What to do?

[Lorule]

About half a year ago, I bought Kerbal Space Program while it was on sale on gog. I've played it about 5 hours and I don't really feel like there is a point on playing it more. The problem is, I have no idea what to do. I tried building a rocket so I could orbit around Kerbin in sandbox mode, but it wouldn't even lift off. And guides I read or watched like control the speed or other things like that. I just have no idea what to do.

[Snark]

Welcome to the forums! 

Sorry to hear that you're having difficulties, but you've come to the right place.  Can you describe your rocket, or post a screenshot?

If you're new to KSP:  rockets have "stages", which you activate by pressing the space bar.  When you launch a rocket from the VAB and it's sitting on the launch pad, the engine isn't activated yet, so nothing will happen until you press the space bar.  Is it possible that that might be your problem?

Or are you saying that you press the spacebar, and then nothing happens?

Or is it actually activating, and you can see rocket exhaust, but it's not lifting off?  If that's the case, you may not have an engine powerful enough to lift you (or you might be using a "vacuum engine" which is really intended for outer space, not atmosphere).

There are a lot of potential problems-- main thing we need to see is what your rocket is like, so we can give specific advice.

[Capt. Hunt]

try playing the training missions.  the first two or three cover building and launching your rocket.

[Aegolius13]

You can also try the stock rockets.  They're intentionally not perfectly designed, but they work ok, so you can focus on the flying side at first if you prefer.

Scott Manley has a great set of YouTube tutorials, from the very basic to the very advanced.

[ForScience6686]

This game has a very steep learning curve.  It is rocket science after all.  I would start with Scott Manley videos.  He does an amazing job explaining the game, but make sure you're watching up to date videos, there have been many changes.  Beyond that, sandbox can be overwhelming with all the parts that you've never used and therefore may be using incorrectly.  I find it best to stay in career mode and get used to solving engineering challenges with what you have available.

[Clipperride]

Welcome aboard!

I'd always advise a new player to start off with a Science Mode game.  The sandbox mode gives you way too many options when you are just starting out.  You will also find that you don't use a lot of the parts as, if theyre available, you might as well use the best part for the job.  

Career Mode is the real meat of the game as you have to unlock the tech tree whilst completing contracts to earn the funds needed to fly missions.  Whilst satisfying and challenging, it can be a little too tough if you are also learning how to build and fly rockets.

Science Mode is the halfway house. You don't have to worry about funds (think - NASAs almost blank cheque in the early days of manned spaceflight) but you do have to earn science points to unlock the tech tree.  That way, you are introduced to new parts at a manageable rate and you have a degree of choice in which parts you unlock when, depending on what you enjoy doing.  Also, you'll use, for example, the simple cheap antenna to start with because that's your only option.  But as you unlock more parts, you'll find better versions of previously used equipment.

I hope you give it a go because, once you start to have a few successful launches, you get a real sense of achievement and will (probably) want more!  

Happy landings!

[Plusck]

I agree completely with @Clipperride, except that I disagree and think you should start with career.

If you're completely new to this, either career or science mode is a necessity. There are so many parts available in sandbox and you will be completely lost to know what to do with them. No dispute at all about that. Both career and science modes are designed to introduce parts slowly, and in using them you start to understand what is significant about each one (and sometimes, why a cheap and simple part can be more useful than an apparently "better" part ... you'll see what I mean if you persevere).

However, career gives an incentive: money. You can simply get the satisfaction of getting progressively better as anonymous plebs pay you good money to do things. The first time you might only make a slim profit, but if you do it again you'll do it better, cheaper, and more profitably.

And when it comes down to it, getting to orbit is all about profit: if it's expensive, it's inefficient. And when it comes to orbital dynamics (which you'll start to understand intuitively, even though it is complicated), everything is utterly dependent on efficiency.

 

So actually, while playing career means getting your hands dirty with grubby cash, in fact it is another way of describing efficiency. Since this is orbits and the dance of the planets we're talking about, efficiency is elegant.
Therefore career mode = fast track to supreme elegancy.

 

Edited October 12, 2016 by Plusck

[Lorule]

I actually did watch a video on Scott Manely about how to go to orbit. I made a rocket similar (I wanted to make my own rocket and not copy it completely) and the rocket wouldn't lift off the landing area. Is there an equation that shows what you need to lift off or to get maximum efficiency? 

And I will try career or science mode sometime later today hopefully.

[RX2000]

1 hour ago, Lorule said:

I actually did watch a video on Scott Manely about how to go to orbit. I made a rocket similar (I wanted to make my own rocket and not copy it completely) and the rocket wouldn't lift off the landing area. Is there an equation that shows what you need to lift off or to get maximum efficiency? 

And I will try career or science mode sometime later today hopefully.

If you hit space & the engine fires but it doesnt lift off, that means your thrust to weight ratio (TWR) is less than 1. In other words, the thrust that your engine is putting out isnt sufficient to lift the weight of your rocket off the pad. It can be easy to have that happen if say, you have a long rocket with tons of fuel but only one engine at the bottom to "push." 

Like other people have said, is there any way you can post a screenshot of your rocket so we can give specific advice?

[bewing]

The default throttle setting is also at half power. So hit Z to go to full power and then hit the spacebar. If that doesn't work, the KSP rule of thumb is to add more boosters at the bottom.

