What have you learned to do without an autopilot?

[Laie]

Is there an autopilot for gravity assists?

I guess the piloting is business as usual: perform one or several maneuvers.

Bit if there is a planning aid for gravity assists, I'd like to hear about it. I can use a Moon to raise or lower my orbit, but I don't know how to plan a Tylo encounter that takes me home.

[Red Iron Crown]

Is there an autopilot for gravity assists?

I guess the piloting is business as usual: perform one or several maneuvers.

Bit if there is a planning aid for gravity assists, I'd like to hear about it. I can use a Moon to raise or lower my orbit, but I don't know how to plan a Tylo encounter that takes me home.

Trajectory Optimization Tool + MechJeb. It's pretty complicated, though.

[SorryDave]

I would say that learning docking is the most critical and rewarding thing to learn.

[Newt]

All of them. I've never even installed mechjeb, let alone used it.

Same again. All my missions have all, always been manual. My first orbital launch was done without SAS, just me dancing my fingers on the keyboard controls. That was interesting.

[merendel]

All of the above. I've used Mechjeb in the past but more and more its autopilot just proved to be a lazy button. I kept it around for a while for the info windows but then i found KER to cover that need. I often have remote tech so I'll use its autopilot to do burns for probes that will be out of controll range and the ocasional long burn so I can walk away and do something else but I'm seting those nodes up by hand. RT generaly wont work for anything but following a node reliably so other catagories dont really apply to it.

The only skill I ever have any trouble with is a precision landing with no targetable landmark. If there is something there, Flag, Ship, Kerbal, I can land directly on top of it if I want to by just following the target indicator in but hiting an exact spot without that is a tad more dicy. I can get somewhat close but may have to microhop if I'm landing a trailblazer ship to get closer than 1km.

[RocketPilot573]

*Selects everything on the list* I have Mechjeb, but the only autopilot I ever used was the rover one (I am NOT going to hold down the "w" key for 5 hours!). In .17 we had to do interplanetary transfers without maneuver nodes or selecting a target.

[xnorb]

As i consider using MechJeb as cheating, i did all of the above without any guidance (except from Scott Manley's videos ofc)

[Axelord FTW]

No option for "EVERYTHING" in the poll*?

So, yeah. Everything.

So often I grew tired of doing everything by hand, which is why I delegate to MJ for easy but tedious maneuvers.

*Would have been a better metric

[magnemoe]

Everything on the list, I also tend to use Mechjeb for all of the opperations.

Only exception is Rendezvous where mechjeb don't work well as its have two resources dV and time, if I have an spaceplane in orbit with 800 m/s and found I aimed for the wrong station I can use 400 m/s reaching it, in other setting the budget might be 50 m/s.

Same with asteroids as you would be in another SOI than the target. I use mechjeb to adjust closest approach.

[Technical Ben]

...

Well, I never use MJ for docking. I mix single launches and constructions in orbit. Never do SSTO as I fail at atmosphere hugging and either dive/flip/run out of fuel. Perhaps with atmos 1.0 I will have a go at spaceplanes again.

[katateochi]

I can tick everything on the list, but I do also use MJ, just never for it's full auto pilot functions. I use it's info readouts and I use the SURF function a lot as that lets you enter a specific heading, pitch roll and have the ship turn to that orientation and stay there. The other thing I use MJ for is predicting aerobraking.

[magnemoe]

Trajectory Optimization Tool + MechJeb. It's pretty complicated, though.

Interesting, One strategy I have used some times is to build a ship at Minmus orbit, then leave Minmus SOI, I can now spend 160 m/s dropping Pe to 200 km at an time where Pe fits well with the time and position for an interplanetary burn, going outward require that you change to an retrograde orbit this is not so expensive as it sounds, you just have to keep burning until you get an impact trajectory and a bit more and you will orbit kerbin clockwise. has not done this with manned missions yes, first its pretty experimental. the mun might mess up and you have to transfer the kerbals and the life support to Minmus,

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

All of it.

Why play this game with an autopilot?

[rockbloodystar]

I only use mech jeb to do things I piloted first; no doubt I am considerably out of practice at soft landings.

I am much more of an engineer than a pilot.

[Sirrobert]

I can do all things rocket related, but I learned them from Mechjeb

[Starwhip]

All of the above.

A few without maneuver nodes or SAS.

[Hannu]

I have done all of these things manually at least once. Some of them are quite laborious and needs lot of time or autosaving, so normally I always play with MechJeb. Planning and building of ships and calculating effective orbits are the most interesting to me.

