birrhan

A personal note to Nerherde: you gotta break down the problem. Think about it this way--the problem can be solved. It might actually be many small problems. Is it a problem with your ship being out of balance? post that craft file (dropbox). Is it a problem with orbital mechanics? You REALLY need to learn how to use the nodes--I cannot stress that enough, and it's so easy to learn, because the nodes don't do anything until you point towards it and start thrusting--so play, trial and error. Is it physics? you REALLY need to understand at least the vector part of physics (motion in any direction in 3 dimensions has an x component, a y component, and a z component--if this doesn't make sense, you need to understand that)--and I say this as a guy who dropped out of intro physics. Frankly, for all the outpouring the community has shown you, you've gotta give a little back, you know? Give us some data to work with, show us the problem (screen caps or craft files or save files). I tell my friends this is a scientist's game, so you need to be patient and methodical, break problems down, trial and error, determine a problem then find a solution by trying, and lots and lots and LOTS of failure--I cannot stress this enough. Like I said, it took me 80 hours to learn to dock. You'll do it too, but be methodical about it--break the problem down into bite sized problems and address each one in turn. You've provided so little information that I really can't comment on your problem(s) specifically--just one screenshot (which could easily be fixed with NODES). Put up your craft and save files, and an image of your closest approach. Good luck.

OK, I gotta correct this one bit. If your ships are oriented north-south, with the ports pointing at each other, then yes, go glacial. Any other time, and your orbits (and bearing!) are are not quite in sync, and when closing 100 m at 0.2 m/s, that's 500 seconds to close--about half an orbit. In that time, while you started off pointed at (and moving towards) your target, all that **** has moved 180 degrees relative to you. The most important thing I ever read on a forum or video guide was the 1/100 rule: for every 100 m apart you are, close the gap at 1 m/s. 1000 m apart? Close at 10 m/s. 500 meters? close at 5 m/s. This gives you 100 seconds to turn around and stop all motion, and it's not a lot of dv either. importantly, orientation won't change in those 2 minutes. Much, at least. Ever wonder why when you're 2000 m apart and you point at the purple prograde and hit the gas, and 2 or 5 or 10 minutes later you're at your closest approach but instead of kissing you're 300 freaking meters away? Yeah. You orbited out of synch. You'd need to lead the target, and bully to the pilot that can do that. Which brings me to point #2: Point your docking port on the north/south axis (pointed either to the 180 degree vertical mark on the navball, or the 0/360 one, centered on the horizon line). When you zoom out and look at Kerbin the ship, assuming the port is on the nose, should look like it's pointing straight up and down but flying sideways. Point your docking craft in the opposite direction. Once the docking ports are close to lined up, even if separated by dozens of meters, they will not wobble. Much. I promise. At this point, when you don't have wobble, and ONLY THEN can you move at a glacial pace. I honestly don't know how people do it slowly in any other way, you end up chasing a moving target and never closing the distance. But your point about ship balancing and RCS port placement is really good--docking really does begin in the VAB.

