MechJeb vs non MechJeb

[John FX]

[quote name='Vermil']It's about how you derive the fun.
I'm sure people who drive sport cars on twisty roads or even in races won't appreciate Google's driving aid for that. Those who have to make long hours journeys a couple of times every week, probably have more fun if something else takes care of the driving.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, this is the point for me. When I have an `interesting` mission, I`ll often take control but if I need to launch 10 very similar craft and get them all to meet up in orbit I`ll MJ it.

I love the cruise control on my car as I do a lot of motorway driving. I also love the button that removes traction control when I want to have fun. Horses for courses as they say.

For me, being forced to manually launch every craft would remove the fun from the game. I`ve launched so many craft that there just in no new fun left there any more.

[Superfluous J]

[quote name='John FX']Yeah, this is the point for me. When I have an `interesting` mission, I`ll often take control but if I need to launch 10 very similar craft and get them all to meet up in orbit I`ll MJ it.[/QUOTE]

I'm similar, but with Hyperedit. It's quicker and uses less processor cycles.

I set up my Minmus mining base, set up my orbital refueling station, do one cycle of land/dock/liftoff/dock to verify I'm capable of it, and then in my mind so long as a day has gone by since the last time I did it, I can just hyperedit the fuel into the station. Is it cheating? I don't give a frick. It lets me do the very few interesting things that are left to do in this game.

[Van Disaster]

I tend to use Hyperedit if I want to do something odd I probably wouldn't bother to do otherwise, like fly an aircraft on Eve with some odd propulsion idea; I mean I could probably arrange the infrastructure to get it there properly ( or more likely build it there ), but that would take longer than my interest would last. I generally like the whole offworld infrastructure building business, but only if I can build stuff in space - one of those service mission mods which is almost like Hyperedit anyway covers the replenishment tedium & I can just build interesting transfer vehicles to shunt stuff around.

SmartASS is still awesome, the launch AP is still awesome, I do interplanetary stuff by hand because I like it so no clue how well that works, Translatron is *awesome* and even the landing AP works sometimes now ( although I still don't trust that either ). I like rendesvous & docking anyway so no clue on those either. So hey, it does all the drudgery, just like an autopilot is meant to!

And I went to Mun in 0.13.3 a few days ago, and that doesn't even have maneuver nodes :P

/obligatory This again? REALLY?

[Red Iron Crown]

I have removed a number of off-topic posts. Please limit the discussion to your preferences regarding the use of MJ or other autopilots, further discussion of "when will this be locked" and such is not welcome.

[Borsek]

Funnily enough I rely on mechjeb for in-space maneuvers, but since 1.0 I haven't used it for ascents due to its instability and also because actual gravity turns work now.<br>I hate cruise mode in cars though. Never used it for more than testing purposes. That said, mechjeb autoland is quite neat for biome hops.<br type="_moz">

[magnemoe]

[quote name='Goomblah']The problem is that you're defining "gameplay" as "piloting spacecraft". KSP is about much more than just the piloting challenges - there's the engineering of the spacecraft themselves, setup and management of any infrastructure you may want/need (i.e. life support, EPL, RemoteTech, or any of the colonization mods), the actual exploration when you finally get to your destination, and for Career and Science modes, some management decisions over contracts and R&D.

I would compare playing with MechJeb to playing a RTS game - You're controlling your units and telling them where to go (and how to get there), but the decisions of what to do and how you do it are entirely up to you. I wouldn't ever brag about, say, completing a suicide burn safely that, in reality, was done by MechJeb, or abuse MechJeb to complete piloting contests. I design and test the craft I build, oversee production of individual units, and monitor them as they move to their objectives. Once there, I complete whatever task I set out to do, then recall that mission back to its home base.

This isn't to say I don't enjoy piloting - in particular, I love flying atmospheric craft and I find orbital rendezvous and docking (which I do without MJ's assistance) to be really fun. If you enjoy the challenge of piloting ascents and executing maneuvers manually, by all means go ahead. But I'm not interested in manually following the exact same ascent profile for every single launch like some mechanical pilot, so I have an actual mechanical pilot do it for me.[/QUOTE]
Same for me, challenge is to design and do complex missions not to do burns.
Then doing accent with troublesome payloads I don't use mechjeb as its tend to mess it up else I use it.

I also prefer smartass over the hold on node as its more smooth.

In some settings, mostly then things go wrong I tend to use mechjeb as pilot and works as an flight engineer, balancing fuel around or at one eve landing letting mechjeb keeping the lander retrograde while I did rotations and minor tweaks to keep temperature down.

