Trying to dock with my spacestation suggestions.

[Sublight]

I have read stuff on this forum, and watched youtube videos and have not been able to dock in space with my space station. 

I removed my old satellite that had a funky orbit and no fuel, and replaced it with a nicer one at 100,00 meters, and its orbit is almost perfectly the same.  within 200 meters.

I just wanted to get some suggestions of how to successfully dock.  Im sure that you guys have learned things that wasn't on youtube / this forum.  I would love it if you would share the things that made it easy to dock in space.  Thanks in advance.

[ZooNamedGames]

My experience tells me to just make a node on periapsis (or close to), click and drag the prograde marker until the closest approach node nears as close as possible. I typically aim for about 2.2-2.5km separation as I want some distance for slowing down and aligning with the station. If prograde doesn't get you that close move the light blue circular circularization nodes around a bit until you get closer (or the purple inclination triangles if your slightly inclined from your target).

Once the node is made, just warp to it, burn and then warp til your about 5km separation, when you get that close, switch your velocity gauge to Target mode. Then use your reaction wheels or RCS to face retrograde and burn until your (relative) speed reaches near zero. If you can, try to move your prograde and retrograde markers towards their respective target nodes. I've learned a little limerick to remember how they work, "Prograde is lazy and you have to drag it to the target, but retrograde is scared of your thrust and will avoid it".

Once your speed is near zero, burn just slightly towards the target, aim for about 20-30m/s. Then wait (or warp if your careful) until your about 300-400m away from your target, when you are, burn retrograde again to slow down to about 5-10m/s. When you reach 50m from the target, slow down to about 2-4m/s. While doing this, make sure to keep your prograde marker facing the target marker.

When you reach 20m distance, I typically stop burning and use my translation thrusters (IJKL HN) to align myself so I'm parallel with the target docking port. Then once I am, I give a slight nudge with the RCS to about 1.5-2m/s and close in. At about 5m I slow to 0.25m/s to confirm a nice gentle docking.

That's how I do it anyway. I remember my first dockings where absolute nightmares where I wanted to rip the hair and skin off of me... but the games changed a lot since those old days... heheh. Hope this helps.

[Sublight]

2 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

My experience tells me to just make a node on periapsis (or close to), click and drag the prograde marker until the closest approach node nears as close as possible. I typically aim for about 2.2-2.5km separation as I want some distance for slowing down and aligning with the station. If prograde doesn't get you that close move the light blue circular circularization nodes around a bit until you get closer (or the purple inclination triangles if your slightly inclined from your target).

Once the node is made, just warp to it, burn and then warp til your about 5km separation, when you get that close, switch your velocity gauge to Target mode. Then use your reaction wheels or RCS to face retrograde and burn until your (relative) speed reaches near zero. If you can, try to move your prograde and retrograde markers towards their respective target nodes. I've learned a little limerick to remember how they work, "Prograde is lazy and you have to drag it to the target, but retrograde is scared of your thrust and will avoid it".

Once your speed is near zero, burn just slightly towards the target, aim for about 20-30m/s. Then wait (or warp if your careful) until your about 300-400m away from your target, when you are, burn retrograde again to slow down to about 5-10m/s. When you reach 50m from the target, slow down to about 2-4m/s. While doing this, make sure to keep your prograde marker facing the target marker.

When you reach 20m distance, I typically stop burning and use my translation thrusters (IJKL HN) to align myself so I'm parallel with the target docking port. Then once I am, I give a slight nudge with the RCS to about 1.5-2m/s and close in. At about 5m I slow to 0.25m/s to confirm a nice gentle docking.

That's how I do it anyway. I remember my first dockings where absolute nightmares where I wanted to rip the hair and skin off of me... but the games changed a lot since those old days... heheh. Hope this helps.

The thing that puzzles me is the thruster works the same as the SAS.  That just will point my nose in a different direction.  What if my entire ship is just a little to high or to much to the left.  How do I correct for this?

[ZooNamedGames]

6 minutes ago, Sublight said:

The thing that puzzles me is the thruster works the same as the SAS.  That just will point my nose in a different direction.  What if my entire ship is just a little to high or to much to the left.  How do I correct for this?

Use the IJKL and HN keys. They are your translational thrusters allowing you to move up, down, left and right without affecting your attitude. H and N thrust forward in your current attitude (basically like firing your normal engine prograde (H) or retrograde (N)). Use those to adjust your location to correctly align with the station.

[Sublight]

30 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Use the IJKL and HN keys. They are your translational thrusters allowing you to move up, down, left and right without affecting your attitude. H and N thrust forward in your current attitude (basically like firing your normal engine prograde (H) or retrograde (N)). Use those to adjust your location to correctly align with the station.

Ok.  Im on Xbox, so Ill assume its all built in.  Perhaps I have to use "Docking Mode".  Im at work so obviously I cant check right now.  If I have any problems or questions ill post here later this evening.  Thank you so much for your time.

[ZooNamedGames]

10 minutes ago, Sublight said:

Ok.  Im on Xbox, so Ill assume its all built in.  Perhaps I have to use "Docking Mode".  Im at work so obviously I cant check right now.  If I have any problems or questions ill post here later this evening.  Thank you so much for your time.

Oh, that's a big difference, at least in the controls. All the maneuvering comments still stand, but changing from orbital to target mode for your UI is different not to mention how to swap to docking mode which is the correct term for it. Basically it swaps the default pitch/yaw/roll controls to the above mentioned translations controls.

So definitely find the manual and read how to work the controls.

[Reactordrone]

6 hours ago, Sublight said:

The thing that puzzles me is the thruster works the same as the SAS.  That just will point my nose in a different direction.  What if my entire ship is just a little to high or to much to the left.  How do I correct for this?

