Docking makes me want to kill things.

[Scotius]

You got some good advice above - i will just add one more thing. If everything fails, use MechJeb's docking autopilot feature. I know, i know - it's cheaty blahblah. But using a "crutch" until you relearn how to dock on your own, is better than rage quit

[jwenting]

It's not hard, once you get the hang of it. What specifically is going wrong? Could we see a screenshot of the ships in question?

Don't tell people it's not hard. It's not hard FOR YOU. For me, I've been trying for years and still can't do it.

[r4pt0r]

Don't tell people it's not hard. It's not hard FOR YOU. For me, I've been trying for years and still can't do it.

He didnt say it's not hard. He said "Its not hard, once you get the hang of it." That happens to be a true statement

Its like saying "Riding a bike is easy, once you know how to ride a bike"

[Uncle Mort]

It's all down to the punchline of the old "how do you get to Carnegie Hall?" joke:

“Practice, practice, practiceâ€Â

[mikegarrison]

You got some good advice above - i will just add one more thing. If everything fails, use MechJeb's docking autopilot feature. I know, i know - it's cheaty blahblah. But using a "crutch" until you relearn how to dock on your own, is better than rage quit

I docked by hand once or twice, then I started using MechJeb for docking all the time. But MechJeb uses about 20x more monoprop than it needs to use. After version 1.0 came out, I started to pretty much always dock by hand.

I do let Mechjeb keep me pointed at the target, then I just use the keyboard to translate. Whether you are directly in line or off to the side, the process is the same. Just keep your port pointed at the target port and keep your target velocity vector right in the middle of navball target indicator.

[federicoaa]

As many people said, docking with unbalanced RCS is almost impossible.

You can use the navball to aid your docking.

First select the docking port in your ship and click "control from here", then click in the other ship docking port the option "set as target"

Now your navball will aim to that docking port. Set prograde (in target mode) to the target vector and stop a few meters from it, then try to move your ship to be parallel to the docking port (here you can use the mod DPAI).

Once you do this, you are going to see that the target vector is not in the center of the navball, you need to achieve this by pressing 'ijkl', at first you can just set the prograde vector to match the target vector, and use h and n to control the distance.

By this way, you are going to reach the docking port with your craft aligned, then you just need to gently press h to dock.

I hope it is clear, that is the way I always dock.

Cheers.

[cantab]

It's not even that, it's just not needed. I mean, if you really want to line things up the navball, with all its lines and colors, is right in your face, no need for any other indicator. Learning to read the navball will help immensely with docking.

Last I checked the navball would give misleading information in some situations, particularly when the docking port is not coaxial with the centre of mass on the target ship.

[Korizan]

Docking is rather painful when you first start.

The magnets which are supposed to help you can actually make it harder (they are way too strong).

The second thing to remember is that RCS does not START or STOP on a dime.

You must overcome inertia and mass plays a huge role so everything has a delay and it is easy to overcompensate so be patient.

Make sure you are controlling the craft from your docking port.

Make sure the craft you are docking with is stable or not rotating.

RCS has ROT and LIN mode or Rotation and Translation.

So the first thing I did is map my Translation keys over to the keypad and I added in the Rotation axis as well (when I mapped them I made them active for all modes.

So the only thing active on the left side of my keyboard for docking is pitch and yaw.

Pitch and yaw are the very first things you want to null or align, after that is done you should not have to go back to those keys to dock.

You slide into the port you don't fly into it, or in more technical words you need to null as many acceleration vectors as possible to make docking easier.

Then it comes down to rotating your craft so that when you slide in front of the docking port you are doing it in the direction you expect to.

Example - In my mind I think I am down and left of the docking port. (space is relative)

So I rotate my ship into that orientation so that when I press the translate up, I actually go up (tap RCS and look at thrusters to verify)

Then it comes down to slide up and left till I am in front of the docking port and then approach.

So that means you don't play these games till you are close to the target 10 to 20 m

When you approach keep it slow and if you are finding that you need to change an angle (STOP your approach) adjust and continue. (Later on when get more comfortable you can adjust on the fly)

When you get right around 1m from target you should be able to turn off SAS RCS everything and just let the magnets do their job.

You should be docking at <1m/s

Hope this helps some, I do suggest you use the Docking Port Alignment Indicator to help you until you get the hang of it, you can always remove it later.

