How to complete docking training?

[port513]

I'm new at this game and it was really fun until I got to the docking training.

I can't for life clear this stage.

Struggle to get the interception markers correct and if I get them correct I will never ever get near the stranded ship, maybe I see it and then everyhing goes really wrong.

I follow the guide point to point but no luck at all.

Right now I feel that this is the most money wasting game I ever paid for.

I know it will be hard to dock but to clear a training session? What will motivate me to continue playing this game if I can't even clear the trainings...

 

Can someone give me a step by step tutorial on how to solve this stage?

[Geschosskopf]

Welcome aboard.  KSP's not so bad, it's just a different language.  Endeavor to persevere

OK, you've aligned the closest approach markers by adjusting the transfer burn's maneuver node.  Then you make the transfer burn from whatever orbit you start in to the orbit the target is in, timed so the target is there when you arrive.  Somewhere after this burn and before you reach your new Apoapsis, be sure to set your navball to TARGET mode.  Once you reach closes approach, your 1st goal is to kill your relative velocity to the target.  This essentially circularizes your obit at the height of the target.  With the navball in TARGET mode, the velocity displayed in the navball is RELATIVE to the target, and the various directional icons are also relative to the target.  So, as you approach the target, with the navball in TARGET mode, turn retrograde and burn until the displayed velocity (which is relative to the target) is approximately zero.  Now you're in the target's general vicinity and will remain there for some time because you've killed your relative velocity to the target.  Now it's just fine-tuning to get close enough to dock.

To get closer, with the navball still in TARGET mode, turn prograde and burn until it shows you've got about 30m/s (relative to the target), no more.  The wait and watch the target.  When it drifts off your nose to about halfway to the edge of the screen, turn retrograde and kill your velocity to zero again.  Turn prograde and burn again to a speed you know you can stop quickly, wait again, and stop again either when you're very close to the target or you have to stop and aim at the target again.  Keep doing this until you're within about 100m, then start trying to dock.

[Spricigo]

3 hours ago, port513 said:

I follow the guide point to point but no luck at all.

Sorry, but you didn't. There are many ways to make things wrong and we can only guess which one (or more than one) was your case. Chance is that it was a small mistake (or a few ) that caused a big effect. 

My first advice is to be patient,  don't rush any step and make sure your actions produce the results the game predicts. 

My second advice is to not consider the tutorial as a requirement.  You may just start a career/science/sandbox game and start to build rockets and go places. Don't worry about doing thing well in the first moment but try to understand how to do it better in the future.  

Third advice is, if you are in trouble to grasp something, try to not rely only on words. Find a good guide with pictures and/or video. Something like that:

 

[Ty Tan Tu]

I spent two days trying to dock for the first time, and not short days I assure you. By the second day I had it set up so that the target ship was facing retrograde, and my ship facing prograde in almost the exact same orbit with an inclination of NaN. The apo and ped were not exactly on top of each other, but I had it down so that the two ships could not be more than 15 meters apart at the absolute most. I put the camera behind me and used the RCS thrusts to nudge a bit to the right. the ports were still not exactly align, and I was about to to panic yet again when - suddenly BOTH shops raced away from me. I was like "What did I do wrong now?" Then it dawned on me, "Oh, I am docked."

Docking is the hardest thing you are going to do in KSP, but it is a bit like riding a bicycle, once you get it , it is easy. If it is really frustrating you, look at a couple of mods. First try the Docking Port Alignment Indicator. You still have to control the ship, but it gives you a good indicator to control your ship when docking. I used this quite a bit when I strated.

https://mods.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/220299-docking-port-alignment-indicator

 

Or even consider MechJeb and watch it do it for you, but pay attention, because I really think you will benefit from learning how to dock.

https://mods.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/220221-mechjeb

 

Installing mods can be a bit confusing when you first start, so let us know if you need any help. :-) 

 

 

[port513]

3 hours ago, Spricigo said:

Sorry, but you didn't. There are many ways to make things wrong and we can only guess which one (or more than one) was your case. Chance is that it was a small mistake (or a few ) that caused a big effect. 

My first advice is to be patient,  don't rush any step and make sure your actions produce the results the game predicts. 

My second advice is to not consider the tutorial as a requirement.  You may just start a career/science/sandbox game and start to build rockets and go places. Don't worry about doing thing well in the first moment but try to understand how to do it better in the future.  

Third advice is, if you are in trouble to grasp something, try to not rely only on words. Find a good guide with pictures and/or video. Something like that:

 

I will try this guide...

One more thing I'm really struggling with is the distance markers when not in map mode, how can I see the distance to my target when leaving map mode? Tutorial tells me to switch when I'm 15km from the target and I have no way to see the distance if I'm not in map mode...

I'll give it a try later today ...

