Precision landing pad

[miklkit]

10 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

It's quite possible if you're good enough, but mods do help with that type of extreme precision. MJ can't do it, but TCA can. But we are talking about stock, so anything that mods can do isn't helpful.

More than likely there will be a radius that will be considered a valid landing for colonies, very similar to KSP1. The only real reason for that type of extreme precision is when your bases are small enough not to be considered colonies. The closer you land to the base, the quicker and easier you can transfer the resources and personnel between the base and craft. The time savings alone is worth being able to "easily" within a couple hundred meters of a base. 

Clarification:  I am not good enough.  My all time best landing was 160 meters, and that was just plain old dumb luck.  1-2 kilometers is normal.  Those who expect more are unbelievably naive.  BTW, all my landings are manual.  Any autopilot would be welcomed.

KSP has valid landing radius?  TCA? 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, miklkit said:

Clarification:  I am not good enough.

Yet.

It's always just a matter of practice, the point is if it's worth to you to put in the needed time to do that practice or not.
If they wipe away the need to make that practice nobody is going to do it except for people searching for intentional difficult stunts or people that practiced already. 

That's why I favor a system with a quite wide recovery range (even up to 10 or 20 kms) but with a clear incentive to be as precise as possible (recovery penalties like in KSP1, but on that 10 km scale instead of the whole planet), it encourages the player to get better at it over time and do some practice.

[Chilkoot]

3 hours ago, miklkit said:

My all time best landing was 160 meters, and that was just plain old dumb luck.  1-2 kilometers is normal.

A little trick (depending on what you're aiming for) is to use targets and waypoints, as those show up in the navball, and you can adjust your approach so that the target is very near your surface retrograde.  Eg, if you drop a flag on Mun/Minmus and call it "Land Here",  then set that as your target, it shows up on your navball and you can use that to fine-tune your approach.

With a little practice to get an intuitive understanding of how that works, you can usually drop a rocket within about 10m of the flag/waypoint, though it's harder on bodies rotating very quickly like Minmus specifically.

[Badoobicus]

There's another simple solution that took my landing game from "20 km is pretty good" to "remember not to land on the target," that the Kerbal Engineer mod implements quite nicely: a big ol' target. From map view, the target appears on the planet's surface at the anticipated point of touchdown, taking planet rotation into account. So if the planet's going to rotate the desired landing spot out from underneath you, the target will make it pretty clear you won't be landing in quite the right spot. From flight view, you can visibly see the target on the planet's surface below you. The flight view target works great for fine-tuning your approach once you're too close for map view to be helpful, but still too far to really eyeball your exact touchdown location.

[shdwlrd]

4 hours ago, miklkit said:

Clarification:  I am not good enough.  My all time best landing was 160 meters, and that was just plain old dumb luck.  1-2 kilometers is normal.  Those who expect more are unbelievably naive.  BTW, all my landings are manual.  Any autopilot would be welcomed.

KSP has valid landing radius?  TCA? 

Neither am I, so I understand the want for an autopilot. If the information for your crafts situation was easily viewable, you would have much better time landing. It won't be any easier of a task, but with knowing what the craft is doing will take some of that mental strain off and make landing a little less stressful.

In career mode, there is a radius around the KSC with how much you would be reimbursed for your surviving craft upon recovery. So if you land in the immediate area around the KSC, you'll recovery the most funds from the parts. 

TCA is Throttle Controlled Avionics by allisa. The only mod I've found that can land you within 100m every time. But it also has a bunch of cool features to play around with.

[Pthigrivi]

20 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

Neither am I, so I understand the want for an autopilot. If the information for your crafts situation was easily viewable, you would have much better time landing. It won't be any easier of a task, but with knowing what the craft is doing will take some of that mental strain off and make landing a little less stressful. cool features to play around with.

So during the course of launches most players get an okay handle on WASD, maybe some throttle control as they hit that dicey aerodynamic zone around 8-10k. Landing really ups the ante, because there's a series of full throttle burns with a little attitude adjustment to tweak the landing zone followed by a well-timed switch from retrograde to regular SAS a few hundred meters above the target, and a lot of fine motor control watching the nav ball as you carefully tweeze the last 10-20m/s down, maneuvering and slightly increasing and decreasing thrust to touch down nice and easy a few meters from the target. This last bit is genuinely, physically difficult for most people who haven't spent a crazy amount of time practicing, and is to me on par with landing a spaceplane on runway without skittering off. I think it's very easy to take this for granted for people who are already pretty good at it. But! I think we're all in agreement there's probably a happy balance between better visualization info and flexible recovery distances. 

