help!!plz cant dock with space station

[jeb1]

i have saved and about to give up, cant dock with ISS/station on the side, spent 1 hr trying nearly out of Mono, can you tell me is there No docking camera like in 3.1, after all the latest real life docking on you tube, Elon Musk??ect,ect, Ksp has un real ships, all the latest,requests surprised no ones asked for Zombies, the most realistic thing you could possible have in KSP, is a docking camera. perhaps there is iv searched add ons, nothing, iv watched KSP 2, great scene's, unless there's a DC, i wont be buying it. 4-5 yrs ago I watched tutorials, from Scott Manley, Marcus House, to get going, realism with science, and now Matt lowe docking from, 3rd person view, not for me i'm afraid. 

[Vanamonde]

What is the specific difficulty you are having? 

Meanwhile, I made a ship that launches as one unit, then deploys a couple of smaller ships which you can use to practice docking with the big ship. I haven't updated the design for a long time, but I believe it should still work. 

https://kerbalx.com/Vanamonde/M131-Docking-Trainer

[purpleivan]

Hey, @jeb1 If you're playing on PC then you could use this mod.

 

[DStaal]

Honestly, a docking camera is only useful for a very small section of the docking in my opinion anyway.  I've played around with the above mod, but I don't find it all that useful.  In real life it's useful because it's the only way you can see what you're doing - but in the game, being able to move your viewpoint freely there's lots of options.

[steuben]

Until I learned how to do it with the nav-ball I wanted a docking camera too. There's several tutorial vids and docs out there on it.

[HvP]

You may find this mod useful: Docking Port Alignment Indicator.

It gives you positional information for all axes of your ship in relation to the targeted docking port.

 

Edited March 19, 2020 by HvP

[purpleivan]

Lately I've been doing the following to make docking almost too simple (at least for small(ish) craft).

1. Get the relative speed of the two craft down nice and low, preferably 0.0m/s but 0.2, 0.3 will be fine.

2. Point the two craft roughly at each other (docking port of each pointing in the general direction of the port on the other)

3. From craft A set the docking port of craft B to be it's target (right click on it's port then click Set as Target), then set the heading controls next to the Navball, to "Target"

4. Switch to craft B and target craft A's port in the same way, and set its heading to target.

5. Give a nudge of power (about 0.5m/s is fine) on one of the vehicles then let them drift towards each other until they dock automatically.

Here's some images to illustrate.

Apart from the initial rotating of the vehicles to point towards each other (that's only so I could see and select their docking ports) I didn't touch their controls after the initial push burn to get them moving closer.

Edited March 19, 2020 by purpleivan

[Chequers]

As a new player, docking was certainly a challenge to figure out. But rest assured, once you've done it a few times, it actually becomes fairly straight-forward... and is immensely fun!

From what you've described, it sounds like you might be trying to dock visually, like using a kerbal on EVA with a jetpack. You can't really eyeball a docking procedure - there's too many things that have to line up perfectly.

There's two parts to it that it helps to break the procedure into two stages.

The first is setting up a good rendezvous with the target, which involves matching orbits, at the correct inclination, at the correct time. For me, I found the easiest method is a Hohmann transfer, as seen in this illustrated tutorial.

The second stage is actually docking. A few tips that made things easier for me:

• Learn how RCS thrusters work, and what the controls are. There a few methods, but I found the control scheme that uses I, J, K and L as direction, and H and N as forward and aft, to be the simplest - and allows me to still change the direction your docking port is pointing at with W, A, S and D.
• When changing the direction your docking port is pointing using the above control scheme, turn RCS off first.
• Position 4 x RCS thrusters around the centre of gravity of your ship. The in-game tutorial actually does a bad job of this, and makes it much harder.
• Having CAPS Lock on allows you to make fine inputs.
• Set 'control from here' on your docking port. And also select the target docking port as your target (when you get close enough tor right click it).
• Go slow!

Then it's a case of lining everything up. Drag the prograde marker over the 'target' indicator on your nav-ball, and, and proceed slowly. Make fine adjustments as you get close with CAPS lock on, and make sure your prograde marker stays over that target indicator!

Then, make sure your docking port is pointing towards the port you're trying to dock to, move in at about 0.2m/s, and it'll pull you the final metre or so and dock.

 

Edited March 19, 2020 by Chequers

[RoninFrog]

24 minutes ago, purpleivan said:

1. Get the relative speed of the two craft down nice and low, preferably 0.0m/s but 0.2, 0.3 will be fine.

2. Point the two craft roughly at each other (docking port of each pointing in the general direction of the port on the other)

3. From craft A set the docking port of craft B to be it's target (right click on it's port then click Set as Target), then set the heading controls next to the Navball, to "Target"

4. Switch to craft B and target craft A's port in the same way, and set its heading to target.

5. Give a nudge of power (about 0.5m/s is fine) on one of the vehicles then let them drift towards each other until they dock automatically.

This is always how I do docking.  If you don't have probe cores or pilots advanced enough to set SAS to , just use WASD to make sure the  icons are centered on the navball for both ships.

[Vanamonde]

Oh, I forgot to suggest the easiest and most obvious response. Hit V until you get "locked" camera mode and align it along the axis of the craft you're flying. 

[KerikBalm]

@Vanamonde

On top of that, you can click on the docking port and focus the camera on it, so you can get real good view when you get in close.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Step 1- download and install MechJeb

Step 2- select the ports you want to dock

Step 3- activate docking autopilot

Step 4- never manually dock anything ever again...

Getting two ships to point at each other isn't so easy if you're docking a small craft to a huge space station as the station can't move nearly so easily. I've found that the target indicator can sometimes be in the wrong place leading to some strange directional changes at close range when both ships are set to point at each other, especially if the target port is not aligned with the target's centre of mass/root part- this is particularly bad for large stations.

[Vanamonde]

At any rate, this appears to be a gameplay question. And so, moved to Gameplay Questions.