To Mech-Jeb or not to Mech-Jeb, that is the question...

[sanity]

i look forward to the planned mission control additions, i wanna plan my missions, ie. burn here, gravity slingshot here, aerobrake here, orbit here, return here etc.....

[_Aramchek_]

I vote "AYE" for Mechjeb.

If you see how many course corrections are made during ascent... you can't achieve that on your own.

People keep saying stuff like "can't do that by hand", etc, but I have never had any problems doing anything I hear anyone else talking about doing, all by hand and eye and navball.

[erkha343]

People keep saying stuff like "can't do that by hand", etc, but I have never had any problems doing anything I hear anyone else talking about doing, all by hand and eye and navball.

They mean in real life, all spacecraft use flight computers.

[Motorsheep]

Well, I once eyeballed a rendezvous by guessing the launch phase angle from the map view and noting down the time my first ship took to get to orbit altitude. I came to within 20km of the other ship and eventually managed to close in all the way.

I think my orbit inclination was accurate to about one or two degrees and my orbits were circular to about 5km. All without MechJeb.

On the other hand, there is so much stuff that is a pain in the ass without MechJeb, especially if you have to do it repeatedly, e.g. when testing rocket designs.

- with MechJeb's readings on, I can do a lot of orbital maneuvers without having to constantly switch between map view to check my trajectory and ship view to adjust my alignment.

- I can touch down softly on the Mün by hand. Most of the time. But sometimes there's a mountain and your altitude reading is off by 1000m. MechJeb can predict this. I can't.

- I know how to circularize an orbit. I've done it dozens of times. I could do it myself every time, but MechJeb is just more comfortable.

- Orbital plane change maneuvers are a bitch to eyeball. How do you know you're aligned at an exact right angle to your trajectory? And where you guess your burn point to be depends on how you tilt your map view. Once again, I've done it successfully by hand, but with MechJeb it works every time and I don't have do restart the whole mission because I wasted fuel when I misjudged the burn timing.

So, yeah, this is why I use MechJeb.

[killernerd]

i've done everything so far by hand. No mechjeb or any other helping tools.

It's so much more rewarding when you finally manage to land on the mun/minmus.

After that it sure is a very, very handy tool to use.

[_Aramchek_]

They mean in real life, all spacecraft use flight computers.

Clearly this is not the case.

The comments have mentioned in game.

[Kosmo-not]

What is it with all the people these days that seem to think it's impossible to play KSP without mechjeb?

[Jay_Em]

I've been playing this game for about a week and a half now. I've never used MechJeb and never intend to. In my opinion, it will ruin my enjoyment of the game. I've landed on Mun and Minmus, and even for me it was only mildly challenging, but it was extremely rewarding to finally crack it. I have nothing against people who do use MechJeb, but it does seem to me like 'cheating' as it takes a big portion of the challenge out of the game.

[erkha343]

I've been playing this game for about a week and a half now. I've never used MechJeb and never intend to. In my opinion, it will ruin my enjoyment of the game. I've landed on Mun and Minmus, and even for me it was only mildly challenging, but it was extremely rewarding to finally crack it. I have nothing against people who do use MechJeb, but it does seem to me like 'cheating' as it takes a big portion of the challenge out of the game.

How does it do that?

[Kosmo-not]

How does it do that?

He's referring to all the autopilots in mechjeb. You can do a whole mission (with the exception of returning to Kerbin from Mun/Minmus) by pushing a couple buttons.

[AmpsterMan]

I mainly use MechJeb to test my different craft and as a substitute ASAS module.

[PakledHostage]

Of course everyone is entitled to play the game the way they want, so I don't think it is fair say that using MechJeb is cheating. That said, I otherwise agree with Jay_Em. And Kosmo-not.

KSP is not so much a simulator as a physics sandbox. What I like best about it is that it gives us the opportunity to experiment. I have learned a lot by hand-flying my missions and forcing myself to only build rockets that can be hand flown.

I am not alone either. Just look at all of the efficiency challenges, The KSP Star Rally, the many Kerbol orbit/return to Kerbin challenges, etc. Most of the players posting in those threads aren't using MechJeb.

[Jay_Em]

Of course everyone is entitled to play the game the way they want, so I don't think it is fair say that using MechJeb is cheating. That said, I otherwise agree with Jay_Em. And Kosmo-not.

