PLEASE HELP - HARDEST MISSION EVER- DOCKING

[HardestGameEver]

FIRSTLY....

Sorry if this has already been asked tried looking it up and yeah couldn't see any topics.

So I've sunk about three nights now into the really hard to understand Ingame tutorials.

So I do all the other ones OK then I get to one called docking.

This has to be the hardest Tutorial I HAVE EVER DONE.

So I get the target, then I perform a manouver to get into a same angle orbit as the space station target, can do that alright. Next I have to do another manouver to intersect with the stranded space station can do that alright as well.

Now onto the confusing excrements. So the tutorial tells me I should wait till im 15K away from the target. UM OK WHERE. on what meter do i look. Do I press M and look at the meter up the top? Do I look on the V-ball thing. Where. Then it tells me to go in retrograde to slow down till im following at 50m/s OK can do that. However when i do this I see the target to which it tells me to go after and well its about 90K away and by the time I get near it Im either going to fast and it flys by or its going faster than I am and flys by me.

I managed to get within 500 metres of it until it then shot past me, Now I want to just chuck this game down and never play again.

I really need a Tutorial for the Tutorial like a Youtube video or something. Just of that mission.

I wish this game wasn't so hard. Oddly its way way easier to even fly to the moon or other planets probably because they have gravity wells. Some sort of automated system that just does it for you would rock. To the point it gets you near what you want to dock with and does the last stages of the intersection by itself.

Hopefully someone can help.

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

[bewing]

49 minutes ago, HardestGameEver said:

So I get the target, then I perform a manouver to get into a same angle orbit as the space station target, can do that alright. Next I have to do another manouver to intersect with the stranded space station can do that alright as well.

Good going! You are 80 percent of the way there.

49 minutes ago, HardestGameEver said:

So the tutorial tells me I should wait till im 15K away from the target. UM OK WHERE. on what meter do i look. Do I press M and look at the meter up the top? Do I look on the V-ball thing. Where.

There are two places you can look to judge distance from a target. In map mode (where you see the orbits), if you hover your cursor over the target, or right click the target -- the distance to the target will be displayed.

Also, in "Staging mode" (the other screen besides map mode), where you can see the details of your ship -- if you grab the screen and look around, you should see a colored marker that shows a distance to a ship (like 8.9km or something). If you hover your cursor over that marker, it should tell you the name of the ship that you are looking at. (But if you accidentally hit F4 then there will be no markers anywhere, and you need to hit F4 again). When you flip to Staging Mode, it will usually show the marker for your target ship, and then the marker zooooms of to one side (so you know where to look for it).

49 minutes ago, HardestGameEver said:

Then it tells me to go in retrograde to slow down till im following at 50m/s OK can do that. However when i do this I see the target to which it tells me to go after and well its about 90K away and by the time I get near it Im either going to fast and it flys by or its going faster than I am and flys by me.

When you start getting close, you have to slow down some more. And then when you are even closer, you have to slow down some more. In the tutorial, it is expecting you to use RCS controls, I think. So you turn on your RCS, and then (if I'm remembering correctly) you hit the N key to slow down. You use the other RCS controls (IJKL) to steer, so that your prograde marker is right on top of your target marker. When you are within 1000 meters, your speed should be less than 20 m/s. When you are within 200 meters, you want to be below 4 m/s. When you are within 50 meters, you want to be around .7 m/s maybe.

 

[Pecan]

2 hours ago, HardestGameEver said:

Sorry if this has already been asked tried looking it up and yeah couldn't see any topics.

-> There are many tutorials and even more questions about docking.  It's probably the hardest thing to learn.

So I've sunk about three nights now into the really hard to understand Ingame tutorials.

-> It took NASA years. A lot of the orbital mechanics is not intuitive, so it's hard.

...This has to be the hardest Tutorial I HAVE EVER DONE.

-> Yeah, it's a tutorial for the hardest thing you've ever done.

...I managed to get within 500 metres of it until it then shot past me

-> The first hard part is getting a close encounter.  If you can get within 500m you're doing well.  That was the hardest part for me.  Now you just have the hard part of stopping when you get there ^^.

Now I want to just chuck this game down and never play again.

-> There is a huge amount of stuff you can do without docking - like return moon missions.  Doing those first will be more fun than continual failure.  It will also give you valuable experience.  Don't be afraid to leave docking, or even just practicing docking, until you can face it again later.  Took me ages to get it.  It's hard!

