Why, oh why?

[Tokay Gris]

Why, oh why are my docking maneuvers always always in the dark and in the shadow?

[Richy teh space man]

That's one reason why I put lights on my space stations..

[Dortmunder]

You should think about tossing a light or two facing away from your docking ports. Lights everything up

Pointing towards the ship you'll be docking with, or towards you from the ship you're docking with.

[Tokay Gris]

I have lights... LOTS actually, because I always have to dock in the dark.

Docking lights, lights to light the docking ports to dock with, lights to see the attitude of the vessel....

My ships are COVERED in lights... This is like riding a bike in the Netherlands: The wind is ALWAYS directly from the front...

[rodion_herrera]

If your computer display/card driver has gamma settings, pulling that up by a few notches might help when you're in the dark side of planets/moons.

[Tokay Gris]

Hey, guys... this was not a problem as such... It was just a lament.

Like "Why does the bread always fall on the buttered side?"

Or "Why do I always run out of batteries in my mouse at the most unconvenient time?"

[Peenvogel]

I used to work around that by using the Lazor systems; they have a great night cam. Too bad the mod is making my game do all weird kind of things, so I decided to put the mod aside and wait for some other versions. In the meantime, the only way to get a little more visual is to crank up the gamma but there is no in game way of doing that. I really hope that someday a night cam will be officially integrated, or the the very least: some brightness settings is the options menu.

[Tokay Gris]

Just Murphy striking again, I guess....

[Iren]

I kind of got used to dock only by looking at the pink mark on the navball.

[Tokay Gris]

So do I.

Around Kerbin, I don't care about the attitude of the ships... But around Mun, it gets problematic... they turn so fast... at least I have that impression.

[Scarecrow88]

I like the Lazor docking cam for docking, not just for the camera. Using the readouts I reckon I could do an instrument docking in full darkness.

[Free Trader Beowulf]

For the same reason battles are always fought at night, in the rain, at the junction of four maps.

[NeoMorph]

Do you notice that there can be a really delicate manoeuvre you need to do and have to align it to the docking port and avoid several solar panels... and then just as you are coming in... LIGHTS OUT!.... Later on you come back into the light and there are lots and lots of little lights... coming from the bits and pieces of the solar panels you smushed. (yeah, smushed is more horrifying than smashed).

[KevinTMC]

Orbital Manoeuvres in the Dark

It should be a band or something.

[CalculusWarrior]

Running out of power just before you've finished lining the ships up is simply one of the most frustrating things that can happen in the game. To combat this, I simply stick an RTG onto any large robotic ships that need to dock, as with my luck they will be doing so on the dark side...

[NeoMorph]

Oh god yes... I usually just drop a single solar panel on to power probes... unfortunately the one time I was approaching the station just as I dropped into shade. Didn't think anything of it but I had forgotten to put any batteries on... Power dropped and died... JUST AS I WAS GOING TO HIT THE RETROS.

I knocked off a good third of my space station that time lol. Nipped it off when I hit the truss at about 12m/s. I managed to save the Kerbals by doing an EVA with the ones going into my old spacelab side of the station. I was about to disconnect that module in that mission too. Good job I didn't.

[Tokay Gris]

I do just that... I don't like atomic reactors on my vessels. But I make an effort to stick at least ONE of those single solar plates on. So no matter what, at least some time in the future there will be enough juice in the batteries to extend those big solar panels....

There are quite a few probes around Kerbin that are absolutely dead...