What's A Craft And Rocket Design For This Space Station Module That Will Actually Work?

[Deep12000]

So I was dumb and forgot to put a power supply on my space station core module. Now I am trying to fix that mistake and attach a pure battery module. I've lost track of how many failed attempts I've had. A big thing is that when I did the stock Docking Tutorial, I could rotate my craft at a decent rate without activating any of my thrusters. With mine that's not the case, so I'm wasting fuel and knocking myself off course just rotating. My theory is that my craft is disproportionately long to its diameter so I could either cut back on some of my batteries (probably don't need as much as I have anyway) or try to make the craft wider. There's probably also a more efficient design for a rocket than I have. This imur link contains all stages of the rocket and the module by itself (forums weren't letting me insert the images) https://imgur.com/a/8TnSrmT

I'm just really tired and am not good enough at the game to figure this out on my own (only got 43 hours)

[Coyote Foxtrot]

Using RCS thrusters will typically cause a change in orbit and relative velocity to your target as the thrust is not perfectly only effecting orientation causing some thrust to change your orbit. This issue is exacerbated with your craft here as RCS thruster are not placed symmetrically around the CoM of the orbital maneuvering portion. This will cause the RCS thrusters fire in an uneven matter and although it can rotate your craft, it has unwanted thrust changing the orbit.

One method is to have your new station module isolated and maneuver itself with its own RCS thruster system. Of course, this will add complexity with needing command modules and whatnot added to your module.

Another method is to toggle off the RCS and rely only on reaction wheels to rotate your craft. It is a a slower unless you have large or many of them, but they allow you to orient yourself without having thrust which can change your orbit (and relative velocity to your target). You currently seem only the small integrated reaction wheels that come with the command module you are using. You could stick with that and slowly rotate with RCS off or add additional reaction wheels near the CoM to allow for greater rotational control.

A note about your module is that it seems to primarily be batteries with no way to generate electricity. It's easier to think of KSP's electrical system as power production and capacitors. The batteries can be thought as the capacitors and store electric charge for those moments when you need a lot of electric charge quickly (e.g. running/transmitting science experiments). Unless you have things that need electric charge production to match their usage, you can simply used a limited amount of them whether it be radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), solar panels, or fuel cells.

[Deep12000]

13 hours ago, Coyote Foxtrot said:

Using RCS thrusters will typically cause a change in orbit and relative velocity to your target as the thrust is not perfectly only effecting orientation causing some thrust to change your orbit. This issue is exacerbated with your craft here as RCS thruster are not placed symmetrically around the CoM of the orbital maneuvering portion. This will cause the RCS thrusters fire in an uneven matter and although it can rotate your craft, it has unwanted thrust changing the orbit.

One method is to have your new station module isolated and maneuver itself with its own RCS thruster system. Of course, this will add complexity with needing command modules and whatnot added to your module.

Another method is to toggle off the RCS and rely only on reaction wheels to rotate your craft. It is a a slower unless you have large or many of them, but they allow you to orient yourself without having thrust which can change your orbit (and relative velocity to your target). You currently seem only the small integrated reaction wheels that come with the command module you are using. You could stick with that and slowly rotate with RCS off or add additional reaction wheels near the CoM to allow for greater rotational control.

A note about your module is that it seems to primarily be batteries with no way to generate electricity. It's easier to think of KSP's electrical system as power production and capacitors. The batteries can be thought as the capacitors and store electric charge for those moments when you need a lot of electric charge quickly (e.g. running/transmitting science experiments). Unless you have things that need electric charge production to match their usage, you can simply used a limited amount of them whether it be radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), solar panels, or fuel cells.

Ah thank you. Now I know what reaction wheels do. Also my plan for the station was to have the power section in two modules: The batteries and the solar panel array(s)

[Deep12000]

While we're here, I've heard from various people that the rendezvous method taught in the stock tutorial isn't the best way of doing it (I've heard Matt Lowne call it the "lazy way" and Scott Manley said it wasn't the most efficient nor the way real space agencies do it) so could I be provided with a resource to learn how to do it the more efficient way?

[Coyote Foxtrot]

1 hour ago, Deep12000 said:

While we're here, I've heard from various people that the rendezvous method taught in the stock tutorial isn't the best way of doing it (I've heard Matt Lowne call it the "lazy way" and Scott Manley said it wasn't the most efficient nor the way real space agencies do it) so could I be provided with a resource to learn how to do it the more efficient way?

I honestly do it the lazy way, but I found this thread with illustrations for the different methods of rendezvous.