I really need a Tutorial for the Tutorial like a Youtube video or something. Just of that mission.

-> Youtube.  KSP.  Docking.  There are many.  ("KSP Docking" gives 'about 107,000 results').  'Cause it's hard.

I wish this game wasn't so hard

-> How hard can rocket science be, anyway?  Blame physics.

Oddly its way way easier to even fly to the moon or other planets probably because they have gravity wells

-> Exactly so :-)  Plus a ship/station is a relatively tiny target, making it hard to hit accurately.

Some sort of automated system that just does it for you would rock. To the point it gets you near what you want to dock with and does the last stages of the intersection by itself.

-> MechJeb.  Docking Autopilot.  Won't help if you're on a console and can't install mods.

Hopefully someone can help.

-> Lots of tutorial writers/filmers.  MechJeb for the automation.  You'll have to see a priest if you want easier physics though.

 

Edited July 30, 2016 by Pecan

[DD_bwest]

lotsa good info here.   I havent done all the tutorials, as i find the requirements kinda finicky and i do things a touch differently then it wants lol, but when docking, i always have good SAS on both vessels.  it makes aligning the docking ports at the end essentially automated, since both vessels can focus on each other lol

 

when your approaching your target, make sure the speed above the Navball says target,  so that when you burn retrograde, your relative speed to the target decreases.  you want to get yourself within 5km of the target, and be stopped in relation to it.  From here Patients is important,  Nudge yourself towards the target between 1-5m/s,   and then cancel out that nudge at your new closest approach.  Rinse and repeat lol (a more skilled pilot can cut the nudge steps down from experience, but for a beginner its best to take it slow.)

also under the map menu, you can look at info for your ship with the info menu by holding your cursor over it.  Youll be able to see your max accel stat.  use this to judge how long itll take to cancel out the difference in velocity.  this will help when aligning your orbits at the initial rendezvous

[Snark]

The diagram that @Rocket In My Pocket provides, above, should be good for getting you to a rendezvous (that is, bringing you within a few km of the target).

For actually closing with the target and docking to it, you may find this illustrated docking tutorial useful, which I put together.

[klesh]

Never did like the Docking Port Alignment mod.  It confused me more than it helped.  At this point my Mk1 eyeball is all thats needed.

[Pecan]

36 minutes ago, klesh said:

Never did like the Docking Port Alignment mod.  It confused me more than it helped.  At this point my Mk1 eyeball is all thats needed.

You may like to try the Navball docking alignment indicator mod.  All it does is add an icon for the target port onto the navball.  With that you can make sure your orientation and rotation are as you wish as well as checking relative movement.  Unobtrusive yet (fairly) comprehensive.

[klesh]

Tried that one too.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

12 hours ago, klesh said:

Never did like the Docking Port Alignment mod.  It confused me more than it helped.  At this point my Mk1 eyeball is all thats needed.

Yeah I should have mentioned to ignore the bit about the docking port mod. (At least I've never personally had to use it.)

Once you've done the complicated orbital mechanics bit, docking two objects together in open space by eyeballing it shouldn't be too hard really.

I've never been able to make heads or tails of the stock docking port mode either. I'm not even sure how one is supposed to use it.

[HardestGameEver]

Thanks for all the replys have tried again today atleast ten times or so.

I got close about 200 metres but cant get any closer as soon as it hits around 200 metres it just does a drive by then turns on warp speed and then its out of there.

Sadly the stranded ship in the docking tutorial is really small which probably makes it even harder to get close to and dock with.

Think ill give up on it today, Want to land on Mun with a base anyway in my actual game.

Sadly Mechjeb wont work in the tutorial as the craft the game gives you for the missions are pre built and I think you have to add a module or pod or something from that mod to your craft in order for that to work.

Another annoying thing about the Docking tutorial is...

The game difficulty is locked to medium and quick save and quick load are also disabled, It's awesome the games realistic but come on please Dev's make it atleast somewhat easier.

The other Tutorials where cool the one where you land on Mun however I always blow up the landing gear most of the craft still survives along with the kerbal.

I suck at maths, Physics and all the other stuff, yet can somehow build and maintain computers not that its that hard in fact nothing compared to this.