What usually happens in this tutorial is that I have huge problem getting the interception markers to be within 5km, they are running wild

Besides that when I get lucky and get a nice 5km marker I will always drift away from the target in map mode no matter how I try to stop start I will end upp drifting away...

So yes I'm doing small errors over time but forme I foolow the instructions exactly. Training missions should not be this hard to complete or understand, they might make players leave with a smashed computer

Get ready for more questions later today, I know I can and will have a success some day and I really don't want to advance in training before I at least understand docking.

[harrisjosh2711]

@port513 Its difficult to learn, but easy once you really get the hang of it. When I first started playing I used MechJeb to dock and rendezvous. It is truly a life saver for a complete newby. Once you get ready to move up and learn how to rendezvous, the best tip I think I can give is lock onto your target. try to get lined up the best you can. get your prograde going straight on your target with your rcs and keep it that way. Don't even look at your ship, fly with Nav ball. When you get close, slow down and they will dock themselves. Remember just try your best to keep your prograde headed straight towards your target, orient your ship so you know which directions the RCS will be pushing you. Its really simple once you learn to dock using the navball over visuals.

Its super easy if both vessels are controllable then you can just lock both of them onto each other and you are oriented perfect. You cant do that in the tutorial. Also you can also bring up the cheat menu and rendezvous that way as well. I have found it helpful from time to time after launching a few thousand rockets.

Edited September 28, 2017 by harrisjosh2711

[bewing]

In some sense, it's better to save the docking tutorial until you've played all the rest of the game for a few weeks. You don't need to master all the tutorials to start playing the game. As said above, docking is the very hardest thing you can do in the game, and that tutorial is admittedly quite hard to follow to the letter.

The rendezvous technique shown in the tutorial is not optimal, either. If you learn good rendezvous technique by playing the game, then you can easily complete the tutorial by not doing what it tells you to.

It's a really fun game, but trying to do all the very hardest stuff in it, right out of the box, is going to be a very frustrating experience.

 

Edited September 28, 2017 by bewing

[Spricigo]

1 hour ago, port513 said:

I will try this guide...

One more thing I'm really struggling with is the distance markers when not in map mode, how can I see the distance to my target when leaving map mode? Tutorial tells me to switch when I'm 15km from the target and I have no way to see the distance if I'm not in map mode...

looking in the right direction you should see a green square marking your target. (If you are not finding it baybe its turned off, press F4 to toggle). Knowing what the navball markings means may help to find it more easily.

Here is my mine, 31km away.

1 hour ago, port513 said:

What usually happens in this tutorial is that I have huge problem getting the interception markers to be within 5km, they are running wild

Be gentle on the thottle, If the distance start to increase cut the engines  and adjust your trajectory. You want, with the navbal in target mode, make thoses symbols   coincide(also those ) At the same time gradually reduce the relative velocity as you get close and close to your target (e.g  50m/s at 1km; 40m/s  at 800m; 30m/s at 600m....) find a pace that is confortable to you.

 

2 hours ago, port513 said:

Training missions should not be this hard to complete or understand, they might make players leave with a smashed computer

The point is, the tutorial is in fact extremely easy...if you have a bit of experience. Unfortunately that is what a new player never have.

[DrLicor]

Hey welcome to the forums and the game, caution: it is time consuming.  

The only thing I can say is to watch this video of Scott Manley, it's short, good explaining and you really get the basics, after that, it's just a little practice.
Take care.   (you could watch the whole Turorial For Beginners series if you want to learn the basics of space flight quitte fast, only keep in mind that the series is based on older KSP version, howver, mechanics of space flight never change.  

 

[port513]

@Spricigo Experience is hard to have in the beginning

But I thought that I could follow the instructions in the starting tutorials and at least solve them with some ease but I have now realized that this is not true.
I'll try some more tips later today and see if I get to solve this starting, I also installed MechJeb 2 just to have something during normal game play...

Thanks for all tips, I'm not really angry at the game just at my self for not understanding the instructions in the tutorials

 

Not sure if you have tried the docking tutorial but in that you don't have a circular orbit so to follow almost every guide out here you have to adjust the orbit first.
Think this not circular orbit is the problem for me when trying to create good interception points.

Will try to create a circular orbit first and then create interception points less than 5km apart and combine that with everything else you mentioned here.

Probably I will not manage to dock the first attempts but if I can learn to make good interception points that's good training too

Edited September 28, 2017 by Val
Merged double post

[Zeiss Ikon]

I learned to rendezvous and dock without tutorials, and without ever seeing the training scenarios.  I knew, from reading (and living through the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo era, when a kid wasn't a kid if they didn't want to grow up to be an astronaut), how a rendezvous worked, how orbital mechanics pushes you in different directions (the rule from Larry Niven's The Integral Trees is "Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you in, in takes you forward; port and starboard bring you back." -- which has stuck in my memory since first reading that book, just weeks after it came out).  I also didn't know anything about how the nav ball relates to docking (I was a pretty deep noob, trying to fly a rescue mission around the Mun, no less).