Whether it is or isn't okay to include stock mechjeb functions is probably more related to the needs of long distance flights and rover missions. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[t_v]

One thing on the recovery system, you have to take loss aversion into account. Is the average player going to cause themselves to have a bad time by retrying landing because they want to recover all of their materials? Absolutely. So, there needs to be a way for players who have not yet learned to land precisely to be able to get full recovery. This means that the radius for full recovery needs to be extendable in-game, either via missions to demonstrate recovery capability or via part upgrades or something else. 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, t_v said:

 Is the average player going to cause themselves to have a bad time by retrying landing because they want to recover all of their materials? Absolutely. 

People up to the challenge will do the required practice and learn, the rest will accept the inefficiencies, and take precautions or workarounds.

Landing on target from orbit in one try is difficult to master, learning to hop around for short distances is quite an easier task, you could always pack enough fuel to land nearby and then do a series of hops to reach the landing pad.

Nobody should start by trying a landing on the center of the pad at first try on a polar colony on Eve.

[miklkit]

Sorry to get wound up about a game that won't be out for a long time yet.  The requirements will not be as tight as the experts here expect, I hope. 

[Bej Kerman]

22 hours ago, miklkit said:

Clarification:  I am not good enough.  My all time best landing was 160 meters, and that was just plain old dumb luck.  1-2 kilometers is normal.  Those who expect more are unbelievably naive.  BTW, all my landings are manual.  Any autopilot would be welcomed.

Instead of bailing on the challenge with an autopilot, you could just practice as with any other challenging thing in this game. No-one got good at Jool-5 by handing it over to MechJeb because "it was too difficult".

 

Precise atmospheric landings aren't even that hard anyway.

[shdwlrd]

54 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Instead of bailing on the challenge with an autopilot, you could just practice as with any other challenging thing in this game. No-one got good at Jool-5 by handing it over to MechJeb because "it was too difficult".

Precise atmospheric landings aren't even that hard anyway.

See below...

On 2/16/2022 at 12:18 PM, shdwlrd said:

I really hate the answer "it's easy, it just takes practice." It's not easy, and if there is nothing to tell you what you're doing wrong, (except crashing) how will you learn how to do it right?

I really do hope that KSP2 will add the tools and/or info to help with precision landings.

 

On 2/18/2022 at 8:14 PM, shdwlrd said:

If landing was as simple and intuitive as you claim, everyone will be landing safely first time, every time. I have to reload several times before I land safely, EVERY... SINGLE... TIME!!! So we have completely different experiences with landing.

Now as I said, I'm NOT requesting or advocating for an autoland feature to be added to the stock game. What I'm wanting is meaningful information about your situation to be CLEARLY visible when you land. An example would be separate velocity measurements for your X, Y, and Z axis. The bearing of the prograde marker separate from the actual bearing you're facing. The actual degrees of roll you are compared to the ground. (For landing planes.)

 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

See below...

Watch what he was replying to:

23 hours ago, miklkit said:

Clarification:  I am not good enough. 
[...] 
Any autopilot would be welcomed.

Ok, maybe you're ok with better tools and tutorials, but other people here are openly arguing for the challenge to be completely removed from the game.

[Bej Kerman]

34 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

See below...

On 2/16/2022 at 6:18 PM, shdwlrd said:

There's a difference between a tutorial to help you get started and an autopilot that makes the game play itself. Bottom line: precision atmospheric landing is no different from landing on the Mun or going interstellar. It's a challenge to be overcome. It's not an impossible task.

 

(this is no different from a complete noob that wants an autopilot because landing on the Mun looks hard)

34 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

If landing was as simple and intuitive as you claim, everyone will be landing safely first time, every time. I have to reload several times before I land safely, EVERY... SINGLE... TIME!!! So we have completely different experiences with landing.