If you have a controllable target vehicle you can switch to it and point its docking port at your incoming ship, then switch back and point your ship at the docking port on the target. It saves having to move around to align with the port.

[IWanttobeEVA]

I think the initial encounter is important to dock smoothly. I try for an encounter of less than 3km. The relative speed between the aggressor and the target is determined by the difference in the initial orbits. So if the aggressor vessel's orbit is a lot bigger or smaller than the target orbit you might want to make an intermediate orbit that is closer ( not matching)  to the target making it easier to get a close encounter at a reasonable relitive speed.

Once you do the burn to the encounter you can use your RCS on the aggessor vessel to get even closer, usually by genally tapping H or N and watching the encounter distance.

When you are at 0.0m/s to the target, turn the aggessor to the target marker in the navball. Increase your speed to a few m/s to the target. The prograde icon will appear over the target. As the target and aggressor are not yet in the same orbit the prograde will drift off the target so your velocity vector relitive to the target no longer lines up. When the prograde marker drifts off by 20-25' line up to the prograde marker, turn on the RCS and use N until you're back to 0.0m/s. Turn back to the target and repeat until you can line up and dock.

I almost alway use RCS to close so I don't have to keep flipping my ship 180'. Keeping the velocity low will save on RCS fuel and make the needed velocity adjustments shorter but likely more numerous. 

[Spricigo]

14 hours ago, Sublight said:

  Im sure that you guys have learned things that wasn't on youtube / this forum. 

Nope.  Good tutorials in YouTube covers everything you need to know about it. Also extensively explained in the forums. My usual answer to how to this kind of question it's usually just link a Good tutorial.  A Good tutorial is not difficult to find. 

[Magzimum]

14 hours ago, Reactordrone said:

If you have a controllable target vehicle you can switch to it and point its docking port at your incoming ship, then switch back and point your ship at the docking port on the target. It saves having to move around to align with the port.

Fully agree with this comment. Turning the other ship to a convenient orientation makes life easier. If the docking is especially hard (e.g. very large ships) I will turn the docking port of the target ship to (anti-)normal, as that orientation stays constant for the entire orbit. Then I get my ship in front of the docking port on the target ship, and turn my ship to (anti-)normal too so that the docking ports face each other. That is assuming that my docking port is at the front of the ship of course. After that it is a matter of using the IJKL NH keys to do some fine tuning. 

If you are going to look up the controls for your Xbox game anyway, look up how to switch between ships. In this wiki on the key-bindings for the PC game that is called "Cycle through active ships", and you use [ and ].

Note that sometimes the docking ports just have a bad day, and refuse to dock. Just patiently try again.

Oh, and press quicksave at the right moments!

[Sublight]

I have made it within 300 meters of the space station.  But I seem to be circling it.  As soon as I sync my movement to the station it seems to start moving again.  I cant sit still long enough to close in and dock.  Any suggestions?  Ive tried everything I can think of...  Thank goodness for quicksaves.

[Reactordrone]

11 hours ago, Sublight said:

I have made it within 300 meters of the space station.  But I seem to be circling it.  As soon as I sync my movement to the station it seems to start moving again.  I cant sit still long enough to close in and dock.  Any suggestions?  Ive tried everything I can think of...  Thank goodness for quicksaves.

Make sure you're in target mode on the navball, point at the retrograde marker and kill your relative velocity. Turn around and point at the ship at the pink "target prograde" marker and thrust gently towards it. That should bring the prograde marker close to the centre and you can then use lateral RCS to line it up to dead centre and keep it there as you close on the target.

[Magzimum]

On 11-8-2016 at 2:42 PM, Sublight said:

I have made it within 300 meters of the space station.  But I seem to be circling it.  As soon as I sync my movement to the station it seems to start moving again.  I cant sit still long enough to close in and dock.  Any suggestions?  Ive tried everything I can think of...  Thank goodness for quicksaves.

I am taking a guess here that you are either 300 m above or below the space station (with respect to the planet/moon)? That would mean that you are actually in a higher/lower orbit, and if you kill all your relative speed to the target, it will not stay zero.

Your choices (in my limited experience) are:

1. Move closer. The effect is less the closer you get to the target.
2. Try to get to the same altitude as your target (not above or below). That is a more stable position that won't change as fast, especiallly if you are in the same orbit. I realize fully well that if you can control this, then docking is not much of an issue either... but problem solving starts with understanding the problem.
3. Ignore that slight drift. Just aim for the "target" (the pink circle with the dot), and go. If it drifts away at 1-2 m/s, you should just go 10 m/s.
4. If the target moves away from your prograde marker, you have 2 options: (A) to go retrograde, slow your relative speed to zero, and go again towards the target or (B) to point your nose to the other side of the target marker than the prograde marker is, and accelerate. This should (at least temporarily) move that prograde marker back onto the target marker, and make you continue going towards the target.

Install enough forward pointing thrusters - e.g. RCS - so that you can move at 10 m/s or so until you are close enough, and still slow down on time.

Don't be afraid to overshoot the target a few times while you practice. That should at least give you a better feel for the mechanisms.

 

 

[Sublight]

Well I figured it out.  My method is this...
I get my Ascending/Descending node within .01 using maneuvers
I allow the orbits to be different so I can catch up with the Space station.
Use maneuvers to see when we will be close together and warp to it.

I will use engines to go toward my space station until the orbits don't sync,
then I burn retrograde (not anti-target) to fix my orbit.  Then I burn towards the target for a while again.  I have to rinse and repeat a few times but it works pretty well.  Thanks to everyone here.  I used a little from all the comments.  I may make something to show how I did it for other newbies later.  I always pack extra fuel, but it wasn't bad on fuel at all.