GroovyMike

Thanks everyone for the quick responses and help. I really appreciate it. The star chart, concavity, and mirror analogies help a lot. Part of the problem is I started out doing all my maneuvering by watching the ship, not the navball. Now I'm trying to navigate more by instrument, but I'm in the habit of looking at the ship still. Just a matter of getting in a different frame of mind and practicing, I'm sure.

I apologize, as I've incorrectly described my situation. Let me try again. When I click launch, the game places me facing the flag pole with the VAB to my left and the ocean to my right. The navball is set so that 0 degrees is at the bottom, 180 degrees is at the top, 90 degrees is to the right, and 270 degrees is to the left. Already that throws me off, because I'm used to a 2-dimensional compass. If 90 degrees is to my right and 270 is to my left, then a compass would put 0/360 at the top, and 180 at the bottom. But the navball has those two swapped. If I launch from this view, and I press D, the nose of my rocket points to my right, and the level indicator moves right along the navball on the 90 degree line. Press A, nose points to left, level indicator moves left along 270. Both the motion of the nose and the navball match and make sense visually. But pressing W, the nose of the rocket points away from me, which I know on a compass is 0/360/north. But on the navball, 0/360 is at the bottom, so the level indicator moves toward me (or more accurately, the ball rolls away from me), but the visual effect is that the rocket nose and navball are moving in opposite directions. Same for pressing S, just in the opposite directions. I'm trying to wrap my head around this, and maybe a more direct question is, why is north and south on the navball opposite of a compass? The problem it causes is when I'm trying to use only navball to hit a maneuver node. My north-south motions are always the opposite of what I intend, because I'm not used to the positions being swapped yet. Yes, in fact, I was replying to an earlier post that what's confusing is that north and south are flipped. Now that you've mentioned the star map, I can see why this is. The difficulty comes in maneuvering from an external view, and trying to use the navball instead of watching rocket movement. For north-south movements, I keep expecting the ball to react the same as east-west, and I'll initially move in the wrong direction. I suppose this is just a matter of getting used to it.

Sorry, I'm referring to the level indicator.

I've searched and found people asking why this happens, but no answers, so I'll post a new thread myself. I've played flight sims and am fine with the navball when flying an aircraft/spaceplane. My issue is with the navball while launching a rocket. Press A, or joystick left. The rocket's nose moves to the left/west, and the craft indicator on the navball moves to the left/west. Makes sense. Press D, or joystick right. The rocket's nose moves to the right/east, and the craft indicator moves to the right/east. Makes sense. Press W, or joystick forward. The rocket's nose moves away/north. Makes sense. But the craft indicator on the navball moves SOUTH. Huh? Press S, or joystick back. The rocket's nose moves toward/south. Makes sense. But the craft indicator on the navball moves NORTH. What? Why does yaw "work" and pitch is opposite? Obviously I could reverse this in the settings, but then I'd have to exit the game and switch the setting back when I wanted to fly a plane. I'm guessing there's some logical reason for this behavior, but I can't find it anywhere, and can't imagine any reason for it.

Just a comment that I'm assuming you mean the same Crew Manifest, and thus have it listed twice. And on not needing it in 0.21, yes the new version allows you to move crew around, just like Crew Manifest, but it doesn't allow you to create your own kerbal with custom name and attributes. This is the part my kids love doing. And while you can accomplish the same thing by editing your save file, I'm not going to turn my kids loose on that and have them accidently screw things up. So we're big fans of Crew Manifest and hope it keeps getting updated.