Tips for the beginner ?

[va1erian]

I heard so much good about KSP, so that I bought it. On paper, the game was going to unleash my creative juices.

However, I found the game boring. There are so many things to learn ("steep learning curve"), yet what I was doing was routine. This made me quickly bored.

I downloaded the tutorials "for beginners" and followed the instructions to fire the pre-designed rockets. This was boring, too. I did not understand why was this or that thing designed, and I had no motivation to learn them -- too many elements many of which were of no interest to me !

But I desperately want to love this game. Please tell me what steps should I undertake, so that I could start enjoying this game.

[Varsi]

Usually good way to learn stuff to watch others. At least Scott Manley has a dedicated KSP series (

) where he tries to explain useful stuff.

Once you figure out how orbital physics works and find out about all the useful tools and shortcuts you really get to enjoy your own creations.

[Mic_n]

do whatever you want to do, it's a sandbox!

Stick some sciency stuff on a probe core and make a satellite. Put the satellite on a bigger stick and send it to the Mun, or to Minmus... or to Duna, or Eve, or Jool and its moons.

Make a plane, fly it around, crash into a mountain.. Make a plane that files around and ejects science pods that parachute gently to the ground.

Make a truck

make a train

make a boat

whatever you want!

OK.. so.. I suppose the "core" of this game is orbital mechanics. So.. build yourself a rocket and put it in orbit. Then try to work out how to adjust that orbit to send your rocket to the Mun, then turn that back into an orbit there, and then land, and then reverse the process.

Once you've got that sorted.. try putting another rocket into orbit, then sending one up to meet with it.. to dock and refuel and continue its journey. Maybe that one has some mining gear on it you can take to Minmus where you can set up a mining base.. then you can refuel a little rocket and send it back home.

Honestly, it's a sandbox game - you can kinda do whatever you want with it. Find yourself some inspiration and let your imagination go nuts. Put it down and you'll likely find yourself come back to it later on, it's one of those sorts of things.

Also, Scott Manley - go watch him on youtube.

[Dedjal]

Learn how the navball works and everything will be smooth.

I have built hundreds of planes, rockets, and maybe only double digits on rover and boats. And none has been the same.

Download mods to expand the already awesome game.

I would point out kerbalengineer, hyperedit and mechjeb as great tools for learning what works where.

But the game is a sandbox, despite the career thingie. So set your own goals and achieve it.

Want to send an unmanned probe to duna? Enjoy!

Just remember that your probe will crash, crash, crash again.

But when it finally arrives safely on Duna, then that is because you, and only you, learned by doing it and managed to eradicate the flaws in your design.

Or, if you want to build a replica of an X-wing, do so and share it to the world on the sharecraft forum.

There is so much to do in ksp and so many methods of doing it. Only you can discover them all.

[Fireking883]

Well, I had about the same problem as you, and when I bough the game, there was no career, so I couldn't even play with that. In one of my last resorts I tried to put a rover on the Mun (which crashed in a fiery ball of death), which entertained me until I succeeded. After that though, I almost gave up, but decided to try docking once. It took a long LONG time to dock my first thing (I would not let myself watch a video or use tutorials) and I ended up making a space station. That got me into the game, but I'm sure it's different for everyone. I advice trying to land on the Mun and Minmus, make a rover, a plane, and yes, make a space station!

[mrclucks]

Watch Scott Manley's videos. Seriously all of them.

Then once you're done you'll see how things should work and know the theorys behind a few. And that's when you should build rockets to learn how it actually will work. Start small, and very slowly work your way up. Then you'll get to orbit and will try and try again to get to the mun or minmus.

After that you'll start becoming a decent novice with the next major road blocks being docking, landing, and interplanatry space.

This is at least how I started ksp. I also highly recommend installing mechjeb and kerbal engineer redux

[va1erian]

Usually good way to learn stuff to watch others. At least Scott Manley has a dedicated KSP series (

) where he tries to explain useful stuff.

Thanks, "holding hand" and mentoring is what I need at this stage.

[Bioman222]

Step 1: Get a nice rocket, maybe a stock one

Step 2: Launch

Step 3: Allow rocket to fly until the 300 meter mark, at which tilt your rocket a little to the right. This is a gravity turn.