[Kevin Kyle]

I have mixed feelings on this one. I have never used mechjeb but I do use engineer. I just do all the flying myself. One side of me says this is the way it was meant to be played. The other side of me says that astronauts quit doing the flying at some point in history and I wish it was just built stock. I dont use a whole lot of mods to begin with but I am starting to think that it might be time to consider it later on in my career. One thing about not using it, I have learned to fly my stuff by the seat of my pants which allowed me to get into orbit way early in my current career. No nodes required. So, Im still on the fence but not using it.

[Bosun]

[quote name='Steven Mading']That's what kOS, and kRPC simulate. What Mechjeb simulates is what it would have been like if that software didn't have to be specially made custom for the space program and could be just bought off the shelf. Programming the AGC for Apollo was just as much of a major effort as making the rockets was.[/QUOTE]


Again - we cannot simulate the actual construction of physical computer components, and the subsequent individual base programming of them in the game. What you have left over, is a universal tool for the effect of having done just that - each ship with it's own build. Each ship with it's own computers and programming. That's what the VAB is for. If you wanted to simulate that correctly, you'd download Kerbal Construction Time, and actually wait the months or years it would take to physically build the craft. Instead, we magically build a craft and launch in minutes, [I]suspending our disbelief [/I]for the sake of playing the game.

Because every craft you build would likely have these controls, Mechjeb, in my opinion, bridges the gap of having to hard-code in your own user interface and binary code to the game in order to properly simulate how a craft is actually flown. Currently, there is no micro-challenge in game that allows you the challenge of doing AGC programming. Whether you fly by stick on every manuever also doesn't address AGC programming. The point of Mechjeb is that those controls would have been programmed in, regardless what they look like, where they were on the dashboard, or how much power the computer had to use to do the calculations. So to claim that Mechjeb simulates a simpler solution of shelf-buying misses the argument everyone else is making: Mechjeb introduces controls and mechanics that would have been purpose-built for each craft, in a format that allows it to be in the game in the first place. It's no more store-bought than any other part you use in the VAB.

[Dunbaratu]

[quote name='Bosun']So to claim that Mechjeb simulates a simpler solution of shelf-buying misses the argument everyone else is making: Mechjeb introduces controls and mechanics that would have been purpose-built for each craft, in a format that allows it to be in the game in the first place. It's no more store-bought than any other part you use in the VAB.[/QUOTE]
Your argument seems predicated on the notion that the only two choices are Mechjeb or no autopilot at all.

If you were just arguing that Mechjeb is more realistic than flying manually, I'd agree with you. But you also keep implying that it's closer to the game's attitude with assembling craft in the VAB than the [i]other autopilots[/i] I mentioned, and that's where we don't agree.

There's nothing wrong with stating that you don't find the notion of roleplaying the autopilot programming part of a space agency fun at all and don't want to bother, and want to abstract all that away and just install a working one out of the box. There's plenty of good reasons to make that argument, all revolving around it not being fun, not being worth the time investment for just a game, etc. The majority of people are definitely going to fall into this category of not finding it fun or worth the time to do it. But the argument that doing so is roleplaying the software side of the space agency to the same detail as the way you play at being a rocket engineer in the VAB, that's just false. Mechjeb is definitely a much broader abstraction of autopilot design than the VAB is of rocket building, for the following very important reason:

Hardware rocket design in the VAB: You can make mistakes both when building it, and later when using it.
Autopilot design with kOS or kRPC: You can make mistakes both when building it, and later when using it.
Autopilot design with Mechjeb: You cannot make mistakes when building it ( * ) , only when using it.

( * ) - Unless you're one of the programmers of the mod itself.

There's no player agency in the making of Mechjeb's autopilot. Thus you're not roleplaying the making of it like you are the making of the rocket. It's not the same thing at all. Sure, the VAB abstracts away an enormous amount of detail, but it still lets you make the final assembly and lets you play at being a pretend engineer, and that ability to fail at it is vital to that experience. If you can't get it wrong, then there's no sense of accomplishment when you get it right. If you want to roleplay at that part of the space program that makes the mission software, in the same exact way that the game lets you roleplay at being that part of the space program that designs the mission hardware, you don't get that from Mechjeb. Stock KSP lets you roleplay at being both the spaceship pilot and the spaceship maker. But Mechjeb only lets you roleplay being the autopilot user, not the autopilot maker. Edited November 24, 2015 by Steven Mading

[livefree75]

I use mechjeb for learning how to do stuff. When I first started playing a year and a half ago, I made MechJeb do 75% of everything. But by watching how the autopilot did things (and reading a tutorial or two) I learned to do those things myself.

[Ogcorp Squirrel]

Mechjeb makes KSP too easy, LEARN TO LEARN STUFF BY YOURSELF, people, i do!

[T.A.P.O.R.]

I've decided to abandon mechjeb as I've lost the skill to rendezvous that I learned way back when I started playing in
23.5

I had developed the habit of making tea or having a shower while waiting for phasing orbits to complete.
So far I can get within 45m of my target but lack the finesse to get precise and dock.

