KSP - Ultimate Tutorial [WIP]

[Kerminator K-100]

KSP - Ultimate Tutorial

This is meant to be a step by step guide for new players (but old players are welcome), updated for 1.10 and 2020. This is a WIP so the tutorial may not be complete. This is made to be the tutorial I wanted to find when I started playing. The progression of this tutorial follows the game progression. i.e Game Menu ->  Difficulty -> Building a rocket -> etc. The full menu is in the spoiler. If you are looking at this while it is WIP, it will show you a proposed road map of what I will add. I am open to suggestions about adding topics, moving topics, and if you have something you want to add, PM me with the info. I will add it and credit you for the info.

Spoiler

Menu

Getting Started

Using the VAB and SPH

Launching a rocket

Collecting Science

R&D - Tech Tree and Archives

KSC Buildings

Strategies

Contracts

Asteroids - Recovery and Detection

Base

Exploration

Grand Tour

Part Testing

Rescue

Satellites and Repositioning

Science

Survey

Tourists

World's First

Building a rocket 2.0

Orbiting

Building a plane

Advanced Orbiting

Docking

Rovers

To the Mun

Commnet and Kerbnet

Minmus

Duna

Ike

Eve

Gilly

Jool

Laythe

Val

Tylo

Bop

Pol

Dres

Moho

Eeloo

Ore Detection

Bases and Stations

Asteroids

Detection

Recovery

Parts (Not exhaustive - just a brief overview)

Manned/ Unmanned

Fuel and Engines

Control

Structural, Coupling, Payload

Aerodynamics

Ground, Thermal

Electrical, Communication

Science

Utility

Passenger

Flags

Expansions

Robotics

Spacesuits

Mission Builder

Mods

Downloading

Best Mods for beginners

Forums

Also good places to go are the KSP discord, the KSP reddit, and the KSP wiki. Scott Manley and Matt Lowne also have good video tutorials if you are more interested in that. The forums have great information also, but if you are reading this, you probably have found the forums.

EDIT: Also a good video tutorial can be found here.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Kerminator1000

[Kerminator K-100]

Getting Started

So you've downloaded the game and are looking at the main menu. What do all these buttons do? Ask no further! Simply look below at the picture, with all the buttons labeled for you. (Note that I am using Spectra, so your Kerbin will not look the same)

Clicking quit will bring up a menu like this:

Lets go back. Click on the start game button. This opens another menu. All the buttons are explained below.

You may notice that the game has tutorials as well. While these are not the best, they are a good starting point. 

The scenarios button will open a list of scenarios: Collision with the moon, running out of fuel, exploring Eeloo, etc.

I will go over the mission when I get to the Making History DLC part of the tutorial.

Lets go to start new. This will open up a new menu. You can pick one of three game modes:

Sandbox - No funds, no contracts, no science, no tech tree. Just build things.

Science - No funds, no contracts, but you need to unlock the tech tree. Good for beginners.

Career - You need to worry about Funds, Reputation, Contracts as well as Science and the Tech tree. Kerbals cost money to hire and losing them cost reputation.

Lets pick Science mode to start. Clicking flags will bring up a list of flags we can choose. You can add your own flags and I will go over that in the flags section. After choosing a flag lets go to settings. (Note that I use mods, so you will have less options on the side)

These are the default settings for Normal. Hovering over a setting will give you an explanation for it and going here will give you a brief overview of the difficulty. These look fine, so lets click Accept. This will bring you back to the first menu. From there click Start. This will take you here:

Read what Gene has to say and then look below at the next picture:

Clicking on the buildings will open them, and right clicking on the buildings opens an info window about them. Your game will not have as many apps because you will most likely not have mods.

Now it is time to build our first rocket. Left click on the VAB and go to the next tutorial.

Index

VAB and SPH

Edited September 9, 2020 by Kerminator1000

[Kerminator K-100]

Building your first rocket

An intro to the VAB and SPH,

Now that you are familiar with the Menus it is time to launch our first rocket. Left click on the VAB. You will be presented with this screen:

Note that your funds are only shown in career mode.

To build, simply click on the part you want (the round module is MH DLC). Do not drag it over. The part will appear in the middle of the screen. Then go to engines. If you are in Career or Science mode, the only engine will be the Flea SRB. Move the mouse toward the round green balls that appear. These are attachment nodes. The game will automatically move the part to the attachment node and connect the two together.

The eagle eyed among you will note that in the top left, under the Action Groups menu and Crew Selection, four new icons appear. These are the editor gizmos.

The first one is the the Place gizmo. This is the mode you are in right now. It allows you to place parts on your spacecraft.

The Offset gizmo.

This allows you to drag parts side to side. With angle snap on, the parts will move in increments and will jump to new places. It is much easier to get precise placement with angle snap off.

Before:

After:

The Rotate gizmo:

The rotate gizmo is a lot like the Offset gizmo. It allows you to rotate parts. Just like before, angle snap will rotate the parts in 15^o increments. 

