N_Danger

I have this in my craft file, Similar to Harry's, lifting 14.6 tons of an over designed muner lander. T/W starts out low esp. the fourth staging group and its a long ride up. But was able put it into a 112 x 94 orbit If you need to, test your lifters in sand box over and over. This took about 10-15 launches and then tweaking the build or the flight profile after each one for me to it get acceptable.

That's a very good guide that I used to learn the ropes(just in the past month too). It is showing an alignment mod at the bottom that is not stock but very much worth downloading. It will help get you docked in that last 100 meters. And it takes practice, lots of practice to get the first docking but once you get it down it will come naturally to you there after.

I sometime use a radial or anti-radial component to adjust an orbit for rendezvous. To make the orbit at intercept tangent to the target's orbit so that when I match courses I end up almost in the same orbit within a few KMs of the target.

35,000 meters for engine cutoff sounds a little low. One advantage of a lower T/W is that you are higher up in thinner atmosphere after cutoff when you coast to AP. I try to lift off at a 1.5 T/W aiming be at 45,000 to 50,000 meters and be nearly horizontal at engine cutoff. I also leave the center engine in a cluster with 30% or more gimbal for when control surfaces lose their bite in thin air. This helped me to control flippy rockets in the past. I will admit that I haven't done a lot of playing in a contract game so I don't know if this is available to you.

Science and sandbox. Career is too frustrating for me at the moment due to the lack of efficiency and patience on my part but I only have 600 hrs according to steam so far so that could change.

I've found that the struts need to go from the de-coupler to the payload and then some more struts from the de-coupler to the fairing base. Then struts from the faring base to the rocket. I've never been able to attach a strut from or to a built fairing skin so I don't think that is possible. I've also, before building the fairing, put struts from the boosters to the payload. It looks ugly but it works(and probably adds drag). I don't use KJR but I do use a lot of struts at times to stabilize the load. And the stock bug fix helps out using the stock fairing immensely.

KSP Win 32 ver 1.05 Problem: When switching ships in the tracking station the UI get corrupted and the ship goes missing when the game is restarted. Mods: Reproduction steps. Got to tracking station at space center Switch between 2 ships in solar orbit going to Duna. After the second or third switch the Nav Ball and altitude indicator on the selected ship are blank and MecJeb readouts show NaN. Returning to the space center there is just a star field, no buildings After restarting game the ship is missing and the crew is shown as missing at the space center. Files: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8vo2l2lx46n4wyt/output%20log.zip?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/xfgg3mty7pm9y3b/persistent.zip?dl=0

I've only done a couple of the tutorials that came with the demo and only by going to the forums (and watching You Tube vids) that it really made things click for me. Since I bought the game I haven't done a single tutorial because I knew they were pretty much useless. If you are not really interested in the subject you are not going to get beyond the tutorials. I've had many friends just bounce off the demo and tutorials and say "I'm not gonna take the extra time and trouble to learn about this game". The best advice I've seen in the forums that helped me was to start in science mode. You basically get spoon feed parts in small chunks that you learn to use before getting new ones.

If you have an Nvida card 600 series or higher(I think) you can use the on board Shadow Play. You enable it through the GeForce Experience program you can download from Nvidia if you don't have it installed. I use that to capture video and audio. I use a separate editor I found for free for Win 10. There is this one I've seen used https://obsproject.com/ (open broadcaster) that is software based but I haven't used it myself. You do need a separate editor for it also but there are free ones like windows movie maker if you have win 7 or win 8. No doubt there are other ones also.

I started operations at my Duna space station. Hab, lab, lander, Service module and tanker. And Ike refining unit has arrived at Ike and will be landing tomorrow.

As someone who just learned to dock without an auto pilot, I've found an alignment mod was necessary for me to get the last 100 meters done. I used the Docking Port Alignment Indicator by NavyFish only because it is large and easy on my old guys eyes. I think there are ones that only add a marker on the HUD that can help line it up. Matching up the inputs with the visual orientation is the key. For me that means when I input left translation I see my craft move left on the screen. Also the caps lock key for fine control is a must.

Went to Ike with a lander to do surface surveys. The first landing in the lowlands was good. I then hopped to the highlands and wrecked it.

Scan Sat Ike delivered. Now to deliver a rover (or hopper since it is Ike) to find the best place for refining fuel.

You can right click on the chute in the vab or in flight to adjust the opening altitude You want set it to a higher altitude than the default. But you do have watch your speed as others mentioned.

I have never been able to get MJ's maneuver planner to work all the time for me but I always use MJ's maneuver node editor. (I think it is similar to the Precise Node mentioned above) When you get an intercept with a SOI of a planet or moon you can focus the view on it and then use the editor to adjust the trajectory precisely. And the advice to practice using the moons of Kerben is right on target.

Bought the game January 2015. Forum account created just this month.

On further review of the tapes, it was actually only 20 m/s at the time of the attempted Hollywood film stunt. The rover operator was punished by not being allowed to buy snacks in the break room for a week.

I drove my unkerbaled Duna rover 14 KM over to my recently landed kerbaled Duna lander. Well not drove exactly, the difference in elevation was 1300 meters over that distance so it just kinda rolled there. I mean I only touched the brakes now and again after I started. I was wondering if this was a bug. I also found out if you endo the rover by hitting a bump at 25 m/s it totally voids the warranty on the extended solar array. Luckily I ended up back on the wheels afterwards and kept on rolling.

First rendezvous and docking without an auto pilot

This game is great and I like that Squad is very dedicated to constantly improving it. For me it's all about the rockets taking off and flying through the air while occasionally making it into space. I guess I'm pretty easy to please. And these forums are so full of helpful, smart people.

Thanks everyone for your help! Back to the VAB! Docking and rendezvous are the two skills I haven't mastered yet and since MecJeb will probably be broken for a while with the new patch it looks like a good time to learn them. Edit: How do I mark this as answered?

Hello there, I'm building a docking trainer while playing in sandbox and I have a couple of questions: 1) I am placing RCS blocks on my space craft and the only way I can see to place them equidistant from the COM is to use another part as a reference guide like so. Is there a better way? (without mods for now, I only use MecJeb for the moment and will mod up with the upcoming 64 bit support for windows with ALL the mods ) 2) I have found on a un-kerbeled re-entry using SAS and one of the probe cores to hold retro-grade that the 150 charge of the capsule is used up very quickly. The capsule stabilizes eventualy without power but I worry if I have a re-entry from interplanetary speeds with a live crew it will not do that in time before it explodes. Is this something to worry about? Thanks in advance!

Since I found out 2 weeks ago that ANYONE (not just people who are good at it) can upload to YouTube I've been inflicting videos about this game upon my friends and family. Here is the one I made today:

Created an account after owning the game for a year to say thank you Squad. You keep improving a great game, something that's rare indeed in the gaming world.