My Experience

[Bazurak]

So far, I have landed on a few planets/moons. However, I still cannot dock, I learnt this from what happend.

I launched a new project yesterday (10th Jan 2014), K.I.S.S (Kerbal International Space Station), and I launched the Core, which had two habitat modulus on, and the four point connector thing (forgot the name) I then brought up a refueler and it went horribly wrong, I was with in 10 meters when the accident happend;

I turned the engine on! This sent the ship into the station, and blew up Jeb, and Bob....

[dazhat]

Keep trying if you can get within 10m then you have almost docked. As for turning the engine on.... Happens to all of us at some point or another.

[ComradeGoat]

Ooh, harsh!

As you get close to the station, make a habit of shutting the engines down. It's saved me a lot of grief.

[KinkyFerrets]

I staged a final decoupler and parachute when I though I was switching from lin to rot in docking mode. The resulting collision with my station solar panel rendered it pretty much useless.

[Markus Reese]

F5.... Usually I roleplay it all, but docking to my large ships, too easy to just blip the wrong thing. Full forward RCS instead of reverse!!! And then I ragequit. Quicksave save's keyboards...

[6.forty]

I have a bad habit of thinking the left Shift actually does something camera related in the map view, and often find my ship's been accelerating in some arbitrary direction for the past few minutes just because I had the navball up. Or I find that I've just plowed through the station I was trying to rendezvous with.

[Boris_T_Roach]

Been there done that, collected all the bits that have kerbals in them and recovered the kerbals and abandoned that debris infested orbit....

But its way annoying when you've spent 10 or more flights building your Kerbal Space Station .22, and you ram it while docking the final piece.

But consider real life..... the russians bashed their MIR space station with a progress supply ship ... and they are supposed to know what they are doing.

Anyway, heres how I dock when I forget to add a mech jeb pod to my ship

Use the map screen and manuvering to get the closest approach at the AP, and match the orbital planes too

Thrust at the AP either prograde, or retro to reduce the closest approach distance to about 200-300 meters

Get to that point and use the engine to reduce relative speed to 0 m/sec

And turn the engine(s) off

Then thrust toward the station using RCS, turn ship lights on (my docking always seem to happen on the night side), and stop about 70-80 meters away, then select the docking port you need to aim at

Aim at it using the nav ball, and thrust to 0.4 m/sec, be prepared to stop and adjust your ships position by RCS to line it up with the docking port, then resume thrusting towards it

reduce speed to 0.2 m/sec when you get within 10 meters.

Boris

And rememebr to open the shielded docking port before you get there!

[celem]

Arrrggh gutted.... but yes, done that. Hit the target so hard both craft were annihilated along with crews.

As Dazhat points out. You got it all right bar the final few key presses.

Some tips to help prevent similar setbacks:

Use little engines to shunt the modules around when they are close to each other... I generally have a skipper as my service module engine to get the rendezvous. I kill that for a ring of 4-6 rockomax radials once i have that first intercept in map view since thrust is no longer my friend.

Consider braking engines for large unwieldy modules.... I sometimes have an issue turning my module over its own length in a decent amount of time to perform gentle braking thrusts. If you overdo it you are then flipping again to put more speed back on. A ring of 4 orange rocko radials mounted backwards by the top of the module lets you make a braking burn while pointed prograde like a beefy RCS. I set the ring mentioned in the first tip to activate engines on action group 1(and skipper off) then both rings to toggle on action group 2.

This lets me hit 1 as soon as i have a decent intercept, and then 2 toggles between forward and reverse 'gear' for the fine-tuning. From 10m however im almost always pure RCS. A very very heavy module benefits again from the setup i mentioned where RCS is too weak to do anything in a reasonable time-frame.

General rule of thumb: Move really slowly for most of the close-in work. You have a timewarp and less than 1ms is just fine.

[ArmchairGravy]

Docking is the hardest thing to master, but once you've done a couple you'll know what to do. More importantly you'll know what NOT to do! The two key things I did when learning that helped me the most: docking ports go on the ends not the sides, and point the ships north/south so the ports don't rotate out of alignment.

[Bazurak]

I will retry again, I will keep you updated! Thanks for the information guys!

[EtherDragon]

Quicksave save's keyboards...

Yes, Quicksave is not short for "Quickly save my game"...

It's actually short for "Quickly save my keyboard from RAAAAAWGE!!!"

As far as docking is concerned:

Once you have a matched orbit, and are within 2km of the thing - you can literally take forever. Do not rush it, be patient, and let momentum do what momentum does. Docking is exponentially harder for the "MUST GET THERE NOW!" type players. Learn to do it right - learning to do it fast will come with practice.

[Rocket Farmer]

It takes time but you will get it. My 1st took me 1.5 hours of nail biting. By my 10th I would skip rcs entirely using the engines only and do it in about 10 minutes no sweat.

I make sure as I get to LKO I'm just a little behind my space station. Then I use the target function and trajectory planner to find the right burn angle to get continuously closer intercepts.

When I close within about 5k I switch to the rocket screen and use the tracking ball to close. With strategic burns I align my relative velocity indicator so it is pointed directly at the target ship and get it to around 20m/s closing speed. When I get within 1km I rotate and burn retrograde to slow my relative closing speed to about 1m/s at about 200m out then rotate back forward so that I point prograde and also directly at the other ship

I then quickly switch ships, target the incoming vessel, control the ship from the desired docking port and then rotate my other ship so that the trackball heading lines up with the other ships marker.

Then I switch back and watch them close te distance and connect. Every once in awhile it will slightly miss and I will have to give it a little throttle to overcome the bounce apart after irate contact.

It's of course even easier with rcs but trust me it will become 2nd nature.