[Wildcat111]

Maybe you could use MechJeb's rendezvous guidance. Watch what the autopilot does. When really close, like 10 meters from the target, select the docking port on the targeted vessel as the target. Meanwhile, control your vessel from your docking port. Then turn on docking guidance. It will dock with the selected target. If you close the docking guidance window, the maneuver will terminate, so keep the docking guidance window.

[Geschosskopf]

34 minutes ago, HardestGameEver said:

Thanks for all the replys have tried again today atleast ten times or so.

I got close about 200 metres but cant get any closer as soon as it hits around 200 metres it just does a drive by then turns on warp speed and then its out of there.

OK, so your problem is stopping when you get to the target?  One little thing that helps a lot with that is changing the speedometer's mode from "Orbit" to "Target".  You cycle through speedometer modes by clicking on the speedometer itself at the top of the navball.

When you're in space far from the target, setting up the intercept and all, you should be in Orbit mode by default.  Stay that way until you finish the burn at the intercept that makes your orbit essentially the same shape as the target's (step 6 in the diagram above).  Once you finish this burn, click the speedometer until it says "Target".  Now, instead of displaying your orbital velocity relative to Kerbin, it now shows your velocity relative to the target.

Now what you want to do is zero your relative velocity to the target.  To do this, point your ship at the orbital retrograde marker (not the target retrograde marker) and burn until your displayed speed (remember, this is relative to the target) is 0m/s (or at least <= 0.5m/s)..

So now you're not moving relative to the target, but the target is still some distance away (say 4.5km as in the diagram).  From here on, it's a series of repetitive steps to walk your ship right up to the target.  The sequence goes like this:

1. Point your ship at the target marker on the navball and open the throttle just a hair to give you some speed (relative to the target).  How much speed depends on how far away you are, how much TWR you have (IOW, how good your brakes are), and how impatient you are.  Generally, if I've got decent TWR and am beyond 1km away, I'll get up to 20-50m/s relative to the target.  If I'm within 1km, I'll only go to about 10m/s.  If I'm within 200m, I'll only do 2-3m/s.
2. Once you have the speed you want, stop the engine and rotate to to the ORBITAL retrograde marker (yellow), NOT the target retrograde marker (purple).  Now you wait to get closer to the target, watching it on your screen like a hawk so you can stop when you need to.  If you were still a fair distance away when you did the last little burn, the target will almost certainly move towards an edge of your screen as you get closer.  If the target doesn't move across the screen, it means you're on a collision course, but this usually only happens when you're very close to the target.  But that's a good thing because the whole goal in docking is to run your ship into the other one anyway.
3. If the target is moving towards the edge of the screen, stop before it goes off the edge.  You do this by burning on the ORBITAL retrograde marker until your speed (in Target mode) is 0m/s again.  Because you're not going very fast relative to the target, this is easy to do.  If the target isn't moving across the screen, it means you're very close so just stop before you hit it.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 as needed until you're within about 100m of the target and have 0m/s speed (in Target mode).  At this point, the rendezvous is complete and you can begin the actual docking.

 

[HardestGameEver]

On 02/08/2016 at 5:05 AM, Wildcat111 said:

Maybe you could use MechJeb's rendezvous guidance. Watch what the autopilot does. When really close, like 10 meters from the target, select the docking port on the targeted vessel as the target. Meanwhile, control your vessel from your docking port. Then turn on docking guidance. It will dock with the selected target. If you close the docking guidance window, the maneuver will terminate, so keep the docking guidance window.

Sadly you can't do this in the games tutorials. Mechjeb2 requires you to add either the Mechanical pod or the other thing AR202?

 

[HardestGameEver]

On 02/08/2016 at 5:18 AM, Geschosskopf said:

OK, so your problem is stopping when you get to the target?  One little thing that helps a lot with that is changing the speedometer's mode from "Orbit" to "Target".  You cycle through speedometer modes by clicking on the speedometer itself at the top of the navball.

When you're in space far from the target, setting up the intercept and all, you should be in Orbit mode by default.  Stay that way until you finish the burn at the intercept that makes your orbit essentially the same shape as the target's (step 6 in the diagram above).  Once you finish this burn, click the speedometer until it says "Target".  Now, instead of displaying your orbital velocity relative to Kerbin, it now shows your velocity relative to the target.

Now what you want to do is zero your relative velocity to the target.  To do this, point your ship at the orbital retrograde marker (not the target retrograde marker) and burn until your displayed speed (remember, this is relative to the target) is 0m/s (or at least <= 0.5m/s)..

