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Starting to think manual landings are more affective than mechjeb.


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Today I was landing my thor on the surface of the mun, and mechjeb started jittering about, I took manual control and landed it just fine.

After that I took off using mechjeb and met up with the return module.

So, mechjeb is good for anything but landings. ;.;

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Then you are on the right way.

IMO Mechjeb is great for learning things.

But when the time comes and you are able to do them yourself, they are way more fun than watching the autopilot doing it :)

I am not saying that Mechjeb is a bad thing, but it is a helpfull bad thing :D

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My missions are generally extremely complex in order to get the maximum amount of science I can, and I don't like taking risks.

Generally my dockings, orbits, launches, and de orbiting is done by mechjeb to ensure maximum survival.

I generally do manual landings.

I think I'm abit overdependant, but I'm not a rocket scientist.

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Yes and no.

Mechjeb, particularly if you're a newer player, is always going to give you a more accurate and efficient landing, and a perfectly accurate orbital situation. The thing about Mechjeb though (and the reason why I stopped using it) is that while it understands the mass and direction and fuel situation on your ship, it doesn't really understand the shape, and it doesn't get the idea of being 'generally' correct. I've found this to result in problems during ascent and descent, where the autopilot would either try to turn while staging, or be unable to see that the landing site, on closer inspection, is no good in relation to the mass distribution of the ship. I've also found this to result in problems as it nears the destination location, as it begins firing all the RCS motors in an attempt to be 100% correct down to the last decimal, while a human player will eyeball it and decide that their end-location is 'close enough' to where they want to go.

However, I will repeat the point that landing manually is way more exciting than MechJeb, and feels more rewarding.

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I've only really used mech jeb for t/w calcs, delta v estimates and precise orbit info. For me half the fun of the game is the suspense of bringing something down as close to a suicide burn as possible without plowing into the surface. It helps you learn. I like that I have a pretty decent working intuition of aerocapture altitudes just from trial and error.

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Yes I do agree, I'm starting to prefer manual landings over automated landings.

But if I attempt to do an orbital rendezvous without mechjeb, it generally goes wrong, one time during space station construction I tried it manually and I impacted the station at about fifty M/S.

Also my current Mun/minmus lander is based off of the apollo system so orbital rendezvousing is a large priority.

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At first I thought auto pilot was the way to go, but after that contributed to my crash landings, I decided to just stick with manual. Its not hard with a little practice. I recommend learning to land at Minmus due to its more forgiving low G environment. Then Mun and of course Kerbin.

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well, its a really good thing that you decided mechjeb isn't that good.... for me, I tried it for maybe a couple days, but I found I could launch much more efficiently than mechjeb and most things other than docking more effiecient, but really I found it was pointless using mechjeb because you aren't doing anything, you might aswell watch scott manley without any commentary at all, you are looking at somebody else play... and if you are doing that why bother with KSP at all....

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Mechjeb's landing autopilot typically results in lithobraking for most anything I've built, and it's entirely useless when you have to land something that doesn't have a probe core, pod, or docking port facing up. Smart A.S.S and manual throttle control works so much better for me.

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I wouldn't trust mechjeb with a landing. I got it for rendezvous and docking, and recently took it off docking duties because it was absolutely TERRIBLE at it. Frittering away RCS fuel like crazy, and so forth.

The final nail in the coffin was when it backed my craft into the station at about 15 m/s, nearly snapped the station in two, THEN hit the brakes.

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Actually, even in real life it's best not to rely on autopilot for precision activities like final descent or docking maneuvers. Any time there's the potential for the need to make swift last-second decisions or adjustments, having an actual human at the controls is a good idea. Especially when those last-second decisions are based on a scenario that you could never have predicted or programmed into the automation. There was a famous incident where one of the space shuttles tried to do an autopilot-guided docking with Mir, and the shuttle ended up impacting and depressurizing one of the sections of the station instead.

The short of it is, don't let a machine do all the work for you, especially not when that work has the potential for mandatory split-second decisions. An activity being routine does not mean it should be 100% automated.

Edited by SkyRender
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Let's please not rehash the pro/anti-Mechjeb argument again. OP's question was about the efficiency, not the morality of using Mechjeb, so let's discuss it in those terms. And since that probably will involve numbers and maybe even some math-type-stuff, let's just ease this thread over to gameplay questions, alrighty?

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mechjeb does a better job that you with both landing and orbital ascent.... Assuming you are either a newbie, or inattentive, or lazy. (im usually one of the last two..)

With a skilled, experienced pilot at the controls, you will outperform MJ in all tasks. It's just a lot harder work and focus.

((except for MechJeb's "fine tune closest approach to target" function.. That functions on Miracles and Black Magic, if you ask me. Even with reams of paper, spreadsheets and calculus, I cannot match it for efficiency..))

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If the game is more fun for you with MechJeb than without it, use it.

If it is more fun without MechJeb or some of its functionality, then don't use it.

Many things require more skill without MechJeb than with it. So if you want to show some skill, learn how to do things without MechJeb even if you use it for these tasks.

In some areas you have no chance to do it better without MechJeb than with it.

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