How do we land accurately

[Bej Kerman]

27 minutes ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

I only know of it being done in the trailer, which is obviously an exaggeration.

Should we discount interstellar flight, orbital construction and surface colonies as 'obvious exaggerations' as well?

[Hyperspace Industries]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

Should we discount interstellar flight, orbital construction and surface colonies as 'obvious exaggerations' as well?

Okay, I admit I have probably phrased that wrong. In fact you can ignore the "probably". 

What I meant was that that landing, while possible, may very well be to hard for the average player, and it may not be necessary to complete the game, like precise landing in ksp1, cool, but not necessary (unless you make it, that is). 

Edited September 4, 2021 by Hyperspace Industries
The post below illustrates perfectly a way to make it be non necessary, but still fairly accurate.

[Guest]

22 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Getting to orbit isn't easy, but it has the advantage that you can overbuild and loosely approximate a gravity turn and you'll get there. Docking is definitely harder, even with tools, but it has the advantage that there's no hard clock ticking. You're not burning away dV every millisecond as you adjust. You can take your time and approach slowly. Similarly landing within half a km of your target on Minmus takes a little practice, the Mun takes a little more, and Tylo takes much more. And of course, with enough practice and with all the necessary tools I completely agree everyone could land on a drone ship off KSC. The question is HOW much practice, and how likely is it that 50% of players are willing to invest that kind of time mastering an incredibly fine-tuned skill that even with all the mods in the world even we--a razor thin set of veteran players who have played KSP obsessively for many years--find pretty effing hard? I suspect it is not likely at all. I think it is very easy to say "I did it, everyone can." And you're right! But you may be expecting a much higher level of patience and and time than most people are willing to invest. And those people also aren't wrong. They're players too, and we all deserve a chance to play this game and learn and have fun. So, by all means, reward players for landing hyper-precisely! But don't make building colonies and recovering boosters dependent on a skill most players won't achieve, and don't waste player time on something that might be better spent on building cool colonies, going interstellar, and all of the other fun things KSP could deliver. 

I get the impression that everyone here is always thinking of a 2 burn landing, deorbit and suicide and boom, soft landing on the top of the VAB, that's an unrealistic target.

 You can give the colonies a pretty wide recovery range (10 km is a huge target to hit), you can design crafts that can move after landed, recovery trucks (or planes), you can do multiple hops and, if you put in a little of hovering/powered flight in your DV calculations you can move around and aim more precisely.

Just overshoot a bit the target, kill the horizontal speed while above it and aim while you're dropping. If it's to difficult to do in an atmosphere maybe add some control surfaces (stock airbrakes with control enabled are awesome) or maybe, if you're better at aiming planes, go full glider and land it like a plane, or just glide toward the colony and open the chutes at the last possible moment. 

You have the same room for error of other operations, you just have to accept that you're not going to do a Falcon 9 return to base at your first attempt just like you accept that you're not going to hit a docking within the first orbit 100% of the time. 

Also how often do you all do powered landings? Because your idea of how precise it is can also come from countless return deorbits on Kerbin with a random reentry profile only vaguely aimed for the KSC continent and an uncontrolled capsule with parachutes.

 

[MechBFP]

On 9/1/2021 at 9:35 AM, The Aziz said:

You guys really overestimate how difficult atmospheric landings are with little help. I am no expert in pinpoint landings, I don't really do it when I normally play. But, above was first, here's my second attempt at landing from orbit.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

On the screen, two tools that helped me. Nothing else. I think if I wasn't coming too hot I'd probably hit the launchpad (should've used airbrakes).

Try it with a non-trivial ship.

[Bej Kerman]

37 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Try it with a non-trivial ship.

Been there, done that

[The Flying Kerbal]

I wonder why it is that there are no videos on Youtube - that I'm aware of - showing how to accurately and with consistency, land on the launchpad at the KSC?  Even Scott Manley, who did an excellent tutorial on how to do a precise landing on the Mun, didn't pick up that hot potato.