KSP is not so much a simulator as a physics sandbox. What I like best about it is that it gives us the opportunity to experiment. I have learned a lot by hand-flying my missions and forcing myself to only build rockets that can be hand flown.

I am not alone either. Just look at all of the efficiency challenges, The KSP Star Rally, the many Kerbol orbit/return to Kerbin challenges, etc. Most of the players posting in those threads aren't using MechJeb.

Yeah, maybe calling it cheating is a bit harsh. I basically think it goes against the spirit of the game to use the 'autopilot' function. But yes, people can play however they want to get the most enjoyment out of it.

[Dizzle]

I never use MechJeb when I do things for the first time, as it does kind of feel like cheating. I use it for when I just want to get something done, or I don't feel like messing around with the navball during the gravity turn. Lately I've noticed I'm not really using it at all.

[EndOfTheEarth]

I strongly feel that mechjeb should be used more as a tool than a crutch. I taught myself how to get to minmus manually and perform targeted landings before I even considered downloading mechJeb.

Besides, during about one-in-four launches, MechJeb does something blatantly wrong, like staging during a gravity turn or putting so much force into rotation that it gets stuck in a spin or a swing. If I didn't have manual training, I'd be stuck. Because I do have manual training, I can react quickly and continue with the mission.

Based on this, I feel that all people ought to have flown to and landed on a body manually at least once before getting MechJeb to do the same mission, just so that when their autopilot does something wrong, they'll be ready.

[r_rolo1]

I strongly feel that mechjeb should be used more as a tool than a crutch. I taught myself how to get to minmus manually and perform targeted landings before I even considered downloading mechJeb.

Besides, during about one-in-four launches, MechJeb does something blatantly wrong, like staging during a gravity turn or putting so much force into rotation that it gets stuck in a spin or a swing. If I didn't have manual training, I'd be stuck. Because I do have manual training, I can react quickly and continue with the mission.

Based on this, I feel that all people ought to have flown to and landed on a body manually at least once before getting MechJeb to do the same mission, just so that when their autopilot does something wrong, they'll be ready.

That is what I did I only got mechjeb after flying dozens of Munar landings ( I basically pinpointed a crater in the limit of the visible from Kerbin area and landed there mission after mission until i could land safely in a place within 100ish m of the intended target ) and after some serious training in powered kerbin landings ( that are quite a challenge if your computer gives you 6 fps at best in kerbin surface ). That said ...

I do think that, being this a space program game, the automated missions should be the norm , simply because that is what happened ( and happens ) in RL, and with good reasons. Even V2 was automated ( within the limits of the 1940s tech ) and the first human astro/cosmonauts were pretty much excess weight in automated ICBM ( OFC you would want to have the best human possible in there if you decide to actually put one , just in case the automated devices go berserk ). More, and even if we discount the fully automated missions ( that are by itself a big majority ), all of the missions involving humans since Gemini and Soyuz have a big degree of automation atleast on takeoff. So, I'm pretty much expecting to see more and more automation inserted in the game as the game approaches beta stage. I would even say that .17, with the need of bigger precision for the interplanetary burns than the one needed to go anywhere that currently exists in the game will only make the need more automation more visible ... not necessarily MechJeb autopilot style ( that are clearly the less performant parts of the mod , btw ) though.

[sp_blazer]

I played stock for months, did all that I could with it, but now I use MechJeb, mainly for the most time consuming tasks like circularizing orbits, or warping to apogee. The true altitude is also a must.

[techonce]

I find I only use Mechjeb for things that I expect KSP to do inthe future. PRetty much the information panels are the most useful and then the best part is the fact that it can time warp until just before capture my the Mun, which is my favorite thing. Too many times I have time warped myself into a slingshot.

It also helped teach me how to do be better at landing. I had done it myself, but after watching mj I can now do it better myself.

[EvilotionCR2]

As an aerospace engineer (Master of Science, NC State University, Go Wolfpack!) I enjoy KSP mostly for the ability to design flight systems (shuttles, planes, rockets) and so for me, MechJeb is a useful tool because I'm not a pilot, I'm an engineer. Neither my reflexes nor my computer hardware are ideal for flight simulations per se, but MechJeb allows me to have success with my landings and other flight operations.

