Do you use maneuver nodes?

[JAD_Interplanetary]

I find myself using maneuver nodes for pretty much every burn. I also use the Precise Node mode for multi-burn planning, mainly so I can make sure I have enough fuel. Does anyone else do it this way, or do most players use maneuver nodes rarely? It's not going to change my play-style, I'm just curious. In you comments, also indicate whether you use mods with your maneuver nodes, and which one(s).

Edited May 18, 2015 by JAD_Interplanetary

[Columbia]

I do if it requires a lot of precision, such as a rendezvous being set up, but for things like Mun encounters? Mmmm... I find it easier to just eyeball everything.

[adinfinitum]

I use them a lot, it's a whole lot easier to get a nice Minmus intercept setup when you use two nodes, one for the initial burn, and one for the mid course plane change. I don't like aligning planes in LKO because it cost more dV, and this is usually the only way I can see if I'll cross it's orbit at the right time.

[regex]

Maneuver nodes are pretty useful but once you know how to read the navball eyeballing things is pretty easy. Like most of my radial burns to setup a low orbit I just do by hand, as well as some other things if I know exactly what I want to do. Nodes are more useful for exploratory purposes or when setting up something specific.

[Robotengineer]

I use them for transfers that I can't eyeball well, (read: any transfer that isn't to the Mun). I don't use them for descending/ascending nodes.

[zarakon]

I played for a long time before they existed, so I don't NEED them for most things. I have started using them more and more though - to plan complex things like gravity assists, to just make my maneuvers more precise, and to compare the delta-V requirements of different options.

My favorite feature is that you can move the nodes around, so I can do that to get optimum ejection angles easily.

[Temeter]

Maneuver nodes are a gift of god.

Can't even believe I managed an moho-mission without knowing about transfer windows or nodes.

[vixr]

yes... for precision

[zarakon]

Even more than maneuver nodes, it's the intercept markers that are the real boon for interplanetary missions. Before that, trying to find an intercept was either a whole lot of math or a whole lot of guesswork. I'd get my ap or pe out to the right area, but if I got no intercept there was no indication for whether I was getting there too early or too late, so no way of knowing what kind of adjustment was needed. Now that I can see exactly how much I missed it by on the first attempt, it's as lot easier to make the right adjustments.

[Red Iron Crown]

Nodes are fantastic for "what-if" analysis of a burn, especially for interplanetary maneuvers. IP was incredibly difficult for me before maneuver nodes made plotting an intercept so much more easily visualized. Nodes are also great for comparing two different approaches to getting the same result (e.g. is a bielliptic maneuver a better way to do this inclination change?).

[Slam_Jones]

I really only use them for interplanetary, which, in my game-play, does not happen often.

Even then, I'll only use one at a time. So, very infrequently.

[KerikBalm]

if an soi change is involved, im going to use them (unless its going to the Mun *and* I haven't upgraded the appropriate facilities in career mod).

I don't need a maneuver node at apoapsis for orbital insertion.

If nothing else, they are good ways to control how much you timewarp, particularly when timewarping out of map view.

What is my time to perapsis where I'll want to do a capture burn/ retract solar panelts for aerobrake/etc?

Plop a manuever node there, watch time count down and the view of your spacecraft hurtling toward _________ outside of map view

[Blue]

IVA all the way.

[Fleb]

I prefer to eyball, because I hate messing about with those fiddly manuever node icons . I only use them for lining up the initial interplanetary burn. In the Kerbin system I never use them at all.

[The Destroyer]

I use them a lot, but sometimes they don't place right, gotta get precise node.

[Jeast]

IVA all the way.

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/002/686/Deal_with_it_dog_gif.gif

Im curious to know, as I am looking more into flying IVA, how do you do this? How do you go on an interplanetary mission all from the pit, without using the map?

[Brofessional]

I only use them for non-Mun transfer and capture retro burns when the craft has very low TWR. Such as Moho where there's a chance I'll fly past it and out of SOI before I can slow down enough.