So now you're not moving relative to the target, but the target is still some distance away (say 4.5km as in the diagram).  From here on, it's a series of repetitive steps to walk your ship right up to the target.  The sequence goes like this:

1. Point your ship at the target marker on the navball and open the throttle just a hair to give you some speed (relative to the target).  How much speed depends on how far away you are, how much TWR you have (IOW, how good your brakes are), and how impatient you are.  Generally, if I've got decent TWR and am beyond 1km away, I'll get up to 20-50m/s relative to the target.  If I'm within 1km, I'll only go to about 10m/s.  If I'm within 200m, I'll only do 2-3m/s.
2. Once you have the speed you want, stop the engine and rotate to to the ORBITAL retrograde marker (yellow), NOT the target retrograde marker (purple).  Now you wait to get closer to the target, watching it on your screen like a hawk so you can stop when you need to.  If you were still a fair distance away when you did the last little burn, the target will almost certainly move towards an edge of your screen as you get closer.  If the target doesn't move across the screen, it means you're on a collision course, but this usually only happens when you're very close to the target.  But that's a good thing because the whole goal in docking is to run your ship into the other one anyway.
3. If the target is moving towards the edge of the screen, stop before it goes off the edge.  You do this by burning on the ORBITAL retrograde marker until your speed (in Target mode) is 0m/s again.  Because you're not going very fast relative to the target, this is easy to do.  If the target isn't moving across the screen, it means you're very close so just stop before you hit it.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 as needed until you're within about 100m of the target and have 0m/s speed (in Target mode).  At this point, the rendezvous is complete and you can begin the actual docking.

 

Thank's for the reply ill try this. The main problem im having is if I speed up towards the target it throws my m/s for the target out of whack. then I have to burn Orbital retrograde and then if I point back at the target its now further away.

[Pecan]

1 hour ago, HardestGameEver said:

Sadly you can't do this in the games tutorials. Mechjeb2 requires you to add either the Mechanical pod or the other thing AR202?

 

Practice in sandbox.  It's easy to build and launch a couple of little docking drones[*] then play 'tag' with them.

Advantages are:

1. Not restricted to tight tutorial actions and requirements
2. Can use MJ mod
3. Can use docking port alignment mod
4. Can quicksave and quickload at any point instead of having to start all over again.

[* An example of all you need for a docking drone and "how it's done" but note that the actual vehicles were designed for version 0.90 and have not been tested since.]

Edited August 2, 2016 by Pecan

[Reactordrone]

6 hours ago, HardestGameEver said:

Thank's for the reply ill try this. The main problem im having is if I speed up towards the target it throws my m/s for the target out of whack. then I have to burn Orbital retrograde and then if I point back at the target its now further away.

With the stop/start method used in the tutorial you should be in target mode throughout the final phases of the docking, burning retrograde in target mode to kill your relative velocity to the target and then boosting towards the target. You should only be burning orbital prograde and retrograde to set up the initial rendezvous.

Edited August 3, 2016 by Reactordrone

[HardestGameEver]

13 hours ago, Pecan said:

Practice in sandbox.  It's easy to build and launch a couple of little docking drones[*] then play 'tag' with them.

Advantages are:

1. Not restricted to tight tutorial actions and requirements
2. Can use MJ mod
3. Can use docking port alignment mod
4. Can quicksave and quickload at any point instead of having to start all over again.

[* An example of all you need for a docking drone and "how it's done" but note that the actual vehicles were designed for version 0.90 and have not been tested since.]

I'm a idiot. I got CKAN which got the Mechjeb going for me in tutorial.

Well Mission Accomplished guys thanks to the help of everyone here and the genius who created Mechjeb I know one should really learn to do it manually but with a mod this awesome theres no point.

I found CKAN which managed my other mods and yeah now everything works and I have the wonderful Mechjeb. Now space stations are gunna rock. \,,/

[Kerbal Nerd123]

Hey, you're not the only one who having this problem I even can't dock stuff  10m-20m CLOSE! PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!!

[Wildcat111]

22 hours ago, HardestGameEver said:

Sadly you can't do this in the games tutorials. Mechjeb2 requires you to add either the Mechanical pod or the other thing AR202?

 

Yes, I'm just suggesting for non-tutorial missions.