I think if you ask the experts who do this for a living, they'll tell you that, while it can be rewarding to calculate a trajectory by hand, it's also highly unnecessary for an astronaut to do these days. The next generation of NASA vessels will fly almost entirely by computer, both for safety and to conserve fuel whenever possible. The landings on Mars, both unmanned and the eventual manned flights in the future, were and will be handled by computer control.

I think the MechJeb system is brilliant and I'll continue to use it whenever needed. Having said that, if KSP version 0.75 or whatever, decides to throw in an autopilot feature, I'd like to see it include a failure mode every once in a while that may force me to fly manually in a landing phase as I think that's the most likely scenario for needing to do so. There's nothing wrong with a little adventure flying. As others have pointed out, it does make the experience more exciting and rewarding. But I love KSP for the engineering and the simulated (so far) science and exploration. (I'm looking forward to building Mun bases and digging up soil samples and learning about the monoliths)

Still, all around, it's an individual choice, but for my enjoyment of realism, I fly MechJeb.

Same!I'm not a pilot but enginer.

[CkGordon]

Mechjeb was one of the last mods I installed and I did so only because of how highly recommended it seems to be here on the forum and even then I was wary of the "auto-pilot" for the reasons you listed. I like the challenge of achieving orbit/landing myself but I did find all the information it provides about your ship and trajectory invaluable. Experimenting with the auto ascent it seems to cause alot more accidents than successful flights whereas I can fly the same ship no problem, mainly when seperating stages mechjeb will seperate than immediatly full throttle and collide with the just discarded tanks/boosters and explode the ship whereas I discard something and wait a couple seconds for it to float a safe distance away before throttling away. I have used the ascent autopilot in a limited function tho for rocket testing. I enable it, watch the rocket fly and when fuel gets low I disable it, manually seperate stages and reenable it to see how the ship handles getting to orbit and how the fuel consumption progresses since I assume mechjeb would be the most fuel efficient way to get to orbit since its controlled by a computer? Never tried any of the other autopilot functions such as landing but I'd more or less rather just do it myself after seeing how flawed the system is on takeoff. Be frusterating if after all the hard work of getting to your destination you crashed at the hands of a computer. If i crash and burn I only want myself to blame. I don't trust mechjeb with my kerbals lives.

[zapy97]

i just tried it, it wasn't my thing so i scrapped it because it isn't my stile

[rkman]

Experimenting with the auto ascent it seems to cause alot more accidents than successful flights whereas I can fly the same ship no problem, mainly when seperating stages mechjeb will seperate than immediatly full throttle and collide with the just discarded tanks/boosters and explode the ship whereas I discard something and wait a couple seconds for it to float a safe distance away before throttling away.

Mechjeb allows for configuation of staging delay, and allows for manual staging.

[ScramUK]

Just gave MechJeb a shot just now using my 'Kerpollo 10 B'.

Every part of the mission was entirely automated. Mechjeb did everything from getting me into orbit, circularising that orbit, doing the trans-lunar burn, and then did a pinpoint landing next to my 'Kerpollo 10 A'.

It did all this far better than I ever could, conserving soooo much fuel in the process. Even after I was pushing buttons like a chimpanzee on amphetamines. The entire flight left me feeling somewhat hollow and horrifically bored. I've just finished removing all of mechjeb's files.

One thing i do hope to see in stock KSP in the future is the information panels - I'll miss them I bet. But I'd rather not traipse down the slippery road of automating aspects of KSP.

[Panichio]

I use MechJeb after I have made the manual accomplishment. I got to the Mun manually on my first time, as well as Minmus, as well as Duna, mainly because my MechJeb exploded Although I did not do it manually for Eve... I feel kind of guilty though.

[Qumefox]

Just gave MechJeb a shot just now using my 'Kerpollo 10 B'.

Every part of the mission was entirely automated. Mechjeb did everything from getting me into orbit, circularising that orbit, doing the trans-lunar burn, and then did a pinpoint landing next to my 'Kerpollo 10 A'.

It did all this far better than I ever could, conserving soooo much fuel in the process. Even after I was pushing buttons like a chimpanzee on amphetamines. The entire flight left me feeling somewhat hollow and horrifically bored. I've just finished removing all of mechjeb's files.

One thing i do hope to see in stock KSP in the future is the information panels - I'll miss them I bet. But I'd rather not traipse down the slippery road of automating aspects of KSP.

Install protractor and kerbal engineer redux.. Pretty much the same information (though likely laid out differently) but no autopilot.