Help with docking on console

[Jebediah Kerman Jr.]

I am new to the forums (as well as KSP), and this might be in the wrong forum. If it is, please tell me the correct forum.

Anyway, I play the console edition. I have recently landed on Minmus and I am thinking of building a small space station in LKO. Only one problem: I am abysmal at docking. Even the in-game tutorial seems impossible! Could someone give me a detailed tutorial on how to dock?

Edited June 19, 2018 by Val
Title edited to indicate console

[Val]

Moved from Console Tech Support.

[PrvDancer85]

Here is a link to a tutorial from the tutorial section of this Forum and here Is a link to a yt vid from scott manley, 5 years old but still good. Both are better than anything i can come up with. And welcome to the forums

Edited June 19, 2018 by PrvDancer85

[Gargamel]

Going to page @GrouchyDevotee here, he seems to be one of our resident console gurus, or at least a player that is competent. 

Now, if you read through the game play questions KSP Discussion forum here, we recently had a very very good thread on tips for docking.  That will help a lot, as the theory of docking doesn't change if you are playing console, just the controls do. 

Give that thread a read, and it should help. 

 

[Jebediah Kerman Jr.]

Thanks everybody! 

[Kryxal]

Probably the biggest tip is practice, practice, practice ... the first time is quite the accomplishment, once you've done it a dozen times it starts to become routine.

Anyway, probably the easy way to do it the first time is stop completely maybe 500m out, then align the ports (vessel-switching helps here if you can reasonably rotate the target) and start your approach at about 5 m/s.  Once you get in close, keep your time to target at about 20-30 seconds until you're at about .5 m/s, and be sure to maintain alignment on the ports.

One of my favorite "tricks" is to have the docking approach along the normal orbital axis, since any drift between ships will be on that axis and won't pull you off-target.

[GrouchyDevotee]

I don't know if I can add anything to the tutorial page that was linked...

 

[ArmoredLipid]

Question: what mode is this in? Career, science, or sandbox? If it's the first one, are you able to place maneuver nodes yet? If it's the first or second one, what docking port are you using for this, and do you have RCS?

[Jebediah Kerman Jr.]

Oh, this is all in sandbox mode, although I do have (rather ambitious) plans to build a large station in career. I'm practicing in sandbox mode.

EDIT: Today I managed to dock two modified Kerbal X spacecraft (I added shielded docking ports)! It felt amazing.