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Here's to MechJeb


JackBush

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I know there's discussion about whether using mods such as MechJeb is "cheating" or whether it's up to the individual player to play however pleases him. But I'd like to say that now that I'm getting the hang of how MJ works, it's a godsend. It relieves me of so many of the frustrations I was having before and some/many of which I've logged over at Gameplay. MJ can do some whacky things now and then but I'm learning to adjust and figure out how to avoid those -- usually by using another MJ feature. It's a marvellous boon to newbies, and I still consider myself a noob. I have no maths (and besides I'm 80 but love to play games) so don't want to be spending the time learning formulas and that sort of thing. I want a game with challenge, yes, but not almost-unending frustration. MJ has just enhanced my KSP pleasure no end! 

I recommend it to others who feel the way I do.

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Here's to Mech Jeb.  The autopilots.  The maneuver planner.  The custom window editor.  The command modules that work differently.  People think it's against the rules, and say they have no respect for cheating.  You can use it, hate it, glorify or vilify it.  The only thing you can't do is ignore them.  Because it flies things.  It pushes the rockets upward, and while some may see it as cheating, we see realism.  Because the autopilots that are crazy enough to think they are are a carbon copy of Jeb, are the ones who are.

- Verner Von Kerman

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Agreed on MechJeb.  As I see it, it has two major bennies:  one, it takes the tedium out of doing something you've done N to the nth times before; and two, it can be a "demonstrator" to show you how to do stuff.  I've gotten to the point where there are a number of functions I'd rather do manually, because MJ doesn't always follow the optimal solution; but the reason I know how to do it better is from watching MechJeb do it.  It's better than a thousand YouTube how-tos in that, because it's dealing with your exact conditions and situation.

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I'm actually NOT using Mechjab because the cost of the auto flight parts in Career Mode are more than I want to invest and because I do like the struggles to get it all to work (finding the proper ascent curve, docking, etc).

My 8 year old, however, has peeked on his ability to progress his science mode game because the fine points of getting to orbit are currently out of his wheel house.  I think he could learn ~if he wanted to~.  He just doesn't.  I'll probably be adding MechJab to our Media PC (where he plays) so he can use those options in his game(s).  

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KSP at 80! JackBush you have given me hope and made my wife quite sad at the same time. She may have once said something about wishing my grown son had never bought me this game. I say may because I was landing on Moho at the time and not really listening.

Seriously, I learned to pilot by watching MJ. Now I choose to use it because a flight simulator isn't the center of my fun. I love the design and planning of the mission... and I love the following rescue missions because I didn't think it through as well as I imagined. 

When MJ does its occasional whacky things it is still necessary to have some pilot skills to try and recover from the mess. KSP is simply more fun for me if I let MJ handle most of the node executions. I still have to plan the mission and there are still plenty of Kerbal opportunities. On my last trip to Minmus when instead of using warp helper to reach the change in SOI, I forgot and left it on edge of atmosphere. It was a beautiful explosion.

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14 hours ago, HoloYolo said:

*cough KER

 

I said nothing 

Yes, I know about KER and had it at one time but it confused me with all the number choices I had to make. I don't know what number to choose to do what. If you can explain to me how it can benefit me (not the features, but how to use it) I'll be happy to reconsider.

14 hours ago, HoloYolo said:

*cough KER

 

I said nothing 

Yeah, I know about KER and had it early on but couldn't make head nor tails out of it. It seemed (as I recall) to consist of oodles of number choices and that sort of thing. I don't know what number to pick for this or that. I'll be happy to reconsider if you can show me how it can help me (in a non-frustrating way).

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1 hour ago, Red Shirt said:

KSP at 80! JackBush you have given me hope and made my wife quite sad at the same time.

I began my game-playing career many years ago with Civilization and, to this day, I can remember visiting the forums and chuckling every time I saw a post by a player whose "handle" was My Wife Hates Civ.I thought it was hilarious. I'm sure your wife has a similar attitude to it as mine: "If it  makes him happy, that's good." (And she wouldn't go near a game.)

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1 hour ago, MrOsterman said:

My 8 year old, however, has peeked on his ability to progress his science mode game because the fine points of getting to orbit are currently out of his wheel house.  I think he could learn ~if he wanted to~.

A new motto for KSP and MechJeb:

"We made putting stuff in orbit kids play..."

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I tend to fly new ships by hand until the many bugs are worked out, then hand them over to MJ if they are adopted for daily use (and stable enough for it to fly). Though in fairness what I really use it for most often is the dV calculator during design and operations, so I always have it running.

I do avoid it like the plague for interplanetary work, though. I can almost always do better by hand.

Oh, and damn it - there's someone older than me on the forums?

Edited by Gojira1000
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I find MJ most useful for providing information (Ap, Pe, time to each of those, true altitude, time to impact etc.)  I also use it to create and/or execute maneuver nodes when precision is important, when close enough is good enough I still prefer to create and fly them by hand.  I learnt docking by watching MJ do it, and now I can (usually) do a better job myself, but its nice to have the autopilot ready in case I get in over my head.

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Its the key mod without which I am certain KSP would be much, much less popular i.e. it has made Squad a lot of money. 

No one would ever fly a real mission to, say, Mars without computer aid and the same holds true with KSP. It's silly to think otherwise. 

Personally, I can fly just about any mission manually but it is so, so tedious to do so for the hundredth time. So I leave all the tedious stuff to lovely MJ and concentrate my energies on the creative stuff of designing craft and figuring out how to get them to where I need them. 

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I can fly and dock better and safer than MJ but planning interplanetary transfers is something I'm just tool lazy to do by hand. (Although I can do them, as I've done a manned return mission to every body before I've started to depend on MJ, I wouldn't want to do it anymore.)

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5 hours ago, JackBush said:

I began my game-playing career many years ago with Civilization and, to this day, I can remember visiting the forums and chuckling every time I saw a post by a player whose "handle" was My Wife Hates Civ.I thought it was hilarious. I'm sure your wife has a similar attitude to it as mine: "If it  makes him happy, that's good." (And she wouldn't go near a game.)

We had a potential situation with Civ that subsided when I hooked my wife on playing Civ.  :wink:    

 

(I'd like to play her head to head sometime, but our playing styles are too different... she likes the short games and rapid-fire decisionmaking, whereas I like the marathon games and careful planning!  So she plays her way and I play mine.)

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I see MJ as a Swiss Army Knife mod. It does a lot of things passably well, so if you want the ease of just having to install and update one mod it's a good option, but personally given the choice I will use a toolkit not a Swiss army knife.

I count its autopiloting under that too, I tried some MechJeb launches and took a swift dislike to them, it doesn't follow the ascent profile I'm accustomed to.

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I think I'd go nuts doing one mission at a time. Kerbal Alarm Clock is a wonderful tool, and so is MechJeb. I tend to launch manually, and do a lot of things manually. I let it execute my maneuver nodes for me, since that's trivial. I still tend to setup my own maneuvers though. The ∆V calculator is a joy to have on hand though. I tend to always over engineer my vessels, and then see if I can snag any mission bonuses out of them once the main mission is complete! LOL :cool:

 

Of course... I've also had MechJeb turn a rocket 180°, fiery bit up, pointy end down, at about 900 meters up... Yeah... There are occasional issues with it's... sanity. :confused:

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