MechJeb vs non MechJeb

[klgraham1013]

I actually still enjoy flying, even after so many hundreds of hours.

Just felt like adding my two cents to that.

[Alshain]

Everyone can play this game however they want.

Playing Kerbal Space Program is cheating, you should be building a real space program.

[PB666]

I use mechjeb, and would have lost interest in the game by now without it.

1. Trying to transfer to another planet by trial and error, or by having to go to a website that tells you a rough approximation of where and when to burn, is not fun. The lack of any way to know when the launch window for a particular planet is, is a huge oversight by Squad.

2. I know how to do all the things MJ does, I just find them tedious to do after 1600 hours in the game.

3. Getting into orbit from Kerbin was fun and challenging - the first 20 times I did it. Now I use ascent guidance and go read Drudge Report for a few.

4. Again, using trial and error to figure out if my rocket could reach orbit was fun and challenging - the first 50 times I did it. Now I am content for MJ to tell me what my D/V and TWR are.

I do all landings manually, though, and docking.

A1. Not hard for the larger planets, for the smaller worlds with large SMA its a its a bit tricky. Intercepting small planet SOIs can often be achieved in three stages, a base burn, a refinement burn about half the distance, and the circularization retro.

A2. yep, true

A3. Ascent guidance is not as efficient since 1.0. I found it made the gravity turn way too soon and some craft will be unstable. Ascent guidance is one MechJeb feature I rarely use.

A4. Delta-v stats in VAB is very useful. But MJ sometimes does not know how to calculate the staging properly (amny features in 1.0 do not work optimally). I use the stats as a guide but rely on experience to guess how much DV I will have at orbit. Guessing on how much DV one is going to get is silly.

Landings I have been a bit lazy with lately, I mean seriously farming the Mun for science hitting each domain 2 or 3 times, Once is enough. However, even if you do not use the autoland feature, the pick target on map also shows biome boundaries (textual) which means if you know what the Mun biomes are then MechJeb can help you find the best place to land. For instance don't try to land the Polar lowlands at the North Munar pole, there is flat surfaces near the south Pole that are much safer, the MechJeb pick target feature can aid the finding of these areas when they are sol facing (sort of). I lost a ship to MechJeb the other day trying to complete a mission where the target was a small strip of flat area on the lip of a crater, MechJeb got confused and basically inverted the rocket at a non-existent landing site in clean space.

Docking, lost too many ships to McJeb glitches. Do not use it.

For planets, I let McJeb make the base burn, I focus on the target celestial and generally retrograde a touch to the closest I can get to my target orbit (the refine the intercept about 1/4th the distance to the target), for some planets like Moho, I want my intercept to be distant from the planet, because I am coming in hot and generally will need ion drive or nuclear engine to get there, I need time to slow down and that early retrograde is going to drive the periapsis close to the planet.

[Hodo]

I use both...

Depends on the situation. Most of the time I use MJ for routine missions or things I want to get the exact same results in every time. Otherwise I do it myself.

But I also run FAR so MJ isnt the best for most operations in that.

[RocketBlam]

Also I've never used MJs "spaceplane guidance" and I don't even know what it does.

[klgraham1013]

Playing Kerbal Space Program is cheating, you should be building a real space program.

Simulations are cheating. Go work at NASA.

edit I basically just said the same thing. I was tired. I have no excuse.

Edited July 7, 2015 by klgraham1013

[problemecium]

I've never used or even installed MechJeb. Not even once. I take pride in this xD

[Eric S]

Depends on what I'm doing. For challenges, of course I play without MechJeb. Basic career mode I tend to either play without, or use it mostly as a fly-by-wire system (SmartASS, maneuver node editing, and sometimes maneuver node execution, but doing my own maneuver node creation). When I start playing with life support or other time sensitive mods, I start using something, be it MJ or KAC or such to tell me when the transfer windows are. Without time sensitive mods, I don't mind throwing my craft into orbit and then estimating how long till the transfer window by dropping a test maneuver node and checking to see if I'm arriving at the destination before/after the target gets there, and by how much.

[TheSaint]

Playing Kerbal Space Program is cheating, you should be building a real space program.

/thread

[Canopus]

Also I've never used MJs "spaceplane guidance" and I don't even know what it does.

