Meticulous Planning or Wing it?

[Flixxbeatz]

Or you could try Jeb's logic: 70% wing it, 70% balls

[SkyRender]

I used to just wing it like you. Then I got tired of finding out that my missions were just a bit short of what I needed for those long interplanetary voyages and started calculating everything out. Strangely, this did not decrease my enjoyment of the game. If anything, I love KSP even more now that I actually take the time to carefully plan both the dV and capabilities of my craft to fit the mission profile.

[magnemoe]

With planning I always test landers and rovers at spaceport.

I also launch huge structures unmanned as they have far more problems during launch than manrated ssto.

Use mechjeb to get delta-v for stages and landers.

But I don't detail plan huge multi goal missions, my grand tour had plenty of improvisation, like checking out the hole at the north pole of Moho, even sent an Kerbal down to 10 meter over the surface of Jool and back with an special launcher / airship I sent while the grand tour was on way to Duna.

[Murchadh]

I reckon I spend +95% of my time with KSP planning and testing, rather than playing out actual missions. Even building the most basic of probes can take me hours because I could consider multiple things at length. I "test" designs by actually sending them on "test missions" on a special save I use for this purpose. When I am 99% satisfied things will go according to plan, I load up the "mission" save and execute the mission proper, by which time I have actually completed the mission in parts several times whilst testing. But hey, I like playing this way. This is part of the beauty of KSP. You can do almost anything you like and play it almost any way you like.

[SargeRho]

30% Eyballing it, 1% skill, 69% pure unmitigated adrenaline.

[Tokay Gris]

So far, I just build what I want to build and then put as much thrust behind it as I can.

Which ususally means two orange tanks (or rather: four grey ones) with a mainsail engine behind it and six asparagus-thrusters of the same size and engine.

Then I lift and pray. (To Kerbol, mostly. Or Murphy. That he might pleeeaaaase look the other way?)

If within the first 1000 meters I do not reach 110 m/s (or reasonably close), I restart and put three big solid fuel boosters on each asparagus booster. Which is kind of silly, since the first asparagus stage usually is empty before the solid boosters burn out.

This method provides results, but is usually so overpowerd that I end up with the center stage (the 2 orange tanks) still almost full and in orbit. (I started putting docking ports on them and now have a pretty big fuel depot in orbit)

So for me, so far, it is mostly "eyeball".

I do have the suspicion though that most of my fuel used is burned up getting all that fuel in orbit and the payload could actually be waaaay bigger.

I put the borgcube in orbit with this method. And I had about one orange tank, a smaller grey tank plus engine in a different stage, an RCS-tank (useless, I forgot RCS-thrusters) and a three man command capsule left over.

Which kind of means that I had about 30 tons wasted (round about... I will check this friday when I get home).

This in turn means that I can get about 60 or 70 tons into orbit easily, if I drop all that useless stuff. This is good.

The bad part about this method is: I have not really any idea how I did that. It seems to be the "just put an A-bomb under it and it will get into space"-method.

It does work. Mostly. But since the next mayor missions are to Duna and other planets, this has to change from around 20% plan and 80% eyeball to about 50/50....

Oh, and another good thing about this method: I learned how to dock those hugh stages together in space. With three dockingports on each. (will add pictures this weekend)

And THAT will help me put together a hugh interplanetary cruiser that hopefully will get to Jool!

Did I say that I love this game?

[Jokurr]

At first I completely winged it (“hmm, this rocket looks just about big enough to get me where I’m goingâ€Â) though now I put some planning into most of my missions. At the very least I use mechjeb to ensure my spacecraft actually has enough delta V to reach it’s destination (and back, if that is part of the mission). I’ll have a general idea of what I want to do on various missions, but that is more or less the extent of the planning I’ll do. Most of my rockets are based off of previous iterations but I sometimes will launch missions with untried rocket configurations.

[Flixxbeatz]

or as Mike Shinoda put it:

10% luck

20% skill

15% concentrated LOX and RP-1

5% success

50% fail

100% reason to remember Jebediah Kerman

[LeonG17]

100% reason to remember Jebediah Kerman

This is yet another example why I believe that Jeb should be contained in a space station before he uses SRBs to "accidently" split Kerbin in half.

[KevinTMC]

I load up KSP, decide where I want to send Jeb today, slap something together, and wing it.

A rescue mission inevitably ensues. And that's where the meticulous planning starts to happen.

[DChurchill]

I have a tendency to just wing it. I start putting parts together and see how it goes. I love when they're so ungainly and heavy they just collapse and explode on the pad.

[Felsmak]

Nah, I just fly and hope for the best.

[viktorserecros]

I start off with great plans that end in either:

A) Where is that engine going!? With a Restart launch.

So much for accuracy. Hey, look what I'm lined up to do today. Cool.

[Boris_T_Roach]

Wing it always

If it works , it flies and gets saved, if it does'nt fly, theres always SRBs to make it fly, and Jeb, Bill and Bob watch the procedings from the safety of the KSS11

"Put a remote control on it? damn those things cost money, stick a kerbal in it"

[brooksy125]

Snip

.

I remember reading your Duna mission and thinking you would never top that then you sent out that one,

One of the best pre .18 missions I have ever seen

[buzzles]

I wing it to start with.

For me a lot of the fun involves seeing what'll happen, so I tend to slap things together with a rough goal and see what inevitably goes wrong.

