What about missions being flung off course while you're dealing with others?

[THX1138]

I have many missions going on at the same time so I can't reasonably be expected to keep switching around them looking for unfavourable encounters. Now I have a mission that's been flung out on a trajectory out of the solar system with Kerbals aboard. Tough ****? How am I meant to prevent this? Does everyone note down the orbit time of each mission and switch between them once per orbit to check? This sucks.

Danille and Ribfield Kerman, the cyanide capsules are now available to you. Jeb, Bill and Bob salute you.

[Feradose]

Try Kerbal Alarm Clock, it makes this much easier.

[Warzouz]

There is 2 aspects on that

1- Your orbit intersect a SOI, you didn't sawit because it was in several orbits. It's quite hard to predict as SOI size aren't visualised on the map. You have to make calculations or carfully manage you ships. This situation is dangerous around Duna (where Ike has a quite lare SOI) and in the mess around Jool.

2- You changed SOI too fast and the physic engine calculate badly because of missing frames. This is a bug which is due to be solved in 1.0. The workaround is to use Kerbal Alarm Clock mod to wake you up on SOI change (that I always do to check if everything goes as planned)

I exeperienced the first situation on my return trip from Duna. I had 2 missions (one on Duna, one on Ike). I parked the Ike mission at a too high orbit around Duna. As waited for the window, I found my Ike mission orbiting the sun. But I managed to bring it back to Kerbin.

SO to speak : beware of high orbits

@Kweller : I'm not sure that Kerbal Alarm Clock can plan for SOI change if they aren't already visible on the map.

[TheXRuler]

You can also create a manouver node two or three hours away from your ship. If you right click on it it should switch to a circle with an x to delete is and two little icons at the bottom left and bottom right of the circle. These show yoou what will happen in your next orbit, and the one after that, and after that, depending on how many times you click. I have not tested this method to try and find future SOI changes, but I use it for docking my ships (ie. adjust my AP or PE to intersect the target orbit, then click a few orbits ahead till the nodes are reasonably close, then make a small adjustment to bring it down to ~100m), so I would expect it to work the same for planetary encouters.

Alternatively you could use [thread=24786]Kerbal Alarm Clock[/thread] (as kweller has pointed out), a very usefull and much recommended mod anyways, to remind you to check every orbit once per orbit, that way you would at least not have to manage the times yourself.

Hope I could help,

All the best TXR

Edited April 23, 2015 by TheXRuler

[Scarecrow88]

I'm with Kweller - Kerbal alarm clock. You can set it to advise you for a number of different events for each ship, and even get it to pause the game as a ship approaches such an event. This feature is useful if you have set an alarm for a SOI change for one ship for example, and happen to be time warping another ship. Without the alarm the first ship would be warped through the change of SOI but with Kerbal alarm clock, the game can be paused allowing you to switch to the affected ship before resuming the game.

[AlexinTokyo]

Kerbal Alarm Clock is certainly essential if you're running multiple concurrent missions.

A couple of things to be aware of, though:

It can only add an SoI alarm for the future while the ship has the focus. So in your situation above, where the encounter occurred some orbits after you switched away from the ship, it will NOT be able to give you prior warning of the change.

However, it can throw an instant alarm on background SoI changes. So when your ship crosses the SoI boundary it will pause the game and inform you of this. You will still have to perform manoeuvres in order to change the final results, but it will give you time to do so.

[Captain H@dock]

Kerbal Alarm clock is the only mod I installed with AFBW (joystick support), despite being very mod adverse, because when running more than two or three flights at the same time, it becomes impossible to keep track of everything. My Duna mission sent 6 ships in a row, and they all arrived safely. You'd still have to be careful not to paint yourself in a corner though (two very close aerobrakes, or two exactly simultaneous burns).

But I've easily managed two simultaneous RDV with it.

Edit: In your case, you'd need to add an alarm for upcoming SOI, which KAC does support.

For instance:

Edited April 23, 2015 by Captain H@dock

[tomf]

If you are leaving ships for multiple orbits in orbits that cross other bodies then you are always going to have problems with unexpected slingshotting. I'm struggeling to think of a reason that you would leave a ship like that though. In my game a ship is always either at the end of its mission in a safe state - landed or in a stable orbit - or it has an alarm set to go of in order to execute it's next maneuver or SOI change.

[DoToH]

First: Kerbal Alarm Clock (as everybody said)

Second: Set an alarm to come back later whenever you leave your ship in an unstable orbit (as tomf suggested). A 0 inclination highly elliptical Kerbin orbit with AP over 9,5Mm may seem stable, but sooner or later you'll have a mun encounter.

Edited April 23, 2015 by DoToH
spelling

[SRV Ron]

When launching several ships to the same destination, note the amount of time needed to reach that location for each ship sent. Due to differences in intercept trajectories and time you send them on their way, they don't always arrive in a predictable order. Too easy for one to be slingshot into another direction if you miss the window for an orbital insertion burn.

[Tex_NL]

I have to agree with pretty much everything that has been said here. Especially Kerbal Alarm Clock. But there is another handy trick:

Go to the KSP root folder and search for settings.cfg. Make a back-up copy for safety.

Open settings.cfg with a text editor. Word or even Notepad will work just fine.

Search for the line that says CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT = 3 and change to CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT = 6.

Save and exit.

With CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT = 3 your path is drawn through only three SOI's (two SOI changes). Anything beyond that is not calculated. With CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT = 6 your path is calculated through six SOI's.

The further out you go the less accurate the prediction will become. But at least now you can visualize the effect of an (un)planned gravity assist.