Precision landing pad

[Laxez]

I was wondering, how do you go from an orbit to a landing pad near a colony?

I mean, with an airplane it is easy because it is more maneuverable than a rocket and it lands horizontally and not vertically, therefore, do you think that on ksp 2 there will be a system to simplify this procedure?

considering also that when you land on a celestial body with atmosphere, the trajectory is shortened due to the effect of airbraking making it difficult to understand exactly where the landing point will be.

do you think that the view of the trajectory also takes this effect into account?

this is what I mean by "precision landing platform" actually agencies like spaceX use computers and complex calculations to allow the Falcon to land like this, but we at home with the good old keyboard, how are we supposed to do?

Edited February 16, 2022 by Laxez

[Guest]

Like landing at the KSC in KSP1, practice and the pads having a couple of KMs recovery range with "recovery costs" being 0% on the pad and 100% at the limit of the range.

Then, if you like planes because they're easier to precisely land you can use them, if you want to bring more fuel to do post landing hopps to reach the landing pad you can do that and if you want to build service trucks capable of picking up and carry the lander to the pad you can do that too.

I get that IRL is automated, but IRL most rocketry is fully automated, but in KSP manually flying your crafts is part of the core of the gameplay, learning how to precisely land is going to be the main (if not the only) flying skill needed to use the colonization system.

[The Aziz]

If you don't mind spending 4.5 minutes, here's how.

 

We can hope that these two utilities, in some form, are present in the game. Because that, and a bit of practice, is all you need.

 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

If you don't mind spending 4.5 minutes, here's how.

 

We can hope that these two utilities, in some form, are present in the game. Because that, and a bit of practice, is all you need.

 

Honestly speaking I see only one useful utility there, MJ is completely useless there as he demonstrated by forgetting to turn on the engine and loosing any additional precision it may have provided.

Anyway, in the whole video he basically only uses the SAS and provides only minimal manual input and yet he's able to land quite close to the landing pad and that's just with a trajectory overlay, anyone can learn to do that.

I think the "landing problem" is only a matter of having a trajectory overlay and fine tuning the recovery range and costs.

 

[jastrone]

without an atmosphere its actually quite easy.  just go into orbit and slow down to zero when you are above your destination. but if you have a larger colony on an atmospheric planet and you are going to need parashutes it might be harder. however maybe you will be able to recover the craft like in ksp 1 or with a rover

[shdwlrd]

I really hate the answer "it's easy, it just takes practice." It's not easy, and if there is nothing to tell you what you're doing wrong, (except crashing) how will you learn how to do it right?

I really do hope that KSP2 will add the tools and/or info to help with precision landings.

[Davi SDF]

One thing that could help with precise landing is having the ability to simulate the trajectory while still visualising the craft, this way you can see where you are going while having visual contact with the place you want to land.

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

I really hate the answer "it's easy, it just takes practice." It's not easy, and if there is nothing to tell you what you're doing wrong, (except crashing) how will you learn how to do it right?

It's the same with orbiting, doing a rendezvous, docking or doing a transfer to another planet or moon, it's just a matter of info, tutorials and practice. There's nothing else to it, no secret sauce or impossible skill.

Watch the video @The Aziz posted, the only part in which he uses MJ is just for "more precision" while executing a simple maneuver node, he basically just works with the SAS with very little manual corrections (he could have landed way closer if he did a little manual fine tuning during descent and landing) and he does stick a first landing 4 KMs away easily corrected to 200m just by relighting the engines for a bit.

There's nothing special in that, just the added info provided by Trajectories but even that just allows you to skip a couple of attempts (or test flights) and the need to learn to navigate by landmarks. 

 

I agree that tutorials are needed, but those are needed for everything, not just precision landing, and I agree that a trajectory mod can spare you a bunch of tests and practice, but there's literally nothing else to learn.

EDIT: Oh, and margins, obviously, if you can't dock at first attempt you usually don't pack just enough monopropellant for a single attempt, the same goes for landing, if you can't stick a landing precisely every time maybe don't build a lander with just enough fuel for a last second suicide burn and don't build your landing pad in the middle of the ocean.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Master39

[K^2]

8 hours ago, jastrone said:

without an atmosphere its actually quite easy.  just go into orbit and slow down to zero when you are above your destination.

The Coriolis effect can push you quite a bit off target. It's less of a problem on the moons with slower rotation speed, but it's still something you'll have to make corrections for when trying to land at a colony. At that point, you might as well go for a direct descent from orbit using planning nodes and save yourself some fuel.