Just a wee bit more practice I think.

I had gotten a bit bored with the game on full auto.

still love it for auto-stage though.

[luizopiloto]

MechJeb are for Kidz... Real man uses kOS for autopilot... :P

[Carraux]

I flew to nearly every planet and moon in the system by hand. Landed manually w/o any rcs. Docked very massiv payloads on even more massive stations. Saved ships with wrong entry vectors... All by hand.

And yes, I am now using MechJeb a lot. Because it give me more spare time to have fun, where the fun really lies (at least, for me. That's of course very subjective). I play rockets only, no planes. I like it very much to design a good rocket (which is at least to build the cheapest and lighest rocket which barely can do its job). During designing process, I test & ascend manually. But if I go "into production", MechJeb takes over. I have launched rockets manually hundreds of times manually into orbit so I do not need to prove anyone (including myself) that I am capable of doing it. MechJeb does the stupid work for me. And I am glad to have it just exactly for these kind of maneuvers.

What I like most on MechJeb is, that it is not 100% reliable. I think all the people who do not use MechJeb misses a lot of fun. When MJ screwed up the landing maneuver and I have to take control in the last second to saved the mission... Well it's like Armstrong, isn't it? Wooaaahhh....:)

[COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR]

[quote name='Ogcorp CEO']Mechjeb makes KSP too easy, LEARN TO LEARN STUFF BY YOURSELF, people, i do![/QUOTE]
KSP makes KSP far too easy. 1/4 the size, 1/4 the gravity. Play RSS. You will have to start again from scratch. :) Edited November 24, 2015 by Carraux

[Octa]

If the default setting of the ascent autopilot can get a rocket into space, i think "mission accomplished", as the rocket is fool proof and manual piloting can only make it more efficient.

I like the insta-planning for maneuvers. Even for manual launches, "circularize at Ap" is a nice feature, because the finetuning of the maneuvers is annoying to me. I perform the actual maneuvers for myself, it's mainly the planning itself which is left for MJ. For transfer-burns for rendezvous or interplanetary transfers, i tend to plan the maneuvers for myself and finetune them using MJ (once again because of the frickling when doing it manually)

With DPAI, docking became something fun for me, so i do it manually most of the time. But for a fuel station, where 12 tanks were added, i only docked the first 2 tanks (as a proof of concept) and the last one completely manually, because it became to repetative. Hence, the insta-planning ("Match velocities at closest approach") is still nice to have.

MJ just takes out the boring stuff out of the game which i done a thousand times before.

[Dispatcher]

I've avoided most mods. I use KER and in the past I've not used MechJeb much. However, I'm to the point where I'm considering getting it again and using it in order to spend more time at target(s) and less time making repeated attempts at achieving my objectives (or arriving with more ∆V than I would otherwise). I think its good to understand the principles involved, but in real life the space programs use automation and autocorrection (or at least auto-assist) during most navigational tasks. So I think I'll give MechJeb another try after its updated for KSP 1.0.5.

[swjr-swis]

For. For MechJeb, for KER, for kOS, for EE, for HyperEdit... all those mods that add -the potential of- conveniences to both the building and managing/piloting craft, and to the operation of Reality such as it is within my Kerbal universe, have their place in my game.

Have I used them constantly? No. Most of the times they just provided me with readouts, or 'fixed' little annoyances or missing things from the stock experience. KSP to me is a mixed bag in that sometimes I am really just playing a game for pure distraction and fun, and other times I feel like a more realistic kind of simulated experience. Depending on the mood, the mods are used or left passive. I like testing my capabilities, *and* I like my conveniences, each on their own time.

MechJeb tends to get used for the test cycle of proof of concepts, then when things get near to flyable, I like to pilot them myself. It's an awesome mod, and does some things really well, but I don't trust it entirely and I am self-delusional enough that I often think I can do better. If a ship I put a lot of time in has to crash and burn, I'd really rather blame myself than MJ.

All that said, since 1.0.5 came out I've been playing pure stock because I am still waiting for 'my' set of mods to catch up. No MJ, no KER, not even the editor extensions. And I am having a grand time at it, modless, despite sometimes missing a convenience or two and muttering about editor quirks. Hundreds (thousands?) of hours spent on KSP before 1.0.5 had me mostly build rockets, hardly ever visiting the SPH, and I now surprisingly find myself having a great time building all kinds of concept craft in the SPH and flying and landing planes. Coincidence? Maybe. I will however soon install the mods again, to have my conceniences at hand. And rockets will be built again.. too many projects still awaiting.

I guess my vote is really a vote for CHOICE, more than anything. I like MJ (and the others) to be there for me to choose when and when not to use it.