What is your brilliant tip or trick?

[Ferdoni]

Hi fellow kerbonauts!

So I'm restarting this thread to give anyone a possibility to post their findings and anyone to just come here and learn a lot of new stuff.

So I'm going to start with a trick I found out just a couple of days ago. Sometimes when timewarping toward a manouvre, I found out that my solar panels were not recieving any sunlight and I could not start the burn. And this happened quite often (shame to me).

Here is my beautiful trick: shut the supply of ElectricCharge of the probe core (or a battery for example) off. (do it in the VAB if you don't want to forget it in flight)

In this way you have always enough charge left to extend the panels (if you forgot it) or turn your vessel so your panels faces the sun again.

I hope I have inspired you all to post your findings and learn from each other!!

happy launchings!!

~Ferdoni~

[heng]

I travel a lot to Minmus currently.

Zooming in and out and in and out again to find the right time to launch gets pretty tedious.

So why not launch a small satellite into LKO.

Call it "Minmus Inclination Pointer".

Match Minmus' orbital plane exactly.

Set Mun(!) as target.

Set AP/PE to match AN/DN (do not change plane!).

Effect: Every time I want to reach Minmus, I set the sat as target, and have the right plane and AN/DN pointers visible in low orbit and can launch at the right time into the right inclination very easily. Saves me the hassle of inlcination change every time.

[viktor19]

@Ferdoni Consider listing all of written tips/tricks to your first post in this thread so new users don't have to scroll through whole thread.

I could write a long story but here it is in few sentences: when installing the mod read the whole release post. I didn't and my 100,000 funds Shuttle got stuck to the space station. When I accidentally opened the IR release thread i read that combining IR parts with docking ports is not recommended.

[Broda]

Hi fellow kerbonauts!

So I'm restarting this thread to give anyone a possibility to post their findings and anyone to just come here and learn a lot of new stuff.

So I'm going to start with a trick I found out just a couple of days ago. Sometimes when timewarping toward a manouvre, I found out that my solar panels were not recieving any sunlight and I could not start the burn. And this happened quite often (shame to me).

Here is my beautiful trick: shut the supply of ElectricCharge of the probe core (or a battery for example) off. (do it in the VAB if you don't want to forget it in flight)

http://i.imgur.com/0o4TMVa.png

In this way you have always enough charge left to extend the panels (if you forgot it) or turn your vessel so your panels faces the sun again.

I hope I have inspired you all to post your findings and learn from each other!!

happy launchings!!

~Ferdoni~

This is brilliant!

I had the same issue numerous times while only carrying SPL 1x6 on board an unmanned probe and with those retracted, I found myself in the middle of nowhere being utterly helpless with zero charge. Cost me a small fortune in career mode. I worked around that by always adding at least one OX-STAT to the craft so it could eventually charge and possibly save my vessel. I think I'll use your method going forward though.

[Red Iron Crown]

I've gotten some positive response about this technique for timing suicide burns in stock:

Perform deorbit burn. Set a maneuver node at the point of impact and drag retrograde until node Ap hits the surface. Start the burn when time to node equals node burn time.

It's not perfect (it ignores rising TWR as fuel is burned off), if you want to squeak the last bit of efficiency out of the maneuver you should start a bit later, but this is a simple method that requires no math on the fly and leaves a comfortable safety margin.

[Evanitis]

For the OP: engineers can also open solar panels when power is out - though I don't have much other reasons to bring one for the Kerbin based missions. As they can repack 'chutes too, they mostly spend their time on interplanetary operations.

The most useful hint I got for 1.0 career mode is to bring an octo-core too for manned science missions. The octo has an inbuilt SAS module, so I can keep stability without having to take a pilot. That means a scientist can do the flights, so I get science bonus, he can reset experiements and he gets levels for later Mobile Lab duty.

[Snark]

When capturing to Jool system, make your aerobraking pass on Laythe rather than on Jool itself (even if you're not capturing to Laythe).

This gives you a much less eccentric orbit around Jool (because the periapsis is up at Laythe's orbit instead of down at Jool's surface), which means you need a lot less dV to visit the various moons.

[Streetwind]

On one hand, I don't want to seem snarky and mean...

On the other hand, there's probably a couple people who might be really helped by this! So here goes:

In this very forum there's a stickied thread of almost four dozen pages called "What are the most important things you've learned about playing KSP to pass on?" which is full of tips and tricks like these.

[Feradose]

Planes can fly without wings, torque or monopropellant if you put your jets correctly.

(Im making a saucer!)

[mrklaw]

don't you hate it when you have low torque and it takes ages to stop on your target marker on the navball. Or when the autopilot overshoots the mark massively because it is stupid.

Makes you feel like this ><

Which is a coincidence, because if you press ><, it'll pop into warp for a split second, which will remove the momentum from your spinning. So spin full speed towards your target marker, tap >< and you'll stop without overshooting

[Red Iron Crown]

don't you hate it when you have low torque and it takes ages to stop on your target marker on the navball. Or when the autopilot overshoots the mark massively because it is stupid.

Makes you feel like this ><

Which is a coincidence, because if you press ><, it'll pop into warp for a split second, which will remove the momentum from your spinning. So spin full speed towards your target marker, tap >< and you'll stop without overshooting

Some consider that an exploit. I would never cheat physics that way. Never. Certainly not all the time to make up for stock SAS' horrible damping. Nope. Not me.

[StrandedonEarth]

TCA-Assisted Anti-Flip System (TCAAAFS)

[FancyMouse]

(RemoteTech trick) Put a long range dish antenna around KSC pointing to Active Vessel. Comes really handy if interplanetary probes need to do anything right after it leaves Kerbin SoI, while the distance is short enough that dish antenna doesn't cover enough area of Kerbin.

[kStrout]

Put Spike intakes on the back of RAPIERs and then offset them until they you can see the nozzles. It creates less drag, gets you more air and looks cool!

[Skorpychan]

Always include a couple of batteries, three OX-stats (at least), and an SAS module to anything. Even if it's a simple probe.

Airbrakes mean you don't need a heatshield all the time. Or a ton of torque to maintain re-entry profile.

Every building in the KSC complex has it's own biome. So does KSC. A rover can get all of these very easily.

Rocketplanes are bad. Rocket cars are actually very good if designed right.

[Snark]

You can slide maneuver nodes forward and backward along the orbital trajectory by grabbing the center (as opposed to one of the six directional grab-handles) and dragging.

(May be obvious to lots of folks, but somehow I managed to never discover this in-game. I played KSP for nearly a year before discovering that this was possible, and even then, only when I read about it in the forum. Really saves a lot of frustration.)

[Red Iron Crown]

(May be obvious to lots of folks, but somehow I managed to never discover this in-game. I played KSP for nearly a year before discovering that this was possible, and even then, only when I read about it in the forum. Really saves a lot of frustration.)

In the spirit of that, the backspace key refocuses the map on the active ship.

[NASAHireMe]

Yeah, you'll find many of these tips (and many, many more) in this compiled compendium of tips and tricks. I condensed 18+ pages of tips and tricks into one (rather long, I admit) list. So read away! I update the list when I can, and will definitely include any tips from this thread if they aren't already on the list.