Angled engines

[Jimbodiah]

Hi,

I am building a rover to land on Mun that has engines attached on the side pointing down. I tried to do some landings (hyperedit is my friend) but the system thinks my engine is in the rear like that of a rocket, which send me full throttle 90° to where I want it to go when it does it's retrograde burn (funny stuff!). Is there any way to tell KSP I have my engines pointed in another direction?

[sgt_flyer]

You need to add either a docking port or a probe core pointing in the good direction (their up side pointing the opposite way of the engine's thrust) then rightclick this docking port / probe core and hit 'control from here'.

[KerikBalm]

If your engines are not inline with your control point, then you have to mentally do that yourself...

However, you can click on pods/probecores/docking ports and select "control from here"

If you put a docking port jr facing the same direction your engines push you, and then select "control from here", you should get the navball in the orientation that you want.

I made a rover to land on duna that had retrorockets to cushion its parachute landing that were 90 degrees from any control point... so for my retroburn to deorbit, I pointed the nose directly at the planet, rotated so that the belly of the rover was facing prograde, and burned... I didn't have a marker, but I didn't need one.

For a more precise maneuver node... like an interplanetary burn, a better system would be needed.

For your rover, you should really be able to just figure out where to point your craft without switching control points

[StrandedonEarth]

The best way (and the only way I can think of) is to mount a probe core or docking port facing the same direction that the engine will push you. Then you can right-click the port or core and select "control from here." This will realign your navball and prograde markers accordingly.

Edit: ninja'd

[Jimbodiah]

AH!!! Yeah, sounds so logical now ))

It works! Thanks guys!

[wolfedg]

You may also want to consider alternative rover delivery methods. Most of my rovers have used this type of landing. (This was my first rover MK_I and was admittedly unstable, but the delivery method lived on in my other rover designs since.

MK-1

MK-2 (Notice the landing leg on the nose that was used to cushion the topple after landing)

MK-3 (This was by far my most used rover in the early days even though it suffered from unavoidable symmetry issues that made it a little difficult to drive, nevertheless better than its predecessors)

My experimental All-In-One moonbase with attached (and very unstable) rover.

Another possible delivery method to atmospheric worlds (though I only employed it on kerbin)

The strange looking vehicle to the far right was a refueling station that had been dropped in form orbit.

Please forgive the age of these screenshots as lately I havent really done many rover missions. I am hoping and waiting for a complete rework of the rover driving system as it is very problematic making it too easy to get going too fast or topple your rover unintentionally.

Edited October 31, 2015 by wolfedg

[Wcmille]

Mark as answered?

[Jimbodiah]

I got feet down on the Mun with the rover/lifter. First attempt, kind of exciting as I landed while it was night so just looked away while mechjeb did the last burn.

Found a new use for those space shuttles too