Navball

[AlykaAZ]

I'm experiencing serious nav-ball drag, I'm burning up fuel trying to get the apoapsis aligned when turning?

[Reactordrone]

Not quite sure what you mean. Is this during launch? How are you trying to "align" the apoapsis? Pictures might help.

[AlykaAZ]

During launch as I yaw left or right, the apoaps indicator lags behind. same thing with pitch.

[bewing]

What I think you mean is that your ship isn't turning fast enough when you want it to? And you have a gimballing engine, so if you do a gentle burn you regain some turning control?

If that's right, then there are three answers. To turn a ship without using fuel, you need a reaction wheel. You probably already have one in your command pod or your probe core, but it's not very big. You can unlock better reaction wheels in the tech tree, and then your ship will turn a lot better. You can do a little better for now by adding an additional inline command pod to your ship, if you like.

Or, you can use RCS. This uses a different kind of fuel (monopropellant). But it can turn your ship really fast. Again, there are various bits that you must unlock in the tech tree.

Or, you can realize that the gimballing engine is what you have to work with for now, and until you unlock some more of the tech tree, you will have to burn a little fuel and use your engine to turn.

But basically at the beginning of the game, you have to be very patient, and plan ahead when you want your ship to rotate. You have to understand that your ship will turn very slowly, and you have to expect that it's going to take a minute or two to make it turn around. Yes, that's inconvenient, but it's an accurate part of the simulation.

[Red Iron Crown]

1 hour ago, AlykaAZ said:

During launch as I yaw left or right, the apoaps indicator lags behind. same thing with pitch.

If you mean this indicator drags behind where you are pointing:

This is by design, and accurate. A rocket has considerable momentum to keep moving in the direction it is already moving, when you adjust your vessel's direction it takes time for the new thrust direction to change the flightpath to align more closely.

(Pictured indicator is called the "Prograde" indicator, it shows which direction the vessel is moving.)

[Pecan]

12 hours ago, AlykaAZ said:

During launch as I yaw left or right, the apoaps indicator lags behind. same thing with pitch.

There is no apoapsis indicator on the navball.  Would you tell us which colour/shape you mean?  (A screenshot is probably easiest).