Hour Hero Yes

Just wondering if there are any tactics to keeping graphics looking good while gaining some frames, especially when dealing with high part count/large spaceships and stations. I've seen youtube videos where people have impossibly big space stations with very little frame loss. I have my physics per frame bar all the way at the right, but there must be some more tricks Thanks!

Additionally, if anyone ever finds themselves searching for a goal.....seeing Jool and its other moons from Laythe is one of the prettiest sights in the entire game.

Any time I'm focused as heck on some kind of docking maneuver, or planning landings, or staring at numbers and the I look up--and there's an eclipse of Kerbin against Kerbol, or the Mun against Kerbol. Eclipses never fail to make my stomach flutter a little bit.

I don't know if you use Mechjeb or have ever played with the Conics setting in the config file, but different settings change the way your projected orbit looks after changing SOI's. One of them lets you see exactly what it looks like when you make the SOI transfer, I think it's Conics 1?

I am also unable to load my SFS file into the burn calculator. What sort of info can I give to help?

My interplanetary probe design uses 1 nuclear engine for most maneuvering, but when it comes time to hit a planetary transfer window, I have 2 liquid fuel engines strapped to the side that I turn on to accelerate the process. They get turned on after the encounter has been hit.

I do use Protractor for phase angles and such, but I don't think having just the angles is that helpful when you're already on your slingshot trajectories across the solar system. unless it is and I just don't know how to access the math! That MATlab program looks good, albeit complicated. Time to learn some more stuff today As far as MJ being inefficient--I usually use the "pinpoint closest approach" to get a general maneuver time and then I go around editing it myself. It usually doesn't have me departing the SOI prograde to the planet, so i make some maneuver node changes myself. I didn't know that about the conics mode, though. Figuring out HOW I was going to be exiting the SOI was the most frustrating thing I was trying to deal with yesterday. One question about this site, what exactly do "Ballistic" "Mid-course Plane Change" and "Optimal" mean for transfer types?

Are gravity transfers a really useful skill? Should all good pilots be able to do it? I've spent most of my day trying to launch from Eve to Jool, but don't get enough DV so I loop around Kerbin, and then I either have the phase angles wayyy off or I can't get my actual SOI exit lined up straight, and I'm probably just wasting fuel I could've spent boosting straight to Jool. I use the Mechjeb maneuver node editor to try to get everything perfect, but I have no idea how you could calculate phase angles multiple planet transfers in advance. Is there a good way to go about learning how to do this? I really want to be able to do it but am struggling.

I've definitely been able to drop the lander and keep the focus on the skycrane, though, which allows me to drop it while still hovering

Hello, quick question here-- I often use a sort of Skycrane setup to drop vehicles or rovers onto the surface of a planet while hovering above it. Sometimes when I decouple the docking nodes, the control goes to the dropped lander and my skycrane loses control, as it becomes "unmanned". Is there a way to ensure that when I decouple a node, the focus stays on the ship I'm controlling?

Definitely going to take a look at the center stage. The top and bottom of the orange can/RCS section are Sr. Docking ports.

Awesome tips, thanks everyone. I didn't know that about winglets being near the actual engine.

Ah good point, I should have mentioned...I included the RCS tank for monopro refueling needs at the station as well. A one stop shop, if you will.

I'm a somewhat impatient sort, so I like to try to save it all to get into space My current design DOES get a completely untouched orange tank up there, I'm just not sold on the launcher.

I'm in the middle of adding fuel tanks to my space station for refueling, and I always struggle with making an efficient launcher for getting orange cans off the ground. They get very top heavy, or long and wobbly, or just hugely inefficient. I also like to try to be as minimalistic as possible, for practice when money and resources actually become an issue in the game. My current design is this. It gets to orbit and eventually gets to my station, but it's really inefficient and a horrible klutzy thing to adjust in space for pre-docking maneuvers. I assume this is a pretty common maneuver, so I'm just wondering if anyone has favorite fuel-launcher designs!

Yes--make sure you put a crew habitat on board, or an extra pod somewhere on the craft! Maybe a Lander can underneath the main capsule. Otherwise your poor stranded Kerbal won't have anywhere to sit!

Remember -- you can attach the bi-tri-quad adapters to the bottom of big fuel tanks and attach multiple smaller engines to it. I see a lot of players using large fuel tanks, but attaching 2 nuclear engines to the bottom. Still highly efficient, but faster burns!

Just don't think about it too much like science, math, OR homework! I think of Delta-V as "space cash" and certain maneuvers are more expensive than others. I know a TWR less than 2 won't get me off Kerbin very quickly. That's enough to get me into space, to the Mun and back. You could put 100 hours into the game just mucking around with orbiting and trying different ways to get to the Mun and back...interplanetary transfers are a strange new beast that I haven't had the courage to slay yet. I also figure, I play a lot of RPG's that require me to learn new, strange terminology...lore, abilities, game systems--this is really the same thing! It's just a matter of getting past the initial shock of there being new things to learn, and proceeding to learn new things

What does docking mode do to help steering? And can I overcompensate with wheel size, like using the huge industrial wheels so I could set the center of gravity beneath their "axels"?

I was experimenting with Mun rovers last night and had one that wasn't any taller than one of the smaller structural girders, very low center of gravity, and I must've killed my poor three Kerbalnauts about 20 times trying to go 3k on the moon. All the tiny elevation changes and bumps mean that 9 times out of 10, one side of the rover lands first after a bump and flips like an Olympic gymnast. Is there anything to do to counteract this? I disabled rear wheel steering, had RCS pressing me downwards, didn't go over 15m/s, let go of the pedal while landing from mini-jumps, etc.