1) Get your first craft into a roughly circular orbit, shoot for 100km to start. Orient it (using your navigation ball) pointing towards the 360/0 line on your navball, centered on the ball's horizon (line between the blue and brown)--that's horizontal to the plane of the earth, pointed towards the north pole. Now you're flying sideways. Hit T. And leave it alone until you come back with another ship. 2) Launch your second craft. During launch, pay attention to whether your target will be west of you (behind you) or east of you (ahead)--this assumes you take off and do your gravity turn to 90 degrees (east). 2a) is it behind you? Make your apoapsis higher by ~5000 m. Your speed will be slower the higher off the surface you are, so your target craft will catch up to you. 2b) is it ahead of you? Make your apoapsis lower by ~5000 m. Your speed will be faster at lower altitudes, so you will catch up to it. 3) Circularize your orbit. If you are not using nodes, use nodes. Learn how to use the three axes. Don't be afraid--a node doesn't lock you into anything and you can **** it up and delete it and start over. experiment, see what burning in different directions will do to your orbit. Nodes give you a blue tick mark on your navball--orient to follow it, then engage your engines to consume the delta-v that it's calculated you need in that direction. Use nodes to make concentric circles--inside your target to catch up, or outside your target it to let it catch you. Again, the circles should be 5000 m apart roughly. some notes about nodes: yellow is prograde (faster) and retrograde (slower)--it has the effect of making your orbit larger or smaller. Blue moves you towards the planet or away; it has the effect of shifting your orbit left or right, so you can correct for lopsided orbits (unequal apo/peri). Purple corrects for orbits that are not equitorial--it matches the planes of each orbit so they're parallel. That's important. 4) Set your target craft to be your target. now click on the speed on the navball until it says "target": if you've done things right, then this number should be getting smaller, it is your speed relative to your target. Now your orbits are probably not on the same plane--look at it from the side and see if they line up. If so, great, go to the next step, but it's probably lopsided. But there is a point where they cross, and when you look at it top-down there should be a dashed line between the orbits at that point (called ascending or descending node). Place a maneuver node there and adjust the purple vector so you match planes. Orient towards blue tick, wait till you hit the node, and burn till your orbits are in the same plane. 5) Now we wait and plan--NO ENGINES YET. watch the purple tick marks as you complete each orbit; they show how close your craft are. They should be getting closer by about 30-80 km per orbit. Wait until the purple node says you'll pass your target on the next orbit. Now **** gets real. Your practice with nodes is about to pay off. Start placing nodes around your orbit and go prograde (yellow open) if you're catching up, or retrograde (hatched yellow) if its catching up--you want to adjust your orbit to touch your target's, ideally at a ascending/descending node. Then mess with the other vectors (blue and purple and yellow) to get the predicted distance (purple tick marks) to be 1 km or less apart. It is possible with less, but SO MUCH EASIER the closer you are. If you can't get it close, erase the node and try somewhere else. For the time being, ignore what your resulting orbit will be, you just want an intersect--just makes sure you don't put your periapsis at 10km or something to accidentally de-orbit. Once you've set your nav coordinates, orient your ship towards blue on the navball, wait for the timer to hit zero, and burn, but not all the way --now here's the clutch part: with about 10 m/s left, cut the engines and delete your node. You're still pointed in the right direction anyhow. Now barely turn on your engines and keep track of how close your closest approach will be. keep tapping the engines until your closest approach stops getting smaller. Often times you can get closer than you thought. but if you miscalculated you will still be as close as you can. 6) Close the gap--complete the orbit and wait for your closest approach. MAKE SURE YOUR NAVBALL STILL SAYS 'TARGET'. once you're within 2000 m or so, reorient your ship: were you at a lower orbit and catching up now? you need MOAR SPEED--orient towards prograde (open yellow navball icon) and burn until your relative speed is zero. Were you at a higher orbit? You need to slow down; burn prograde (hatched yellow navball icon) until relative speed is zero. At this point you can use RCS to get really good and zero'ed. Check your orbits. They should magically be pretty damned close. You're halfway there! An important note in these final stages (again, make sure your navball is set to "target"): NOW yellow prograde/retrograde are speed relative to your target--it's the axis of your motion. Purple prograde/retrograde are the direction towards/away from your target. These are critical to get straight if you're going to close to within 50 meters. 7) Find the purple prograde marker on the navball--this will point you towards your target. is your nose pointed at your target? Good. What's the distance? Divide that number by 100, and burn towards the target at this speed (if you are 1000 m apart, burn at 10 m/s). That way you'll hit the target in 100s, whereever you are. Flip ~180 around towards the yellow retrograde marker--you want to close distance, but stop ALL relative motion at every step, reorient towards your target, burn at 1/100 the distance (speed = distance/100), flip 180 degrees while you're closing and point towards yellow retrograde, stop, rinse, repeat until you're within 50 meters. 8) Remember your target ship in step 1, and how you oriented it to point at the north pole? You're going to do the opposite with your chase ship now--point towards the 180 degree mark on the horizon line on your navball. your ships should now be parallel and pointed in opposite directions. What this does--even though your orbits are the same now, your orientation as you complete an orbit changes. If you find you're drifting apart, this is usually why. but if you're oriented north/south, your orbits are parallel, and any change in direction is matched by your target. MAGIC. 9) Hit "v" until it says "chase cam mode". Look from the back end of your ship. Tap the "I, J,K,L" keys, see which direction your RCS ports thrust. Often times this is not intuitive--"J" may thrust you left, right, up or down, just keep it straight. It's always OK to tap it to remind yourself. A note about RCS: You want your RCS ports ONLY AT 90 DEGREE ANGLES. A rule of thumb is "1 set of 4 for every 10 tons of craft". Try to balance them along the ship's center of mass. Using the I,J,K,L keys shouldn't push you off axis, but if it does, that's why you re-oriented towards 180 degrees--you can use the ASWD keys to keep pointing in that direction. Also, when you're building the thing in the VAB, looking out the door of the VAB is "south"--placing RCS ports along the cardinal directions using this as a reference point (0/90/180/270; N/E/S/W) will make a big difference using the IJKL keys, as only one pair should fire at any time. Your goal is to deal in only one vector (one direction out of the three in 3 dimensions) at any one time. 10) This is the money shot. More than ever you must think in 3 dimensions now. Correct your distance to target ONE VECTOR AT A TIME. First, use H and N to get the get the ships--still parallel--separated by a hair when looked at from the side. Now look from one side, then another, see which direction (vector) you're furthest from your target, and tap IJKL to see which pair of RCS keys will thrust you in that direction towards your target. Tap WASD to keep pointed towards 180 degrees--if your ship is small (less than 20 tons) and well balanced, you can keep ASAS on, otherwise you won't be able to see the RCS directions and you'll burn through monoprop like whoa, so you'll have to keep pointed south manually. Once you get close, stop. Try not to go more than 0.2-0.3 m/s--you've got to stop. Now repeat this ONE VECTOR AT A TIME until you are damned close. Pay attention to your H-N vector, and try to keep the ports close. 11) Keep shifting your focus from top to side to side and seeing which direction you're off, and then back to stern and hit the right IJKL RCS key to close that gap. Sometimes you can adjust the view to look along the axis of your target ship so you can gauge what "stationary" and "matched" and "parallel" are. Once your ports are matched and STATIONARY, tap H, get a bit of thrust, MAKE SURE ASAS IS OFF, and enjoy the fruits of your hard won fight. Best of luck!