There are videos showing vessels landing at the KSC, but in the majority that I've seen, the player freely admits it "took two or three attempts" to pull it off.

This is something I worked on really hard to try to learn, going so far as to dedicate an entire weekend to it.  I cheated a vessel into a 75km LKO, set up a manoeuvre which descended all the way to the surface, and then did a quicksave.  I then tried landing at the KSC.  When I failed, I reloaded, moved the manoeuvre node in the required direction, and then tried it again.

Doing this, and sooner or later I was bound to put my vessel down at the space centre, though I don't think I ever got it back on the pad, and all was good.  Then I tried adjusting the orbit out to 85km, and was disappointed to discover I was more or less back where I was when I first started, missing the KSC and having to fiddle about with the manoeuvre node until I once again found the spot necessary to land back at base.

The people posting here who have learned to do this: maybe one or more of you could put a tutorial on YT showing the rest of us how it's done, because I freely admit, it beats me!

[Pthigrivi]

7 hours ago, Master39 said:

you just have to accept that you're not going to do a Falcon 9 return to base at your first attempt

Why do we have to accept that? Whats wrong with KSP2 behaving exactly the way space-x does with automated landing features?

To me this seems a perfect opportunity for a strategic fork. Suppose autopilot functions were built into the tech tree or some other point-buy system. Players could then chose between automated landings with a very high chance of 100% recovery or rely on their own skill to get close-enough and devote that research to something else, something they find more valuable. It creates diversely of playstyles and rewards players for learning a skill and getting better at something they might not otherwise have tried. 

 

Edited September 5, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Why do we have to accept that? Whats wrong with KSP2 behaving exactly the way space-x does with automated landing features?

Why not for orbiting then? Or for rendezvous? Or for docking? Space-X does non of that manually.

As I stated above there are countless ways of accounting for users still learning how to land (and we haven't even touched the fact that KSP2 is going to have tutorials too, not youtube scavenging for a 10 years old tutorial), even Nate said that the BAE is "looking for nearby unpacked modules" not "modules landed precisely at  the center of the 'x' on the landing pad", there's no gameplay being cut off if you can't land precisely on a landing pad, and the cause for reusable stages and rockets it's all depending on how the balancing of the game's economy, and I can bet it's not going to make or break a career save, especially if the game balance accounts for a lot of attempts and mistakes and thus freely gives you the funding needed to make those learning-experience error that Nate continuously talk about.

And, about that, if you hear and read the devs talking about the game difficulty they are always talking about keeping the gameplay as difficult as KSP1 (that includes flying) and give the player the tools to understand what they're doing wrong. We shouldn't have the presumption that that talk is 100% aimed at new players, everyone of us has some KSP skill that, for a reason or another, never fully developed and there's going to be a lot of new gameplay elements and flight techniques that we'll need to learn to play KSP2, as @Bej Kerman said, KSP2 is going to bring us back at the beginning of a new, different, learning curve, asking for tools to avoid that new learning curve if you're a KSP1 veteran just sounds to me like people asking to have KSP2 for free if they have the first.

If there's even an unlockable autopilot for landing there's no reason not to have one for rendezvous, docking and every other orbital flight maneuver, those only look easier to people who already learned how to do them, but learning the tricks of orbital maneuvering is way harder and less intuitive than understanding that "flamey bit goes down, pointy one goes up".

[shdwlrd]

12 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Sounds like you might have previously been overestimating how much dV you have - helps to always pack a lot of fuel. IDK about you, but sometimes I find myself landing my landers with the transfer stage of my rocket.

 No. That's not the issue. I was using a purposely built lander for the Mun. This specific lander had 900 dv with 200 tonnes of payload. I was using it on the Mun and Minmus. The typical payload landing was 20-50 tonnes. The average dv was about 2800 dv. So no, fuel wasn't a problem. Neither was the TWR, I had the motors tuned down to a TWR of about 1.6 at full throttle.

The problem is using a keyboard as your primary way of control isn't precise enough to control the throttle to hover. Every tap would change the throttle 3-6% when you only need 1-2% change in the throttle position.