But yeah, a much bigger problem is performing such landings in atmosphere, as it can be very hard to predict the amount of drag your craft will experience.

[shdwlrd]

@Master39 we have danced around this landing issue before. We both agree that tutorials and better tools/information will help. But all the tutorial videos out there won't help when the person doing the task can't see what they are doing wrong. Having a nice marker showing where you're going to land is helpful, but it doesn't show how to keep the marker on your target. Real time how to land property is more important than real time where you're going to land. Once you have the how to land down, then where you land is relevant.

You can compare docking and landing for the amount of required precision. The difference between the two is that with docking you can stop and access the situation where with landing you can't. Once you start landing, you must complete the operation or fail trying. You either land safely or you crash, there is no other outcomes. So when you crash multiple times before you land safely every time you land. You're not getting how to do the task properly, you're just getting lucky.

[Bej Kerman]

14 hours ago, Laxez said:

I was wondering, how do you go from an orbit to a landing pad near a colony?

It's not a monumental feat. The difficulty curve will be going up anyway with interstellar vessels so having to pull off precision landings should be the least of your concerns.

[The Aziz]

You said it yourself and confirmed the obvious. Landing at target is only a next step after landing in one piece. And so you can watch and learn what the provided tools are showing.

SpaceX also learned how to land, step by step, through continuous failures, but they learned from them. They didn't have a video tutorial because nobody has ever done it before. The difference is in that they had to program it, which is a lot harder than manual control in a videogame. You can see it in the video. Landing too far from target? If I didn't have enough fuel to correct, I'd crash. Lesson learned: bring enough fuel. Now that I've saved the ship, which way to I turn? I turn and observe the marker. If it goes in wrong direction, lesson learned: not this way. Once the marker is in the correct position to land, we're back in step one: landing in one piece, which at this point should be nearly a routine.

[Bej Kerman]

20 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

You said it yourself and confirmed the obvious. Landing at target is only a next step after landing in one piece. And so you can watch and learn what the provided tools are showing.

SpaceX also learned how to land, step by step, through continuous failures, but they learned from them. They didn't have a video tutorial because nobody has ever done it before. The difference is in that they had to program it, which is a lot harder than manual control in a videogame. You can see it in the video. Landing too far from target? If I didn't have enough fuel to correct, I'd crash. Lesson learned: bring enough fuel. Now that I've saved the ship, which way to I turn? I turn and observe the marker. If it goes in wrong direction, lesson learned: not this way. Once the marker is in the correct position to land, we're back in step one: landing in one piece, which at this point should be nearly a routine.

People are scared of having to learn the game all over again, that's why this keeps getting brought up. Precision landing is only the next step up from landing, which should be basics by now.

[mattinoz]

It would be good if the space centre had a few additional pads (like we've seen in videos) to land on out of the way of the main building. Landing on the top of the VAB might be fun but it's not the place to learn. 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

Having a nice marker showing where you're going to land is helpful, but it doesn't show how to keep the marker on your target.

It allows you to aim while deorbiting and approaching the target, that alone brings you within a few KMs of the landing pad, if you then learn the "trick" of over-shooting and then killing your orizontal speed while still a few thousand meters above the target (at KSC, keep the target almost on the water and then point retrograde and bring your speed down to 0 while passing over the VAB) you will have all the time you need to make adjustments while coming down.

All of that and even more can be easily explained in a landing tutorial, and a few well targeted "build a SpaceX like grasshopper" mission can give any player the required skills in just a few tries.

We're not aiming for a 100% center on the pad, that's where the recovery range will come into the argument, just like with recovering things on Kerbin in KSP1, but with a range that covers a few KMs around the pad instead of the whole planet.

 

[miklkit]

What is a precision landing?  At my Mun base a great landing is within 200 meters.  Most are in the 800 meter - 1 k range, but anything less than 3 k is fine.    Been landing there for six months or more.  Every craft is different, every orbit is different, so guessing when to lit the candles is always a little different.

[shdwlrd]

41 minutes ago, miklkit said:

What is a precision landing?  At my Mun base a great landing is within 200 meters.  Most are in the 800 meter - 1 k range, but anything less than 3 k is fine.    Been landing there for six months or more.  Every craft is different, every orbit is different, so guessing when to lit the candles is always a little different.

It's landing in a small target area. An example would be landing on the VAB or launch pad from orbit.