Before:

After:

And now for the most confusing gizmo for beginners: The Root gizmo:

The root gizmo allows you to reroot the pieces. The default root part is the part you placed first. As the root, if you move that part, every other part moves with it. The reroot will change the root part to the part that you click.

Before Rerooting:

Note that the root part (the command pod) moves every part with it. 

While Rerooting:

I have rerooted the craft to the Flea SRB. 

After rerooting:

Note that hovering the mouse on the command pod only highlights the command pod and parachute (the parachute is connected to the attachment node on top)

Now that you understand the gizmos, we can move on to the next part: Staging. If you look at the bottom right corner, you will see the staging stack. This is the order that things are staged as you hit the space bar. In this one, all the stages are together. This is bad because the parachute will deploy when the engine starts, destroying your rocket. As Scott Manley says: "Check yo staging!"

To fix this just click the plus symbol that will show up when you hover over the staging stack. Drag the parachute up to the new slot. The stack starts with the largest number and moves up the list.

If you did it right, it will look like this.

Now the only things left to do are to add science and the crew. 

Hit the X button 3 times. It will put everything in 4x symmetry and hitting C will turn on and off angle snap.

Now go up to the top left corner. If you click the icon shaped like a kerbal, it will bring up the crew selection. Clicking on the clothes hanger next to the name will bring up the suit selector. 1.10 players can change the color of the lights with the Breaking Ground suits. Also shown is the experience bar, shown as stars. The level of your kerbals enables them to do various things. Below their name is their class and the bar beneath the class is the experience for the level they are on. At the bottom you can fill every seat, clear every seat, or reset to Jeb in the first seat. You can also go to the Astronaut Complex to hire new kerbals.

Next to it is the action groups menu (not needed at the moment, you don't have enough parts to need action groups) and the button to switch editors. 

If you click to switch editors, it will move the craft to the SPH. The SPH and the VAB are very similar. The main difference is that the SPH automatically puts parts horizontally and the VAB puts them vertically. Also the SPH uses mirror symmetry instead of normal. The SPH will put craft on the runway, while the VAB puts craft on the launchpad.

Switch back to the VAB. Now you just need to change the name, change the flag (if you want) and save.

Congratulations! You have just built your first rocket!

Index

Launching your first rocket

Edited September 15, 2020 by Kerminator1000

[Kerminator K-100]

Launching your first rocket

Now that you have built your rocket, you need to launch it. Click the green button in the top right corner. It will take you to this screen:

Click T to turn on SAS and click Z to fully turn on the throttle. Before launching, right click on one of the mystery goos. It will bring up a screen like above. Click "Observe Mystery Goo" and it will run the experiment. 

The grey button gets rid of the results and resets the experiment. The Green button stores the results in the experiment. And the blue button will transmit the data if you have enough power and antenna strength. (Connectivity is in the status bar). Keep the experiment. Press the spacebar to launch the rocket.

Pressing the WASD and QE keys will move your rocket. WS change pitch, AD change yaw, and QE change roll. Clicking D will tip your rocket toward East. (Default direction is W is north, D East, S South, and A west, you can change that by clicking your rocket in the VAB and hitting Q and E to spin it). Tip your rocket over to east so you land in the ocean.  As you fly, observe another mystery goo.

Clicking the M key will bring up the map screen:

As you can see, we have run out of fuel and are coasting. Drag will pull your apoapsis down. Once you have passed the Apoapsis, click the Space Bar to stage again. Your parachute will deploy. Right click on the capsule to perform a crew report.

Don't worry, it will automatically open all the way when you reach a certain altitude. (1000 m above ground, you can adjust this by right clicking the parachute, but this is not recommended for beginners). 

As the rocket coasts, observe another mystery goo. Career mode players will not be able to do this right away but you can EVA by hovering over the portrait and clicking EVA. You can EVA report by right clicking on the kerbal.

You will land in the ocean. Click the fourth mystery goo and collect all the juicy science. EVA again and collect an EVA report and surface sample. 

Click B to board and mouse over the altimeter. Click the "Recover Vessel" button. 

This will take your vessel back to the KSC and collect all the science.

As you can see, this trip collected 41 science!

With all this new science we will need to spend it on better rockets.

Index

R&D building

[Vanamonde]

This is a lot of work to do on behalf of fellow players.

[Kerminator K-100]

7 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

This is a lot of work to do on behalf of fellow players.

Well I had a lot of difficulty finding an up to date tutorial when I started playing, and the up to date ones are very math heavy (KSP wiki - how to play) so I am trying to make a easy to use, up to date tutorial. 

Yeah it will be a lot of work. My KSP schedule is to update this, work on the Kerbal History thread, work on the Reaching for the Stars tread, work on a suit pack mod, work on a KSP simpit, try to do an Elcano entry, and now this. And that's just for KSP, I have a bad habit of taking on a lot of side projects and trying to do them at the same time.

Edited September 17, 2020 by Kerminator1000