The other problem is the inherent drifting that craft will do. I can't see what direction I'm drifting and the navball is useless. 1 m/s horizontally is more than enough momentum to tip a lander. So without something to indicate the direction of drift and what key you need to press to cancel the drift, I will never be able to land the precisely.

[The Aziz]

7 hours ago, The Flying Kerbal said:

The people posting here who have learned to do this: maybe one or more of you could put a tutorial on YT showing the rest of us how it's done, because I freely admit, it beats me!

Fine. However I should mention that it's not going to happen with unmodded game. Vessel's behavior in atmo is not something you can predict without doing some math. Then again I haven't seen any tutorials for precise landings on Tylo either, and there's no atmosphere. Hell, I'd say Tylo is even harder because there's no atmosphere to slow you down to terminal velocity.

I see simple reason, the stronger the gravitational pull is, the harder the landing is. Mun is a piece of cake, 0.0something G, Duna has only 0.3, both mean you have a lot of room for error as you won't accelerate too fast after shutting down the engines.

20 minutes ago, Master39 said:

If there's even an unlockable autopilot for landing there's no reason not to have one for rendezvous, docking and every other orbital flight maneuver, those only look easier to people who already learned how to do them, but learning the tricks of orbital maneuvering is way harder and less intuitive than understanding that "flamey bit goes down, pointy one goes up".

We will have those boom events, right? Unlocking, or rather discovering tech after reaching certain milestones? How about a discovery report:

Our engineers analyzed the telemetry of your last vessel that arrived at our base. They are happy to report that they have managed to write some code and put it in all our probe cores, and as of now, all your ships should be able to repeat your landing at the exact same spot. If you want to improve it, go ahead and try on your own, we will update the software afterwards.

One step at a time.

[mcwaffles2003]

On 9/3/2021 at 7:17 PM, shdwlrd said:

Look man, you keep saying it just takes practice. I've spent almost very weekend and days off from 2016-2019 using different mods to build bases. Every time I had to land a component, it would take me 3-7 tries to land successful. And I don't mean on target, I mean just getting to the ground without crashing. It wasn't until Angel-125 released KFS I started to be able to land reliably and on target.

Why did KFS help you may ask? The reasons are that I could slow down my decent to a pace where I could figure out what was happening and correct any mistakes without worrying about dv, I could automatically hover and cancel any horizontal motion.

So no, this isn't a skill I'm going to just get good at with practice. This skill I need actual instruction or something to tell me what I need to do and when to do it.

when you go in to land how are you doing it? If its from a low kerbin nearly circular orbit  at 80 -100 km I normally aim for my reentry (hit <70km)to begin over the western half of the desert of the continent just west with a perigee around 30km. If I feel I'm coming up short I'll aim the prograde side up to get some body lift to travel further and if I'm overshooting Ill hit the engines for a bit. I don't always end up on the pad but 90% of the time I end up within a km of the KSC

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

The problem is using a keyboard as your primary way of control isn't precise enough to control the throttle to hover. Every tap would change the throttle 3-6% when you only need 1-2% change in the throttle position.

Don't control the throttle just with shift/ctrl, I like to use the slider to put me in my general range then shift/ctrl. Having the reduced range of total throttle with the same rang of control gives overall finer control to the throttle. For super minor corrections in orbit I'll do similar but bring the slider sometimes as far down as 1% so then shift/ctrl gives .03-.06% throttle control resolution.

[mcwaffles2003]

9 hours ago, The Flying Kerbal said:

I wonder why it is that there are no videos on Youtube - that I'm aware of - showing how to accurately and with consistency, land on the launchpad at the KSC?  Even Scott Manley, who did an excellent tutorial on how to do a precise landing on the Mun, didn't pick up that hot potato.

There are videos showing vessels landing at the KSC, but in the majority that I've seen, the player freely admits it "took two or three attempts" to pull it off.

