Control from here does not work

[Nich]

I created a tug to build my moon base in space however I had to connect the port visually because Control from here was not working. Only mod I am using is Kerbal alarms. It felt like I was controlling from the red circle while looking in the green circles orientation(green circle was what I wanted). however for lining up docking ports this was of little use. I have also had this issue using docking ports.

[Randazzo]

If your docking ports are not in alignment with the center of mass "Control from here" can seem quite a bit off. It's a little hard for me to see where the docking ports are in the picture precisely.

[Nich]

The docking ports are next to the hitch hiker connected to the struts. The 2 pieces were launched separately and the green line should have given me a perfect view for docking however if I followed the target in the nav ball the probe core at the top would end up hitting the docking port i was aiming for and I would be no were close to docking successfully. I will try some docking ports lined up with the COM and see if that is better.

[Snark]

Yes, that's a KSP bug that has been around since forever. "Control From Here" affects the orientation of the nav ball, but not the position. So if you ever do a "control from here" for a docking port whose axis doesn't pass through your ship's center of mass, then it's pretty useless.

Really wish they'd fix it. You just have to fall back on playing games with the camera and aligning things visually.

[Nich]

BAH that is what I figured. I will probably have to make some "work light" probe drones as the hardest part for me was the lighting (why cant we have 2 suns in both directions lol)

Is this COM for viewing purposes calculated at creation or does it change as fuel is used?

[Randazzo]

BAH that is what I figured. I will probably have to make some "work light" probe drones as the hardest part for me was the lighting (why cant we have 2 suns in both directions lol)

Is this COM for viewing purposes calculated at creation or does it change as fuel is used?

It moves up or down as fuel is consumed, depending on the balance of the vehicle.

[Snark]

BAH that is what I figured. I will probably have to make some "work light" probe drones as the hardest part for me was the lighting

Yah... this is why, pretty early in my KSP experience, I got into the habit of always designing my dockable craft so that they have a couple of strategically placed floodlights mounted to self-illuminate their docking ports.

[Mikki]

Yes i noticed this thing also long ago, would be nice if someone could fix this...

My target command skips off also sometimes near docking port <5 meter...

[moogoob]

For off-centre docking ports i just dock manually using the camera in Staging mode. It's not ideal but works.