KSP Skill Levels

[Chel]

2 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

If you really believe that, then you are not serious about flying.

Do I have to be? You may see KSP as a flight sim, I see it as a sandbox game for building and doing things

[GRS]

I used Mouse and Keyboard, sometimes My CRAFTs "get cocky" (Being Hard to Handle) or its just my OCD, flying SSTOs really is pain, landing with only ZX is also a pain, i used "your usual landing style" when my Paranoid beats my Confidence, usually beyond 500 Tons.

[JadeOfMaar]

On 3/3/2019 at 10:37 AM, GRS said:

Level Seven : Hyper Madlad (AKA God)

Meh. I'd name an actual god (Loki) (or goddess, Eris) of mischief, and not God himself.

Level 4, halfway to 5, sounds like me.

[herbal space program]

Just now, The_Cat_In_Space said:

Do I have to be? You may see KSP as a flight sim, I see it as a sandbox game for building and doing things

Of course not! But flying is as much a part of the game as anything else. And TBH for my own part, if you don't learn how to do that you are missing out on a major part of the fun. I'm just trying to tell you that if you want to do that kind of stuff, you'll find it's a lot easier if you use the appropriate input devices . 

[Chel]

1 minute ago, herbal space program said:

Of course not! But flying is as much a part of the game as anything else. And TBH for my own part, if you don't learn how to do that you are missing out on a major part of the fun. I'm just trying to tell you that if you want to do that kind of stuff, you'll find it's a lot easier if you use the appropriate input devices . 

Okay. I still prefer to use M&K though, might experiment with my laptop's touchscreen 

[ARS]

I don't know my level. I have done something on higher level, but on the other hand I cannot do some stuff on lower level. I have visited every celestial body, can do Gilly operation, doing Eve return, landed on Eeloo and back, understands gravity assists and orbital mechanics, know how to build atmospheric crafts, etc. But for the love of god, for nearly 5 years I played this game I cannot do a simple DOCKING. All of my interplanetary craft are single-launched and over-engineered, no matter how impractical or horribly inefficient that launch is (But I guess that makes KSP fun, the ability to "Improvise")

[herbal space program]

Just now, ARS said:

I don't know my level. I have done something on higher level, but on the other hand I cannot do some stuff on lower level. I have visited every celestial body, can do Gilly operation, doing Eve return, landed on Eeloo and back, understands gravity assists and orbital mechanics, know how to build atmospheric crafts, etc. But for the love of god, for nearly 5 years I played this game I cannot do a simple DOCKING. All of my interplanetary craft are single-launched and over-engineered, no matter how impractical or horribly inefficient that launch is (But I guess that makes KSP fun, the ability to "Improvise")

 I'll bet this can be fixed in short order! Please post your case and I will help you! Learning orbital mechanics was the single most (potentially) useful thing I've gotten out of playing KSP.

[Loskene]

Flying well without analogue control inputs is certainly possible, but beyond a certain performance range (ie super- or hypersonic) digital inputs, even with fine controls or fly-by-wire, become very accident prone. I use KBM for rockets and other things that don't require a smooth hand, and Smart A.S.S. is generally good enough to handle gravity turns and orbital manoeuvres, but I always have an old wired 360 controller handy for flying planes. With the analogue sticks I don't need anything else to stop them tearing themselves apart with slight motions at high mach numbers, only a steady thumb.

So yeah you can fly without them, but to fly at peak performance practically requires them. It's a lot harder to overcompensate landing twitches when your range of motion fidelity is 0 to 65535 rather than 0 to 1.

I sure as hell wouldn't play a driving game or a "proper" flight sim with a keyboard though, that's for sure.

[JadeOfMaar]

@ARS I lol'd. Add a utility mod to help you with docking. It's vital to have something in the HUD to show you the orientation of the active vessel's control point and the orientation of the target ship's target docking port. Using just your eye and judging the ships in 3rd person view is a futile exercise.

This one adds a big, separate UI:

This one adds an extra marker onto the navball with orientation component.

 

[Superfluous J]

The least happy I've ever been with controls in KSP is when I tried to use a controller instead of kbm.

Of course, the least happy I tend to be in KSP in general is when I'm flying planes instead of rockets, so maybe those are related.

But anyway that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

[ARS]

8 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@ARS I lol'd. Add a utility mod to help you with docking. It's vital to have something in the HUD to show you the orientation of the active vessel's control point and the orientation of the target ship's target docking port. Using just your eye and judging the ships in 3rd person view is a futile exercise.

Thanks! I'll try it and see how it works for me

[Loskene]

37 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

The least happy I've ever been with controls in KSP is when I tried to use a controller instead of kbm.

Of course, the least happy I tend to be in KSP in general is when I'm flying planes instead of rockets, so maybe those are related.

But anyway that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I will say it took a lot of fiddling with the control settings to get the deadzones and axial alignment right, as well as working around duplicate inputs, but I did eventually get the controls as comfortable as I needed them to fly planes at any speed, though I stopped short of going through the same rigmarole for driving rovers since KB is fine for them. PC KSP out of the box isn't terribly friendly to alternate control setups, but yeah that's a story for another day.

[herbal space program]

54 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@ARS I lol'd. Add a utility mod to help you with docking. It's vital to have something in the HUD to show you the orientation of the active vessel's control point and the orientation of the target ship's target docking port. Using just your eye and judging the ships in 3rd person view is a futile exercise.

This one adds a big, separate UI:

This one adds an extra marker onto the navball with orientation component.

