Any tips and tricks??

[SpaceFanatic10]

Yo wassup homesicles! 

I just wanted to know some tips and tricks for docking in KSP.

For example,if i want to dock with a space station,i either miss it,or i crash into it,causing me to revert the flight.And even with cheats,its kinda hard to dock.

Any tips and tricks??? I would appreciate it.  

 

 

[Tex_NL]

Rendezvous and docking is either the hardest thing or the easiest thing in KSP. Before you got it down it all seems like some kind of evil dark magic. Once the pieces fall into place you'll wonder what all the fuzz was about. Watch tutorials and practice practice practice.

Edited December 10, 2016 by Tex_NL

[Starman4308]

A decent mod, like Navyfish's docking port alignment mod, makes docking significantly easier. I'l be honest: I'd probably be pretty hopeless at docking without it, or at least something similar to it (there's also a mod to add an indicator to the navball).

[Martian Emigrant]

Hi.

One of the things that might help if you don't do it already.

Switch ship (To the target) select through "Control from here" the docking port you want to use. Then make the the other ship target and line up on is port.

Revert to the chaser ship. You can switch back and forth making sure they are in line.

When you do switch make sure you are "Far" or "Slow" collisions happens when you gone (Distracted) too long.

 

ME

 

 

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

On 12/10/2016 at 9:11 AM, SpaceFanatic10 said:

I just wanted to know some tips and tricks for docking in KSP.

A while back, I put together this illustrated docking tutorial, which you may find useful.

[Dman979]

Practice in hacked gravity first. Make two simple ships, stick'm on the launchpad and runway, hack gravity, give a boost up, and try to dock them. This way you don't have to worry about getting a rendezvous first. Once you get confident, send them into space on the same vehicle, and dock them. Lastly, send them up on different vehicles and rendezvous and dock them.

[bewing]

The basic technique is: set up a close approach. As you come zooming in on the close approach, use the navball to adjust the approach (at least once) to make it really close. When you are passing your destination, brake to a dead stop. Use your eyes in flight mode to pick out the location of your docking point. Fly toward it slowly. When you are much closer, brake to a dead stop -- and repeat.

And one tip that I don't think has made it into any docking tutorial yet: go into the context menus of your RCS ports and disable the roll/pitch/yaw. This allows you to turn on SAS and RCS at the same time. SAS will keep your nose pointed in a straight line while you use the RCS system (ijklh and limited thrust) to dock.

 

[SpaceFanatic10]

@Snark @bewing @Dman979 @Martian Emigrant @Starman4308 and @Tex_NL

Thank you all so much,i now know how to easily dock in KSP! 

[Draalo]

"And one tip that I don't think has made it into any docking tutorial yet: go into the context menus of your RCS ports and disable the roll/pitch/yaw. This allows you to turn on SAS and RCS at the same time. SAS will keep your nose pointed in a straight line while you use the RCS system (ijklh and limited thrust) to dock." by bewing

 

ahh, thx a lot - was allways annoyed when the SAS fires the RCS while docking.

 

Now i dont have to switch RCS on and off and on again while docking.

[Gianni1122]

Some good tips here:

@Draalo just a friendly tip; Use your mouse to highlight the text you want to "quote" (like you're going to copy & paste it) and you should see a small black popup that says "quote this". Use it to make your quotes look like @Snark's does above

 

Edited December 11, 2016 by Gianni1122

[Draalo]

3 hours ago, Gianni1122 said:

Use your mouse to highlight the text you want to "quote"

tested.

works.

thx

[Snark]

On 12/10/2016 at 4:52 PM, bewing said:

And one tip that I don't think has made it into any docking tutorial yet: go into the context menus of your RCS ports and disable the roll/pitch/yaw. This allows you to turn on SAS and RCS at the same time. SAS will keep your nose pointed in a straight line while you use the RCS system (ijklh and limited thrust) to dock.

^ This.

On 12/10/2016 at 11:38 PM, Draalo said:

Now i dont have to switch RCS on and off and on again while docking.

Yup.

Or you can do what I do, and just stick a snippet of ModuleManager config into your GameData folder so that "roll/pitch/yaw disabled" is the default state for RCS thrusters (i.e. they're already set that way when you add a new one to a ship that you're building).

Then you never have to mess with this ever again, including when you're building a new ship in the VAB. 

If you like the idea, you can find config to do that (along with various other useful things) here: