Rundown of important KSP elements?

[Fuzzwad]

Hello, I've just started playing KSP and was wondering, "What the heck does 'delta V' mean?", "Why is the Eve landing so hard?", "Why are Kerbals so stupid?", "How did KSP become so awesome?", "How the heck are you supposed to dock a ship?", "Why is Jeb so awesome?", "How do people make such huge, impressive ships?", yada yada yada. A rundown of nearly all the elements in KSP wouldn't go amiss here, so feel free to make walls of text as far as the eye can see! This is meant for everybody to answer, as well. If you see someone with the same answer as you, but the two answers are worded differently, feel free to go ahead. The more text, the better.

[Superfluous J]

"Delta" means "change" and "V" is Velocity. "Delta-V" literally means change in velocity. So on a maneuver node, it's showing you how much you need to change your velocity to achieve that turn. In Kerbal Engineer Redux, the dV readout is how much your rocket can change its velocity before it runs out of fuel.

Eve is hard because it's large and has a thick atmosphere. You need a LOT more dV (about 3x as much) to get off of Eve as you do Kerbin, and that doesn't just mean 3x the fuel. Usually it means about 10-20x the fuel. Plus more rockets and whatnot.

Kerbals are not stupid. They built an entire aerospace industry on a planet with no other signs of civilization.

KSP is awesome because it is the only game that allows lego-style building of ships that can then fly to any of a vast number of destinations.

To dock, I suggest my tutorial It's in 3 parts that include rendezvous and approach, but

.

Jeb is not awesome. Awesome is in fact Jeb.

We make huge impressive ships by making small ships and adding to them. Then we repeat until our computers crash.

[Starhawk]

The KSP Wiki contains many, many walls of text with extremely useful information.

There is also the Tutorials Section of the forums which contains valuable learning tools on almost every aspect of the game.

Hope you find this useful.

Happy landings!

[Pecan]

...The more text, the better.

Really?

Ok - "Induction To Construction" is a complete-beginner's guide, that's 46 pages long.

"Exploring The System" is 90 pages of vehicle (mainly rocket) designs for missions from a starter rover to manned interplanetary, spacestations and landers.

The Drawing Board (link also in signature) categorises the many brilliant tutorials written by everyone else as well.

[Tweety]

Eve landing is easy. Returning to orbit is the hard bit also kerbals are not stupid, just paid very very handsomely in large quantities of snacks and are therefore willing to do anything you command as long as you dangle snacks in front of them.

While im not so good at the building of large and impressive crafts there are many people who are, the aesthetics are covered in this thread and for generally large and oversized crafts look for anything whackjob touches have fun.

Tweety

[Warzouz]

For sure satrting KSP is massively overwhelming.

It's like watching Pro Tennis players. It seems very easy. But when on a Tennis court, it's much harder than it seems. KSP's leaning curve ist VERY steep.

My suggestion : start playing science game mode (or sandbox). Carreer adds complexity. Read Wiki, as it's been said. Watch few basic videos and try to redo them.

Some mods are nice for beginners as it's been said. Don't hesitate to use MJ autopilot to see how it's doing it. Then try to do it yourself.

Some advice : TEST your stages launchers before real launch. Test landers on ground (check ladders, batteries, solar panels...).

And remember "F5" (but use it wisely).