Giving up.

[skipper8472]

Sorry but I give up. I have been on it for 22 hours and not got a clue any more what to do. I don't no how fast to set your throttle and I have looked every where but can not understand it. I don't no when to start rolling properly and a what height and speed etc. I no its only Alpha version but wish there where more descriptions in game for what things do as to me its not clear and more on tutorials and not just the couple. I am leaving this game a loan for a bit as its now getting me mad.

[joppiesaus]

I don't get it. You don't understand to throttle? Just press leftshift to throttle up, and leftctrl to throttle down.

[rosenkranz]

'rocket science' may not be for everybody but, perhaps you're trying to hard. ease up. you'll learn a lot watching some of the youtube stuff (there is a lot of it). I'd recomend Scot Manleys stuff

[MBobrik]

there are plenty of tutorials on the internets. just google kerbal space program tutorial getting to orbit or something like that.

.

there are loads of tutorials on the youtube

like here

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

Have you tried Scott Manley's tutorial playlist?

This is how i learned.

[ComradeGoat]

KSP does require a certain familiarity with the concept of orbital mechanics and the mathematics behind it to play well. I'm personally grateful for this and appreciate the challenge, but understand not everyone has that in their background.

[togfox]

May I suggest you're over thinking it?

throttle to 100% and leave it there.

Go straight up to 10 000 meters (having a single ASAS helps)

At 10 000 meters, turn your nose to 45 degrees on the 90 degree line.

Win. I can guarantee you won't have the most efficient ascent, but I can guarantee you'll reach space this way. Perhaps your craft is causing problems?

[skipper8472]

Sorry if I seemed I sounded like I was bashing the sim as its not the sim its me if you no what I mean.

[HGGundamReviews]

For most launches, full throttle at launch, throttle back to about 45-50% after your launch, so you're still getting altitude but not pushing up to or past 200m/s until you're into the first dark blue bar of atmosphere. At 10k altitude turn to 45 degrees along the 90 degree vector. Continue turning slowly until your at 70k, when you should be near the horizon mark on your nav ball, the point where the blue and brown meet. On your map it will show you your AP (highest point) once that reaches the altitude you want (75K or higher recommended) turn your engines off till you get to that point at which point, point ProGrade its the yellow marker that doesn't have a little X in it on the nav ball. Then burn full speed until on the map you see your orbit come up out of the planet and the PE marker reach the same or as close to the same height as your AP. That is a stable orbit.

[Tw1]

Don't worry, just take it slow. Build a simple rocket. See how high you can get.

Make it bigger. Try and leave the atmosphere.See how far you can get, heading over the sea. Keep building, go further, and further, and eventually, you'll go right around the planet.

Do this above the atmosphere, and the air won't slow you down. And that's an orbit.

Read the part descriptions carefully, and use them according to that. Best of luck to you!

(And if KSP is not your thing, it's only a game, so go outside and enjoy the sunshine! (Or get on with assignments like I've been doing all day:( ))

[Ted]

I wouldn't give up just because you're not great on the building of rockets. Try your hand at building planes - it's what I do mostly.

Also, as many have suggested in this thread, give the YouTube videos a gander; they're massively helpful.

[Deadpangod3]

I could post a pic of my ship I used to get to orbit for the first time so you can copy it, or I could try and figure out how to post a craft file, its really wide though, but I got it into munar orbit in the old demo (yes I was stupid enough try and land with it, failed miserably XD) it also needs some struts but it works well, if you want I can do it as soon as I get home from school

[Endangerment]

You can get into orbit with three parts. Prob core, grey fuel tank and a '45 engine I believe. Turn right (east) at 10km and that will get you up into orbit (think with this design you cut thrust once apo is >75k and restart to circularise but can't remember).

[flyfire2002]

May I point out that there's something called ‘Training’ in the game?

[EndOfTheEarth]

Don't give up. Learning how to get into orbit the first time without prior knowledge is, in my opinion, the hardest part of the game. It took me two and a half days before I had it down to a level where I felt comfortable.

[ahappydude]

Ask your parents for help:)

[JRF2k]

As others have suggested, do the Tutorials, they will teach you the basics.

I usually follow these steps:

1. Turn on ASAS.

2. Throttle up to 100% (Shift key)

3. LAUNCH!

4. Look at how fast I am ascending and try and keep the speed at 150 to 200 meters/second. Anything more and you are wasting fuel due to the atmosphere.

5. At 10,000 meters, decouple any SRBs (solid rocket boosters) I have and start slowly edging my rocket to a 45 degree angle. This is called a "gravity turn". It sets you up for orbit.