[jastrone]

12 hours ago, K^2 said:

But yeah, a much bigger problem is performing such landings in atmosphere, as it can be very hard to predict the amount of drag your craft will experience.

well aparently it wasnt that hard to go to a place the hard part is the actual landing. i was playing ksp yesterday and i was able to land a spacecraft at the ksc. i think it would be recoverable or atleast within rover distance. but i guess coloies will have a certain recover range

 

 

[Guest]

40 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

It's landing in a small target area. An example would be landing on the VAB or launch pad from orbit.

No it's not, that's setting yourself up for failure.

Landing at a colony and landing on a landing pad are 2 very different things. Nobody confirmed yet that you'll be required to land precisely on a landing pad to recover a craft but even then there's tons of things you could do to bypass such a silly requirement. 

You could land near the colony and then hop to the pad slowly, even in multiple hops if that's necessary.

You could build as many ground support vehicles as you want to either carry the lander or its cargo from the landing point to the colony.

You could come in high and with enough fuel to hover to the landing pad at your own pace.

You could glide your way there if there's an atmosphere or make a plane.

I'm going to do all of the above.

If you choose instead you must do only a deorbit burn and a suicide burn and center the landing pad precisely every time that's not a landing problem but a landing challenge and it's on you if you choose such high standards for what you consider "landing at a colony".

[Laxez]

52 minutes ago, Master39 said:

No it's not, that's setting yourself up for failure.

Landing at a colony and landing on a landing pad are 2 very different things. Nobody confirmed yet that you'll be required to land precisely on a landing pad to recover a craft but even then there's tons of things you could do to bypass such a silly requirement. 

You could land near the colony and then hop to the pad slowly, even in multiple hops if that's necessary.

You could build as many ground support vehicles as you want to either carry the lander or its cargo from the landing point to the colony.

You could come in high and with enough fuel to hover to the landing pad at your own pace.

You could glide your way there if there's an atmosphere or make a plane.

I'm going to do all of the above.

If you choose instead you must do only a deorbit burn and a suicide burn and center the landing pad precisely every time that's not a landing problem but a landing challenge and it's on you if you choose such high standards for what you consider "landing at a colony".

well, in the very first trailer we see a rocket landing on Marble, that rocket is carrying resources to the colony, landing on the VAB. It is possible that the first time it is necessary to land a rocket on a launch pad or on the VAB manually, but the following ones will be completely automated because they will copy the path taken by the player. however, the problem remains of doing it at least once, moreover somehow it will be necessary to bring resources to a celestial body to form colonies, especially the first few times when you do not have rockets powerful enough to carry many resources (note that in the video the rocket that lands on Marble has a metallic hydrogen engine) without considering that at the time of launch the planets will be aligned in a certain way and that at the next launch they could be somewhere else entirely. Unfortunately we do not have enough information to make assumptions, but right in the same scene at the end of the video we see several rockets starting from different colonies, whether it is a reference to multiplayer or to an automated resource transport system is not yet known.

the other idea I was thinking about is that maybe there is a system that does everything by itself, let me explain better, you select the starting point like Kerbin and an ending point like Laythe, the game tells you that it takes a vehicle with at least 11000 delta-v, and once the proper vehicle is built, the game does it on its own. only for resources transportation.

we must also consider that building a rover that goes to retrieve a rocket just landed a few hundred meters from the colony, it could also be done, but from the point of view of an automated gameplay it is a nightmare, I do not think that KSP 2 will have this type of automatisms because they are complicated to program. also you have to consider the dynamic factor, maybe a rocket lands 100m from the colony and there is a whole road cleared for the rover that will have no difficulty in recovering the rocket, but maybe the rocket lands on the edge of a cliff above a mountain 5km from the colony, not the best of life for the rover. we also consider the fact that we will not be there to make every single Resource Transport landing, otherwise the game calls for becoming much, too repetitive and complicated.

10 hours ago, The Aziz said:

You said it yourself and confirmed the obvious. Landing at target is only a next step after landing in one piece. And so you can watch and learn what the provided tools are showing.

SpaceX also learned how to land, step by step, through continuous failures, but they learned from them. They didn't have a video tutorial because nobody has ever done it before. The difference is in that they had to program it, which is a lot harder than manual control in a videogame. You can see it in the video. Landing too far from target? If I didn't have enough fuel to correct, I'd crash. Lesson learned: bring enough fuel. Now that I've saved the ship, which way to I turn? I turn and observe the marker. If it goes in wrong direction, lesson learned: not this way. Once the marker is in the correct position to land, we're back in step one: landing in one piece, which at this point should be nearly a routine.

true, but you have to bear in mind that the Falcons have never been driven manually, everything has always been done with calculations and computers, on ksp YOU drive the vehicle.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Laxez said:

well, in the very first trailer we see a rocket landing on Marble, that rocket is carrying resources to the colony, landing on the VAB. It is possible that the first time it is necessary to land a rocket on a launch pad or on the VAB manually, but the following ones will be completely automated because they will copy the path taken by the player.

