How you even manage to rendezvous?

[amateur astronaut]

i did a hohmann transfer rendezvous but i have no idea what's next... slow myself down to zero at 15,000 m like the in-game tutorial showed? I hate the KSP tutorial because its just complete BS and it works very differently. in the tutorial, your target speed allways reduces naturally, and the prograde marker alligns up with the target marker... i used to slow down  to 5.0 m/s and then speed up to 10.0 m/s back-and-forth-back-and-forth until i managed to get close enough but then both craft started to spin like they wanna orbit each other, and drifting away, and dancing around, and i have no idea what to do cuz im tryin' like for 3 days now and i'm frustrated!!!!!!
 

[Adenosine Triphospate]

Do you mean docking? Because what you have described is a docking manoeuvre, where they physically connect. Rendezvous simply means that you are stationary within the vicinity of the target vehicle, in other words, not moving and close to the target.

Depending on where the docking ports are located, and the location and number of RCS thrusters determines how hard it is to dock the ships. An image would really help, as the design of the craft is kinda important to the ease of docking. If the docking ports are on the front of the ships, it makes it significantly easier. All I can say now is it's just patience and very slow approaches.

[Dan Kerman]

I used this guide to help me... now I rendezvous and dock like a boss. Explains how to use the navball and what the symbols mean in a docking situation.

Illustrated Guide to Docking

[bewing]

2 hours ago, amateur astronaut said:

but then both craft started to spin like they wanna orbit each other, and drifting away, and dancing around, and i have no idea what to do cuz im tryin' like for 3 days now and i'm frustrated!!!!!!

I'm pretty sure that's the very first thing that every single one of us did, when we first tried to dock.

The answer is that when you get close, you have to come to a dead stop. Your target velocity needs to go to something very close to zero. 0.0 is best. Residual velocity is what makes you do that dance.

To get to zero, you want to be in target mode on your navball, then you want to lock SAS to retrograde. Then burn very gently. You may need to open your settings for your engines, and throttle them down to make them more gentle.

[amateur astronaut]

Thank you! this guide helped me a lot ('n' saved me a ton of fuel!)

 

with the help of it, i managed to put another piece to my space station with my shuttle! (in the left you can see the station)

[Daniel Prates]

Its easy to forget that the navball shows pro/retrograde markers in relation to three different things, if you click on it: surface, orbit and target. The second and final steps of a rendevous has to be done with the markers set to "target", otherwise you will get it all wrong.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Daniel Prates