None the less, I got it done, and did it in less than two hours.  The second time took less effort.  The third even less, and by the time I mounted an asteroid capture/redirect mission, docking was just part of the job.

If you haven't already, mount RCS and learn to fly the "right hand" controls -- the ijklhn keys work like the wasd shift-ctl set, only in translation and with the RCS rather than whatever attitude controls you have and the main engine.  Don't forget to set cap-lock when you get close; that puts the RCS into a "slow" mode, and saves a lot of monopropellant by reducing overcorrection.  Do some practice flying with those; you'll have to be close to something to see any effect.  Once you get within visual range of your target, you can use RCS instead of "turn and burn" -- it's MUCH simpler.  IMO, you don't need any of those fancy docking alignment widgets (though Better Burn time is very helpful for finishing up the rendezvous).  Take a look at an Apollo CSM stack to see where the RCS can/should be mounted.

[StrandedonEarth]

I just want to add, you don't need to look at the ships while you dock. I only look at the navball; it's all you need. One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread (I don't know if it's in the tutorial) is to rt-click the target's docking port and set as target. It helps. It also activates the little red circle (from a mod) in the image below:

Edited September 28, 2017 by StrandedonEarth

[port513]

I managed to stop to 0 m/s right by the stranded pod but suddenly I drifted away with no reason, why's that?

I didn't have any relative speed at all but the stranded pod escaped me anyway...

One other thing, as long as I have SAS activated I can't turn and lign up docking ports, should I shut down SAS during alignment?

I will take a small paus from the docking thing and play a little bit and return to my docking training.

Edited September 28, 2017 by port513

[Daveroski]

First practice getting as close to your target as possible with your engines. You are aiming for a distance of around 100m.

Now to learn to dock.

It may be easier if you right click each RCS thruster and turn off Roll Yaw and Pitch.

Now rotate your ship so that it is in line with the docking port of the target.
It doesn't matter if the docking port is behind you, off to one side, above or below you.

By rotating your ship now to facing the right direction, you will only have to concentrate on moving the ship up down left right back and forward.
Here's the thing. Don't get ahead of yourself. Don't rush. That means go VERY slowly.
For every second you fire your RCS in any direction you have to fire it for the same amount of time in the opposite direction to stop.

Pick a direction and move in that direction. Then stop. Use short controlled bursts. Keep the burst uniform in length, that way when you fire three or four bursts you can remember that you will need the same number of bursts in the opposite direction to stop.

Don't turn your ship until you have stopped (relative to your target).

When you make a mistake and thrust in the wrong direction, think about how to correct the mistake before you act.

Doing it this way, you shouldn't have to rotate your ship in any direction until you are almost facing the docking port.

Approach the port at around 0.2m p/s

The magnets will help when you get in range. Try not to fight them.

So take your time, be patient. Rotate your ship so that it will be in line with the port when you move your ship there. (may be easier to turn RCS off for rotation and only use SAS). Use only up/down/Left/Right/Backwards and Forwards RCS for movement. Short controlled bursts. (if a burst lasts longer than the time it takes to say "spurt" it's too long.)

Happy docking

 

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

3 hours ago, bewing said:

In some sense, it's better to save the docking tutorial until you've played all the rest of the game for a few weeks. You don't need to master all the tutorials to start playing the game. As said above, docking is the very hardest thing you can do in the game, and that tutorial is admittedly quite hard to follow to the letter.

The rendezvous technique shown in the tutorial is not optimal, either. If you learn good rendezvous technique by playing the game, then you can easily complete the tutorial by not doing what it tells you to.

It's a really fun game, but trying to do all the very hardest stuff in it, right out of the box, is going to be a very frustrating experience.

 

@port513, this is exactly what I did, and what I would suggest for you as well. I really wanted to complete all the tutorials before getting into the game itself, but I got stuck on the docking tutorial like you. Getting the rendezvous was tough enough, but actually docking the two ships seemed impossible. A couple of times I got them within a km of one another, but they flew by so fast that I seriously thought it couldn't be done without a computer piloting the ship. I decided to just play the game and see if I could learn along the way. I started a career, and had an absolute blast. I found out you don't need to dock right away, and you actually can't anyway. You don't unlock the docking ports for awhile, so the skill isn't immediately necessary. I learned how to control my ship and make proper maneuvers. I didn't complete my first docking until about two months had gone by. I had already landed on Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, and Gilly; and been destroyed by Eve. These experiences were invaluable and, by that time, I was semi-obsessed. I even went back to do the docking tutorial to see why it was so hard and, of course, it wasn't. They tell you a couple of things that I wouldn't do, but the problem was that I just didn't have the skill-level yet. So do yourself a favor and just start playing. If you've gotten as far as the docking tutorial then you're already diggin' the game. And I can promise you; it just keeps getting better.