Step 4: As you continue flying, make sure the rocket is at a stable heading, then press 'M' to open the map view and press the little arrow in the center bottom of the screen to bring up your artificial horizon

Step 5: You should see a parabolic trajectory shown in blue. At the height of it should be a marker that says "Ap". This is your apoapsis, or highest point in an orbit. Hover your mouse over the marker and it should show your apoapsis's height in meters. Follow the apoapsis until it's height is between 70,000 to 90,000 meters (I personally like to put it at 85k meters, but 70,000 should be your absolute minimum, as the atmosphere cuts off at that point), then cut off your engines

Step 6: While coasting to your apoapsis, rotate your craft so the artificial horizion shows you to be at the border of brown and blue at the 90° mark.

Step 7: Coast until you are a few seconds from your apoapsis

Step 8: Throttle up your engines. On the map screen you should see your trajectory becoming wider until it becomes a circle, and you should see a marker that reads 'Pe'. If you follow this like your apoapsis marker, it will show you the lowest height your orbit will be. This is your periapsis. Follow it with your cursor until it reads a number greater than 70,000 meters.

Step 9: You're in orbit!

Now, why did that work?

Imagine you're on a mountain. A really tall mountain. You throw a baseball, and its trajectory curves due to it's lateral velocity and the gravity of the body you stand on.

So let's say you throw a second baseball really hard. Like really, really hard. Its lateral velocity is just right, so that as it falls, it curves with the curvature of this planet or moon or whatever that you stand on. That's an orbit.

Hope this helped, and if you already understood this, than I just wasted my time

[va1erian]

Download mods to expand the already awesome game.

I would point out kerbalengineer, hyperedit and mechjeb as great tools for learning what works where.

Mmm... maybe I should learn the basic game before I move onto mods ?

But the game is a sandbox, despite the career thingie. So set your own goals and achieve it.

Want to send an unmanned probe to duna? Enjoy!

When I got this game a while ago, I wanted to make an anti-satellite kinetic kill weapon, and deploy it against a satellite. Can I do it ? (I must confess my motivation is low now, and I am not that interested to do it now.)

[Pixel of Life]

*snip*

A little variation to Step 6: You can actually point your nose below the horizon during the "coasting to apoapsis" phase and start burning - this will raise your periapsis without raising the apoapsis. Very useful, especially for low-TWR craft.

[Cairol]

A little variation to Step 6: You can actually point your nose below the horizon during the "coasting to apoapsis" phase and start burning - this will raise your periapsis without raising the apoapsis. Very useful, especially for low-TWR craft.

Thanks. I wondered every time when Mechjeb was heading/burning below the hoizon during ascent phase.

I thought this is bad and this stupid auto pilot would waste my precious fuel...

Now I know what MJ is doing there. ^^

Question is: Is this more efficient than doing the whole circularization when actually reaching Ap?

[Fireking883]

Mmm... maybe I should learn the basic game before I move onto mods ?

Yes, you probably should. At least don't get hyperedit, learn the basics first.

[Wanderfound]

1) Ignore the tutorials. Build a rocket, watch it explode on the launchpad. Then build another rocket that explodes in midair. Then one that goes suborbital. Then one that reaches orbit. All of this is stuff that can be worked out by trial and error, and it's more fun to figure it out for yourself.

2) Start to expand your options. Fly by the Mun. Crash into the Mun. Land on the Mun. Land on the Mun with something that can take off again. Land on the Mun with something that can return live Kerbals to Kerbin. Again, this is all best done as trial and error.

3) Get serious, look at the tutorials. Learn to go to the Mun in style. Start to expand your range to other planets.

4) Do it inside a budget. Career mode and mods time.

[Evanitis]

Mmm... maybe I should learn the basic game before I move onto mods?

MechJeb was invaluable to me when I couldn't climb the steep learning curve. It gets things done without you having to know how to do it. You can basicly ignore the hard and (initially) boring parts of the game. After a while I found that I learned the theory from it, got envious of it's flying skills, so I learned to live without it.

Minor mods are OK too, though I'd keep clear of part-packs and physics altering mods. The stock game is complex enough already.

My suggestion is to dabble a bit in career mode too. Yes, all those limitations make the game harder, but it's easier to learn the basics of construction and what the parts do when you only have a handful of them available. It also sets goals for you until you get full of the whackiest ideas about what to do next.

Edited June 7, 2015 by Evanitis

[Foxster]

If I was you I'd just walk away. Sounds like its just not your kind of thing. Cut your losses and don't waste your time.

[Dedjal]

Mmm... maybe I should learn the basic game before I move onto mods ?

When I got this game a while ago, I wanted to make an anti-satellite kinetic kill weapon, and deploy it against a satellite. Can I do it ? (I must confess my motivation is low now, and I am not that interested to do it now.)

