advil

I guess what I was getting at is if you were trying to move something long distance or de-orbit it you might find that the whole thing is trying to rotate because of the additional mass off to one side. I ran into this with one of my mother ships trying to bring a lander in closer to a moon, lander was docked along side it and it started off okay but as the burn progressed my ship started to turn in the direction of that additional mass. Considering both craft had RCS and the huge difference in mass between the two.. Where's a picture.. Right. So take away two of those landers. I wouldn't have thought that additional mass would do as much as it did. I tried deactivating RCS on the lander, even tried rolling it's fuel back into the mothership, I tried activating the engine on the lander and varying it's output. Nothing helped. I'm thinking you can't move much with it docked to the side. Also this is the HMS Ganymede capable of hauling up to 10 Kerbals all the way to Jool for science and returning to Kerbin orbit on a single tank of gas It's also capable of operating unmanned. But this isn't the thread to talk about motherships in. I digress.

I forgot to mention something about my craft. As you can see in the cropped image here, all four of the tug robots are connected with a stack decoupler, I flipped those upside down so the left over part stays attached to the center portion rather than the tug. The upper docking port is underneath that so it is not visible until the unit is decoupled. Each unit gets detached one at a time by hitting space. Once a unit is detached you will want to switch to it and turn on the SAS and RCS and stop it from drifting or else it will slowly drift backward away from the main ship. On these modules I went with surface PVs and batteries to avoid having an excess of parts sticking off of the sides such as retractable PVs which enables the tugs to get in close and attach to other parts. I will also note that the two tugs that have a liquid fuel engine also have two chutes on them to enable returning small parts and even capsules holding kerbals safely to the surface but I have not tested that so would recommend quick save and try to aim for water. Also don't forget to activate the engine while throttled down or else you will take off once you turn it on.

manni01: Completely separate from the competition I love that your tug somewhat resembles an R2 unit Or maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see.. the fact that you were able to incorporate all different sizes of docking ports puts you ahead of the rest of us because rather than purpose build, this tug can just go up and grab onto whatever it needs to. I suppose depending on the mission all one would need to modify is the lower stages. If I was planning an orbital station at Duna for example I would need more fuel to get one of these guys there but it would get the job done once there. I'll have to check out the maneuverability for myself when I can as that is one of the most important aspects when you're trying to grab onto something and move it. Have you had trouble towing anything from the side with those two small docks?

I agree it could be a lot smaller and more elegant. I just wanted to make sure it would get where I wanted it to on the first try, and have plenty of fuel and monoprope to play around with once it got there. I purposely overbuilt for the demonstration as to not have to keep tinkering

I don't have any objections I was just stating an observation. Your tug does get the job done, I just thought we were supposed to be avoiding mods for the demonstration.

The rules did specify no mods though and I'm not aware that garden module is a vanilla part..

Which post are you referring to Mathman?

I don't know why all of my pictures went in the order they are considering I thought I uploaded them in the correct order but I think you get the idea?

[modedit] Edited it into an IMGUR tag. Carry on!

Okay I'm finished. It's not beautiful but it works and I am confident it will give people some cool Ideas. First, here's my craft file https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32205762/Advil's%20DockBot.craft And then the pictures. I'm sorry there's more than four, I just want to let the pictures do the talking. Basically what I have created is a small unmanned craft that is carrying four robots, two with RCS only and some extra batteries and two with fuel and a small engine. The type with the small engine is intended to serve as a means to move parts that are already in space a small distance or return them, probably destructively, to the surface. The second type is essentially to give a control-less piece of what have you a control module or bring some power and PVs to a damaged craft. Both can obviously be made smaller or more purpose-built depending on what you want to do with them. In my demonstration I attached to a fuel barge I already had out in space. Obviously the parts of it are too big to return to Kerbin non-destructively though I did try with two small parachutes. Here is an imgur link to my screenshots while I'm trying to figure out how you guys embedded yours. http://imgur.com/a/wk02H#0

...Why can't I set a profile picture?

I really want to enter a craft in this but I'm not sure if I will have enough time! Hey guys, I'm new here and play KSP WAY too much but the advantage is I have learned a lot of little tricks. I refuse to use mods even though a lot of them are really cool, I will save that for after I have completed Career mode. Anyway I have done a lot of playing around with docking and space stations and moving things around in orbit and will likely get started on this challenge when I get home from work. I've also noticed a lot of people saying that they are no good at docking and for that I highly recommend Scott Manley's docking how-to on youtube. It helped me immensely. I went from trying to dock for two hours unsuccessfully to Rendezvous with motherships in under fifteen minutes. Here is that video. Don't be ashamed to take advice from actual astronauts. I look forward to sharing what I come up with, even if I don't meet the deadline.Thanks.