It can hold a heading and altidude and theoretically land your plane at the runway though i haven't had to much luck with that. It can give you an ILS like landing guidance on the Navball which is very useful.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Canopus

[RocketBlam]

Playing Kerbal Space Program is cheating, you should be building a real space program.

I am.

Signed,

Elon Musk

[Hodo]

It can give you an ILS like landing guidance on the Navball which is very useful.

That feature I use quite a bit.

[RocketBlam]

It can hold a heading and altidude and theoretically land your plane at the runway though i haven't had to much luck with that. It can give you an ILS like landing guidance on the Navball which is very useful.

Hmm, maybe I'll try it. My solution to lining up with the runway was to go out and plant a line of flags pointing to it.

[selfish_meme]

The whole concept of cheating in a single player game is ridiculous, as is a Space Program without autopilot's and Astronauts eyeballing thrust vectors and burn times, sorry Apollo 13. I use MechJeb unashamedly, but not so much for piloting. Since 1.0 MechJeb has not landed or ascended a single one of my ships successfully. Lately I can't even get it to do Interplanetary transfers because it cannot circularise either. I have used it to aid launches, I fly up to space and allow MechJeb to make the final orbit. But frankly it's not been good at that either lately. I really think it should go on a diet, it tries to do too many things and could benefit from being simplified and having the core components work better. It was never great at flying planes. I used it frequently to select landing zones and to fly manoeuvres and transfers. It can't land a rocket lander on Tylo, or ascend a craft from Eve, so i don't know what about using it is cheating. Also I think it provides a better in flight ui than KER. I have both but I often prefer MechJeb.

[Tourist]

I've never used Mechjeb (but may give it a try someday), but it's certainly not cheating. I'm not sure how one 'cheats' at what is essentially grown up lego. I suppose infinite fuel may considered to be a cheat, but even it has its uses in simulation and testing, and at the very least the only thing you'd be cheating is your own enjoyment, as a fair part of KSP's is as a fuel efficiency simulator.

Also, its not as if NASA didn't automate... well... pretty much everything. The astronauts were pretty much cargo except for docking and lunar landing (with some notable exceptions of course).

[mikeb30165]

Mechjeb.

IMHO, using MJ is most definately NOT cheating, and, I respectfully suggest, those who look down on those who use it, get to know the thing first, before thinking of it as a "cheat" and - by association - users of it as "cheats" .

Here's why I think why...

1. This mod (like many others) provides basic functionality that should have been built-in to the stock-game, as soon as interplanetary travel was implimented. Indeed, Squad themselves, have been planning to add MJ-type functions for some time now (it already has been partly - hence those nifty little buttons by the navball, that offer kimited SMARTASS functionality) .

2. MJ by no means, provides "The Easy Option" as it raises it's own challenges; this is because you can still fail VERY spectacularly with it, even if it predicts things accurately and "behaves itself". Moreover, as you need to understand what you are doing before you can use it properly, it actively, enhances your skill's not bypasses your shortcomings.

3. MJ (and KER) allows you to approach your designs more realistically and build much more efficient hardware (just like a true-life engineer);

it allows you to make intelligent design decisions based upon TWR/Delta-v calculations etc, and so, takes an awful lot of the "sillyness" out of the design-process, (guess-work, erronous assumptions, bad-design etc). Granted you could use a spreadsheet for Dv calculations or take a stab at TWR in your head, but best of luck if your figuring these out accurately for a 23-stage Eve lander. Thinking about it, isn't using spreasheets or online data sheets a form of cheating, as some have implied in the past?

4. It's educational. I didn't know the first thing about Dv - now I do, because of MJ. Surely, dicovering what all those mysterious figures mean when you right-click an engine, through, actually, being able to to use them, is a good thing? Which begs the question, why are things like, ISP, thrust etc published, anyway, if they aren't meant intended for a mod like KER or MJ?

5. It allows you to fly more realistically, baring in mind auto-pilot's have been around since the 1930s! Moreover, it takes-out an awful lot of unecessary (and boring) faffing-about, regarding node set-up, transfers etc; and removes (or reduces) piloting inconsistancies during flight-test.

Still not-convinced? Well, let me put it this way: do you honestly think Nasa or the Russian Space Agency throw up billion-dollar probes, and risk people's lives, by building rockets based on "personal experiance", hunches or because something simply looks "coooool"? Or trust someone to fly a Soyuz properly while poking at the capsule's instrument panel with a stick, as his face is being pulled-off during a 6G ascent?

