Help With EVA?

[starkllr]

I'm guessing this is another one of those questions where the answer is simply "practice!" but I'll ask anyway.

Can anyone give me some practical tips on controlling my kerbonauts when I send them EVA in space (once I've landed them, I've mostly got the hang of running them around on the ground)? Every single time I've done it, I've blasted them away from their ship and lost them in space with no hope of maneuvering them back.

Is there a trick to keeping them under control and getting them to move slowly and carefully where I want them to go? I even tried it with KAS. I stuck ladders all over the ship so I could walk my kerbonaut down to the winch and attach the connector to him. So far so good. But when I tried to use the jetpack to fly him slowly over to the target ship 5 meters away, I lost control completely and had to use the winch to reel him in. I just can't keep them oriented correctly or anything.

Like so many other things with this game, it seems impossible until I figure it out, and then I wonder why I thought it was so difficult in the first place. But can anybody help me get to that point with my poor guys on EVA? Thanks!

[SuperWeegee4000]

Well, you need to know the control scheme. R is to toggle their RCS packs on and off, WASD is to move them forward, left, back, or right, respectively, SHIFT is to move up, CTRL to move down. Be sure they have their packs on.

[esinohio]

Gah, I hate to be the first one to say it but you are right. Practice does make perfect. For me, I got used to the eva by firing up the jetpacks and just learning to move up, down, right, left.. etc. Just one direction at a time. And as I'm sure you have noticed a little jetpack can go a looooong way. Small moves.

[Tw1]

Tip number one:

W always makes the kerbals move away from the camera. (Unless you're looking top down or bottom up.) Use this to your advantage.

Two:

You will always need to to the opposite to slow down. Just like with a spaceship.

Three:

No navball means you have to keep track of your velocity vectors by eye and memory. When moving around stations, I like to use the lights for extra clarity.

Also, keep your winches in "released" mode, or your kerbal will go out of control. I tried towing a capsule with Bill a while ago. The capsule ended up "orbiting" around him.

Hope this is of some help to you.

[SDIR]

Also, a handy tip is that you can use space to orient your kerbal to whatever direction the camera is facing. And added bonus is that if you mouse over your kerbal and drag with the eva pack on, the kerbal will rotate, so that he is oriented in the proper position to grab on.

[sierra_seven_]

Take it slow and steady, Kerbals travelling at high velocity can wreak havoc on pretty much anything. If you're having real difficulty, just inch forward a bit at a time and then kill your speed. Rinse and repeat And good idea with KAS, I use it for tethers too. Still, once EVA becomes second nature, you'll have more than enough monoprop in the backpack to get your Kerbal wherever they need to go!

[Crass]

Go slow. For every action there is an opposite reaction. So instead of just mashing the shift key when you want to go up, give it a tap, drift into place then tap ctrl to stop, etc etc.

[Entropyguy]

Well - I've done many successful EVA's with the jetpack ---until last night.

I was transferring between ships ~ 100 m apart, and the jet pack was just uncontrollable. It seems to have way too much thrust so even the quickest blip would send me at a high relative speed and there is no way I can get close or grab one without smashing into a ship.

I tried "tab" to see if that would generate softer thrust levels (as with RCS), but nothing helped.

Anyone have suggestions?

[Taki117]

Well - I've done many successful EVA's with the jetpack ---until last night.

I was transferring between ships ~ 100 m apart, and the jet pack was just uncontrollable. It seems to have way too much thrust so even the quickest blip would send me at a high relative speed and there is no way I can get close or grab one without smashing into a ship.

I tried "tab" to see if that would generate softer thrust levels (as with RCS), but nothing helped.

Anyone have suggestions?

It's actually CAPS LOCK that does the fine adjustment, but I don't believe it works for kerbal packs. As far as your issue, quickly tap one, then the other for fine adjustments. You could also tap the opposite direction you want to go first, then doubletap the direction you want to go (The faster the better, also don't press and hold, just give it a quick tap)

[Entropyguy]

Caps lock - oops..that's what I meant to say! Works great for RCS but I didn't notice a difference on backpack.

yeah - I'm tapping as fast as possible. Maybe just something going on with the computer because it had worked perfectly before. I could moved easy and very accurately in the past.

I just figured I had hit some key combination to turn on "super jets" - which I guess isn't the case.

[Sirrobert]

I would suggest you land on Minmus and practice your jetpack there. Because of the low gravity you can actually fly pritty easy over the surface (you can also on the Mun, but the gravity is higher so you get pulled back harder). And because you are not in orbit, you'll always come back down again if you lose control, so no risk of getting lost in space.

Note that if you let go of the controls and fall from to high up, the fall might kill your Kerbal. So quicksave just in case.

On that note: It's always a good idea to quicksave before you do something you are not an expert in, and/or could go wrong easy. For me that's Landing and Docking, for you you might add EVA to that list

PS: if your kerbal is spinning out of control, activate and than deactivate the jetpack (hotkey R) a few times should fix the spin faster than just activating the jetpack and leaving it. Should also save abit of extra fuel

[Panzerbeard]

Also, a handy tip is that you can use space to orient your kerbal to whatever direction the camera is facing.

Wait, what?!

...well, I have learned something today

Edited December 16, 2013 by Panzerbeard