 

LOL Orbital docking in stock is EASY! You just need to understand the underlying orbital mechanics. Offering a crutch for that is bypassing half the fun of the game IMO.

Edited March 5, 2019 by herbal space program

[Gargamel]

KSP is a really cool game where everybody can enjoy it, the way they want to enjoy it.  

So let's leave it at that.  

K?

EDIT: Apparently I was being a touch too subtle here.    Please do not insult other's style of play. 

Edited March 5, 2019 by Gargamel

[GRS]

@ARS

Orbital Docking SHOULD be Easy, start with small things like The Docking Training, or use Matty Matlon The Matt-gician(AKA @Matt Lowne)'s Lazy Docking method (Point at one docking port, then set control source of the targeted vessel in its Docking Port and target the other one, make sure you terminated all of your relative velocity), you can't move faster than 1 m/s (?) Towards target.

@Gargamel

K...i'll expand the OP, those capable of making realistic intangible designs from real world counterparts also count as madlad, anyone who tried hard for something with SUPER difficulty rating (Ex:Tylo) deserve Madlad title, depends on how hard you tried and how impressed people are, sorry if i'm being garbage, i do dumb things when bored...kinda...

[Reinhart Mk.1]

8 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

KSP is a really cool game where everybody can enjoy it, the way they want to enjoy it.  

So let's leave it at that.  

K?

as a fight sim guy i can see how total realism is rewarding, but i still love all the sandbox aspects of it. those combined give the game so much replay value. do you playboi <3

[JadeOfMaar]

16 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

LOL Orbital docking in stock is EASY! You just need to understand the underlying orbital mechanics. Offering a crutch for that is bypassing half the fun of the game IMO.

It's easy for me, however, I don't play in the realm of replica rockets and knowing or ensuring the CoM and CoT for RCS will always be on-the-spot. Docking is fun indeed, as long as I can get it done swiftly and the ports don't bug out. And sometimes they do and I spend the whole night cycle of an orbit trying before I realize I'd best deorbit and run back to the VAB.

Now, if I was suggesting to install MechJeb and have it do the docking for you, have at me with righteous anger, because people utterly ruin themselves on that.

[herbal space program]

2 hours ago, Gargamel said:

KSP is a really cool game where everybody can enjoy it, the way they want to enjoy it.  

So let's leave it at that.  

K?

 

2 hours ago, Reinhart Mk.1 said:

as a fight sim guy i can see how total realism is rewarding, but i still love all the sandbox aspects of it. those combined give the game so much replay value. do you playboi <3

Nothing is more rewarding in playing this game IMO than figuring out how to do do something on your own given the parts, the physics engine, and your own brain. I furthermore think that offering people too many crutches in that is actually depriving them of that awesome sense of reward that comes from figuring out something this hard by yourself. YMMV, but that's my take. Edit: and I certainly don't mean to insult anybody in saying that!

Edited March 5, 2019 by herbal space program

[Reinhart Mk.1]

51 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

depriving them of that awesome sense of reward that comes from figuring out something this hard by yourself.

cosign on this, i could've left eve by now but im stubborn and wanna keep things vanilla and mod-free  (ish)

[herbal space program]

41 minutes ago, Reinhart Mk.1 said:

cosign on this, i could've left eve by now but im stubborn and wanna keep things vanilla and mod-free  (ish)

Alas, I think your effort has actually suffered more than benefited from all the discussion on that thread, for which I'm sorry. We were discussing edge cases, when what you really need for this is a maximally robust, right-down-the-middle sort of design. The last thing you posted actually looked pretty good to me, although I couldn't see what the core stage has on the bottom. You just need around 7km/s or so of vacuum dV, using the engines that have a good ISP in that thick air, with a starting TWR of at least 1.2 or so out of the gate. If you asparagus appropriately and execute a good gravity turn ( a whole thing in itself!), you can definitely make orbit. You just have to keep trying!

Edited March 5, 2019 by herbal space program

[GRS]

@ARS, how big ??? Is it big enough to be called "Tremendous" (5000-10000 Tons in my criterias)...?

Edited March 5, 2019 by GRS

[ARS]

4 hours ago, GRS said:

@ARS, how big ??? Is it big enough to be called "Tremendous" (5000-10000 Tons in my criterias)...?

You really had to improvise if you can't do something

Here's another one

Pretty much anything that requires docking (especially space station) will be launched in a single launch. Interplanetary craft needs to transit celestial bodies to mine resources to continue the mission

[GRS]

Those looks nice, my first interplanetary rockets are all Direct Ascent, with traces of the Noob myself's design in it, i still remember those days, when i was a noob that failed to get orbit because of forgetting SAS.

[razark]

KSP Level Zero:

Too busy having fun doing what I'm doing to worry about how others play or feel the need to justify my own style.

[GRS]

1 hour ago, razark said:

KSP Level Zero

Level Schroedinger : because you haven't even tell us what you did.

@ARS, you're level 4-5, mastery of docking should be easy, took less time to master than...that damn Eve, i've beaten Eve before mastered Docking, my "Eve Centurion" holds 3rd place of my largest rockets, with 5992 Tons of pure LF+Ox, and Direct Ascent, the largest entered "Immense" category (10k-20k Tons), purposed to do a double Dres round trip.

@Reinhart Mk.1, do you mind telling me your best mission ???

@IncongruousGoat, you're Level 7, i mean...seriously, what kind of "mere mortal" that can beat a Jool 5...WITH ONLY 42 PARTS !!! AND ION VALL LANDER !!! (you didn't use MechJeb, didn't you)