How hard is docking

[Maxmaster084]

On a scale from one to ten, how  hard is docking is Kerbal Space Program

[Norcalplanner]

1 minute ago, Maxmaster084 said:

On a scale from one to ten, how  hard is docking is Kerbal Space Program

The first time? 9.2. It ratchets down by some increment each time you do it though, so if you're a quick learner (and your increment is 1.5 instead of 0.8) it'll be down at 1 before you know it.

[The Raging Sandwich]

It depends on what kind of docking you're doing. It's much easier to dock with the port on the front of my ships than with in-line ports. I'd say for ones on the front its about 5/10 and with in-line ones its about 8/10. 

[Maxmaster084]

I really think that it is a 6. it is easy to get to 100m from the station but is hard to dock from that close. i spend 20-40 minutes to dock from 100m away.

[katateochi]

1 hour ago, The Raging Sandwich said:

It depends on what kind of docking you're doing. It's much easier to dock with the port on the front of my ships than with in-line ports. I'd say for ones on the front its about 5/10 and with in-line ones its about 8/10. 

When doing those kind of dockings, right click on the docking port you're doing with and click control from here. Then that becomes the "front" of the ship and (most importantly) the markers on the navball relate to that port. 

As @Norcalplanner said, it's very hard first time, but gets easier with practice. There's a couple of ah-ha realisations to be had and after that you'll be doing dockings that look like sequences from movies. The most important ah-ha; it's all about the nav-ball. 

[Lelitu]

I think it depends a lot on what you're docking, to what, and with what supporting tools.

With some kind of alignment indicator, and a reasonably well built craft with RCS balanced in all 6 degrees of freedom, it's pretty straightfoward with a little practice.

Lose the RCS balance, or alignment indicators, and it all goes bad fast. 

[radonek]

2 hours ago, Maxmaster084 said:

I really think that it is a 6. it is easy to get to 100m from the station but is hard to dock from that close. i spend 20-40 minutes to dock from 100m away.

You are doing it wrong then. Five minutes, tops. Much less with a small and sufficiently agile craft.

(ed: I am experienced player. Rendezvous and docking is definitely one of most difficult maneuvers, my first attempt at docking took about two hours.)

 

Edited October 24, 2016 by radonek
clarified

[Ultimate Steve]

2 hours ago, The Raging Sandwich said:

It depends on what kind of docking you're doing.

Wait... so trying to dock a small lander with next to no SAS with an inline port to a giant wheel shaped mothership which is currently rotating and bouncing down a hill on Gilly would be considered an 11?

Actually happened to me. Took me 30mins. Harder than my first ever docking.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I learned how to dock using training wheels first- I had 2 identical rovers at KSC with docking ports on the front that I practiced with to get a feel for what would actually happen in space. As others have said, it does get easier each time (mostly).

[The Raging Sandwich]

43 minutes ago, katateochi said:

When doing those kind of dockings, right click on the docking port you're doing with and click control from here. Then that becomes the "front" of the ship and (most importantly) the markers on the navball relate to that port. 

I did! 

[max_creative]

I just ram the two ships together and hope they don't explode because I went to fast. It works well if you only need to dock for 2 seconds and you don't care about RUDs.

[Garrett Kerman]

Fourish. Once you do it a couple of times, it gets much easier. If I had told myself a few weeks ago that I would build a space station in orbit, I wouldn't beleive myself (wut?). Anyway, the learning curve is pretty steep, but once you dock a couple times, it becomes much easier.

[ottothesilent]

It's easier when the body is smaller,  so your relative velocity is less. (ex. Mun rendezvous is easier than Laythe rendezvous)

[StrandedonEarth]

The first time took forever and gobs of monoprop. Now I can glide a massive tanker into a space station dock in one approach. Again, a reasonably balanced RCS and an alignment mod such as "Navball Docking Alignment Indicator" (simple and effective) or NavyFish's "Docking Alignment Indicator" (more info, separate window) work wonders. The key is learning how to, as I put it, fly the navball. Once you become one with the navball, everything becomes much easier. With NDAL, you don't even have to look at the ships, just the navball.

It also helps to rotate the target so the docking port is facing the approaching craft. Right-clicking on docking ports (on your current ship and the target) and choosing "Control from here" and "set as target" as necessary works wonders.

[Firemetal]

I  don't really know why people think it is hard. I did it first time. Just takes a while. I'd put it at about 6.

(This is from my first time. Now docking is pretty dang easy. I'd say 1 now.)

