Anyone else have trouble flying your Kerbal EVA in space?

[jpinard]

I don't know what my problem is, but I cannot seem to keep control of my Kerbal in space.  It seems to be the visual orientation plus mouse plus maybe key bindings.  It disorients?  me up so bad I have never been able or get back to my ship after a a brief free-flying EVA.

Can someone give me some pointers?  I need to rescue a nice Kerbal lady in orbit, and I cannot get her to fly to my waiting craft.  Things go all wonky fast.

Scott Manley makes it look so darn easy makes me feel stupid.  Thanks for the help!

Edited April 23, 2016 by jpinard

[Scotius]

KAS cable might help Attach it to your Kerbal and use as a safety line while you are practicing maneuvers. In case of troubles you can always reel him\her back to the ship. If you don't want to use mods, go to Minmus and train there. Low gravity on Kerbin's smaller moon allows for quite comfortable flying - and you can always return to the capsule by ladder

 

[Jart]

If you are using the default control method for Kerbals

Turn on that jetpack,the  key is R

 Press the spacebar the Kerbal will orient itself to face directly away from you  or orient the camera to where the kerbal is face directly away from you.

It may be easiest to just not move the camera if you are having troubles.

there are six more keys for control.

X-axis: W moves you forward, S moves you backward.

Y-axis: A moves you left, D moves you right.

Z-axis: Shift moves you up, Ctrl moves you down.

Q and E rotate you around the Z axis (so you'll face left and right, respectively)

 

TAKE IT SLOW!.

 

Quick tap for the direction you want to go,  treat it like docking.

 

If you tap twice to go forward you will need to tap twice to stop that momentum.

 

Same with any direction.

 

 

Edited April 23, 2016 by Jart

[jpinard]

Thank you for the tips!  one of my greatest problems is I hit the wrong key a few times and I end up zipping along at an odd angle.  Each time I try to reorient toward my ship and go to it, I end up being way off angle and the ship whizzes past.  Sometimes I don't know if it's my velocity from going to fast, or my veolocity is too slow (relative to ship).

scotius I will look to install KAS cable.  Is it updated for 1.1 and on CKAN by any chance?

[Xavven]

5 minutes ago, jpinard said:

 one of my greatest problems is I hit the wrong key a few times and I end up zipping along at an odd angle. 

This could be the result of pressing the keys for too long and building up momentum. I try my best not to treat it like the usual First Person Shooter where you have to hold down W continuously to walk forward. Pretend you're on an ice-level when every movement makes you slide in that direction indefinitely.

[suicidejunkie]

Switch view modes to ANYTHING other than auto.  The last thing you need when flying EVA is for your camera to spin around wildly because you just technically went suborbital!

You may need chase or orbital mode to get allow the kerbal to orient in a direction they can grab the ladder from, but you can press 'v' only when appropriate.

 

Set the nav ball to target mode, and watch the prograde marker; stay on target

Also keep the speed down.  10m/s is plenty fast for a long range cruise, up close you will want to keep it below 2m/s, and under 0.5 when hoping to grab a ladder.

 

Whenever you're not looking at the navball alone, the key thing is to put your mind in the Kerbal's head.  'A' means accelerating to THEIR left, not yours, and shift is towards their helmet.

[bewing]

I doubt this is helpful, but it's exactly the same as docking a ship with RCS -- except easier, because a ship can rotate in three dimensions and a kerbal can't. An orbiting kerbal's helmet always points north. So if you get enough practice in at ship docking then EVAs should become easier. One tip is to always point your destination ship north before the EVA and hit SAS. Then the ship and kerbonaut always remain oriented in the same direction. You can also rotate the ship so that the ladder is already pointing at the kerbal.

The one major difficulty is that a kebonaut's RCS jetpack is overpowered for the last little bit of the docking. One tiny tap on Shift generally pushes your guy "up" too fast. So you have to tap "ctrl" -- and now your guy is going down too fast. So killing every last bit of your relative speed is hard when you are trying to grab that ladder.

