Precision COM balancing

[Invader Jim]

I use the RCS Build Aid mod and when constructing a ship that is going to dock I always balance the ship so the dry CoM and wet CoM are the same. Typically I end up placing cylinder or rounded monoprop tanks to make the two CoMs match precisely.

Are there better ways to fine tune and make the CoMs match?

Edited October 23, 2015 by Invader Jim

[Snark]

The best way is to make it so that you don't have to worry about perfectly matching the CoM to RCS placement.

Fortunately, the game has such a solution built in. It just happens to be well-hidden and lots of players aren't aware of it.

The answer is "Turn on fine control mode (caps lock) while using RCS." It puts the RCS thrusters into a really cool proportional-thrust mode that compensates for your CoM, as long as your CoM isn't too out of whack from your RCS placement.

Details are in this blog post if you're interested, but the TL;DR version is basically just "turn on caps lock while you're using RCS and it will just magically get better."

[RexKramer]

The Caps Lock button does not perform this function on OSX. The fix is easy, reassign the precision controls function to another key. More information can be found here- http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/125288#Precision