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How often do you use Mechjeb?


Grand Lander

How often do you use Mechjeb?  

  1. 1. How often do you use Mechjeb?

    • All the time
      55
    • Sometimes
      60
    • Rarely
      22
    • Never
      51


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Never, I have so far achieved orbit, landed on Mun and Minmus and back, and recently completed my first orbital rendevous without it. I like the challenge. But I have no problem with it as long as it's doing something routine to save time and effort. Haven't gotten around to getting it though.

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I use it on a fairly regular basis. When it comes to new things and challenges (like when Minmus first arrived) I will always give it a go by hand. However, at the moment I have pretty much ran out of things to do, I have landed on all the bodies in Kerb in orbit many times in many strange and wonderful ways with weird rockets and I already have my interplanetary mission planned out.

At the moment I use mechjeb to do all the things that are pretty mundane and boring to me after doing them hundreds of times: liftoff to parking orbit, rendezvous (although mechjeb is pretty useless in that department) putting satellites around Kerbin and when I need a precision landing on Mün or Minmus where fuel isn't really an issue.

However, I never use mechjeb for the injection burn to reach Mün/Minmus. I always find that mechjeb either misses, or applies way too much thrust forcing the whole rocket to concertina in on itself (I could probably design better rockets, but that's not how I roll)

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i do it for redundant tasks .. i have the kethane pack and im building a mun base near a large reserve .. i did the first few landings myself .. after that i just let mechjeb do the rest .. i enjoy the challenge of landing most of the time. in the new update im going to do most of the interplanetary flights and landings by hand only use mechjeb for info and then use it again for redundant base building tasks ..

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Where's the "often, but only the statistics part" option? :P

*Channeling the comedian Bill Cosby here* ... Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

I'm sorry Nova, but that's like saying "I only have all these playboy magazines for the interesting articles."

I use the MechJeb attachment because it's not as spaztastic as the stock ASAS.

Now, something I would suggest as the next add on for the MechJeb mod would be different flight options.

For example:

'shortest time' and 'most efficient' as well as 'Least g-force demanding'

(Regular).......(Least fuel Consumption)..... (Gentlest flight characteristics)

Options that would allow a more customized experience.

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i voted "sometimes" but really, most if not all my craft have it installed - the actual usage of autopilot features is drastically dependent on whether or not my ship is actually manageable by it and won't have it try to rip it apart to shreds on blastoff....

most of my exceedingly heavy vessels are well beyond what MJ can safely pilot without leading to violent oscillations and fiery death... then i usually fly the ascent manually (with SAS or ASAS to help, if manageable) and engage the AP only when i have a responsive enough vessel after shedding a few hundred tonnes of orbit insertion stages :)

i wish it had a flight director, you know... for orienting where to point the nose during launch so one achieves the preset gravity turn profile - that'd be quite a treat to have aboard

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I don't use it regularly, but sometimes I just think "Gah, I've done this a thousand times. I'll just use mechjeb to autpilot this to orbit, then take it from there."

In other words, I use it when I'm bored of doing something (Normally the launches. Those get boring.)

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I use it most of the time. Do you think Neil Armstrong was steering the Saturn V during launch? It was under fully automatic control until it was in orbit. Similarly, they didn't just eyeball the moon and take their best guess as to when to boost for TLI, they had computers in Houston figuring out exactly when and how long to burn, and the PNGS controlled the engines. About the only time an Apollo 11 astronaut was actually manually controlling their vessels was during transposition and docking maneuvers, nulling a few residuals, and for the last 2.5 minutes of the landing.

I figure if they had similar systems for Apollo, why shouldn't I use it?

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Starting out, I made it a point to get to orbit and to both moons and back manually, but now I use it all the time. From time to time, I do a completely manual mission to see if I still have it, but most of the time I can't be bothered. Putting something in orbit, pointing in a certain direction and burning for a certain amount of time strike me as a computer's job. But hey, the whole point of sandbox games is that everybody can play them as they want, right?

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