But if you mess up, you can always tap S three or four times to back up -- and then you get to try again. Of course, it's also a matter of practice. So just go into sandbox, launch a kerbal into orbit, quicksave, EVA, let go, turn on RCS, and then try ten times just maneuvering and getting back to the ladder. Another tip: once you are within 30 meters, forget the navball. Turn on your suit lights (L) and just do the last bit of the manuever by eye.

Other than that, if your kerbal is more than about 5km from the destination ship, use standard orbital methods (modifying your Ap, Pe, An and Dn) to create a close approach before using "rcs" docking techniques. And if your destination ship is below about 73Km altitude, pay attention to what suicidejunkie said -- you will have major camera problems trying to dock. And it's a little easier having your kerbal catch a ship from "behind", I think.

[swjr-swis]

Something easily forgotten and often confusing: in EVA, the navball orientates itself to where your camera is looking, unlike with ships, where it is fixed to the ships' orientation.

So when you're trying to use navball rather than visual navigation, hold rightclick and keep the navball on the navball target with the mouse. for some people that may be more intuitive, for example by making a maneuver node to track just how much (or more often, how little) impulse you need to match speeds with the target vessel.

[something]

Had the same problem on my first EVA...and it's  tsken its time to learn to not confuse up/down with fore/aft - here are some hints:

Take your time. In orbit there's no need to be fast since it is a frictionless vacuum  - you will move forever.

Be one dimensional for the start. Cancel your speed dimension by dimension. Then go wherever you want.

If you accelerate in the wrong direction don't panic. Think of what key you hit and cancel the acceleration by accelerating in the opposite ditection.

Setting your vessel as target might help since you can then use the navballmarkers to get back (did that on my first EVA to get back to the vessel.

 

 

 

[Renegrade]

7 hours ago, suicidejunkie said:

Switch view modes to ANYTHING other than auto.  The last thing you need when flying EVA is for your camera to spin around wildly because you just technically went suborbital!

^ exactly this.  AUTO uses orbital vs. sub-orbital craft status to determine which mode to use (I believe it's switching from 'orbital' cam view to 'free' cam view for orbital and sub-orbital respectively.  I strongly recommend that @jpinard pay attention to that advice there. And any other inexperienced EVAers.

EVA shouldn't be a thing of fear, it's a thing of joy in KSP.

 

[Hodari]

8 hours ago, jpinard said:

Scott Manley makes it look so darn easy makes me feel stupid.  Thanks for the help!

I'm sure this is only after a LOT of practice and possibly a few outtakes.  But yeah, EVAs are definitely not easy and I usually avoid them as much as possible.  I just wait until I have unlocked the Klaw and use that for rescue missions or anything else that doesn't already have a docking port on it.

[suicidejunkie]

Another thing to try is turning off the EVA auto-rotate in your settings.

Having the Kerbal spin around to face away from the camera every time you touch the controls is annoying and disorienting.

Once you know about pressing spacebar to spin the Kerbal only when you want, the auto-rotate is pretty useless too.

[helaeon]

Definitely switch to "Free" camera mode, and just tap the keys for the jetpack and use mouse look + space to orient.

Also most of all. Practice. I had troubles with EVA too, I think a lot of us did. Then at some point you get to where they're no problem.
An interesting place to get used to jetpacking around is Minmus. Super low gravity so you can train, but it's like the planet is acting like a safety tether.

One other thing : if you're into mods, NavHud is handy as it shows you your actual travel vector overlayed onto the world. It can really help. Especially on long range EVA jaunts. Super handy for landings including on the runway at the KSC (put the velocity vector on the end of the runway and that's where you're going!), and regular ship docking.

Edited April 23, 2016 by helaeon

[jpinard]

Oh thank you all so much!

EVA is something I dread, so if I can get it to something I enjoy it will be quite an achievement.

