I am going to take my first stab at docking today (best practices?)

[scyflimark]

Docking scares the hell out of me, so I've never even tried it. That's not true,  I tried, but let's just say I couldn't even get my crafts close enough to each other to warrant the ability to dock. I want to learn though, if I'm going to be a real Kerbonaut, I must cross this threshold! I've watched a ton of vids trying to figure put the best way (there are several).  I'm still so confused. So, I just wanted to ask the community for best practices when docking, including the rendezvous itself. Does anyone have a link or guide? Thank you in advance for any help.

[18Watt]

Here's a really good guide by @Snark.  It's written for KSP1, but the concepts are the same.

I'd start with that guide.  Here's my tips for learning to rendezvous and dock:

• Once you have zeroed out relative motion, go slow!  
• Turn on infinite propellant while practicing.  Once you have it down, turn infinite propellant back off, but start with an infinite supply of propellant.
• Docking small maneuverable ships is much easier than maneuvering big ships.  Start with two small ships.  
• If you are becoming visually confused in LKO, try a higher orbit for docking practice.  At first, the motion of Kerbin moving under your ships can be disorienting.  Performing the docking at 200-300 km might help keep the visual disorientations to a minimum.

Good luck!  Oh yeah, also welcome to the KSP Forums @scyflimark!

[Vanamonde]

The hardest mental adjustment is understanding that you can't force it to happen. The harder you try the worse it gets. Instead, try to adjust the conditions so that time brings the craft together. 

[Starhawk]

Read Snark's guide linked above.

Learn the navball.

Happy landings docking!

[FleshJeb]

The one thing left out of Snark's guide is to point the docking port of the target ship to Normal or Anti-Normal . This simplifies the complexity of the operation a lot.

If it's pointed in any other direction, the burns you do to get from 100m to 0m will have a noticeable effect on the size of your orbit, and you'll have to correct for them. With this trick, mostly what changes is your inclination, and you can almost ignore the other motions. You can actually dock fairly easily without setting a target, just by locking your orientation to the opposite of the target, and you'll remain parallel to it during the entire process. So it just becomes a 3D translation problem with no rotations to worry about.

[Mahnarch]

On 3/30/2023 at 1:00 AM, FleshJeb said:

The one thing left out of Snark's guide is to point the docking port of the target ship to Normal or Anti-Normal . This simplifies the complexity of the operation a lot.

Also known as the 'UppyDowny Method' - which, as we all know, was invented by Dr. Jonathan Uppydowny in 1863.

[FleshJeb]

On 4/4/2023 at 2:31 PM, Mahnarch said:

Also known as the 'UppyDowny Method' - which, as we all know, was invented by Dr. Jonathan Uppydowny in 1863.

It's the NorthySouthy Method. UppyDowny would be and

[Mahnarch]

On 4/6/2023 at 12:09 AM, FleshJeb said:

UppyDowny would be and

That's the Outtie/Innie Method.

[Dunas Only Moon]

4 hours ago, Mahnarch said:

That's the Outtie/Innie Method.

you are all wrong. the uppie/downie method is when you point prograde at launch, as it is the only one that points up on the navball