The first trailer is a cinematic one, with a huge "not actual gameplay" sign under it and Duna rotated 90 degrees on one side because the animator thought it looked cool that way, not exactly a good source if we want to speculate on the gameplay of the game.

BTW we already know the colony VAB isn't going to be one of the first buildings in the colony.

10 minutes ago, Laxez said:

however, the problem remains of doing it at least once, moreover somehow it will be necessary to bring resources to a celestial body to form colonies

A problem solved by having a recovery range, like in KSP1.

Nate said something about being able to access the inventory of nearby crafts (keyword "nearby" not "landed on the roof") from the BAE screen or something similar in the discussion under one of the show and tells, I don't remember which one but we were talking about resources and buildings.

15 minutes ago, Laxez said:

however, the problem remains of doing it at least once, moreover somehow it will be necessary to bring resources to a celestial body to form colonies

I think the idea is to mine them nearby, not bringing them from home, but I surely hope that they're spread around enough to make planes and sub-orbital rockets the most common occurrence.

 

17 minutes ago, Laxez said:

the other idea I was thinking about is that maybe there is a system that does everything by itself, let me explain better, you select the starting point like Kerbin and an ending point like Laythe, the game tells you that it takes a vehicle with at least 11000 delta-v, and once the proper vehicle is built, the game does it on its own. only for resources transportation.

We already know about the supply route system which is going to require you to fly the mission once manually.

A system like you're proposing would defeat the point of having "the colony system subservient to the rocketry gameplay" like they said in the Design Pillars Dev diary. 

21 minutes ago, Laxez said:

we must also consider that building a rover that goes to retrieve a rocket just landed a few hundred meters from the colony, it could also be done, but from the point of view of an automated gameplay it is a nightmare

It wholly depends on how the supply route system works and, again, most likely "a few hundred metres" are going to be covered by the automated recovery of the craft from the colony, maybe with some penalty in fuel or money or something based on the distance so you have room to improve to your supply routes later on by redoing them and flying better or with a better lander.

27 minutes ago, Laxez said:

also you have to consider the dynamic factor, maybe a rocket lands 100m from the colony and there is a whole road cleared for the rover that will have no difficulty in recovering the rocket, but maybe the rocket lands on the edge of a cliff above a mountain 5km from the colony, not the best of life for the rover.

First, you choose the position of the colony, if you can't aim for the peak of a mountain don't build your colony up there and, second, with a trajectory indicator I think it's quite difficult missing a colony by 5kms, at that point you're doing something wrong with the deorbit maneuver or there's a problem in the re-entry prediction on the trajectory indicator.

[The Aziz]

36 minutes ago, Laxez said:

ksp YOU drive the vehicle.

Yes, and thanks to that, I can counteract immediately if something goes wrong. SpaceX only can watch and say bye bye rocket.

Honestly, people act here like the learning process regarding pinpoint landing was something entirely different from literally everything else. Some time ago I lost my first and so far the only Vall lander. I crashed at high speed few seconds after running out of fuel. What did I learn from it? That I need more fuel than I thought and more powerful engine. Even if the mission cost me over 4 ingame years. I am fully aware that before I try anything that requires precision, I first need to know how to do it without that precision. Gods, learning from mistakes is the essence of this game, always has been. Before you get to landing at/near bases, you should already know how to land safely *anywhere*. And, you know, your first landers usually have enough fuel for return, unless you like to be stuck. When you finally start setting up a base, you'll probably still be using those, or similar landers, all with return capabilities. So you may as well use some of that fuel to hop in closer to the base. There's most likely a long way before you're able to recover your vessels, and thus, when you no longer have to worry about having enough fuel for return.

[Laxez]

33 minutes ago, Master39 said:

The first trailer is a cinematic one, with a huge "not actual gameplay" sign under it and Duna rotated 90 degrees on one side because the animator thought it looked cool that way, not exactly a good source if we want to speculate on the gameplay of the game.

BTW we already know the colony VAB isn't going to be one of the first buildings in the colony.

A problem solved by having a recovery range, like in KSP1.

Nate said something about being able to access the inventory of nearby crafts (keyword "nearby" not "landed on the roof") from the BAE screen or something similar in the discussion under one of the show and tells, I don't remember which one but we were talking about resources and buildings.