No-one landed on the Mun first time without making mistakes. No-one left Kerbin for the first time without making mistakes. No-one landed their boosters back at KSC first time without making mistakes. Better instrumentation and tutorials are the answer to reducing difficulty and preserving the challenge - autopilots do not respect the challenge aspect.

Edited February 21, 2022 by Bej Kerman

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

There's a difference between a tutorial to help you get started and an autopilot that makes the game play itself. Bottom line: precision atmospheric landing is no different from landing on the Mun or going interstellar. It's a challenge to be overcome. It's not an impossible task.

 

(this is no different from a complete noob that wants an autopilot because landing on the Mun looks hard)

No-one landed on the Mun first time without making mistakes. No-one left Kerbin for the first time without making mistakes. No-one landed their boosters back at KSC first time without making mistakes. Better instrumentation and tutorials are the answer to reducing difficulty and preserving the challenge - autopilots do not respect the challenge aspect.

I think what he's saying is he's been trying for years and still finds it very difficult. He's not the only one saying this, so I think its worth considering that some people just find that rapid hand-eye coordination and intuition about how to angle your thrust to come down gently vertical just physically difficult. For folks like that being told "you just have to practice more" sounds kind of insulting. Maybe after decades of trying they could do what you find comes easy, but that just isn't worth it for a lot of players. Hopefully much better visualization helps, but I see no reason to rule out some autopilot functions. 

[magnemoe]

On 2/20/2022 at 2:03 PM, pandaman said:

One 'trick' I often use is to use landing gear instead of legs.  That way I can not worry about killing all horizontal velicity (as long as I'm pointing the right way).  I can also touch down a bit short and roll towards the target.

An excellent idea, you can also use this for travel if you have an rocket for trust in direction of travel and you can retract the gear and rest on structure to avoid issues with weight jumping during warp. 
Later is an KSP 1 issue who is probably is solved in 2. 

On 2/20/2022 at 2:03 PM, pandaman said:

One 'trick' I often use is to use landing gear instead of legs.  That way I can not worry about killing all horizontal velicity (as long as I'm pointing the right way).  I can also touch down a bit short and roll towards the target.

An excellent idea, you can also use this for travel if you have an rocket for trust in direction of travel and you can retract the gear and rest on structure to avoid issues with weight jumping during warp. 
Later is an KSP 1 issue who is probably solved in 2. 

[pandaman]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

An excellent idea, you can also use this for travel if you have an rocket for trust in direction of travel and you can retract the gear and rest on structure to avoid issues with weight jumping during warp. 
Later is an KSP 1 issue who is probably solved in 2. 

I do that too, I have been known to land rather further away than intended, so it help a lot with that.

[miklkit]

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I think what he's saying is he's been trying for years and still finds it very difficult. He's not the only one saying this, so I think its worth considering that some people just find that rapid hand-eye coordination and intuition about how to angle your thrust to come down gently vertical just physically difficult. For folks like that being told "you just have to practice more" sounds kind of insulting. Maybe after decades of trying they could do what you find comes easy, but that just isn't worth it for a lot of players. Hopefully much better visualization helps, but I see no reason to rule out some autopilot functions. 

That is what I was saying, and why I wanted to walk away from this pointless thread.  I have over 2200 hours into KSP and started with ver. 1.18.1.  All of my rocket landings to date are manual and anything within 3 kilometers is fine.  My worst was 31 kilometers and that was my first attempt with NERVs.  Misjudged them a little bit.  That one actually ended up being pretty funny in a Keystone Kops sorta way.

If I expressed my opinion of these "experts" I would probably get banned.

[Bej Kerman]

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

so I think its worth considering that some people just find that rapid hand-eye coordination and intuition about how to angle your thrust to come down gently vertical just physically difficult.

Then it's worth considering that KSP 2 should add slow-motion as a time warp increment, as KSP 1 has half-implemented with the physics delta settings. Again, autopilot takes out the challenge instead of just the difficulty. The entire point of KSP 1 is that you fly a rocket, not let autopilot take over. It really doesn't take much effort to pull the autopilot card rather than come up with better solutions that keep the player in control, such as rotating frame trajectories that also account for drag, better tutorials, and of course the slow-motion I suggested.