[ag3nt108]

Lights on your craft, EVA during a dark side can really mess you up if your craft doesn't stand out from the stars.  Other than that as everyone has said small small taps of the propellant.  if you accelerate for too long or even too often you can really reach quite a distance from the craft.

[LordFerret]

11 hours ago, bewing said:

I doubt this is helpful, but it's exactly the same as docking a ship with RCS -- except easier, because a ship can rotate in three dimensions and a kerbal can't. An orbiting kerbal's helmet always points north. So if you get enough practice in at ship docking then EVAs should become easier. One tip is to always point your destination ship north before the EVA and hit SAS. Then the ship and kerbonaut always remain oriented in the same direction. You can also rotate the ship so that the ladder is already pointing at the kerbal.

The one major difficulty is that a kebonaut's RCS jetpack is overpowered for the last little bit of the docking. One tiny tap on Shift generally pushes your guy "up" too fast. So you have to tap "ctrl" -- and now your guy is going down too fast. So killing every last bit of your relative speed is hard when you are trying to grab that ladder.

But if you mess up, you can always tap S three or four times to back up -- and then you get to try again. Of course, it's also a matter of practice. So just go into sandbox, launch a kerbal into orbit, quicksave, EVA, let go, turn on RCS, and then try ten times just maneuvering and getting back to the ladder. Another tip: once you are within 30 meters, forget the navball. Turn on your suit lights (L) and just do the last bit of the manuever by eye.

Other than that, if your kerbal is more than about 5km from the destination ship, use standard orbital methods (modifying your Ap, Pe, An and Dn) to create a close approach before using "rcs" docking techniques. And if your destination ship is below about 73Km altitude, pay attention to what suicidejunkie said -- you will have major camera problems trying to dock. And it's a little easier having your kerbal catch a ship from "behind", I think.

I have always found this most annoying. However, I discovered this mod, and ever since my EVAs are a breeze.

[samstarman5]

It's really just a matter of allowing yourself to adapt to how EVA kerbals behave.  You could use a mod, but you don't have to.  It's like when docking became a feature. We had to change the way we control the ship to figure that out.  I definitely recommend practicing with EVA more, and then challenge yourself to travel between two craft in orbit that aren't very close. I can tell you it is quite the rush to achieve it.

[Javster]

I would recommend looking at it one axis at a time.

For example: I'm going up, forwards and to the left.

Cancel out up, now I'm only going forwards and to the left. Then only to the left, then stopped.

I find it easier than trying to do them all at once.

[jpinard]

This has seriously been one of the best threads of all time.  I've been too sick (I have crappy lungs) to play since you all updated this but I'm finally feeling well enough tonight to go to space

[suicidejunkie]

This may not apply to you, but it makes a huge difference if you're used to using WASD for running around in an FPS game vs if you're a hunt&peck typer.

My Dad is the latter, and although he gets there eventually, it takes a long long time travelling at 0.1m/s in order to get time to press the correct burn direction.

With FPS habits, I often use side thrust to start going where I want to go while the Kerbal is still spinning and/or tumbling, and roll around the keyboard to match the spin.

[Enorats]

Eva takes practice. My first few times I couldn't get back to the ladder and ended up floating through space endlessly. After a few attempts though it generally becomes extremely easy. Press keys very briefly, a second or two is all it really takes. Remember that any key you press will need the opposite pressed for an identical period of time to counteract it and stop you again. 

 

It can help to remember that you're moving one button press left, two presses down, and a press forward for example.. counteract each of those (in any order at all) and you'll come to a stop relative to where you started (your ship). After a short time you'll find that you can generally intuitively break any given vector into those three directions instantly, so that as you're moving in any random direction you can intuitively know that you need to go slightly up to hit your target, maybe slow down a bit (move backward away from it), and maybe do other adjustments as the intercept changes when you change your approach velocity.

 

Basically.. break your "speed" into three different speeds in your head and look at it that way.