Help

[Foxy86]

Just need some help understanding some of the game.

[sal_vager]

Hi Foxy86, welcome to the community

Can you tell us what you need help with?

[Ascensiam]

We probably know what you need to know, just specify the issue. And welcome aboard.

[Markus Reese]

Hiya, and welcome to the forums. The best help I can give is remember that ksp is a physics program first and foremost. The graphics, while bright and cool is mostly texture and in itself, secondary. Everything is about that.

Learning ksp is much like the initial glory days of space travel, one small step! Not sure if trial or paid, but start with being as basic as you can. Take a capsule and add a parachute. This is the basic for every successful flight, getting yourself down and defeating the evil kersplosions when gravity drags you in.

Add a decoupler underneath your capsule. These are found in the structural category of the design area. This allows you to jettison spent fuel.

Lastly, go to production and attach a solid rocket booster to this decoupler. Affix some fins to it for stability. Now the fins attach around the outside. It is important that they are symetrically placed around to ensure stable flight, imbalances can lead to loss of control. To make radially symetrical placements, you can click the symetry icon in top left of the fitting window for symetrical placement of 2,3,4,6 or 8 parts.

Now you have your first rocket. Head to the launchpad, hit spacebar to fire your stage. When the engine runs out of fuel, press spacebar again for the next stage to decouple the engine. One more time when you start decending and parachute will fire off. KSP uses standard WASD flight controls for pitch and yaw, use Q and E for roll. Experiment around with this to get the feel for control. After that, it is all about experimenting and playing. Add a few fuel tanks and engine for a bit more and longer duration thrust. Add secondary stagings for boosters. An SAS for stability, ASAS for autoguidance (press T to turn SAS/ASAS on and it will try to keep you pointed in direction you are traveling with ASAS).

You also can change what stages parts are in by first clicking to highlight a part in the staging order, then dragging to a new stage. Pres the + icon in staging list to make a new stage, or - to remove an empty stage. This is useful when you want a stage to activate right after jettisoning another one.

That should get you a good start on ksp, aim for space, and then orbitting and returns. As you set new goals, be sure search the how to, lots of good guides on ways to accomplish tasks on stock parts.