Docking Controls

[hieywiey]

Has anyone ever used these? Let alone even figured out how to use them?

I have played KSP since 0.22, and I can't figure out how to use this if my life depended on it.

[Superfluous J]

I've never used the interface, but I did try the controls once. I hated them.

The thought that I could get comfortable with the idea of hitting spacebar on a ship to do something other than stage scares me. Also, I *like* being able to rotate and translate at the same time, and have no trouble working both hands to do it.

I hear people use it to drive rovers. I never bothered trying because rovers seem to have no problem driving for me.

[Gargamel]

3 hours ago, hieywiey said:

Has anyone ever used these? Let alone even figured out how to use them?

I have played KSP since 0.22, and I can't figure out how to use this if my life depended on it.

I've tried it a couple times, back in the .20's like you, but couldn't get used to it either.  

 

But now that I'm looking at it, without the pressure of imminent death and destruction looming....  is that an alignment indicator, or a control input indicator? 

 

[Atkara]

I first used them out of curiosity and ended up liking them. The reason is that they keep my left hand firmly on the WASD buttons and my right hand on the mouse, which I use all the time to check the alignment during docking/capture.

You'd think that mods like docking port alignment indicator would eliminate the need (and they do) but I also work with the claw for which there's no "magic ball". With my closure rates never exceeding 1.5m/s past the 300m mark (getting down to 0.05m/s when the magnets kick in) I have plenty of time to align properly.

And there's target tracking ofcourse -I speak of the  function you find on the navball, readily available in sandbox and accessible by rank 3 pilots and high-tech probe cores in career. As long as your docking port isn't off-main axis (KSP guidance has some trouble with them for some reason) you can use it to offload rotation to the pilot/probe core, leaving translation to you. At this point, docking mode becomes a way to re-assign WASD buttons to translation.

As I said earlier, with docking mode I barely move my hands around -but it did take some getting used to. I even dug into the configuration file and assigned the docking mode toggles to the side mouse buttons -shows how much I ended up liking it

These, as far as keyboard and mouse goes, since none of this matters if you're a joystick user -you just assign translation to one of the hat switches and you're done.

[The Aziz]

Never used docking mode, never bothered to learn it, but I definitely always remap RCS controls. That ijklwhatever just does not work for me, I never use these buttons so I can't find them without looking at keyboard - so I simply change the controls to Numpad.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Nope, never touched them.

I guess I just always had an easy time docking? I don't really see the need for any assistance tools when you have a 3rd person camera; although I use DPAI mod just because it makes me feel cool like a real Astronaut lol.

Personally I use WASD/IJKL. I just put the camera in locked mode behind my ship, and only move it to make a distance/accuracy check a couple of times.

Edited December 25, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[septemberWaves]

I like the docking controls. When I'm used to using them (i.e. when I'm not out of practice from over a year of not really playing the game) I don't even need to have the UI turned on to dock properly.

[qzgy]

9 hours ago, Gargamel said:

But now that I'm looking at it, without the pressure of imminent death and destruction looming....  is that an alignment indicator, or a control input indicator? 

 

Control I believe... 

Stock alignment indicator ha, as if the devs would add something useful like that, or a dV display. Oh wait they did. 

[klgraham1013]

I'm a WASD/IJKL kind of guy.

[putnamto]

nah, default controls with locked camera, then when im sure its going to connect i switch my view to the receiving docking port because i think it looks cool.

[Xurkitree]

I dock randomly - sometimes without the Docking Controls, sometimes with. Its pretty useful once I got the hang of it - SAS can control heading, while I can control my translation using wasd, because the others suck.

[Snark]

I've never seen any point to the so-called "docking controls".  They seem worse than useless to me.  I've already got a set of controls for rotating / translating the ship, with plenty of muscle memory programmed into my hands for how to use them.  So why on earth would I want to have a thing that toggles them to some other "mode" in which the buttons behave completely differently?

