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MechJeb Review


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but it makes mistakes all the time, many are due to its lack of fine control. I've seen it shake rockets apart, flip them end over end, miscalculate burns to planets and moons.

Which means it actually fits better into the game as I see it. A mechanical version of Jeb is just as capable of thoroughly screwing up an ascent, lithobraking a landing, or oscillating a hypersonic fighter into a million pieces as the best Kerbal-controlling human can.

One thing that suggests itself is the idea for incremental improvements to MJ with the tech tree in career mode; starting off with controls to hold angles and a pre-programmed time for retrorockets to fire, like the first few flights of the Mercury project...up to and including taking the RCS controls away from Scott Karpenter...and progressively unlocking things like docking module, orbital information, burn scheduling etc. A properly evolving flight computer, so players who want to automate can focus on that development but everybody starts with learning the same basics.

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So it seems either people want realism in which case they would let the computer launch, rendezvous, dock, and land or people want to be an engineer and just make rockets and have `mission control` fly them in which case they would let the computer launch, rendezvous, dock, and land or people just want an unrealistic `driving game` where they control everything in a simplistic manner in which case the computer takes over a lot, more than and yet at the same time not as much as, in real life... (try to control the amperage from your batteries directly, turn off subsystems to conserve power, mix the fuel in the tank with the mixing pump etc and see how `real` KSP is)

To my mind if you can make a ship that can be flown by hand and also by MJ it is a better ship than one that can only be piloted by hand or MJ.

I have landed by hand on every single body in the system except jool and the sun. If you have done that then you are qualified to dismiss the use of MJ by others but if you do that you may find you realise why it is childish to dismiss the use of MJ by others.

Play however you find the most fun.

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. . . which bring out those that want to defend it...and yeah...

I'm one of those guys, but it's not so much as to specifically defend MechJeb, but to defend a person's right to play KSP in any fashion that makes them happy. The only exception to this, in my view, is any challenge where the mod in question is expressly forbidden. It's not just MJ.

People need to stop telling other people how to play the game.

I wonder if Scott Manley would have become such a legend if he let MJ do his flying.....

Scott Manley uses MechJeb, too.

Edited by DChurchill
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If you aiming for precise inclinations, such as launching to a 20.1 degree orbit for example, you need MechJeb. You don't have the ability in the game to precisely adjust your inclination from launch (or arguably after launch too), unfortunately.

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I find MechJeb has its uses. I dont have a lot of time to play, so it is very useful in rendezvousing, which seems to take so much time to do. Also if i have problems docking with less than cooperative ships, it can help do that final tricky dock and save time. Sometimes I will use it to help me land if i have tried and failed, some vehicles are just too hard to do, and MJ does help. But most of the time I like to do things manually, so I only use MJ when I need to.

Besides, although a lot of people feel the game is very realistic, its not, it has a lot of the physics, but I can understand people using this trying to get as close to the real thing as possible. And it is the best simulator out there! But it is also a game, so I think it is very silly for anyone to rant negatively about anyone using any way to do anything they want to in this game.

Mods are there to make the game more fun, and expand on possibilities, so I say use them to your hearts content and have a blast!!

:D

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Another one of these threads? Why do you people keep doing this? The OP itself is fine I guess, but come on...what is wrong with the rest of you? Stop. Just stop. There is no argument to win, no point to make, no reasons to debate, nothing. The game is singleplayer. Mechjeb exists. Don't like it? Don't use it. The magnitude of presumptuous ignorance it takes for one to tell another how to play a singleplayer game is absolutely hilarious.

For all of you whining purists, quit while you're behind. The only people who care about how you play are...you.

Wonderfully stated!! End of Discussion!!!!

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Mechjeb's great and all, but I would NEVER trust it with my ships unattended. It rips em apart! If I install its only for node planning.

Mechjeb is an lifesaver for non symmetric ships.

It let me continue the mission and return with this ship.

fgBDLn2.png

it lost two orange tanks and four of the 16 LV-N.

or this

ukqMHDC.png

However here it was designed to drop one of the stacks.

Mechjeb has an issue with shaking the ship a lot during the final part of the burn as it adjust the nodes. probably that killed the ship who lost the two orange tanks.

However in 0.22 career mode I find I miss the dV stats most both then building and flying.

So used to having 4500 m/s on the launcher and 1200 on the transfer stage on Mun and Minmus missions.