I can then go back, look at what went wrong and improve it, which I suppose is planning.

[DMagic]

A lot of the time I just start putting something together in the VAB. Sometimes I'll go back and redesign something even if I can already get it into orbit, just to make it smaller, or to make a few changes. But sometimes I go all out in planning. This was the first step into putting together what I showed in the base thread. The final version actually turned out pretty close, except for 1 component that I added because I didn't quite understand how Kethane refining worked. The numbers written everywhere are part counts and estimates as I refined things.

[Noticeably FAT]

I mostly wing it. I'll test separate parts of a mission separately (mostly by docking them together before sending them on their merry way), but I tend to just assume they'll work at the other end. that bites me on the ass sometimes (ok, usually), but I have more fun that way. For instance, I just sent a giant mission to the Jool system. It has a CM/tug (for moving big parts from moon to moon, and for habitation), four mapsats, four mid sized rovers, a lander that should (but probably won't) work on all the moons, a large interplanetary drive for getting the thing to Jool, and a large stack of drop tanks for the lander (the idea being that I dock with and carry as many as I'll need for a particular moon, then drop them on the way down/up as needed). So far the mapsats don't have enough dV to get themselves into each moon's orbit (they have to break out of a highly elliptical and inclined Jool orbit first), and I used up about half of the lander drop tanks getting into Jool orbit. Oops. So, my next Jool mission will be another stack of drop tanks, and a large to small docking port adapter so the CM/tug can insert the mapsats. I now suspect that it'll need to push the rovers around as well, their skycranes should land them ok, but I doubt they have the fuel to change SOIs.

[Elemental]

I'm very much a planning person, with iterative testing of concepts up front before trying to apply them to live missions. I burn up a LOT of probes.

This is my method.

When I went to build my multi ship for Duna.. I built two rovers with docking ports and drove them around at KSP just so I would get a feel for what to expect from docking and how to swap fuel etc.

I also test drop complex landers on kerbin to find flaws in the design.

[Spatzimaus]

I built two rovers with docking ports and drove them around at KSP just so I would get a feel for what to expect from docking and how to swap fuel etc.

I did something similar. My KSC is surrounded by a ring of debris at the moment, as the first thing I'd do when I designed a heavy rover would be to drive it at full speed to see how stable it was when hitting a bump. (Granted, this was with the Modular Multiwheels mod, where your rovers can go up to 100m/s, so that's a lot more of a danger.) As you can guess, my first few attempts all resulted in vehicles ripping themselves apart and scattering pieces across the landscape. But it meant that by the time I was ready to put a mobile Kethane refinery on Mun or Minmus, I knew it wouldn't break easily.

It also made it really easy to spot KSC from orbit when trying to land there, since there were hundreds of debris pieces on the ground nearby. Which is funny, given how careful I was to prevent any orbital debris...

[The Destroyer]

I usually plan.

When I built this monster, I didn't know where I would go. Now its on its way to Jool.

[AustralianFries]

Meticulous Planning... I first create a mission. Then create flight plans (via notepad). Here's the prompt I use:

Mission:

Mission Flight:

Vehicle:

Action Keys for Vehicle:

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

0)

Objective(s):

Notes:

Mission Report:

Here is a completed mission file.

Mission: Alpha

Mission Flight: Alpha 1

Vehicle: Lyra

Action Keys for Vehicle:

1)Extend antenae

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

0)

Objective(s):

-Achieve orbit around Kerbin.

-Deorbit launch vehicle and debris.

Notes:

-Slower takeoff than expected.

-LV separated with periapsis of ~20km.

Mission Report:

Mission was an overall success. Final orbit is 102,872m by 103,385m. All antenae have been extended and the ship is now oriented North (zero degrees). All debris has been deorbited.

In the VAB, I name the vehicle something and save it with the mission name in front. (So the above vehicle would be named "Alpha - Lyra". Once the flight starts, I then rename the vessel to the mission flight number. I have a main folder called "Kerbal Space Program Mission Logs". I then create sub-folders of missions. So going with the example above, I have a sub-folder named "Alpha". Inside the sub-folders go the notepad file of each flight. I will then move screenshots into the mission folder as well.

[Reavermyst]

Trial and Error(By FIRE). So a combination of both xD Coming up with meticulous plans and then winging them in hopes of not falling back down in a heap of scrap and charred Kerbal.

[W3asel]

I plan my primary mission (at least when I'm going farther out than mun). Extending missions due to extra fuel without planning is how I ended up with Jeb in my first Duna return ship landed on Dres with almost no fuel left.

[Tokay Gris]

I got this baby into orbit. My heaviest yet.

Actually, no planning behind it. Two tests, though. One, where it turned out the boosters knocked the mainsails off and the second without the satellites.

What suprised me most was that the satellites actually stayed on unstrutted.

And AGAIN way too much fuel left. One third still in the center tank, the "circularizing" stage still unused, the interplanetary tank (the orange one) still full.

Idea was to get this cruiser to Duna and deploy the mapping satellites there. Or someplace else.

(And I forgot RCS again. This time including the tank...)

EDIT: By the way, this thingie has a serious flaw... the nuclear engine in the middle of the payload can't be used. Activating it results in immediate posthumous heros...

Edited May 11, 2013 by Tokay Gris