Also start a sandbox game and launch 2 very small probes already docked, then spend some time docking them and undocking and moving them around till you are happy.

Call it a simulator for your actual game.

Best of luck and keep at it.

Edited July 26, 2015 by Korizan

[Sirine]

My 1st experience in docking took 2 hours. And it failed. After 2 weeks of practices, I have confidence to dock in just a minute. Or just to said its already aligned perfectly once both craft in visual range. Remember, you can always tab to switch between craft.

[Sekonda]

You got some good advice above - i will just add one more thing. If everything fails, use MechJeb's docking autopilot feature. I know, i know - it's cheaty blahblah. But using a "crutch" until you relearn how to dock on your own, is better than rage quit

This guy.

Thanks guys, you're the best. I'll give all this a run down and practice later.

[Vegetal]

I don't even use DPAI, I use navhud, it also doubles as a nice hud for space plane flying. You first align the docking ports, THEN you translate your ship into position.

[keeper]

took me a many attempts for my first dock. This thread reminded me when i was learning.

Like most things i ended up making crafts specifically made to let me mess around till I got it right. I found the small miniature docks are harder and have only used the 1.25m one since then. MechMeb showed me the way. Now I am using Docking port alignment indicator. I tried external cameras mod, but it wasn't very useful, sometimes the problem was the camera angle. So many times i spent ages lining up, and went in for the dock - only to find i'm 5 meters in front of the ship. Not even cm's off, whole meters and i couln't tell at all LOL

Only today i put a senior docking port on a vessel to see how i fare with that, but will have to go with a totally dedicated vessel to dock with, lol.

[Alshain]

I don't even use DPAI, I use navhud, it also doubles as a nice hud for space plane flying. You first align the docking ports, THEN you translate your ship into position.

NavHud is fine too, so is NDAI, any of those can be used synonymously, but all of them give you a port orientation indicator that stock does not. That is required if you plan on docking by instrumentation alone. If you don't mind looking at the craft you can certainly do it with NavBall and that alone, but in the dark that is annoying.

Edited July 26, 2015 by Alshain

[Frank_G]

Man, i remember that moment, i proudly made my first rendezvous in orbit and then discovered that docking ports are not downward compatible... Facepalm big time...

Edited July 26, 2015 by Frank_G

[Sharpy]

Docking can be hard due to the stupid bug that aligns your position with the root part, not the "control from here" part. So, first of all, line up all your docking ports with the root part or the navball becomes far less helpful than it should.

(if "R" is root and two docking ports align like R==<>==R, that's okay. But if you make it like V==R instead of >==R you're in for a lot of frustrations.)

It can be unreasonably hard if you're docking two big things together. I spent literally 40 minutes docking a big SSTO plane to a station -after- the magnets caught, just trying to align the angle.

And last but not least, dock while sober. It helps.

[regex]

Last I checked the navball would give misleading information in some situations, particularly when the docking port is not coaxial with the centre of mass on the target ship.

"Control from here", "set as target", and a good eyeball corrects for that. The navball is mainly used for aligning components and checking velocity, judicious use of the camera helps with everything else.

[Nich]

does the DPAI mod take care of the control from here/root part inconstancy?

But yes I never put RCS on any of my craft as docking with main thrusters and momentum wheels is super easy. It probably did take 15 docks before something clicked in my mind.

1. Stop all velocity 20-30m from docking craft

2. Accerlerate directly towards the docking port (.1 m/s)

3. Pull the propragrade so it is perfectly centered (.2 m/s)

4. Stop looking at the nav ball as it only works if the docking port is lined up with the root part.

5. While floating in make sure you know which way is up/down/left/right in camera mode

6. Slam the 2 ports togeather and turn off SAS

7. Once perfectly vertical turn SAS back on to stop wobble. May take 2-3 applications of SAS toggling

[tater]

Do "control from here" on the target station port, and point it normal, or anti-normal. Then get your new part roughly coorbital, but on the side the station port is pointing at, and point it the opposite direction (if the station port is normal, point the docking ship anti-normal). The use RCS to put your prograde onto the target. Go forward slightly, then translate till prograde and target are coincident. I do this and never even look at anything but the naval, even in the dark. If you are far off where the station's port is pointing, it will be more difficult, so eyeball yourself close to that axis first, and it's a cake walk (it will mitigate drift). With more manageable craft, it really isn't necessary. to go to that trouble, just start the alignment far away, and tweak it in (my usual method).