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After downloading MJ awhile back, I finally gave it a try last night. It took me awhile to figure out that I had to equip the ship with the electronics package to enable it. I've been doing all my flying "by hand" up to this point.

I've come to love it to its rendezvous autopilot. (one of my least favorite things to do). In about an hour, I constructed a 3-piece space station over Kerbin using it. I don't think I'll ever go back now. I still dock and land myself, because I enjoy doing it.

I dont' see MJ as hokey, since no real-life astro/cosmonaut was ever stuck using slide rules to compute their own destinations. If their on-board computers weren't helping, they had a virtual MechJeb at ground control coming up with the answers anyway.

ZF-

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If you aiming for precise inclinations, such as launching to a 20.1 degree orbit for example, you need MechJeb. You don't have the ability in the game to precisely adjust your inclination from launch (or arguably after launch too), unfortunately.

Relevant XKCD:

duty_calls.png

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  • 1 month later...
MechJeb is overpowerd? :huh:

BWAAAA HA HAA Ha haa ha ha aaahahah ahh.

wow, some people eh ... and I suppose the flight computers on any modern spacecraft .. heck pretty much ANY spacecraft period, are also "overpowered" too?

MechJeb is merely a flight computer. I sometimes let it do stuff for me, and I sometimes just have it show me data.

It's an excellent add-on. IMO it should be incorporated into the game itself.

You can say that if you coded MechJeb yourself. I mean, NASA just didn't download their flight computer software from a higher power, so neither should you.

EDIT: Also, KSP isn't a single player game. You interact with other players through these forums.

Edited by Holo
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Relevant XKCD:

duty_calls.png

Too funny by half :D The only thing missing is the footnote "and I know I am right" :wink:

My own take on all this MJ stuff is to play however you like, it matters not one bit.

In my many lives I have built 200Hp motorcycle engines, I have and still do build composite and timber yachts, I have written and had published 4 video games, built and managed multi-site networks for thousands of users. But I can't fly KSP for love nor money, MJ lets me enjoy (a very important factor in gaming) KSP.

If I could fly without it I probably would, but I can't so it's MJ all the way for me and I don't have a problem with that. If you do, well it's your problem not mine :D

Thanks to the crew who built it and those who maintain it :cool:

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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh mech jeb mech jeb again and again :) love the drawing, i myself use it a lot, fact is i have totally no interest in piloting vessel themselves, plus i landed on the mün on second try (after leaving kerbin orbit and reach the mün for the first time) with only stock feature.

Really, imho mech jeb save me from all things that i feel boring to hell like piloting, or doing all the math myself for each flight (but this is very personal, i can undertand people who have interest in piloting, even if i will never understand the fact of non stop arguing about mech jeb is evil or not ;)

rightly wrong is'nt it ? ;)

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I use it for things I have gotten board of doing manually. There was a time I used it to dock because docking manually caused me traumatic drenching sweat stress but ever since Docking Port Alignment Indicator and then Navball docking alignment indicator that has become a relaxing enjoyable experience for me.

The latest build supposedly works in 0.23: http://jenkins.mumech.com/job/MechJeb2/lastStableBuild/artifact/jenkins-MechJeb2-136/MechJeb2-2.1.0.0-136.zip

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I love the people that say that our modern space programs were built on people flying the rockets...HAHA, that makes me laugh. In truth MechJeb is nothing at all new and is in no way new to rocketry. The grans majority of rocketry was controlled by computer being it mechanical or digital (Yes there are mechanical computers...there are also mechanical calculators, my father has one). Most of space flight is done by a computer and was done even for the Apollo missions. United States Astronauts had to demand that manual controls be put in as they were not planned but in time saved many missions including Apollo 11.

But Manual control is for the most part a minor event and typically only used when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, your just a passenger trusting a computer with your life. MechJeb is a great mod for how ever you choose to use it. You can use it just for the information it gives, or you can use it for more. The thing is, people payed their money to play a game, and they have the right to play it as they please with what mods they please. I personally use MechJeb for landing and docking, things I am not good at.

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You can say that if you coded MechJeb yourself. I mean, NASA just didn't download their flight computer software from a higher power, so neither should you.

EDIT: Also, KSP isn't a single player game. You interact with other players through these forums.

That is really stretching the definition of multiplayer.

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