Er, nope. Even "back in the day", Nasa fired up their mighty tube-powered IBM 1701's and the russians their massive Ural II's, dug out thier slide-rules and figured it out. All of it. Before they even considered building a prototype.

With regards to flying, even Gagarin's Vostock (apologies for the spelling), back in '61, was controlled entirely from the ground. in 65', Gemini was designed with a primative on-board computer that did a lot of the piloting. Although Armstrong "took over" the landing of the LEM, the rest of the Apollo mission was almost completely computer controlled, partly through the onboard guidance computer, and partly from ground uplink. There's a good reason why, for years, test-pilot's referred to Astronauts as "Spam in a Can".

- BUT, HERE'S THE REAL POINT...

Regardless of all the above waffle, this whole topic is a bit daft, anyway.

it all comes down to what turns you on about the game, as to whether you consider MJ (or any mod for that matter) to be cheating or not. Afterall, Squad intended mods to be used right from the start.

I use MJ 'cos, what blow's-my-hair-back/spin's-my-wheel's, is the science behind it all and the design process; I strive to make the most efficient thing possible, do the most challenging, 'puter breaking thing imaginable and go beyond what simple guess-work and my fists of ham are able to do.

Although I'm a good-ish pilot, and I like doing the odd S**ts & Giggles thing, too, I'd much rather spend my time building something better than I've done before, or establishing a better way to do things (like ascent /flight profiles etc) and generally, getting "better" at the game, on my own terms. MJ allows me to do this as the only mod I use.

Others are more into the bare-chested aspects of the game. That's up to them, and, as there are no fixed rules to KSP (only goals), they have the right to play the game any damn way they please - and so do those who use MJ. And, just like me (or me or anyone else for that matter), they shouldn't look down thier noses at anyone else who doesn't play the game their way.

So, let's forget all this MJ nonsence and agree to disagree shall we?

[justidutch]

Waiting for MechVal...

[ShadowZone]

I have used MechJeb extensively in the past and the longer I play, the less I use it. That being said, I still like to put it on my vehicles as sort of a backup option and for maneuver node editing as well as interplanetary transfer window planning.

[Kegereneku]

Not playing KSP is cheating.

Playing KSP with Mechjeb, is not.

Myself I use it when I get bored to fly mission myself.

Though, its first use is the dV-reader which should be stock.

[Fengist]

Mechjeb uninstalled. I realized after about a month... it was having all the fun.

So, let's forget all this MJ nonsence and agree to disagree shall we?

Btw Mike, you have forgotten one VERY important thing in your tirade. When all that electricity is gone, when those computers fry a transistor, when that data storage unit fails... one thing and one thing only will get that pilot back on the ground.

Flying by the seat of their pants.

And thank you, my pants fly better than Jeb's.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Fengist

[Cairol]

MechJeb is not cheating. Real rockets also have flight computers to plot courses and execute maneuvers.

The Crew is most of the time only monitoring what the FC is doing and go manually if it does something

obviously not desirable due to certain conditions in or around the space craft.

If I need super precise maneuvers, I do use MechJeb sometimes. Also wehn it comes to tedious parts like flying several payloads to space in a short time.

However. I don't use MechJeb for everything, as I generally want to be able to pull off any maneuver manually.

If I know how to do stuff, I might give control to MechJeb sometimes to skip boring parts and bring me into the direct vicinity to where the creative part starts.

I won't laugh at someone who is using MJ. But I would encourage everybody to learn those orbital mechanics to not be totally dependent on MechJeb.

It's really rewarding to get the hard stuff done right by yourself.

[Mighty1]

Oh no, not again

[Xyphos]

I'm Non-Mechjeb.

I don't mind using mods, so long as they're simply aesthetic and/or visual aids such as Kerbal Engineer, RCS, Docking Alignment, Kebal Paint

Anything that flys the vessel for you is just plain cheating.

[Dawnkeeper]

I use MechJeb. It taught me how to do an orbital rendezvous.

Now I use it for maneuver node editing and the slap-on-any-surface remote control.

[Canopus]

I'm Non-Mechjeb.

I don't mind using mods, so long as they're simply aesthetic and/or visual aids such as Kerbal Engineer, RCS, Docking Alignment, Kebal Paint

Anything that flys the vessel for you is just plain cheating.

Docking alignment and Kerbal Engineer? Thats pretty cheaty of you.