Dunno, sharpy, I think I dock better with a pint in me

[Tourist]

Ah, sorry to tangent, but this reminds me of the hassle I had trying to dock myself. I couldn't get a close intercept at first. Sadly, years of playing "space flight sims" like Wing Commander, Tie Fighter and X3 had little prepared me for the process. Your instinct before you learn is to just burn towards your target... which of course will just leave you with no fuel and a really eccentric orbit. It make sense once you learn, but before then, all the burns required seem a little counter intuitive. After learning a bit of the history of Gemini, I felt a bit better about this when I leant they also had some problems with this too (to a much smaller extent) and initially found the process counter intuitive.

Then, I managed to get close enough to dock, yay! of course what followed was about an hour of being unable to a wrangle the two ships together, facing the right way, docking ports moving towards eachother. At this point I also discovered the fact that the docking ports need to be aligned the right way.... after about another 15 frustrating minutes of docking ports bouncing off each other. When you get it, it feels like a real accomplishment. Say what you like about the learning curve in this game, but what you pass those spikes, you feel awesome.

[Guest]

Whether you are directly in line or off to the side, the process is the same. Just keep your port pointed at the target port and keep your target velocity vector right in the middle of navball target indicator.

That's pretty much how I do it. I just smack the docking ports together, turn off SAS, then let the magnets sort things out.

I did manage to pull off a perfect docking approach from 1km out before, but that also required constant translation and vectoring, and it was a big PITA.

"Control from here", "set as target", and a good eyeball corrects for that. The navball is mainly used for aligning components and checking velocity, judicious use of the camera helps with everything else.

Put some practice time in and this is pretty much all you need. I used a docking port indicator for a few weeks, but it's not really necessary. NavyFish's indicator sure is pretty though, and I'd recommend it to anyone having trouble docking.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Guest

[Captain H@dock]

I would suggest to the OP that going into Chase view mode also helps, as it puts your view orientation in alignment with your pitch and yaw controls as when viewed from behind the ship... a starting point in getting oriented.

Locked orientation does that better than Chase, in my opinion. 1.0.x Locked has replaced 0.9 chase. And this is indeed the first item on my docking procedure.

Last I checked the navball would give misleading information in some situations, particularly when the docking port is not coaxial with the centre of mass on the target ship.

"Control from here", "set as target", and a good eyeball corrects for that. The navball is mainly used for aligning components and checking velocity, judicious use of the camera helps with everything else.

I would side with cantab on this one... As long as your vessel is streamlined in the direction of the docking, you're fine, but sometime you just can't visualize the alignment. I wish fixing this bug was higher on the todo list...

Edited July 27, 2015 by Captain H@dock

[LordFerret]

Locked orientation does that better than Chase, in my opinion. 1.0.x Locked has replaced 0.9 chase. And this is indeed the first item on my docking procedure...

Yes, that's it. Thanks. So used to it being 'Chase'.

[Mantabloke]

I don't even use DPAI, I use navhud, it also doubles as a nice hud for space plane flying. You first align the docking ports, THEN you translate your ship into position.

Must admit i use the same - except when i am bored or docking re-fueler to the station and just use mechjeb . But the first thing i found is getting the RCS in the correct position - if the craft is to big for 1 set of thrusters - do 2 sets - equal distance from the COM to help balance it out.

The final thing is to make sure the craft is in LOCKED visual mode - this means that up is up and down is down etc

[SciMan]

TBH, I don't even use RCS Build Aid. I just use the CoM indicator to tell me where I should put my RCS thrusters. 4 RCS quads around the CoM and done.

Easy and I don't need to install another addon.

Also, don't EVER use docking mode. Use IJKLHN instead. It used to be the only way to do it, and it works tons better anyways.

[Charley575]

Careful with those Docking Port SNr's. If you're not paying attention, it's possible to install them backwards, in which case they don't work. I had this happen to me a while back. Rule of thumb, if you right click on the port you should have an option for "Control From Here". If you're not seeing that, the port is on backwards.