Well, since Squad hasn't enabled two-point support (e.g. allow the radially connected parts of a rocket to connect to nodes directly above it and provide vertical strength that way), then of course that's what I'm doing. We are limited currently to one node of attachment, and therefore all strength through that. And struts. I still argue it's a game design flaw.

do you accept that challenge then? I've gone through two failed iterations already today.

Sure. It's already linked in the original.

Well, it was built as a Tylo lander. I've since reengineered it to be smaller, but the problem with the t77 is evident even with smaller tanks. While i appreciate th criticism about the size, half of those parts are strut, and they don't work to reinforce the t77. You see the catch 22? Can someone post a picture of that rig strutted "correctly"?

Problem: rockets fly apart. Solution: more struts. This leads to a new problem: too many frickin parts. This rocket has around 1600 parts, about half of which are struts. When it fails, which is ~75% of the times, it's generally at this juncture: "Structural failure between Rockomax Jumbo 64 fuel tank and T77 radial decoupler". Devs, please take note of this critical game flaw. it's a catch 22--either you don't cross brace, and that failure mode happens, or you do cross brace, and it takes 20 minutes to get to orbit--or to find out at t=15 minutes (real time) that at 25000 meters your cross bracing did squat, then you're back to the drawing board. In neither case are you in orbit. I really want to drive this home as a critical game flaw--there needs to be some modification of the strength of supports to obviate the need for so many struts and to make the game even playable.

I've learned how to operate on 4.5 hours of sleep for the last month or so. Along those lines, caffeine is like delta v for your brain...