[Pecan]

7 hours ago, HardestGameEver said:

I'm a idiot...
Well Mission Accomplished guys thanks to the help of everyone here...
and the genius who created Mechjeb...
I know one should really learn to do it manually but with a mod this awesome theres no point.
...Now space stations are gunna rock. \,,/

If you were an idiot you would have kept failing instead of asking for help ("Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" Einstein)
Well done and you're welcome.
To my (further) shame I can't remember who made it originally but @sarbian keeps up the awesome.
Despite its awesome you will get more satisfaction from being able to do it yourself (even if you don't bother most of the time).  As I said before, there's no reason to learn everything at once - watch how MJ does it and try it again manually later, when you feel like it.
They do (although some just don't see the point of them).  Beyond stations it's a good idea to include a docking-port on every vehicle 'just in case' you forget some important component (yeah, like that's ever going to happen ^^).

@Kerbal Nerd123 - does the same help HardestGameEver used not benefit you too?  If not, we need a bit more information to go on.

[Tyko]

8 hours ago, HardestGameEver said:

I'm a idiot. I got CKAN which got the Mechjeb going for me in tutorial.

Well Mission Accomplished guys thanks to the help of everyone here and the genius who created Mechjeb I know one should really learn to do it manually but with a mod this awesome theres no point.

I found CKAN which managed my other mods and yeah now everything works and I have the wonderful Mechjeb. Now space stations are gunna rock. \,,/

You're not an idiot...it's actually really tough to visualize in your head what's going on. The key thing is to understand that you have to be in "Target Mode" on the navball and that the Retrograde Marker is telling you which way to burn to slow your relative velocity to 0. So you get close (within a few kilometers), set your Target, point your ship to the Retrograde marker and then burn until your speed is 0. After that, you can point your ship at the pink target marker and slowly move closer...it's a pain to figure out, but really worth it.

Once you've watch MJ do it a few times, it's really rewarding to go back and do it manually. If you need more help, ask.

[Geschosskopf]

11 hours ago, HardestGameEver said:

Well Mission Accomplished guys thanks to the help of everyone here and the genius who created Mechjeb I know one should really learn to do it manually but with a mod this awesome theres no point.

As it has been since the beginning, it's still SOP in real life for rockets to fly themselves.  Computers are way better at this than people.  This includes not only docking but launching and all other burns.  People are only there occasionally to consume life support for purely propaganda purposes, not for practical benefit.  However, if your need for propaganda outweighs your need for practicality, it's a good idea if the people have some rudimentary self-help skills.  Otherwise, your Apollo 13 scenario will be a propaganda disaster.

Now, in the KSP, community (thankfully, more in the past than the present) some folks would talk smack about how they could do everything themselves and heap scorn on MJ users.  They did so in the mistaken beliefs that 1) anybody cared and 2) that KSP is really representative of actual spaceflight.  So don't let the MJ haters get you down.  They really don't know what they're talking about.

Still, occasionally it's useful to know how it all works in KSP so you can do it manually when actually needed.  It's actually needed when it takes more realtime to use an autopilot than it does to do it manually, because the amount of realtime spend doing some housekeeping task like rendezvousing and docking subtracts from how far you can explore before bedtime.  And as you get better at it doing it manually, the more things shift in favor of doing it manually, or at least manually with navigation aids like @NavyFish's DPAI mod (which is the best thing since canned beer). 

[bewing]

Well, computers are really bad at landing on an unprepared surface. So you need the manual piloting skills for that, at least.

[Wildcat111]

On 2016-08-02 at 0:54 PM, HardestGameEver said:

Sadly you can't do this in the games tutorials. Mechjeb2 requires you to add either the Mechanical pod or the other thing AR202?

 

Get one of these:

https://mods.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/221109-mechjeb-embedded-universal

https://mods.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/221500-mechjeb-and-engineer-for-all

 

P.S: Both of these are for 1.0, but I think they will work with 1.1.3.

 

On 2016-08-03 at 8:36 AM, Kerbal Nerd123 said:

Hey, you're not the only one who having this problem I even can't dock stuff  10m-20m CLOSE! PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!!

Like I suggested to @HardestGameEver:

Use MechJeb's rendezvous guidance. Watch what the autopilot does. When really close, like 10 meters from the target, select the docking port on the targeted vessel as the target. Meanwhile, control your vessel from your docking port. Then turn on docking guidance. It will dock with the selected target. If you close the docking guidance window, the maneuver will terminate, so keep the docking guidance window.