Hello! A bit of help and where should I start?

[Andrew Jolly]

Hello! I posted in the sticky but now realise I should probably post my own thread if I have a specific new player question.

I've been playing for maybe a week or so on and off and whilst I am getting to grips with getting into orbit etc. I'm getting a little bit frustrated with not being able to work out how much fuel etc. I need to bring for the mass of the ship - I'll explain where I am with my particular problem:

I have landed my first ship on the Mun (great feeling!) but the tank is almost literally empty so no way to get back. Built a stripped back rescue ship (1 man pod, Octo probe, 90 cap fuel, terrier engine, legs, chute) managed to land 1.2km away from the first lander, but I only have about 700m/s² left. I've tried a few times but always fall short of an escape velocity. What would be best to do - get into a circular orbit and do a rescue that way? Wish I'd put put an antennae on to get that cold hard science back a bit easier!

This kind of brings me onto my next question - whilst the game itself seems incredibly deep and well imagined, the community/forums just seems enormous from mods to tutorials and I don't really know where to start - I like maths/physics etc. so was going to look into the Kerbal Engineer mod which I think will help me with knowing how much ÃŽâ€V I've packed, but is there anything else that I should be reading/installing that you couldn't play the game without?

[Xannari Ferrows]

I do favor Kerbal Engineer as an informal mod. It is incredibly useful for that Delta-V stuff.

I don't really know the scale of your lander, but it is definitely a Delta-V issue, which can be solved through a few methods, but is hard to determine without a visual.

Cookies over there, beverages over there, here's the brochure.

[Starhawk]

Kerbal Engineer is an incredibly useful mod. If I only have one mod installed, it's Kerbal Engineer. It solves the problem that I saw best described by this conversation:

New Player: "What's that number next to the maneuver node I just created?"

SQUAD: "That's the delta-v needed to perform that maneuver."

New Player: "Great. How much delta-v does my ship have?"

SQUAD: "We're not telling."

Now, if you know already that you have 700 m/s of delta-v, then you know how to calculate it and Kerbal Engineer just automates that. If you know how much you have, you can use a delta-v map, such as the one found on this Wiki page, to figure out where you can get to from there.

The other important place to start is the Wiki itself. An amazing and irreplaceable fount of KSP knowledge.

Tutorials, all stats for all bodies in the game, all stats for all parts in the game, definitions of the terms, the complete default key binding list, etc. can all be found on the Wiki.

If you have a specific question, try the Gameplay Questions and Tutorials section of the forum to see if it's already been answered. If not, start a thread asking your question.

Happy landings!

[Dman979]

So, I see four ways to go about doing this, but none are particularly easy.

The first one is to send the ship into a low Mun orbit (as low as you can). Then build a third ship, with at least 6 Km/s of D-v, and send that ship to rendezvous with the first one. The rescue ship rescue should have either 2 seats or a probe and one seat. Then send it back home.

Second, build a ship which can do the same thing as the first one, but better, and run the mission from Kerbin, Mun, Mun landing, Mun orbit, burn retrograde to Mun's orbit, and back.

Third, wait until you are facing towards Kerbin, and burn straight up. As soon as you reach intercept velocity, stop, and play with your orbit until you get back home. This saves you the horizontal velocity needed to go to orbit, but risks leaving you stranded in a high kerbin orbit, needing a rescue ship with a lot of D-v to get you.

Fourth, do the same as the one above, but use your jetpack to push yourself to home. Yes, this is a viable strategy. Detach everything except your landing capsule, and be sure to grab all the science! Engage SAS (hopefully you have unlocked EVA and have a probe core!), and point in the direction you need to push. Then get out and push! When you have 1 unit of fuel left, get back in, get out, and restart the process all over again. Repeat until you have areobreaking.