[Prepper-Jack]

Yes, I use them often - even when going to Mun. It's useful for determining precision approaches, and can save you a ton of fuel. Going for a polar approach or a low orbit is far cheaper when you make tiny changes millions of km away. Can't do that eyeballing.

Standard orbiting maneuvers, including rendezvous/rescue I usually do manually though.

[katateochi]

I voted for the use often and with multiple nodes, although I will also eyeball a lot of manoeuvres. A lot of my craft, especially in career, are built with very little margin for error as far as available dV goes, so I use them for getting the most optimal transfer or rendezvous I can. And as RIC said they are very useful for "what if" analysis.

If I'm just doing a simple transfer to Mun then I won't bother, but where I really like the use of multi nodes is if I'm doing something like going to Mun and wanting to rendezvous with something on arrival. But unless you are very precise in following multiple nodes they can be more of a pain than they're worth, if you do one of them even a little bit off then you need to re-plot all the subsequent ones anyway, but they can be good for testing if what you want to do is possible and to give you a rough course projection to follow.

I get a certain sick satisfaction out of being able to rendezvous without nodes but doing that is usually either more time consuming or more dV consuming so most of the time I will use nodes to rendezvous.

[zarakon]

Im curious to know, as I am looking more into flying IVA, how do you do this? How do you go on an interplanetary mission all from the pit, without using the map?

I did an all IVA mission to the Mun once. I ran it first normally and took notes on speed, altitude, heading and burn times. Then when I ran it in IVA I basically just reproduced the same steps, and looked out the window of my mk1 pod to see when to make the Mun burn. When landing, I gave a quick look out the window to make sure my landing spot wasn't terrible, then set it down on navball and radar altimeter.

Interplanetary though, with no map view and no mods to give extra information? That would be really damn hard. You could use something like http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ to tell you exactly how much delta-V to use in your transfer burn, and then calculate how much fuel you need to use to achieve that. But if you don't burn at just the right time, you'll be off by enough to miss the intercept, but you'll have no way of knowing until you simply don't arrive.

[problemecium]

Occasionally I stack maneuver nodes, but I find that the UI for them gets rather twitchy and the nodes themselves give unreliable predictions when more than maybe two are stacked, so I only stack them when I'm uncertain how much dV I have left and want a rough estimate of how much I'll be needing.

For actual maneuvers, I only use one at a time and I don't fuss over executing it exactly as marked - since they're often so sensitive about timing, I find I can get better results if I just follow the general idea of the node (e.g. for an escape burn, aim below prograde for the first half and above for the second, etc.) and delete it when it's close to done so I can carefully watch what my orbit is doing.

[Hotaru]

I pretty much always use maneuver nodes. Usually let MechJeb set them up and then adjust them manually if necessary, although sometimes MJ gets confused and I have to do it myself. (Yes, I could make a Munar injection burn without nodes or MechJeb, and did the first few times I did it, but after sending about the five hundredth identical unmanned tanker out there I started looking for ways to streamline the process.) Simple stuff, changing apoapsis and periapsis, radial burns, that sort of thing, I just eyeball though, ends up being less work that way.

One of these days I'll try an all-IVA, MechJeb-free Mun mission (probably still with KER giving me orbital info, though, and maybe RPM). Maybe even in real-time, make a weekend project of it.

[AbacusWizard]

Once I'm in a reasonable parking orbit, I start placing multiple sequential maneuver nodes to plan out my entire trip to a final desired parking orbit, then add up all the required ∆v and compare to the available ∆v from my Tsiolkovsky equation spreadsheet. If I don't have enough, I try planning a more efficient route or sending up a spare fuel tank. Gotta make sure I have enough fuel before I start burning it.

[MacroNova]

I use multiple nodes all the time to plan a long trip, but I find i have to recreate the second, third, etc nodes because they will be off slightly if I don't execute the first node with exact precision (which is never).

[Thomas988]

I last time I used multiple maneuver nodes at once when I was going to Minmus and timewarped to far. Otherwise, since I haven't done anything serious interpretation, I usually only use one maneuver node to get t the Mun and Minmus.