Fire

Edited October 24, 2016 by Firemetal

[Sharpy]

It's never 1, but once you've mastered the controls and learned to build easily dockable vehicles, it's usually 2-3.

These two dinghies:

I've used them dozens of times. Rescues, visits to Minmus surface, rescuing a dinghy that ran out of EC, flew without a kerbal and is stuck with solar battery away from the Sun.

See these tiny stubs on the bulging ends of the tanks? That's Electric Solid Propellant rcs thrusters for nanosatellites.  Which has a serious downside: once it runs out, only an engineer with KAS screwdriver and new set of thruster blocks can help - it can't be refueled. And these are thruster blocks for nanosatellites. Like, cubesats. These dinghies are HUGE by comparison, to what these RCS are meant to handle. Long story short, pathetic thrust and maybe 10m/s of delta-V in that RCS.

And yet I've docked dozens of times, and the RCS is maybe halfway down the propellant supply. Reason? Docking is easy once you get it. I'm using up maybe 0,2m/s worth of delta-V of the RCS per docking. The rest goes out of the fuel tanks - non-gimballed Ant engines. Know where to point at the navball, know how much throttle to push, approach from the right direction - and docking is a solid 2. And if you don't care about RCS propellant, it gets below 2/10. Not all the way to 1, but... 1.8?

[Alshain]

The biggest things to consider are

1. Experience.  It's going to take you several attempts to get the system down no matter who you are.  Until you get a practiced hand you are going to spend time and monoprop docking.

2. Mass distribution.  It's generally easier to dock with the port on the front because the craft are cylindrical that way.  Docking something where the RCS jets aren't symmetrical is harder (like a plane)

3. Illumination.  It's simply easier to dock when it isn't dark.

[jhousen]

slow is smooth, smooth is fast

for an rcs balanced craft...1, maybe 1.2 if the target is not spinning, 100, maybe 110 if it is

for rcs unbalanced craft, good luck 8-10

[something]

That totally depends on the way you placed your RCS thrusters - if they are nicely balanced it is not that hard. Your first orbit being a 10 then docking is somewhere around 7-9. (Assuming a linear scale here. Cinvert to log scales yourselves).

[severedsolo]

I would say 6 ish. docking in stock is quite difficult, (I use Docking Port Alignment Indicator and it's much easier), but like katateochi said, it's all about the navball. I recommend doing the docking tutorial actually, it's very helpful! I'd been playing KSP for about 3 years when I did that tutorial as part of the 1.1 pre-release and it taught me a couple of things.

Edited October 24, 2016 by severedsolo

[Mastikator]

Docking is probably the hardest non-crazy thing you can do in KSP. I'd say 8 or 9. Interplanetary travel is easier.

[StahnAileron]

I think the hardest (or most tedious...?) part of docking is engineering the vessel to be easy enough to dock. Of course, there's also the conditions under which you need to dock (e.g. in daylight vs. at night with no lights or multi-port docking vs. single port.) Though having assists like DPAI or KURS makes the actual docking fairly simple(r).

I haven't docked much in my KSP playing, but when I do, I can spend quite a bit of time getting my RCS set-up as relatively balanced as I can (within SAS/RW tolerance so I don't veer off oddly during translation.)

So for me, I'd say 9 difficulty in stock. With basic mods, like a 5/6. With extensive mods (JUST short of full automation via something like MJ), it's like a 2. All assuming I'm actually in a craft designed to be docked. (With one port.)

Anecdote: I once did a docking with both craft having NO RCS at all. (This was a very basic Apollo-style system to test out the new fairings in 1.2pre.) It took a while because of a stupid complication: the stack separator got caught between the ports on docking. I had simply flipped the Command Module around and retro'ed a little. My attempt to whack the separator away didn't work. I spent minutes trying to separate the crafts (LOTS of spinning there...). Then I had to re-approach and re-align them properly. (Again, no RCS, so all via main engine burns.) My most complicated docking to date. (I've yet to attempt multi-port docking.)

[I_Killed_Jeb]

It goes back up to a 10 once you decide to dock multiple triple ports

[Ripper2900]

Remember the most important thing:

Click caps lock! 

The rcs will be put in proportional mode, so you can make tiny adjustments with short click and the thrust will grow higher the longer you keep pressing. Also the rcs will be balanced to a large degree, so you won't induce turning while trying to translate. 

[KOCOUR]

Docking in KSP is super easy if you have your RCS ports distributed evenly in reference to CoM. it is still easy with badly distributed RCS ports, but then you have to work with both hands. I do it with Left hend on WASD correcting rotation and Right Hand on IJKL controling translation.