Why didn't anyone tell me....?

[MrOsterman]

..... That you can use your RCS thrusters on the moon to fly between two points quickly?

I landed a life boat for one of my stranded Kerbals but it was 10 km away and I figured that she'd NEVER be able to run that far so I scrapped that mission and started over (again) to get her a new ride home. Granted, I probably didn't leave enough fuel in the tank to safely get her home anyway but that's not the point.

..... That you should prioritize upgrading your tracking center?

Seriously, this game got WICKEDLY easier once I could start to plot maneuver nodes. Yes I did manage to get a flyby of the Mun to work by just eyeballing it, but I probably never was going to get Munar orbit without seeing flight plans.

..... That the save game features are broken and you need to click "Save" rather than hitting Enter?

I'm still a little cheesed over how often I've lost my "backups" to that bug. Upside is that it did, briefly, force me into a "Well you done screwed that one up" moments that forced me to go back and fix things which ultimately were kind of fun, but I really would have preferred to know that was the case.

So what else do you wish someone had said a little earlier in your KBS Career?

[KerBlammo]

After my first ever Mun landing I had barely enough fuel to get back. I had a high Ap but the Pe was bare in the atmosphere. It took roughly 2 dozen orbits to finally de-orbit. What I didn't think of was using the RCS to slow it down...

[Hary R]

On my first mun mission in 1.0.X i thought, i've made it multiple time before, should be easy with that design, just transfer fuel when main tank is empty... Surprise, you can't do that up until you upgrade R&D...:(

[soulsource]

I wish I would have known that KSP actually allows Kerbals to push ships around. I always assumed that a craft that isn't currently under player control would be "on rails", so that pushing it with a Kerbal wouldn't have any effect.

Well, given situations like the one described by Ker Blammo above, it helps a lot to know that you can just EVA at the Aphelion and push the ship retrograde with the EVA jetpack to lower the Perihelion...

[Kevin Kyle]

Ive had to get out and push before, in real life and in KSP as well!

[Just Jim]

Using vernier thrusters as docking brakes!!!

[img]http://i.imgur.com/6O8ON4h.png[/img]

You can see them along the wings. Something so simple...but I didn't think of it for the longest time! It's the greatest way to slow down if you're coming in to dock just a little too fast, without having to flip the ship retrograde.

[Pecan]

I think I probably wish someone had told me earlier that I'd learn to love docking.
Learning to dock is a pain, but once I could do it relatively easily I found it's the single most satisfying thing I do in KSP, and it looks great watching ships docking and undocking at a station.

[Just Jim]

[quote name='Pecan']I think I probably wish someone had told me earlier that I'd learn to love docking.
Learning to dock is a pain, but once I could do it relatively easily I found it's the single most satisfying thing I do in KSP, and it looks great watching ships docking and undocking at a station.[/QUOTE]

Oh, totally agreed!
I honestly was really intimidated at the thought, and procrastinated learning really bad.
But like you said, it's now one of my favorite things to do!

[KerBlammo]

I put off learning docking too. It's intimidating for good reason, its one of the hardest things to do in the game IMO, but of course that makes it all the more satisfying when you do learn how to do it. For me its still more a feeling of relief when its over than one of enjoyment!

My favorite thing to is still landing on the Mun, even though its become almost routine to do now. I play sandbox, and must have orbited the Mun 10 different times before finally screwing up the courage to try and actually land.

[Just Jim]

[quote name='KerBlammo']
My favorite thing to is still landing on the Mun, even though its become almost routine to do now. I play sandbox, and must have orbited the Mun 10 different times before finally screwing up the courage to try and actually land.[/QUOTE]

I shouldn't do this... lol... but if you want to land somewhere really scary, visit Pol:

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/zpK404P.png[/IMG]

[SpaceNomad]

[quote name='MrOsterman']..... That the save game features are broken and you need to click "Save" rather than hitting Enter?

