I'm ticked off to the extreme on MechJeb

[Pawelk198604]

Today I decided to go to the mon with rocket.

I still use the MechJeb autopilot especially for mon landing(on mun) because it's still too difficult for my , but i greatly improved my navigation skills so most of space maneuvers i do myself, it's great fun :-)

Today, for the first time I had enough excess fuel to back all the astronauts bring to Kerbin ( i can orbiting the mun and back, but i have problem with bring all kerbonauts to Kerbin, i never have enough fuel to deorbit)

Today i menage to save enough fuel to do this maneuver for the first time, it's will be de-orbit with aerobrake predicted 6,5 G :-)

But i do one bloody mistake, when all was set, I thought to myself why Il continue to torment me I'll turn MechJeb auto-land function, mayby i do this to early? anyway damn MechJeb turn me spacecraft into pro-grade mode firing full throttle and increasing my perigee to over 1000 km, i freaked out i turn off MechJeb steering to retrograde but i have fuel run out i menage to decrease perigee to 200 km.

I'm so furious on MechJeb but most of all on myself. Unfortunately, of this fault is a space tragedy my laziness, I entrusted life of the crew to the fool on-board computer, i can do this maneuver myself ease.

I would like to know if any of you had a similar unpleasant experience with MechJeb?

Edited August 28, 2012 by Pawelk198604

[2008dragon]

It sounds like it was going to try a bi-elliptical transfer to save fuel. If I were you I'd slow down until I was going to crash into the mun (suborbital trajectory ?) and then turn on the landing feature.

[4 IN 1]

Its called Mech Jeb for a reason: When it work it work, when it goes to hell, crap start hitting the fan.

[Tauge]

Mechjeb is a wonderful tool, but it's just a tool. It does make mistakes, sometimes those mistakes are due to incompatibility with your ship design and how Mechjeb flies (For example, my biggest problem with some of my designs is that some have a tendency to roll and Mechjeb likes to oversteer, so on gravity turns a roll turns into a barrel roll turns into a tumble turns into an abort, I could achieve orbit fine on manual). Sometimes it makes mistakes with burns (takes to long to rotate your massive craft and burns too late). It's not perfect, and you need to be there and ready to take over when everything goes wrong, or abort and try again.

[Pawelk198604]

Well I'll have to try again, once I did it certainly will again.

For now I have to write a eulogy to honor fallen kerbonauts , I even found a template,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2193732/President-Nixon-The-moving-speech-delivered-Apollo-11-astronauts-return.html

A little rewrite , and you will be fine

[KAO]

I find myself doing manual landings more and more, especially with my new series of miniature probes

[ilikemoneygreen]

Im going to be honest, i can do the landing itselft fine, but get to the mun isnt within my skills yet. i have tried 20 times to get within the muns orbit without mech assistance but its like a bad guessing game. I always use mech to get me to the mun and to circularize. Mechs messed up a few of my landing so i tend not to let it land itself (unless its within minminus. it has a couple frozen lakes that are perfect for mechjob to land on, nice and flat!)

[Pawelk198604]

Im going to be honest, i can do the landing itselft fine, but get to the mun isnt within my skills yet. i have tried 20 times to get within the muns orbit without mech assistance but its like a bad guessing game. I always use mech to get me to the mun and to circularize. Mechs messed up a few of my landing so i tend not to let it land itself (unless its within minminus. it has a couple frozen lakes that are perfect for mechjob to land on, nice and flat!)

But i landed on Mun, i admit with small help of MechJeb but i have problem with return to Kerbin, i can go around mun but when i land, i have problem with fuel.

[Markus Reese]

I never used mechjeb myself. One way to really help with capturing orbit, is use atmospheric braking. When you leave the mun, try to burn in opposite direction of munar orbit. This way you are only moving in orbit of kerbin of a few hundred m/s. At this speed, it is easy to change your orbital intercept since small velocity changes have a large effect on your Po. Set your orbit to graze atmosphere. Try and avoid less than 37km in my experience if you want to use it to help capture orbit. The atmosphere will slow you down so capturing orbit takes alot less burn. On re-escape from atmosphere; once you are in space, if you burn directly towards planet, it will circularize your orbit.

[r_rolo1]

First of all, some questions:

a) Your orbit was circular ?

Did you used "land" or land on target" ?

For the first, mechjeb assumes a lot of stuff regarding your orbit and , in case of the landing algos, it assume that you're either using a circular orbit or that you are using one that crosses the body surface. If you are not in neither of them, it will do wacky stuff. For the second, if you used, "land on target" with the target being on the other side of the world at the time it is expected you will land without intervention or at Pe, Mechjeb will try to do a bi-elliptical or atleast to circularize ....