A couple of personal suggestions. Start with a new career game. This is always a hotly debated topic (sandbox, science, or career), so this is just my personal opinion through my own experience. In career mode you start with very basic parts, making very simple rockets, and have to work your way up. This will allow your skill level to work its way up as well. I found it a very good way to learn.

And this is always debated as well, so I will just say autopilot-type mods are completely unnecessary. I think you'll find the game more fulfilling if you do your own flying. What this game has, that I don't think any other game can match, is the tremendous sense of accomplishment you feel every time you complete a mission. Even the simplest missions, that I've done over and over, still give me that "mission accomplished" feeling. I would never want anything to lessen that. Again, just my opinion though. Good luck and welcome aboard.

[Palaceviking]

The reason the target drifts even though you seem to be at the same velocity is because of angular velocity around the curve of the planet, it's a terrible place to learn orbital rendezvous,  too fast and too small.

I've never done the tutorial but why would you teach docking in lko Darn it?!?

Surely most if not all training should be around minmus?

Dude, seriously,  do yourself a favour and just forget that the training and scenarios even exist,  the scenarios and training you come across in your own career game will be in a natural progression, (maybe) and the time you put in will feel much more rewarding when you get the green guys home safe.

Edited September 28, 2017 by Palaceviking
Stupid, stupid training missions

[DrLicor]

1 hour ago, port513 said:

I managed to stop to 0 m/s right by the stranded pod but suddenly I drifted away with no reason, why's that?

I didn't have any relative speed at all but the stranded pod escaped me anyway...

You'll always have relative speed, it is impossible to have the speed down to 0.0000000m/s and a 0.049999m/s is noticable, however the navball will say 0.0

1 hour ago, port513 said:

One other thing, as long as I have SAS activated I can't turn and lign up docking ports, should I shut down SAS during alignment?

I will take a small paus from the docking thing and play a little bit and return to my docking training.

Nope, it's not the SAS. So when you're docking, you go to the docking tab, the blue button on the left of your screen. (middle one)
<-------

On the left, you see " CTRL MODE", it's normal on the UN mode, with his mode, you control the ship up, down, forward, aft, left and right. In this mode, you can control your roll too.
When pressing the spacebar, you switch mode and then the ' ROT' button pop up and the ' UN' will get grey. In this mode, you can rotate your ship.

 

Alsoooo: you what I do, I leave it in Rotation mode (or don't even use docking mode), and use the keybinding to dock the ship.
A, W, S, D, Q, E are used as normal to rotate and turn, 

R	Toggle RCS	0.11.0	RCS
H	RCS thrust translate forward	0.11.0
N	RCS thrust translate backward	0.11.0
I	RCS thrust translate down	0.11.0
J	RCS thrust translate left	0.11.0
K	RCS thrust translate up	0.11.0
L	RCS thrust translate right	0.11.0

Edited September 28, 2017 by DrLicor

[Spricigo]

9 hours ago, port513 said:

 Experience is hard to have in the beginning

Not hard, impossible. But other than be patient and keep trying there is nothing to do. You may not feel that way, but it seems that you had some progress and will figure out how to do it eventualy.

8 hours ago, port513 said:

I managed to stop to 0 m/s right by the stranded pod but suddenly I drifted away with no reason, why's that?

You are always under acceleration of gravity, so your velocity is constantly changing.  That is what makes you go around in a orbit instead of straight to the infinite. This acceleration points toward the center of the celesial body you are orbiting.

So even if at a given moment you and you target have the exactly same velocity (intensity and direction) each will sufer a different acceleration (because the difference in position) and thus will start to drift away.

In fact ,it bother me that the tutorial asks to reduce relative velocity to 0.* You should not do it, instead keep a small but positive velocity toward the target, just enough to reach it but not overshot it.

*a few m/s is enough to trigger the next step but that is besides the point.

 

[port513]

Docking finished, probably I was a little rought with the controls before. This time it felt much more stable and I was able to turn around to align docking ports etc. A little bit off but the magnets solved that for me

[Dunbaratu]

A full description of what to do is too involved for a quick post on the forum, but if nobody has said it yet, here's good advice for a beginner at docking:

Put the camera in "fixed mode".  Then rotate the camera until you are looking the same direction as your vessel is pointed (camera behind the vessel, looking where the vessel is looking).

You toggle camera mode with the "V" key.  Pressing it will cycle through several modes.  Hit it until the screen says "Fixed" on it.

This can *really* help a player who's having trouble understanding the controls orientation.  The "fixed" camera locks the camera to the same orientation as the navball has so what you see is what you get.  Left really is left, and right really is right.  Some people have a very hard time rotating the controls in their head and this can help a lot.