Orbit adjustments and Hohmann transfers. Of course inclination and LAN will be coarse if I have to measure angles from screen with degree ruler.

Manned return trip to all bodies including Eve and Tylo.

Docking to stations and interplanetary ships. Interplanetary transfers. I have not calculated launch windows with pencil and paper, but I have programmed porkchop plot programs by using Lambert's algorithm.

I have made accurate landings couple of times (not reliable, but with trial, error and autosave). Most often to Tylo, because some version of MechJeb calculated landings to Tylo wrong. It succeeded to land but tens of kilometers east from the target.

I have tried gravity assist. I went to Eeloo through Jool. I succeeded but my geometry did not save significant amount of propellant.

Once I made a plane and flied couple of hundreds of kilometers to the pyramid anomaly and KSC 2. I have also tried to make and fly plane couple of times with FAR, but did not get a great inspiration.

[Random Tank]

Literally everything in this game. All AI is inherently Evil, and I know that MJ would attempt to kill my Kerbals and ruin my space program if I let it anywhere near it...

Besides, MJ is really inefficient by the looks, so I'd wanna do it myself anyway.

[eddiew]

Never got the hang of...

- interplanetary transfer. Guesswork and TAC-LS don't mix, and frankly it's very intimidating for newbies to the game. Stock should have a porkchop at the least.

- gravity assist. Well to be fair, I may have occasionally passed through Mun's SOI and been happy with the result, but overall I've never relied on it as a tool.

- precision landing for non-equatorial targets. I can bullseye KSC runway with a spaceplane, and occasionally with a capsule, but targetting my Minmus base by eye is... awkward.

And I choose not to do rendezvous and docking manually because it's tedious after the 5th or 6th time. I'll get a rough alignment myself, then allow MJ to do the final approach at 4x timewarp.

[moronwrocket]

Everything except Gravity Assist. I use Docking Port Alignment Indicator to make docking fairly painless. I do abuse the RemoteTech2 flight computer to get precision burns, but I find that a fair tradeoff considering the effort I went through to put comm sats up. It also gives low end probecores high end functionality (hold nodes etc), which I will be sad about when it changes.

[r4pt0r]

I would never use mechjeb.

lol I've gotten in trouble alot for my old sig that said "mechjeb is cheating", which I wholeheartedly believe.

[Starhawk]

Is there an autopilot for gravity assists?

I wasn't aware of one, but I'm going to check out Trajectory Optimization Tool that Red Iron Crown mentioned.

I guess the piloting is business as usual: perform one or several maneuvers.

Bit if there is a planning aid for gravity assists, I'd like to hear about it. I can use a Moon to raise or lower my orbit, but I don't know how to plan a Tylo encounter that takes me home.

The Tylo assist is the one I've been playing around with. So far I'm still doing 'an inefficient search of a solution space'. I know the result I want, and with enough time mucking around, I can get close enough. A tool to make this more efficient would be very useful.

[cantab]

Where are you departing from? If you're at Laythe or Vall, then the Laplace resonance between Jool's inner moons restricts you. When departing from Laythe, if you encounter Tylo before Jool apoapsis you effectively have only three choices of position for Tylo to be in (albeit with some leeway). Usually you can secure a Kerbin return but you might not be able to get an express trip back if that's what you want. If you encounter Tylo after Jool apoapsis you can get more freedom but it becomes extremely sensitive to your departure burn.

For Vall it's far worse, you can only encounter Laythe or Tylo in one position each unless you make phasing orbits round Jool.

[Starhawk]

Where are you departing from?

Laythe.

When departing from Laythe, if you encounter Tylo before Jool apoapsis you effectively have only three choices of position for Tylo to be in (albeit with some leeway).

I'm not yet sufficiently versed in orbital mechanics to 'see' this. I'm trying to develop an understanding of the necessary relationship between the positions of Laythe and Tylo and Jool's orbit.

Usually you can secure a Kerbin return but you might not be able to get an express trip back if that's what you want.

I've just trying for a lower delta-v transfer home. It'd be nice if I could make it more predictably, though.

If you encounter Tylo after Jool apoapsis you can get more freedom but it becomes extremely sensitive to your departure burn.

I've seen that some times/positions are much more finicky than others.

For Vall it's far worse, you can only encounter Laythe or Tylo in one position each unless you make phasing orbits round Jool.

Haven't tried with Vall so far. I knew that the Tylo assist from Laythe was doable and so I've just been trying to get a handle on that.

[Jean Deaux]

I love MJ for those long burns, especially with those ion engines. Flying, docking, and driving I much prefer to do myself for efficiency sake.