I'm still a little cheesed over how often I've lost my "backups" to that bug. Upside is that it did, briefly, force me into a "Well you done screwed that one up" moments that forced me to go back and fix things which ultimately were kind of fun, but I really would have preferred to know that was the case.[/QUOTE]

For this Dated QuickSaves of [URL="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/107663-1-0-x-Magico13-s-Modlets-%28Field-Experience-Sensible-Screenshot-etc-%29"]Magico13's Modlets[/URL] might ease your pain a bit. It automatically copies unnamed quicksaves (those created by F5) to a name including timestamps, so you automatically keep previous saves. It also performs autosaves. Still works in 1.0.5.

[Choctofliatrio]

Why didn't anyone tell me making a base on Minmus at a low latitude would be a bad idea?

seriously though, the tale of my minmus base is quite the story.

[justidutch]

… that I would lose thousands of hours of my life to this game… please don't buy it!

[Norpo]

[quote name='Just Jim']I shouldn't do this... lol... but if you want to land somewhere really scary, visit Pol:

[URL]http://i.imgur.com/zpK404P.png[/URL][/QUOTE]


Pol is my absolute favourite of the Joolian moons, low gravity, remote, but once you get there the terrain is great. I landed on a cliff on my first (and to date only) visit, the sights were breathtaking.

...Well, as breathtaking as they can get on Minimal graphics, that is. :)

[Tourist]

I wished somebody had told me that struts break off when the stage they reinforce is jettisoned or undocked. My thinking was that because they are used to reinforce the stage it would just be pulled along behind. This led to several aborted attempts to attach them to decouplers, even abandoning the use of them entirely. Eventually I saw the errors of my ways.... but, yikes they could have been useful when I was first starting out and my rockets were flipping and flopping their way to orbit.

[Kerba Fett]

[quote name='KerBlammo']I put off learning docking too. It's intimidating for good reason, its one of the hardest things to do in the game IMO, but of course that makes it all the more satisfying when you do learn how to do it. For me its still more a feeling of relief when its over than one of enjoyment!

My favorite thing to is still landing on the Mun, even though its become almost routine to do now. I play sandbox, and must have orbited the Mun 10 different times before finally screwing up the courage to try and actually land.[/QUOTE]


Docking isn't one of the most difficult things to do in KSP, it's just difficult for most people to figure out for themselves.
Orbital rendezvous has a couple of things that are somewhat counter intuitive and most people have trouble with the actual docking process the first time because they don't really understand what the navball is telling them.
With a good tutorial that explains the principles as well as how to execute them even a noob can dock with 1 try.
I've talked a few people through it using the broadcast feature on steam and they're always surprised how easy it is.

The problem is that most people don't have it explained to them very well before they try.

[R4P70R]

It makes me remember when I was using Jedediah's jet pack to help me deorbit my out of fuel spaceship

[Enorats]

Forget the stock maneuver nodes. Get kerbal engineer and/or Mechjeb and never look back. The stock game doesn't give you 90% of the info you even need to effectively fly, and you don't have nearly the control precision needed either. Let the navigational computer do its job and set up those nodes perfectly and you'll see what I mean.

I understand why they dumb down and hide so much information (they don't want to overwhelm new players with the half dozen different data panels an experienced player has open at any given time) buy at the same time they're making the game far more difficult. Knowing your horizontal speed, vertical speed, mach number, true altitude, exact location, remaining delta-v, vessel mass, trust to weight ratio updated in real time, thermal flux, critical part temperatures, apoapsis, periapsis, time to both of those, orbital eccentricity, orbital inclination.. and so much more.. I just can't imagine trying to play without all that. It'd be like flying blind.

They really need to have some sort of a "beginners" interface that can be slowly added to as missions grow in complexity until you reach a more advanced stage where all that data normally shown by UI mods is incorporated into a stocK UI. A Mechjeb like autopilot would be good too.. watching Mechjeb do its thing basically taught me everything I know about orbital mechanics. Nothing like watching it done right to learn how to do something. Well, that and failing to do it yourself repeatedly until you figure out what it's doing that you're not, lol.