tips on docking?

[Dunas Only Moon]

 

i need help on docking for the first time in console ksp... any tips?

Edited August 2, 2023 by Dunas Only Moon

[Zhetaan]

10 hours ago, Dunas Only Moon said:

i need help on docking for the first time in console ksp... any tips?

I'm going to assume that you're good enough with rendezvous to reliably get good close encounters and only need help with docking, itself.  I'll not parrot the standard advice that you can find most anywhere, but will instead share a couple of tricks that I've learned over time:

• Docking ports generally only engage when your closing velocity is less than .3 m/s--that's 30 centimetres per second.  You need to drift--with purpose--but still drift to dock.
• If you put your docking port on the front or side of your vessel and approach from zero relative inclination, then depending on how slowly you perform the manoeuvre, you may find that the circular path of the target vessel's orbit has rotated the target port away from a good angle by the time you reach it.  You can do one of two things to help with this:  you can learn to drift quickly, or you can use reaction wheels on the target to orient the target port to normal/anti-normal and approach from above/below.  Orbital rotation will then merely spin the target port round, not turn it away from your port.
• For learning, it's okay to be generous with monopropellant and attitude thrusters.  Efficiency can only reliably come with skill, so learn the skill first.
• I play on PC and thus have access to the alternative translational controls for the attitude thrusters, but I think that on console, you are stuck with docking mode instead.  I don't know the way to get to docking mode on console, but I will say that translational control is much more important than rotational control for docking.  This is another reason to rotate the target so that the docking port is aligned with the normal axis:  you can rotate your vessel to face normal while still somewhat far away from the target port, and then switch to docking mode and use the translational controls to bring your vessel in to dock.
• Precision control mode (accessed on PC with CapsLock--I hope that helps you find the appropriate control for console) is, if not absolutely necessary, then certainly helpful.  When it's active, the roll, pitch, and yaw indicators on the lower left of the screen are blue instead of orange.  You don't need power to dock; you need precision.  The best unsung feature of precision control mode is that it balances the thrust output of your attitude thrusters to keep your vessel aligned.  This alleviates any balance issues that come from not having the jets positioned equidistantly from the vessel's centre of mass.
• Lastly, if you need to practise docking, then you should consider sending up a set of docking trainers.  These are little tugs with a probe core, monopropellant tank, attitude thrusters, docking port, and only the minimum necessary hardware to power and control them.  They're cheap, highly manoeuvrable, and a lot more forgiving than your 3-million-Funds orbital station.  If you send them up as a set of two, then you won't need to worry about rendezvous, either; simply undock, re-dock, and continue doing so in various situations until you're comfortable with the process.  If you break one, then de-orbit and try again.

I hope that helps.

Good luck!

[Dunas Only Moon]

22 minutes ago, Zhetaan said:

I'm going to assume that you're good enough with rendezvous to reliably get good close encounters and only need help with docking, itself.  I'll not parrot the standard advice that you can find most anywhere, but will instead share a couple of tricks that I've learned over time:

• Docking ports generally only engage when your closing velocity is less than .3 m/s--that's 30 centimetres per second.  You need to drift--with purpose--but still drift to dock.
• If you put your docking port on the front or side of your vessel and approach from zero relative inclination, then depending on how slowly you perform the manoeuvre, you may find that the circular path of the target vessel's orbit has rotated the target port away from a good angle by the time you reach it.  You can do one of two things to help with this:  you can learn to drift quickly, or you can use reaction wheels on the target to orient the target port to normal/anti-normal and approach from above/below.  Orbital rotation will then merely spin the target port round, not turn it away from your port.
• For learning, it's okay to be generous with monopropellant and attitude thrusters.  Efficiency can only reliably come with skill, so learn the skill first.
• I play on PC and thus have access to the alternative translational controls for the attitude thrusters, but I think that on console, you are stuck with docking mode instead.  I don't know the way to get to docking mode on console, but I will say that translational control is much more important than rotational control for docking.  This is another reason to rotate the target so that the docking port is aligned with the normal axis:  you can rotate your vessel to face normal while still somewhat far away from the target port, and then switch to docking mode and use the translational controls to bring your vessel in to dock.
• Precision control mode (accessed on PC with CapsLock--I hope that helps you find the appropriate control for console) is, if not absolutely necessary, then certainly helpful.  When it's active, the roll, pitch, and yaw indicators on the lower left of the screen are blue instead of orange.  You don't need power to dock; you need precision.  The best unsung feature of precision control mode is that it balances the thrust output of your attitude thrusters to keep your vessel aligned.  This alleviates any balance issues that come from not having the jets positioned equidistantly from the vessel's centre of mass.
• Lastly, if you need to practise docking, then you should consider sending up a set of docking trainers.  These are little tugs with a probe core, monopropellant tank, attitude thrusters, docking port, and only the minimum necessary hardware to power and control them.  They're cheap, highly manoeuvrable, and a lot more forgiving than your 3-million-Funds orbital station.  If you send them up as a set of two, then you won't need to worry about rendezvous, either; simply undock, re-dock, and continue doing so in various situations until you're comfortable with the process.  If you break one, then de-orbit and try again.

I hope that helps.

Good luck!

thanks man! 

1. i think that precision control mode is made with the trigger buttons.
2. there is a mode to mode left right up down foward and back, (docking mode, you said earlier)

3. im going to crash... many times, as stick drift is a think 
is centimeters from docking

stick drifts full power: bojour