When did you "get it" with KSP?

[Biggen]

I've been playing KSP for about two months now.  I think I bought it on a Steam sale during Christmas.  I've got a bit over 200 hours in now and I finally feel like I "get" what it is I'm supposed to be doing.  I can finally dock, build rockets, build stations, go interplanetary, etc...  I'm no expert by any sense but I finally feel comfortable doing most things and no longer abuse the search tool on this forum for every minor detail like I once did.

I've never put this many hours into a single game.  It is an amazing piece of software that really is limitless in what you can accomplish.  Look forward to the next 200 hours and beyond!  Just curious on how long it took others to finally feel like they were accomplishing their goals and not just floundering about.  

[Kerbart]

I managed to built my first rocket. Got it on the launching pad. Staged it. Nothing happened.

Staged it again. Capsule popped off and parachute released. Great.

Google. Manley. “Oooh, there's a Throttle?” While at it, watched some more Manley videos.

After that, I “got” the game. The rest was just practice.

[cratercracker]

When i started my first Version of KSP i was like- OHMY GOD OHMY GOD,LOOK IT IS AN ENGINE A FRICKIN ROCKET ENGINE KID. I build my first rocket. 

Full throttle,All engines ready,Crew is okay.All control system check.

And lift..Ugh, Ummm what is wrong? I was looking around seen nothing and stuff.

 

But now i conquered Duna,Moho and Ike!

 

[Slam_Jones]

Once I figured out how to rendezvous, I felt like I "got it."  Although I had already landed on the Mun before then...

[The Destroyer]

I felt like I got it once I stopped using mechjeb in .17 and remembered how it did things, to make me a better pilot. Now I've done grand tours, and never touched MJ (but love KER) since .17

[Waxing_Kibbous]

Once I understood what the orbital/intercept lines were actually telling me and how to switch focus between objects things got a lot less hectic.

[TimePeriod]

I'll see you at 1200 hours, there is still many things I don't get.

[natsirt721]

Once I learned how to set up an orbital rendezvous and dock properly, that was the end of the beginning, so to speak.  Designing vehicles to be easily dockable (read: proper RCS thruster placement) assisted this greatly.

[Ten Key]

I felt like I "got it" when I finally grasped the navball and everything it was trying to tell me.

         

   

[steuben]

docking craft, and getting by poor little space walk-about kerbals back into their tin cans.

[mikegarrison]

Obviously, there are different stages of "getting it".

One of the things I remember coming together for me was learning how to judge by eye pretty well what maneuvers in one SOI will do for the next SOI. For example, to leave Mun and return to Kerbin you need to look at both of them. When your burn is prograde in Mun's SOI but retrograde in Kerbin's SOI, you can use one burn to both leave Mun orbit and also return to Kerbin. It's not hard, but the point is to see why it happens and just know by looking at the situation about where the burn should start.

[Tyko]

I'm with @natsirt721 - Once I'd mastered rendezvous and docking I felt like an accomplished 3-star Kerbal.

[Just Jim]

I think this... the very first time I landed on the VAB. I still had a lot to learn, but this is when I started to think I was actually getting the hang of playing KSP...

[ottothesilent]

Things got MUCH easier when I figured out Apollo style rendezvous and docking. The combination of skills is really good practice, and after that, it got way easier to do anything.

[Maelstrom Vortex]

I was stuck trying to make orbit til I watched a video on making rendezvous. That was.. many years ago now.

[IncongruousGoat]

I don't think it came all of a sudden. Rather, it's been gradually dawning on me as I stop and look around at the kinds of things I've been doing. There's too many facets to KSP to nail down a definitive "getting it" moment, too many things you need to have a grasp of in order to think yourself competent. The more you do, the more you realize lies left to be done. Even now, I hesitate to call myself good, all too conscious of my failings as a KSP player. I could write out my milestones, but I don't think any one of them qualifies as the most important.

[septemberWaves]

It's been a gradual learning curve, and I still learn new things fairly often. There's been a few "Eureka" moments I suppose, but mostly I've accumulated knowledge gradually and after a whole lot of explosions.

[DarkOwl57]

I think my first "got it" moment was when I realized that rockets weren't the only solution to my problems. Another time was when I finally figured out what COL/COM was. But the biggest "got it" moment was by far the time I discovered that the Whiplash engine was faster than the Panther.

[SickSix]

I felt like I truly 'got it' once I could rendevous on my own and dock like a pro. On my last save I really got comfortable with what I was doing.  Having a stable LKO station and using it as a refuel and restaging point really was the moment. 

 

[LordFerret]

I'll agree with a number of others who have posted the same, 'getting it' comes in stages. I've found it all as much fun as I have frustrating... and that spells: Challenge. I think pretty much everyone here, all those playing KSP, are folks who enjoy 'challenge' and the personal reward that comes from mastery.

[Schmik]

I don't have a specific number of hours played before I 'got it', but I had already done dozens, maybe close to a hundred landings on Mun and Minmus before I was actually able to travel to other planets. That's when I felt the game really opened up to me. Reaching a stable orbit was a big stepping stone for me, and actually landing on one of Kerbin's moons (which was Minmus, because many said it was the easier moon to land on) was probably my most memorable moment in gaming history. It was tense and immensely satisfying.

I kept doing this for at least a couple hundred hours of gameplay; going to other planets seemed like an impossible leap for me. But then I actually gave it a real shot, and I was surprised to find that it wasn't quite as hard as I kept thinking it would be. I could actually reach other planets, and I even landed on Duna. Now I have about 400 hours played on steam, and probably as much time played that is not recorded by steam. Perhaps I'm a slow player, but there is still so much more I need to do, and I'm looking forward to doing them.

[DarkOwl57]

Now that I've conquered the planes, I'm thinking about moving back over to rockets. I don't use them much for anything besides ICBM's, but I may attempt a landing on the Mun. Wish me luck!

[SgtSomeone]

There was no one big moment for me, but I did have a couple light bulbs go off above my head along the way.

-when I really understood orbit and stopped the 'straight up and circularize' style of launch trajectory

-When it clicked that the CoL goes behind the CoM and higher CoM=more stable (the opposite of a building in the ground)

-the first time landing on the mün

-the first time docking two crafts where I used translation and didn't just point them at each other...

-finally when it clicked that higher orbit =slower, even though you fire the engine to get there. And interplanetary maneuvers then made sense.

[N_Danger]

 The first rocket I made, after watching a Scott Manly video, almost made it into orbit and after that I "got it". 

[W. Kerman]

Learning which button is for thrust increasing.