This is something I worked on really hard to try to learn, going so far as to dedicate an entire weekend to it.  I cheated a vessel into a 75km LKO, set up a manoeuvre which descended all the way to the surface, and then did a quicksave.  I then tried landing at the KSC.  When I failed, I reloaded, moved the manoeuvre node in the required direction, and then tried it again.

Doing this, and sooner or later I was bound to put my vessel down at the space centre, though I don't think I ever got it back on the pad, and all was good.  Then I tried adjusting the orbit out to 85km, and was disappointed to discover I was more or less back where I was when I first started, missing the KSC and having to fiddle about with the manoeuvre node until I once again found the spot necessary to land back at base.

The people posting here who have learned to do this: maybe one or more of you could put a tutorial on YT showing the rest of us how it's done, because I freely admit, it beats me!

Don't put your perigee all the way down to the ground from orbit. The longer you are in the 50-60km range the more time you have to adjust your reentry and air resistance will bring you to the ground anyway once you dip under 45km. Coast longer in the high atmosphere.

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, Master39 said:

Why not for orbiting then? Or for rendezvous? Or for docking? Space-X does non of that manually.

I DO think we should have it for those things. Your concern seems to be that if the game has autopilot people wont learn. If its locked late enough however players will already have demonstrated that they can do those things before those functions unlock. Its a convenience for them that you are welcome to ignore. The gameplay being cut off is the fun of seeing your own craft coming down precisely on a drone ship. Its a game that forces players to do something over and over that they already know how to do and find boring. So once again, why can’t they have that? Why should your philosophical opposition deprive them of something they find fun?

[mcwaffles2003]

Not trying to back seat mod but we've had this convo before.. just saying before we lose the topic. Though, I agree automation is a solution to the topic at hand, I know I've hashed out this convo with you guys several times and I don't think any of us are budging on our stances.

Edited September 5, 2021 by mcwaffles2003

[kerbiloid]

In the age of car autopilots, it's a strange question.

Mouse click on the place to land, button "Land there",

To save the mouse clicks on usual routes: "Like always, sir/ma'am?" "Yes"

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

Your concern seems to be that if the game has autopilot people wont learn.

No, my concern is that the game may loose its focus, dumbing down its core to try to run after games like Surviving Mars and other colony/civilization building games that aren't exactly hard to find or rare right now.

KSP is about building and flying your own rockets, I don't want that replaced with a discount version of Oxygen Not Included, Surviving Mars, Rimworld, Stellaris, Factorio or any or any other gameplay/style that could replace what we loose by making fly just an option.

Flying in KSP is core and center, not an hardcore setting you enable at will, and yes, you can still fly even if they make it optional, but then it would be just a pointless exercise of style as it is now building bases on planets, yes you can, but the game barely acknowledges it.

Making non-violence a viable option in DOOM wouldn't automatically remove the option to shoot at everything that moves, but it would be a radical change in gameplay and mechanics nonetheless.

That is my main concert right now with KSP2 as a game.

[The Aziz]

There you go

I should say that better accuracy is definitely possible, by taking different reentry profile, ship design etc etc. i'll be honest, that was my second worst result yet, but uploaded anyway. TWR of 2 is nice to have here.

Now please note that "attempt" means "I picked too weak engine" rather than "I missed the target by 5km".

Edited September 5, 2021 by The Aziz

[mcwaffles2003]

34 minutes ago, Master39 said:

No, my concern is that the game may loose its focus, dumbing down its core to try to run after games like Surviving Mars and other colony/civilization building games that aren't exactly hard to find or rare right now.

KSP is about building and flying your own rockets, I don't want that replaced with a discount version of Oxygen Not Included, Surviving Mars, Rimworld, Stellaris, Factorio or any or any other gameplay/style that could replace what we loose by making fly just an option.

none of those games actually simulate the physics though... adding autopilot doesn't get rid of the physics which is the core mechanic that ultimately tests your design. also, including partial autopilot systems doesn't remove flying from the game, it just changes how we interact with it. You still need the know how to build a ship capable of flight/space maneuvers and you still need to know how to fly to tell the autopilot what you want it to do. There's a reason veteran pilots fly airliners despite the fact that they too can take off, fly, and land autonomously and I don't think it is just incase the autopilot goofs.

