captainjerky

Oh, so many thanks for that tidbit!! I've been looking for info on this for a long time. I sent multiple ships over years to Val to build an orbital construction platform to support my activities around Jool but couldn't build any of the vehicles I'd created in the VAB. I was so excited to have my own shipyard in orbit and was disappointed when it didn't work (but without a good explanation why). Thanks for the comment; I'm back in business and building my next deep space mornership to go hit Sarnus and the rest of the Outer Planets Mod using Laythe as my colony home base.

Hey all. First off, I'll be honest; I go between loving the game and wanting to delete it and cut out the part of my brain where memories of it are stored. I'll spend an afternoon on a mission, only to have it be unable to complete. Turns out I forgot a big enough antenna, a spare battery, or I installed something upside down. It's aggravating as hell. To be truthful, if it wasn't for MechJeb I wouldn't be able to play the game. Sometimes I go days or a week or more between sessions, and I've given up on being a top notch Kerbonaut in exchange for a guy who pretty much knows the deal but is willing to turn some functions over to the autopilot until I get better (which I really am, honest.) But the other day, it started to come together. I started building a space station, leaning heavily on the suggestions of those in the forums on what to do and how to do it. But then I hit a snag. I put a Clamp-o-Tron Docking Port Senior on the station module I want to connect to, plus the module I'm trying to connect into place. I tried bumping uglies for an hour, reloading and trying again but the stupid things won't latch together. I tried docking the Senior on my inbound module with the Junior on the station (green bracket in picture). Also no dice. Then I turned it over to MechJeb, and instead of docking it tried to ram through the station and get to the docking ring from the back side (which is already connected). I'm at a complete loss. I don't know why it's not working, and nothing in-game will help explain why. Can I not join two docking ports? Are they directional so that I should have flipped the one on the station around? If that's the case, can I do that maybe via an EVA somehow, or is my station plan completely down the crapper? Short version: can somebody help me? And feel free to explain how this stuff actually works, because this forum is the only reason I've been able to play this game; the tutorials and little documentation from the developers are no help. Advice and tutorials from you folks are what helped me stick with it. I'm such a glutton that I'll torture myself with days of failed missions in exchange for that one or two that goes off just the way I planned. Thanks for any advice.