The three mods I listed are great tools for learning.

Kerbalengineer tells you how your rocket will perform, even on other celestial bodies.

I do not play the game before I have that one installed.

Mechjeb is great at showing you hands-on on how to do things, like rendezvous, docking etc.

Watch how it does it and try to replicate it and you will understand it better.

And hyperedit is also something that is a must for me when testing designs.

Getting stuff to space is great, but sending a prototype up, check how it performs, revert to workshop to tweak it, relaunch and so on, that takes time. Much easier with the hyperedit.

That way, you know that your probe will land safely on duna instead of littering the place.

Learn by doing and seeing.

Videos are great, personally I have not watched any videos on how to do things, trial and error and a lot of fatherless kerbals.

And yes, you can make a satellite killer.

Made a few myself.

Edited June 7, 2015 by Dedjal

[va1erian]

If I was you I'd just walk away. Sounds like its just not your kind of thing. Cut your losses and don't waste your time.

OK, can you suggest where should I walk to ?

I like first-person shooters. As a matter of fact, I spent thousands of hours on Team Fortress 2. I like the infinite and immediate freedom to do things in it. I suppose I feel too restricted by the prescribed ways of doing things in KSP.

So, I bought "Take on Mars". It looks more like my thing. I am waiting until it leaves the Early Access stage this month or soon thereafter.

[Wallygator]

Enjoying KSP is actually more of an investment than just paying for it.

This game can change your perception and understating of space news and missions.

But don't take it too seriously, it's a simulation that is presented in a game format. It may take time to realign your perceptions and to unlearn some thinking and expectations regarding space manoeuvres.

Watch a few videos, and then then try to replicate them in sandbox - this is the fastest way to learn the basics. Once you can get something to fly straight and attain enough altitude, then you can work on orbital insertion.

Once you are in orbit, your halfway to anywhere.

Hint - MOAR BOOSTERS may sound fun, but it's not always the right answer. Consider small payloads at first and you will find it helps a lot.

[Keras]

I like the infinite and immediate freedom to do things in it.

This is probably the problem. KSP definitely has an endless amount of things you can do in it but you can`t get these things immediately. Things in KSP take time and if putting time and effort into it isn`t your thing then KSP is not the right game for you.

I`m actually surprised there is an infinite amount of things to do in TF 2. I thought it was just an arena shooter.

[KSK]

This might be a slightly odd suggestion but - download the demo. Treat it like a Facebook game and play it for ten minutes here, maybe twenty minutes there. Casual is what I'm getting at here.

The sole aim of 'casual KSP' is to send a rocket as high and as fast as you can. Don't worry about all the orbital mechanics and stuff, just play around and see what you can lash together and launch into space. Bonus points if you accidentally send your crew into the Sun. If you find yourself enjoying it and/or can reliably get a rocket moving at around 2.3km/s, then go back to the full game and give it another try.

KSP can feel a bit prescribed but that's because at heart it's a reasonably serious engineering/space physics game dressed up in a cartoon, although it's nowhere near as hardcore as, for example, Orbiter.

[problemecium]

I have a hunch that a lot of us started playing the way Danny2462 does now - blow stuff up until you think you've figured out something "useful".

[ILikeIke]

If you're into shooters, you might want to check out [link]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/85209-1-0-BDArmory-v0-8-3-%28critical-fixes-improved-AI%29-Dev-Thread-May-30[/link]. BD Armory has missiles and bombs, so if you think that might hold your interest, I'd encourage you to try that. FYI, it (and other mods) are not compatible with the demo.

[Xannari Ferrows]

Try making absurd contraptions rather than do everything by the book. Take this for example: [upgraded now, but the concept is the same]

[tetryds]

Tip for begginer?

Don't waste much of your time looking after how to do something following a few steps, but WHY to do it.

That way you will be able to figure out much more ways to do the same thing and master the one that fits your style better.

Ah, and don't give more importance to rocket efficiency than it deserves, you can get anywhere by docking a few modules together in orbit, this is not real life.

[Phil deCube]

I can see how you would eventually find the game boring. I would find it boring too, if I had to do all the manoeuvres manually. After you have planned your 20th~30th manoeuvre node it becomes tedious. To me, the greatest aid to loving KSP is a mod called Mechjeb. Mechjeb is an autopilot. Mechjeb does your nodes for you. it aligns you craft to the node and executes the burns. This leaves you to plan missions, build rockets, and do all the fun stuff. Other people will disagree. They like to do the hands on stuff. Good for them. I find it boring.