15 minutes ago, miklkit said:

That is what I was saying, and why I wanted to walk away from this pointless thread.  I have over 2200 hours into KSP and started with ver. 1.18.1.  All of my rocket landings to date are manual and anything within 3 kilometers is fine.  My worst was 31 kilometers and that was my first attempt with NERVs.  Misjudged them a little bit.  That one actually ended up being pretty funny in a Keystone Kops sorta way.

Some people also never do Jool-5, orbit close to the Sun, or even land on the Mun. Doesn't mean there should be an autopilot to trivialise these things.

15 minutes ago, miklkit said:

If I expressed my opinion of these "experts" I would probably get banned.

I don't believe anyone expressed any interest in knowing that, thank you.

[EnderKid2]

I think Trajectories and some of the lower-level VTOL assists from TCA (like vertical and horizontal velocity control) should be integrated, unlocked as you progress.

Edited February 21, 2022 by EnderKid2

[RKunze]

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Better instrumentation and tutorials are the answer to reducing difficulty and preserving the challenge - autopilots do not respect the challenge aspect.

I beg to differ.

My current personal challenge is to get kOS (clearly a kind of autopilot) on a limited IPU budget to bruteforce its way fast enough through some fairly complicated math (a homegrown Runge-Kutta solver for rocket motion equations in atmosphere) to hopefully finally get something that can actively guide any rocket from launchpad to orbit (and in consequence back again - that's basically the same equation, only drag is your friend now)  without having to touch the keyboard after the initial "go"...

[Bej Kerman]

8 minutes ago, RKunze said:

My current personal challenge is to get kOS (clearly a kind of autopilot) on a limited IPU budget to bruteforce its way fast enough through some fairly complicated math (a homegrown Runge-Kutta solver for rocket motion equations in atmosphere) to hopefully finally get something that can actively guide any rocket from launchpad to orbit (and in consequence back again - that's basically the same equation, only drag is your friend now)  without having to touch the keyboard after the initial "go"...

Programming a rocket (kOS) is different to having a pre-programmed autopilot already there (what everyone else is on about).

10 minutes ago, EnderKid2 said:

TCA

Some aspects of TCA should be stock in KSP 2 given that rockets are getting so huge that Mammoth engines would make tiny RCS thrusters in comparison.

[MADV]

22 hours ago, t_v said:

Is the average player going to cause themselves to have a bad time by retrying landing because they want to recover all of their materials?

Absolutely no.

I hate to break it to you as I don't want to influence negatively the way you play the game, but the very challenge of partial recovery is already present in KSP1 (career mode), and as far as I know the average player isn't trying to pinpoint the launchpad or the runway for every single one of their Kerbin reentry. Heck, even most veteran aren't always trying. A 90% recovery at 10 or so kilometers away is pretty damn good enough that most players would only try to land closer it they find pleasure in the challenge.

I'd expect the average player would be very satisfied with a good enough result, especially for a mission that is subsequently repeated for free in the background. And in the remote possibility recovery scaling on proximity from KSC in KSP1 career mode was news to you, I strongly advise you against changing your play-style for a handful funds you did not notice until then and which the game in normal difficulty gives you in near infinite abundance already.

Edited February 21, 2022 by MADV

[Vanamonde]

Some people would like an autopilot to be a stock feature of KSP2, and others would prefer the game be strictly manually piloted. Both are valid wishes, so please stop telling each other that those who wish for the other option are wrong or bad players. 

[Bej Kerman]

2 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Some people would like an autopilot to be a stock feature of KSP2, and others would prefer the game be strictly manually piloted. Both are valid wishes, so please stop telling each other that those who wish for the other option are wrong or bad players. 

KSP wouldn't really be KSP with an autopilot - the motto as I remember it is build, fly, explore. An autopilot would take away a core pillar that's been there since before the game went into open alpha. Valid wish, sure, but a wish that goes against KSP's foundations.

[RKunze]

2 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

KSP wouldn't really be KSP with an autopilot - the motto as I remember it is build, fly, explore. An autopilot would take away a core pillar that's been there since before the game went into open alpha.

If a majority would habe that opinion, we would not have MechJeb, kOS, KRPC, Atmosphere Autopilot, and a gazillion of other mods I'm sure I forgot...

.And just for a different view, for me, KSP wouldn't be KSP without Principia, Kerbalism, JNSQ, kOS, Strategia and a whole bunch oft other mods.