[FullMetalMachinist]

9 hours ago, Lorule said:

Is there an equation that shows what you need to lift off

Yes, and it's very simple. It's just (engine thrust)/(current gravity)/(total craft mass). 

Let's take these one at a time. First the engine thrust. This is given by the info panel when you hover the mouse cursor over an engine in the parts list. It has two numbers, both given in kilo-newtons. One is the thrust in vacuum, the other is the thrust at 1 atmosphere of pressure, which is what you get at sea level on Kerbin. Since that's where you're launching at, you'll want that 1 atm number. Type that into your calculator (if you're using more than one engine, then add them all up). 

The second number is the current gravity that you're experiencing. At sea level on Kerbin this is 9.8066 m/s^2. 

The last number is the total mass of your fully fueled craft. This is given by the engineer's report. Find it on the bottom right corner of the VAB screen, the icon that looks like a wrench. Hover your mouse over it, and towards the top of the small window that pops up is the mass of your craft. (If you are in career mode it will be formatted as <mass1>/<mass2>. Mass1 is your craft mass, mass2 is the max weight that the launch pad can handle.)

Then you take those three numbers and divide them out. Here's an example: 175 kn thrust / 9.0866 / 11.8 tons = 1.51. That 1.51 is your thrust to weight ratio, often written as TWR. If you're going to be able to lift off, that TWR must be grater than 1. 

Edited October 12, 2016 by FullMetalMachinist

[Foxster]

Don't forget though that not every game suits every person. 

There's a particular type that sticks with KSP and you don't have to be that type. 

[Lorule]

Thank you @FullMetalMachinist! That is what I have been looking for.

 

 

 

39 minutes ago, Foxster said:

Don't forget though that not every game suits every person. 

There's a particular type that sticks with KSP and you don't have to be that type. 

I know that. The problem isn't I dislike space, building, or hard to learn games, it's just that I need to learn how to make a rocket well and then I can go and do the fun things like orbiting or going to other planets.

[Foxster]

You could try a looking through a guide I wrote here a while ago...

 

[NeverEnoughFuel!!]

In my humble opinion for the beginning you need the mod called kerbal engineer redux... guessing (as I did first time I played KSP) or manually calculating delta V and thrust for different stages is very frustrating/difficult... kerbal engineer should be stock from start... later when you see how orbital mechanic works, get a hang of it etc. kerbal alarm clock, transfer window planner, and some delta V map... try to fulfill  contracts, unlock tech tree... the excitement of landing on the new planet is unbelievable... installing mods is easy "copy/paste"...

[Mikki]

@Lorule, there is a nice in game wiki just in case you overlooked it. KSP has grown rather complex, amazing amount of things to discover. And hello to the forums!

[septemberWaves]

This game is incredibly challenging to learn how to play, but it's well worth it. It took me an enormous amount of time to design my first orbit-capable rocket, and now (with over a thousand hours of play time) I regularly create fleets of huge interplanetary transports to explore both the stock system of planets and even new planets that are added by mods. Doing anything in this game is very difficult the first time, but once you know how to do it, it's usually not difficult to do again.

Reaching orbit is tough. You have to make a vehicle that can accelerate to over 2km/s (though the actual delta-v requirement is almost twice that) whilst fighting a thick atmosphere, and that's not an easy task when you're new to the game. I didn't even have an efficient lifter design that I was fully satisfied with and could use regularly without risking the loss of a payload until I had a few hundred hours of play time. Around a similar time was when I learned how to dock properly. But once you're used to it, it's simply a matter of scaling your rocket to fit your payload (and eventually creating standard launch vehicles that you can just stick onto any suitable payload, which is what I've gotten into the habit of doing).

[Daveroski]

Keeping it simple.

Throw a ball. It arcs and falls back to the ground.

Now throw it so hard that as it falls it falls off the edge of the horizon.

If you can throw it that hard and then have it boost enough at the top of the arc, the ball will keep missing the ground entirely and keep on falling.

No more atmosphere to slow it down.

Gravity still keeps trying to pull it back down but it is travelling fast enough to keep missing the planet. Orbit.

 

Edited October 13, 2016 by Daveroski
typo

[DrLicor]

18 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

This game is incredibly challenging to learn how to play, but it's well worth it.

This, this is exact what this game is. You have learn so many, but it is so much fun. Once you are getting good at it, it really pays off. Go watch as many tutorials as you can, and you can orbit in notime. Scott Manley has a some really good vids for almost everything in KSP:

Of you watch those 12 vids, you do the same as him, you start to understand the mechanics etc. after that, you can design it yourself.

Also, go use mods, like KER. This gives you the info you need to whether you orbit or not. If you know that you need around 3400 delta-v (for beginners) to orbit. Also, when you don't understand something, like delta-v. Just google it or ask the forum  

[septemberWaves]

22 minutes ago, DrLicor said:

Also, go use mods, like KER. This gives you the info you need to whether you orbit or not. If you know that you need around 3400 delta-v (for beginners) to orbit.

Aim for 4000m/s. That way you have some room for error (which is useful since many beginners don't know how to efficiently execute a gravity turn) and you also have some extra delta-v for orbital maneuvers like moving to high orbit to gather science.

[Gogi]

No disrespect intended, but it seems to like you're trying to run before you learned to crawl. Start of by placing a small MK1 capsule, slap parachute on top and flea SRB on the bottom. Press space. See what happens. Than replace flea with bigger SRB...