As far as I'm concerned, the so-called "docking controls" are simply pointless.  They're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, in a confusing and unintuitive way.

I agree that the stock game could use a little bit of assistance for making docking more straightforward.  For me, though, this is the right answer, not the "docking controls".

[bonyetty]

Early days I forced my self to learn to use the docking mode because I didn’t know what the translation keys were (ijkl). I no longer use it. I would lose track of what mode I was in, rotation or translation too often. 

[Psycho_zs]

WASDIJKLHN.

I probably could dock Soyuz on the first try if it had a qwerty keyboard.

 

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, Psycho_zs said:

WASDIJKLHN.

I probably could dock Soyuz on the first try if it had a qwerty keyboard.

You of course mean WASDQEZXIJKLHN<SHIFT><CTRL><mouselook>

[Psycho_zs]

7 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

You of course mean WASDQEZXIJKLHN<SHIFT><CTRL><mouselook>

Using throttle in docking? How crude.

OK, I left out Navball Docking Alignment Indicator.

[Superfluous J]

42 minutes ago, Psycho_zs said:

Using throttle in docking? How crude.

OK, I left out Navball Docking Alignment Indicator.

Haha granted I don't use z or ctrl much, but yeah I probably use throttle more than translate, at least for small vessels.

[Curveball Anders]

5 hours ago, Psycho_zs said:

WASDIJKLHN.

I probably could dock Soyuz on the first try if it had a qwerty keyboard.

I assume that Soyuz is equipped with a Cyrillic keyboard, but it should work with muscle memory

[Psycho_zs]

35 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

I assume that Soyuz is equipped with a Cyrillic keyboard, but it should work with muscle memory

Well, I fluently touch-type in both

I doubt it even has a full-blown keyboard. Definitely not as a flight control input device. And those two joysticks would require some training to use.

[tater]

Don't use it. I never look at anything but the navball and the distance.

[Gargamel]

13 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Haha granted I don't use z or ctrl much, but yeah I probably use throttle more than translate, at least for small vessels.

I usually turn of my main engines and go RCS only.   If it took me 4 seconds of thrust to get up to a certain speed, I know it'll take me 4 seconds to slow down.  If use the throttle, I have no idea how good my brakes are. 

[Superfluous J]

27 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

I usually turn of my main engines and go RCS only.   If it took me 4 seconds of thrust to get up to a certain speed, I know it'll take me 4 seconds to slow down.  If use the throttle, I have no idea how good my brakes are. 

Just a couple puffs will tell you, though I prefer just staying under 1m/s so I don't have to brake.

[LolgamEbr0ken]

may this clip will help u >>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI8pecb2bmg<<<

[Slyguy3129]

Sort of? I have my "RCS" control set to my numpad. 

8: Up

2: Down

4: Left

6: Right

9: Foward

3: Back

Problem is even though I have cleared those controls from WASD, when I have RCS on, WASD still uses my RCS fuel. That's what I have an inline reaction wheel for.

I'm sure this sounds "nitpicky" to some, but it can be a Major Paine*, pressing R, numpad, R, WASD, R, numpad, so on and so forth.

Would love for RCS to not activate when I have those keys not set to WASD. I have not figured out a way to fix this yet.

[Rhomphaia]

8 hours ago, Slyguy3129 said:

Sort of? I have my "RCS" control set to my numpad. 

8: Up

2: Down

4: Left

6: Right

9: Foward

3: Back

Problem is even though I have cleared those controls from WASD, when I have RCS on, WASD still uses my RCS fuel. That's what I have an inline reaction wheel for.

I'm sure this sounds "nitpicky" to some, but it can be a Major Paine*, pressing R, numpad, R, WASD, R, numpad, so on and so forth.

Would love for RCS to not activate when I have those keys not set to WASD. I have not figured out a way to fix this yet.

A global toggle for RCS "pilot only" would be nice to stop SAS wasting fuel, but for now with advanced tweakables turned on, you can select which inputs each thruster responds to and so can disable pitch, roll and yaw