How did you learn to play ksp?

[Shadow Wolf56]

This thead is about how you learned to play ksp so orbit was a walk in the park. I learned from my mistakes and realised I was being very inefficient with my method of flying to space. I then progressed from that.

So, how did you learn to play ksp?

(*wait, my nana is scotish!!! Just like Scott Manley!*)

Edited May 2, 2017 by Shadow Wolf56

[NSEP]

MechJeb taught me how to do it. I mean, my VERY FIRST orbit, was super elliptical, and had a low periapsis. I used MechJeb for everything! Untill i played with dark multiplayer, where i landed my first thing on the moon!

[Polstar]

Scott Manley YouTube tutorial videos for most part, also a few websites for departure angles, DV maps and aerobraking altitudes.

A lot of it was trial and error, funny because most of the issues I had real life agencies also had and unintentionally I did similar things to practice and over come them i.e. sending up a fuel tank with docking port as a target to practice docking.

[cratercracker]

I just clicked random buttons in order to get random result.

[ARS]

Danny2642's videos taught me how to "fly"

[Ferdoni]

scott manley and very, very many kabooms... 

[shynung]

I'm proud to say that I didn't use any guides or YouTube videos to get to orbit.

Staging, however, didn't occur to me until much, much later. My earlier rockets were all enormous SSTOs with pitiful mass ratios.

[TheDARKOMETER]

Scott Manley had taught me how to fly, maneuver, and construct Rockets. He also taught me the basics of planes, but for the most part, I myself learned how to construct it and fly it efficiently on my own. Making good looking planes and replicas are one thing, but making it practical i.e having long range, high maneuverability, correct speed, and reasonable TWR is quite difficult and takes more work than making good rockets imo.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Initially stacks of trial and error, never been one for video tutorials much and back in 0,16 they were in short supply . Though  I truly learned how to play while teaching someone else the basics,  I've always found that explaining things to others helps to clarify and refine  my thoughts and skills.  It's been a while (months) since I last went to orbit, but it's still a breeze to do, don't give it much thought now

[Just Jim]

Like a couple others, after I went from the demo to the full game, I watched a ton of Scott Manley's videos to get the hang of things.

[Majorjim!]

I just played the demo then the full game. A lot.

 I had a mate who played too so we helped each other out at the beginning. Back when Mun landings made me sweat bullets.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Majorjim!

[steuben]

trial and error

reading forum threads

asking slightly absurd, but somewhat plausible, design questions.

KER

 

 

[Johnny Wishbone]

I learned to play the game by *gasp* playing the game! I didn't let MechJeb do it for me, I did it myself. I read some of the basics here on the forum (back when this forum was a lot more active than it is today) and I played the game. Having already had a basic understanding of aerodynamics, orbital mechanics, and physics, it wasn't a very steep learning curve for me.

I played the game and eventually got pretty good at it. My 2 tips for getting good at KSP:

1) learn to read and understand the navball

2) learn how to properly rendezvous

Once you have a good understanding of those 2 things, there isn't anything in KSP you can't do with ease.

[overkill13]

I played through all the tutorials.  After that I could do just about everything, albeit pretty inefficiently.

I watched where MechJeb stopped throttling my rockets, with the air pressure restriction on, and that helped me know where air resistance was negligible and between the two I worked out a decent gravity turn system, though I have yet to manage a hands off gravity turn, I just always want to tweak the angle.

Precise Node has helped me infinitely more than anything else to plan super efficient intercept burns.

I worked out how to "corral" the prograde and retrograde markers through trial and error, which stopped me from reducing closing velocity to zero and firing towards target multiple times when rendezvousing.  Now I ride the markers into the target.

I think Scott Manley taught me how to get to other planets.  Though, so far, I've only practiced it on a smaller scale by transferring from mun to minmus and vice versa.

[adsii1970]

I played and played and played - and discovered Scott Manley's YouTube page.

I'm still learning how to play the game - and it seems that each time there is a major game update, I have to learn some things all over again.

 

[CaptainTrebor]

Demo and Scott Manley videos.

[TheKorbinjer]

2 years of the very Scottish, Scott Manley.

and about 1500 hours of game

 

hey, i could become a real pilot with that time..

[Red Shirt]

When I started my internet was not much better than dial up, so no video help for me. I didn't discover the forum until 4 months or so after starting to play. I convinced a couple friends to download the demo right after I got the program. They gave up easily and never made orbit. I guess I learned by sheer determination and moar boosters.

[LoSBoL]

I played the tutorials, and because they were so tedious in how you must do things, after that the real thing was a peace of cake 

 

(and offcourse watching YouTube, reading the ingame wiki, the internet wiki and searching this forum)

[Alshain]

trial and error and these forums.  Maybe a few youtube videos.

The tutorials didn't exist when I started though.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Alshain

[Merkal]

I learned from using pre-made rockets and learning gravity turns, then I made my own rockets!

[LoSBoL]

23 minutes ago, Alshain said:

trial and error and these forums.  Maybe a few youtube videos.

The tutorials didn't exist when I started though.

You should try em, just for the fun of it

[regex]

I managed orbit just by messing around, read some forum posts to help get to the Mun, then watched a bunch of ChickenKeeper24's videos to get some build tips back in the days of ridiculously floppy rockets.

[DualDesertEagle]

For building and space flight:

Videos, videos, videos.

For in-atmosphere flying:

No need to learn anything, I've flown real gliders before and I'm also a more-than-just-decent RC model pilot.

[lttito]

For first orbit: read a lot when I was a kid about space flights, so I figured out how to use stages to get to orbit in around 30 tries.

For first munar orbit: I got a soyuz mod back in the day (~0.16) that had tremendous amounts of dV, so I just pointed to the mun until I got there.

After that, I saw some youtube videos on how to land on the Mun (had to use winglets to land because landing legs where not implemented yet). And then I discovered Scott Manley and learn about orbital mechanics and a bunch of stuff.