I think the idea is to mine them nearby, not bringing them from home, but I surely hope that they're spread around enough to make planes and sub-orbital rockets the most common occurrence.

 

We already know about the supply route system which is going to require you to fly the mission once manually.

A system like you're proposing would defeat the point of having "the colony system subservient to the rocketry gameplay" like they said in the Design Pillars Dev diary. 

It wholly depends on how the supply route system works and, again, most likely "a few hundred metres" are going to be covered by the automated recovery of the craft from the colony, maybe with some penalty in fuel or money or something based on the distance so you have room to improve to your supply routes later on by redoing them and flying better or with a better lander.

First, you choose the position of the colony, if you can't aim for the peak of a mountain don't build your colony up there and, second, with a trajectory indicator I think it's quite difficult missing a colony by 5kms, at that point you're doing something wrong with the deorbit maneuver or there's a problem in the re-entry prediction on the trajectory indicator.

ok, i think a recovery range is a good idea, i think it works like ksp 1 where just click "recover ship". I imagine that for the creation of a colony everything starts from bringing resources and / or personnel to a sort of outpost composed of vessels landed more or less in the same area, to then take the materials necessary to build a VAB (which I think is the center for the construction of a colony). this makes sense, and I don't think it is difficult to land vessels in more or less the same area.

36 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Yes, and thanks to that, I can counteract immediately if something goes wrong. SpaceX only can watch and say bye bye rocket.

Honestly, people act here like the learning process regarding pinpoint landing was something entirely different from literally everything else. Some time ago I lost my first and so far the only Vall lander. I crashed at high speed few seconds after running out of fuel. What did I learn from it? That I need more fuel than I thought and more powerful engine. Even if the mission cost me over 4 ingame years. I am fully aware that before I try anything that requires precision, I first need to know how to do it without that precision. Gods, learning from mistakes is the essence of this game, always has been. Before you get to landing at/near bases, you should already know how to land safely *anywhere*. And, you know, your first landers usually have enough fuel for return, unless you like to be stuck. When you finally start setting up a base, you'll probably still be using those, or similar landers, all with return capabilities. So you may as well use some of that fuel to hop in closer to the base. There's most likely a long way before you're able to recover your vessels, and thus, when you no longer have to worry about having enough fuel for return.

I do not argue that learning from mistakes is a basic concept of ksp, however, as mentioned in a previous video, the game will not become easier, but more accessible and with "more accessible" means helping players with operations complicated like rendezvous in orbit. in ksp 1, there are several indicators that tell you how far you will be from the target at any given moment, it is then up to you to reduce that distance to allow rendezvous. however, in ksp 1 the reentry system from an orbit of a planet with an atmosphere, for example, gives you a landing point that does not take into account forces such as the air brake or the rotation of the planet itself (coriolis effect) and this leads you to be inaccurate with landings. I agree that by dint of trying sooner or later you succeed in the intent, but personally I think that while docking to a vessel in orbit is a difficult concept to learn, but that then becomes easy once you understand the mechanism. landing more or less precisely in one point is equally difficult to learn, but equally difficult to master, as there are many variables that can make landing go wrong, because it depends on external factors, which are not there in orbit, because in fact, the tracking of an orbit does not undergo variations because there are no external forces, in the atmosphere there are external forces (such as friction in ksp 1 and in 2 probably there will also be other atmospheric conditions) that affect the trajectory

 

[Pthigrivi]

Im generally in agreement that really good trajectories and some recovery mechanic gets players close enough for horseshoes early and they can refine over time. It be nice if the prediction accounted for attack angle as well and there was a ‘lock on angle to horizon’ SAS function to help pitched descents. I also think it might be wise to have an early starter colony control hub type part in the 2.5-3.75m size range that would open up BAE functionality, and allow you to simply pick up and arrange modules landed within a km or so. It be much more forgiving and less time consuming for players than using rovers to manually arrange things in those very early stages. It should just require some basic set up to provide power and staff. 

Edited February 17, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Chilkoot]

You can do these kind of automated RTLS and propulsive-landed boosters in career mode (KSP1 obv) using KoS.  The end effect is largely identical to what SpaceX does with F9 and FH, and it's extremely satisfying when you nail it in-game.  Be warned, the ∆v cost is higher than you might think.

From a very early interview with one of the mod consultants, we heard that parts in KSP 2 are now scriptable, but whether there will be an interface for that in the game is another question.  I'm a big proponent of adding user-generated automation sequences as they add a whole new dimension to the simulation (literally no one is flying rockets IRL of course), but it remains to be seen if and how that would be implemented in KSP 2.