinstalling MechJeb2. The only settings I've changed between sessions was some EVA controls, and that was only impacting kerbals on EVA (duh). So what did I set for that vehicle that's hidden MJ from me altogether, just for that vehicle, and how do I undo it? :-/

Thanks for the suggestions. I've turned off the EVA auto-rotate option, as well as cleared the 'orient to view' button in the Kerbal controls in Settings. I have only NumLock 7 mapped for UP and it works, but it also spins the Kerbal around 360 if I hold it long enough. Not sure what else I'm missing. <later> Not sure if there's a better way to do this, but I set 'Orient to View' in the Kerbal control to NumLock7 as well as UP in the Jetpack controls, and that seems to give me what I'm looking for.

Whenever I'm on EVA, the kerbals maintain their orientation when moving forward/backward/right/left/down. But as soon as I want to move up, they re-orient to face another direction. It makes getting them back into a ship without a ladder virtually impossible. Am I missing something? Or is this just part of the standard gameplay?

Yes, I am as well ... orbiting Mun at ~50km (KSP v1.10), with the latest version of MechJeb2 installed (just did so today), and it's taking me to the opposite side of the Mun from where I want to land. Been looking around for a solution without luck. This seems to be a recurring issue w/ MechJeb, as I've seen lots of posts dated several years ago. Good to know it's not just me, right now... <8 HOURS LATER> I've been trying to find the boundaries of where MechJeb2 works and where it doesn't. There seems to be a valid 'box' where MJ2 works properly (on the Mun) in the region of 27N/17E; 25N/25E; 11N/, 11E; and so far I've been able to land as far west as 10N/35W, but nothing in the South. There may be other variables involved, but I'd be curious to see if anyone else has similar results, where there's a zone of viable landing areas. My ship is starting at: Ap: 72.7km; Pe: 52.5km; Period: 55m 13s; Inclination 163.5; Ejection: 17.0; LAN:280.1; ARG PE: 316.7; Eccentricity: 0.0385 Hopefully some of this information is of use in trouble-shooting this excellent mod. Any comments, suggestions, observations are welcome! <A FEW HOURS LATER So maybe it looks like you have to be within a certain range of the landing site when you active the Landing Guidance. I got down to a low orbit of ~15km, and within 35 degrees of the landing site, and the guidance worked fine.