Can't intersect orbit in docking tutorial

[dockingtutorialimpossible]

I have managed to get past the declination section, but now that I have to meet the orbit of the other craft, I don't see how I can obey the tutorial. 

 

The orange markers which are supposed to be 50km or 5km (not restarting the tutorial for a 5th time to find out) apart are without fail separated by thousands of kilometres. I cannot get them any closer than 1500km using the prograde/retrograde manoeuvre control. What the hell am I supposed to do?

I tried to go my own way (ignoring the markers) at this point by adjusting everything to get a vaguely circular orbit next to the stranded craft, but then if I slow down to match the target like it tells me to, my orbit decays and I can't ever reach it!

What gives? 

 

EDIT: I did it, but I had to do 3/4 burns to get the orbits to line up. I don't know how I was supposed to do it using only pro/retrograde burns since I 100% needed to adjust radially as well to get the orbits to match. I was very lucky that the craft happened to be close after I did this (almost like it was planned, eh?). End result = 0 fuel, 2 stranded craft. 

Album https://imgur.com/Ousci56 will appear when post is submitted

https://imgur.com/Ousci56

 

 

Edited May 27, 2018 by dockingtutorialimpossible

[Superfluous J]

Never tried the tutorial, but I use the +/- orbit buttons on the maneuver node (right click it first) to get the orange markers close, then prograde/retrograde and dragging the node to get them exact.

Edited May 27, 2018 by 5thHorseman

[Geonovast]

9 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Never tried the tutorial

It's... pretty bad.  Nearly made me quit the game.  I likely would have if I hadn't found the forum.

[Gargamel]

I had a whole spiel typed out on how I set up my rendezvous, but then I remembered I suck at it, and my advice may not be the best.

2 hours ago, dockingtutorialimpossible said:

but then if I slow down to match the target like it tells me to, my orbit decays and I can't ever reach it! 

When you match velocities with your target, you are doing just that, going the same speed and vector that it is.     For your target, this is fine, it is going the correct velocity for the orbit it is in.   But you are in a different orbit, and the speed you are going is not 'correct' for your (intended) orbit.   

Imagine walking towards a horse that is walking across a pasture.   At some point you realize you are not going to reach the horse if you keep going the way you are going.  So you start walking in the same direction (heading) and speed as the horse.   You will now never get closer to the horse, and in this case never get farther away.  You will also not avoid the electric fence that the horse is going to miss. 

So after you match your velocity with the target, you need to burn in such a way to get your prograde marker to line up with the target, or else you will start drifting apart. 

 

And it might be a good thing we have the name change thread.  Although, it would make for a good statement to encourage the devs to fix the tutorial. 

Edited May 27, 2018 by Gargamel

[Gargamel]

There is also:

 

[djr5899]

As the OP of that thread, I can attest I got a lot of good information from all those that replied, and have gotten much better at docking.  I think one of my biggest issues was not matching the orbit completely. I'd make an intercept point that was very close, maybe down to 500m, and the relative speed under 5 m/s, but never completely circularized my orbit.  This resulted in me watching the target get really close to me, and then start sailing away in the other direction.

Best advice I can give from someone who struggled with this until last week, is match one side of the orbit (let's say the apoapsis are both the same) and keep the perapsis a few 1000m lower, so that your target craft is moving slower than you are in a complete orbit.  Once your current craft and your target craft are pretty close, within 5km, circularize the orbit.  I found that by doing that, I could then just make minor tweaks to radial in/out, prograde/retrograde, and normal/anti-normal, to get the craft closer together and the approach speed lower, until I could get the craft down to about 500-1000m and use RCS to get my current craft down to 0.0m/s relative velocity, and then use RCS to do the rest.

Hope this helps.