Bill_Murray

Hello, Lots to do with this game. Lots to learn and when you achieve something it feels great! Good luck.

I'm back from a pretty big break from this game. A ton of updates meant that my old designs didn't work any more and all the new parts and features felt a bit overwhelming. It suddenly felt the game was much harder, and my new designs would break or fail to get into orbit. I stopped playing. Recently I started to mess about it it again and thought I'd put some stuff into orbit. Then realised I'd never docked anything before, even though that feature had been in for a while. So a new design was built, and managed to rendezvous for only the second time (the first being the picture above I posted way back in Apr 2012) and docked for the very first time. That lead to me wanting to put some sort of space station up there. New design, rendezvous and second docking. So I present my very simple (and probably laughably unimpressive) SKYLAB! Feels a great achievement. Will stick with it and plan to build something similar to a LM and CSM combination for a moon landing. Then work out to these newer planets!

Hi, welcome to the forum! Quick tip to help you adjust those orbits to make them circular. Firstly, any burn your make affects the point on the opposite side of the planet. If you burn at your PE the AP will change, and so on. You have two choices: you can prograde (burn whilst aiming at the circle on the navball, or retrograde (burn towards the circle with a cross in it). Prograde will mean a higher orbit on the opposite side of the planet, retrograde a lower one. Now imagine your PE is 80,000m and your AP is 100,000, and you would like a circular orbit at that 100,000ms. Wait until you reach your AP and your prograde burn (facing the circle). Watch in map view until your altitude at PE approaches 100,000m and stop burning. Try to be as accurate as possible. The AP and PE symbols will shift and might even flick all over the place if the PE and AP are very close, (don\'t worry if the symbols flicker, it\'s a good thing). You can prograde/retrograde burn anywhere in your orbit, not just the AP and PE, and it will affect the point on the opposite side of the planet, and the AP and PE points will shift. Map view is useful for this stuff. You may need to do several orbits and adjust at the AP and PE several times to get a really neat orbit. Also, all orbits should be above 70,000ms. To get those guys home all you would do is retrograde burn until your orbit comes back down to the planet. Hope that helps, that\'s a rough guide so still lots for you to learn. Your mission: go back to one of your spacecraft and make a circular obit at 100,000ms.

Nice one. Also, don\'t think about them being stuck there, this is the first manned Mun base. Good job!

In the final stages of landing keep aiming at the retrograde icon on the navball, the circle with a cross in it. Keep following it until it moves towards the top of the nav ball, be as accurate as you can as it will move about a bit, but don\'t go mad following it when it\'s at the top. That will get rid of most sideways movement. Aim to land at as low a speed as possible, I think around 3 or 4 m/s max. I use the RCS as well for little blasts of the H key to smooth out throttle movements. Also, if you can see you\'re going to be landing on a slope, manually fly to a flatter area, then aim at the retrograde symbol again and stop the drift again. Advanced SAS is your friend. Your new mission is to not use Mechjeb and go do it manually, it feels a great achievement.

Hi, welcome aboard. There\'s loads more to do than that: Learn to orbit and how to adjust that orbit, get to the moon, land and come home, get two spacecraft to meet up in orbit, and there are more features to come! That first moon landing feels a great achievement! Have a look about the forum to see what people have to say about launching, orbiting and the use of the navball and it\'s symbols, a good place to start. Have fun!

Hi! I\'ve been playing KSP for a little while and thought it was about time to say hello. I\'m really enjoying this game and like how I\'ve had to learn at each stage what it takes to orbit and change it, get to and land on the moon, etc. Look forward to seeing how this game develops. The feeling of making that first moon landing was great! Here\'s a screen shot of the latest achievement, rendezvous using Orbiter 1 and 2. (They\'re actually a moon landing design that I used for rdv) Cheers!