The Jeb Station Incident

[Adamczuk]

Planning! Planning can be a wonderful thing, if done properly. This mission started out rather simple, but rapidly spiraled into a mess.

Orbiting to meet up with the Station was a pain in itself, but then I released an error in my planning. The craft only had RCS thrusters mounted on the front of the unnaturally long vessel!

I learned 2 things about RCS that day:

1. The more RCS thrusters you have attached, the easier maneuvering gets! [A little Captain Obvious, I know!]

2. IF you go without enough RCS thrusters, then you are doomed to Space Krakens Wrath! Do not make an attempt to maneuver or your crew will surely perish!

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[Geschosskopf]

I be Elbo (love the name) was cursing the engineers back on the ground the entire time

[Adamczuk]

I be Elbo (love the name) was cursing the engineers back on the ground the entire time

Thank you. I don't I'd like to be the rest of the Kerbals that share the space station with him on that day. I bet there was a lot of complaining from him when he re-entered.

[Sharpy]

1. The more RCS thrusters you have attached, the easier maneuvering gets!

Eeenope.

Get exactly as many thrusters as required and not a single one more. Twelve (single-port, like Vernor or place-anywhere) thrusters plus a reaction wheel is a plenty for even a very large craft. Two front, two back, two up, two down, two left, two right.

Too many thrusters means controls so twitchy there's no way you can align with the port, even in the precision mode.

The only exception is if it's a lander and you depend on RCS to be able to set it upright. Or if you're rich (science mode), using the "pinecone" nose for stabilizing launches - a nose cone thickly covered in vernor engines, keeps even quite unbalanced craft from flipping over.

[Sampa]

hmmm...am I the only who has discovered how to turn off unnecessary RCS thrusters?

[Wallygator]

RCS placement should be aligned to the vessels centre of mass.

Sadly, the COM indicator floats around when you pan your view in the VAB, so your RCS can never be placed perfectly. <----- SQUAD PLEASE FIX: COM should be static and locked to the vessel not the camera viewpoint.

[Geschosskopf]

Sadly, the COM indicator floats around when you pan your view in the VAB, so your RCS can never be placed perfectly. <----- SQUAD PLEASE FIX: COM should be static and locked to the vessel not the camera viewpoint.

Well, there's this very cool mod called RCS Build Aid that I find invaluable, not only for RCS but also to keep spaceplanes balanced despite burning fuel and adding / dropping cargo.

Also, it would be highly, highly annoying of the camera was always fixed to center on the CoM. This would make building ships rather difficult for like when you need to zoom in on an area far from the CoM. HOWEVER, it would be nice to have a button you could toggle to center the camera on the CoM when you want to do that, just as long as it wasn't a permanent thing.

[Wallygator]

Well, there's this very cool mod called RCS Build Aid that I find invaluable, not only for RCS but also to keep spaceplanes balanced despite burning fuel and adding / dropping cargo.

Also, it would be highly, highly annoying of the camera was always fixed to center on the CoM. This would make building ships rather difficult for like when you need to zoom in on an area far from the CoM. HOWEVER, it would be nice to have a button you could toggle to center the camera on the CoM when you want to do that, just as long as it wasn't a permanent thing.

True, but i only would like the COM fixed to the vessel, and not linked to the camera view point.

[Scotius]

Props for performing an impromptu daring EVA maintenance. SQUAD really needs to consider adding KIS/KAS equivalent to the game.

[Geschosskopf]

True, but i only would like the COM fixed to the vessel, and not linked to the camera view point.

The CoM is fixed to the CoM. It only appears to move when you move the camera because it's located inside the ship but is drawn on top of the ship's pixels, so as your angle of view of the ship changes, the parts move past the CoM. IOW, it's an optical illusion.

[Adamczuk]

Eeenope.

Get exactly as many thrusters as required and not a single one more. Twelve (single-port, like Vernor or place-anywhere) thrusters plus a reaction wheel is a plenty for even a very large craft. Two front, two back, two up, two down, two left, two right.

Too many thrusters means controls so twitchy there's no way you can align with the port, even in the precision mode.

The only exception is if it's a lander and you depend on RCS to be able to set it upright. Or if you're rich (science mode), using the "pinecone" nose for stabilizing launches - a nose cone thickly covered in vernor engines, keeps even quite unbalanced craft from flipping over.

I may have over exaggerated a little. I mean't more along the lines that you should have enough RCS thrusters attached to the vessel and don't, like I did, have them on one half of the ship and not the other.

hmmm...am I the only who has discovered how to turn off unnecessary RCS thrusters?

Don't worry, you're not the only one. When I was altering the angle of the annex, I turned off two of the closest thrusters to the docking port. There are a few images that don't seem to show my craft tilting, but that's due to the fact it was going really slowly.

RCS placement should be aligned to the vessels centre of mass.

Sadly, the COM indicator floats around when you pan your view in the VAB, so your RCS can never be placed perfectly. <----- SQUAD PLEASE FIX: COM should be static and locked to the vessel not the camera viewpoint.

Thanks for the advice. I'm not really that experienced with RCS placement (The above example for case and point!) but I usually judge by general coverage areas and distance between them. I didn't really know that they should be placed closer to Centre of Mass, but now I know.

Props for performing an impromptu daring EVA maintenance. SQUAD really needs to consider adding KIS/KAS equivalent to the game.

Thank you. I really do love KIS/KAS as it really adds a lot more to EVA in the game (It's really useful for covering up mistakes made prior or during launch!). I'd love for it to become an offical mod or for there to be an equivlent!