[BurningSky93]

I find MechJeb's landing tools work best when you are at a fairly high altitude (above 100km) and you give it plenty of time to react with a "land at target", but don't start the autopilot too early or MechJeb will freak out.

[Pawelk198604]

Thank you for your advice;)

I managed to land on the moon and brought everyone back, but unfortunately my kerbonauts did not survive this epic journey;)

Something screwed up in the design, parachute is broke off and the capsule followed in the footsteps of the* Soyuz 1 :-(

[bandit4910]

I did this before and my rocket fell off over on the launchpad.

[Tauge]

Were you using the 3 man capsule? If you were, did you have anything between the parachute and the capsule itself? ASAS? Mechjeb? RCS Fuel? A stuffed bear? If there was anything between the capsule and the parachute, then the parachute will pull the item off the capsule leaving the capsule to plummet to the Kerbin. When using a three man capsule I have tried using struts to hold the item better to the capsule, but it doesn't always work. Typically, I've just been using several (3) of the smaller parachutes attached directly to the capsule, the only time had one rip off was when I collided with jettisoned fuel tanks on reentry.

[Pawelk198604]

Were you using the 3 man capsule? If you were, did you have anything between the parachute and the capsule itself? ASAS? Mechjeb? RCS Fuel? A stuffed bear? If there was anything between the capsule and the parachute, then the parachute will pull the item off the capsule leaving the capsule to plummet to the Kerbin. When using a three man capsule I have tried using struts to hold the item better to the capsule, but it doesn't always work. Typically, I've just been using several (3) of the smaller parachutes attached directly to the capsule, the only time had one rip off was when I collided with jettisoned fuel tanks on reentry.

I used 3 men capsule i add several struts, but maybe to little

[BurningSky93]

Thank you for your advice;)

I managed to land on the moon and brought everyone back, but unfortunately my kerbonauts did not survive this epic journey;)

Something screwed up in the design, parachute is broke off and the capsule followed in the footsteps of the* Soyuz 1 :-(

This is why you follow in NASA's footsteps and test your rockets as much as possible in atmo before undertaking the main mission. Make sure it stages properly and make sure the parts that need to land on Kerbin do so safely. Remember to try and open your parachute only when the final stage has slowed down quite a bit from drag before opening it (though obviously keep your altitude in mind). You obviously don't want your chute open too late, but it doesnt help to have it open too early either.

Edited August 28, 2012 by BurningSky93

[Suzaku]

Lol, why are you so mad? It's not like it's a real rocket. Were you using time accelerate?

[Pawelk198604]

This is why you follow in NASA's footsteps and test your rockets as much as possible in atmo before undertaking the main mission. Make sure it stages properly and make sure the parts that need to land on Kerbin do so safely. Remember to try and open your parachute only when the final stage has slowed down quite a bit from drag before opening it (though obviously keep your altitude in mind). You obviously don't want your chute open too late, but it doesnt help to have it open too early either.

Thank you, now I know I was going to run Fraps and record a video of my landing on the mun, to celebrate Niel Armstrong, it's good that I forgot, because that was a total embarrassment . I'm going to improve my project(the parachute), and I'm going to try again tomorrow with a full video recording to be able to fulfill Neil Armstrong Challenge, i plan also download flag mod too to add more realism.

[AncientAstronaut]

I have a crazy idea. It might just work...

Learn to fly yourself instead of relying on autopilots. When the Eagle's auto-landing went whacky on them, you know what Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did? They made the last minute of the landing completely manually.

KSP is only fun if you know how to fly. What's the point of just pressing a few buttons and having the game do it for you? I do it sometimes in some cases because it's convenient, but I can perform every maneuver in the game

completely manually. I think you should give that a shot.

[techonce]

Mechjeb does not play well with my standard rocket. THe gravity burn kills it since my rocket is a bit unwieldy and it goes into the death tumble.

But launches are not the issue anyway, I can handle those. I use jeb to circularize, since i seem to be unable to do it, althought after watching Mechjeb, I see where I was making mistakes.

[sal_vager]

Right, well, it looks like this thread is going to turn into an argument thread, so I am closing it, and AncientAstronaut, people play in different ways, KSP is flexible enough, especially with add-ons, to allow this, it is not up to others to dictate how people play this game or any other.

The point of gaming is to enjoy yourself and have fun, if that means using autopilots then so be it.

Thread closed