34 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Flying in KSP is core and center, not an hardcore setting you enable at will, and yes, you can still fly even if they make it optional, but then it would be just a pointless exercise of style as it is now building bases on planets, yes you can, but the game barely acknowledges it.

Making non-violence a viable option in DOOM wouldn't automatically remove the option to shoot at everything that moves, but it would be a radical change in gameplay and mechanics nonetheless.

That is my main concert right now with KSP2 as a game.

I'm just gunna say I don't find the non-violent path option in DOOM analogy to be very convincing. There was a non-violent path in postal 2 but that changed nothing about me running through town cutting off peoples heads, kicking the heads around, then pouring gas on everyone, burning them, then relieving myself to put them out.... but that did mean someone who wanted to play the game without killing people (why they'd want that in a game built around the most joyous cartoonish violence ever is beyond me) could do so and it didn't harm my play.

Edited September 5, 2021 by mcwaffles2003

[shdwlrd]

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

when you go in to land how are you doing it?

Any vacuum body. In an atmosphere, I will use chutes, or a plane. 

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Don't control the throttle just with shift/ctrl, I like to use the slider to put me in my general range then shift/ctrl.

Kind of hard to do when there are multiple motors. 

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

including partial autopilot systems doesn't remove flying from the game

OP question is "how we land accurately" if the reply isn't "by learning how to design and fly something that can land" but anything on the "by pressing the 'land here' button" side we're specifically talking about removing flying the game, maybe not as an optional element but surely as a main design core and pillar of the game.

Automation to avoid the tedium of repeated flights it's already confirmed and nobody is arguing about that, the only kind of automation remaining is the one making flying an option.

41 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

You still need the know how to build a ship capable of flight/space maneuvers and you still need to know how to fly to tell the autopilot what you want it to do.

Why, I could argue that designing a lander is even harder than flying it and ask for a complete set of premade optimised crafts for every explorable body in the game, after all NASA and SpaceX have engineers and I'm not one.

I can use all the same arguments about accessibility and not being able to design a craft even if I tried 1000 times or not wanting to invest the time to do it and that if you want you can still use the VAB by enabling it under "hardcore settings" that are being used against manual piloting, these arguments are the baseline to ask the arbitrary removal of any gameplay element we don't like just by changing a word or two in the phrasing.

I'm not at all against having a cheat/debug mode with all these autoplay features, as long as they're not considered by the Devs when balancing the gameplay and designing the progression mode, if you arbitrary take out a portion of the game and it becomes too easy or pointless that has to be on the player deciding to do so, and the game has to be still solidly designed around the "build and fly cool rockets" core loop.

To make a similar example, I'm not against the ability of turning off re-entry heating or comnet, as long as the game and especially the progression is still designed around that, if disabling it throws the balance of the game out of the windows it's up to the player to play around that.

While those example are extreme as it's easy to just wiggle some numbers around those things being disabled, piloting it's a foundation element of the game, one of the things that form KSP identity as a game, a fun and cartoonist space sim. One of the very few space sims out there and the only one releasing in this decade (KSP2).

[SOXBLOX]

It would be much easier if you could see exactly where a maneuver node would put you. We need to be able to see the planet in the position it will be in when we land. It's the rotation that makes it hard to aim.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

Flying in KSP is core and center, not an hardcore setting you enable at will, and yes, you can still fly even if they make it optional, but then it would be just a pointless exercise of style as it is now building bases on planets, yes you can, but the game barely acknowledges it.

But I haven’t suggested enabling these functions at will or arbitrarily. If you make these functions unlockable in the mid to late game, after players have docked and landed more or less accurately dozens of times, and only enable auto-landing to a point you’ve landed before or already placed a beacon, this concern kind of goes out the window, right? Players still need to manually land on new worlds, its still an active focus of the game, but late in the progression players can choose for themselves what repetitive tasks they’d rather skip. And as bonus you unlock space-x style landings for 99% of players. How are you harmed by that?