6. Switch to map mode (M) - check apopasis. Waiting until I am at least 70KM - 100KM.

7. Kill the engines (X)

8. Coast to Apopasis.

9. Right when you hit the apopasis, throttle up to full (SHIFT KEY) and watch as your orbit increases.

10. Once you you have periapsis, kill the engines (x)

11. Welcome to orbit.

After that you can play around with circularizing your orbit or you can do maneuver nodes too to do different things.

The Scott Manely Tutorials on Youtube were awesome. Definitely check those out! Those got me off the ground and into orbit. Now I am trying to land on Minimus and having a hard go at it right now.

Edited May 10, 2013 by JRF2k

[Exal]

It can be a little difficult but once u do it once then it gets way easy from there. Try getting mech jeb and watch how it does it then try to replicate it on ur own just don't get hooked on mech jeb to do it every time because that takes the fun out of it.

[BaneOfPilots]

Also, if you reach orbit, you can easily reach the Mun. Just throttle forward and look at the map. Once it your rocket's orbit touches the Mun's, then just wait.

The wiki is also very helpful.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Main_Page

[Endoric]

The Scott Manely Tutorials on Youtube were awesome. Definitely check those out! Those got me off the ground and into orbit. Now I am trying to land on Minimus and having a hard go at it right now.

scott manely is the man-ly!

[Mazlem]

During my first week of playing I was absolutely pissed off a lot of the time because I *thought* I knew what I was doing but still couldn't make a ship that wouldn't fall apart, and when I did get one built I still couldn't get into an orbit. It wasn't until reading / watching a lot of tutorials on building stuff and getting an orbit / rendezvousing that I got to understand the game. Then it took another week of kinda starting over before I got to a point of having enough experience to do anything useful.

So stick with it! Especially early in the game when things seem really hard, finally getting something accomplished like getting a good orbit, docking to another ship or building a basic space station are really rewarding.

[superm18]

I don't know if it is possible, but if you would like me to help i can play the game through Teamviewer and show you how it's done!

send me a PM if your up for it

[sadron]

He's only been here since May (it's the 10th ) and he's already given up? He barely even tried to learn! This isn't rocket surgery, the concepts are easy to understand. I don't think he actually tried that hard.

[SkyRender]

It can be intimidating, trying to learn a complex system. Especially one that involves as many variables as space flight. And it can be very frustrating when you make no progress for what seems like forever when you first start out with such an intimidating task. But it's not impossible! Here's some helpful advice:

1. When you build your rocket, keep in mind that any weight you don't need is just going to slow you down on the way to space. Set up any side tanks so you can drop them as they run out of fuel.

2. Hook up fuel lines leading from any droppable side tanks to the central tank of your spacecraft. That way, you can drop the side tanks faster and lose more weight from your rocket faster too.

3. Don't forget to add an ASAS module to your ship! It takes the tedious task of keeping your ship level over for you.

4. When launching, turn on ASAS (press T) and go full-throttle to start with. If you're not going up very fast doing that (or at all), you need bigger or more engines to do so.

5. Slow down so your speed is roughly 90 to 100m/s and climbing very slowly around 1,000m.

6. Keep an eye on your speed: it should be around 140 to 160m/s at 6,000m and around 220 to 240m/s at 10,000m.

7. At 10,000m increase the thrust to near-full and start slowly tilting your rocket towards the "90" mark on the navball (the small orb on the bottom of the screen). This should cause your rocket to tilt 45 degrees towards the horizon. Don't forget to re-enable ASAS once you're at the 90 mark!

8. Bring up the map and call up the navball there too. You now want to track two things: your time to apoapsis (move the mouse over the AP marker to check this) and your rocket's position. Your goal here is to make sure that you keep pointing towards the yellow circle (prograde) and that your time to apoapsis stays between 55 seconds and 1 minute 15 seconds. This means a lot of disabling ASAS, adjusting position, and re-enabling ASAS, as well as gradually reducing thrust so you're not pushing ahead too far.

9. Once AP is 60,000m or so, gradually start easing back on your time to apoapsis. The idea is to get it down to around 0 to 15 seconds at 70,000 to 75,000. Shut off the engines if apoapsis reaches or exceeds 75,000.

10. Once you reach apoapsis, turn back on the engines and thrust towards the yellow circle (it should be right on the horizon) hard and fast. Watch your map while you do this. When AP switches to PE, you're safely in orbit.

Hopefully something in there helps you out. Don't give up! The more frustrating the experience, the more satisfying it is when you triumph!

Edited May 10, 2013 by SkyRender

[lyndonguitar]

try doing the tutorials, I forgot exactly how I learnt KSP but as far as I remember I did all the tutorials first and around 22 hours I already mastered orbiting and omw to the mun