[mcwaffles2003]

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

Kind of hard to do when there are multiple motors. 

Fair point.

42 minutes ago, Master39 said:

OP question is "how we land accurately" if the reply isn't "by learning how to design and fly something that can land" but anything on the "by pressing the 'land here' button" side we're specifically talking about removing flying the game, maybe not as an optional element but surely as a main design core and pillar of the game.

Automation to avoid the tedium of repeated flights it's already confirmed and nobody is arguing about that, the only kind of automation remaining is the one making flying an option.

Well it's apparent that even among the players that love the game so much they're willing to frequent a board about it and make 1000s of posts over years that some people still have great difficulty in this task.  Now I'm not personally in the "press one button and everything runs itself" camp, though I don't have much of a problem with that so long as the simulation holds true. I'm more in the "lets have a bunch of tools available and have the ability to automate some maneuvers that present themselves over time as players gain experience in the main story mode" camp. I use mechjeb for SMART A.S.S, maneuver planner (and maneuver execution), and transfer window planner. Ascent guidance and the other automation features are in there, but I just don't use them, though I'm happy they're there for the people that do use them.

50 minutes ago, Master39 said:

I can use all the same arguments about accessibility and not being able to design a craft even if I tried 1000 times or not wanting to invest the time to do it and that if you want you can still use the VAB by enabling it under "hardcore settings" that are being used against manual piloting, these arguments are the baseline to ask the arbitrary removal of any gameplay element we don't like just by changing a word or two in the phrasing.

Wait, so are you arguing that craft file sharing we already have shouldn't be stock either because it undercuts the design experience of the game since they can just take other peoples designs then?

52 minutes ago, Master39 said:

To make a similar example, I'm not against the ability of turning off re-entry heating or comnet, as long as the game and especially the progression is still designed around that, if disabling it throws the balance of the game out of the windows it's up to the player to play around that.

While those example are extreme as it's easy to just wiggle some numbers around those things being disabled, piloting it's a foundation element of the game, one of the things that form KSP identity as a game, a fun and cartoonist space sim. One of the very few space sims out there and the only one releasing in this decade (KSP2).

So what if the game wasn't balanced around the implementation of the automation features and instead the automation features were implemented with consideration to the design of the game... by progressively being incorporated into it as the game progresses...

 

Once again though:

3 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Not trying to back seat mod but we've had this convo before.. just saying before we lose the topic. Though, I agree automation is a solution to the topic at hand, I know I've hashed out this convo with you guys several times and I don't think any of us are budging on our stances.

 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

and only enable auto-landing to a point you’ve landed before or already placed a beacon, this concern kind of goes out the window, right? 

I said it before that having hardware to setup on the ground side could enable some interesting gameplay and design choices for bases and colonies, maybe even coming to autolanding as a late game option.

My main concern is specifically with the view that sees flying as something you're forced to do and not the "playing the game" part of the game, KSP is basically 50% craft building and 50% flying, everything else is just serving that by providing scenery, and places and reasons to constantly fly and design new rockets.

Picking the example of colonies, their main goal for me is exactly to have different places other than the KSC to end or start missions from, I've already done a Duna mission multiple times, what I've never done is a Duna missions that starts from a Laythe launch site and ends at a Jool orbital colony. 

Btw that was mostly the point of the "KSP core pillars" dev diary, if we don't understand that the game's "KSP1-like pre colonial stage" is going to feel like grind and the colonial gameplay is going to be underwhelming, either that or the Devs will correct the "issue" by making flying less prevalent and colony management more central.

[Pthigrivi]

@Master39 Well that all sounds reasonable, and I actually completely agree about keeping the game focused. The idea that even starter colonies could be used as recovery sites and ease new players into more and more accurate landings is a great one. And again I don’t by any means believe autopilot functions are a requirement, just that they COULD be useful and fun even later in the game. The most important thing that everyone seems to agree with is that we need better visualization and flight data information. That plus automated milkruns takes care of 90% of the problem. 

Edited September 5, 2021 by Pthigrivi