How to put manuever node on blue "current" line not brown "after encounter" line.

[Dunbaratu]

When your current course is predicted to encounter a planet or moon which is going to alter its orbit, the interface shows you two orbit prediction lines - a blue one and a brown one. The blue one is where you're going on your current path prior to the encounter, and the brown one is where your orbit is predicted to be after that encounter changes it.

For some really annoying reason I continually have problems getting the game to let me click to set a maneuver node on the BLUE line when in this situation. It always instead sets one on the nearby brown line when I click on the blue, which is useless if the reason I want to do the maneuver is to change how the encounter will go prior to getting to the planet. I've now gotten into the habit of just not using maneuver nodes to adjust the encounter, instead aligning the ship along exact orthogonal orientations (i.e. aimed toward prograde mark, rotated so "up" is lined up exact with either normal, antinormal, "in" or "out"), and then turning on RCS and using HNIJKL to experimentally see which orthogonal directions cause the encounter periopsis number to get smaller, and that tells me the direction to make my more substantial burn in. (i.e. if I discover that prograde makes the number get smaller fast, and antinormal makes it get smaller slowly, then that tells me to pick an orientation partway between prograde and antinormal, but closer to prograde than antinormal, and make my burn like that. This is the sort of thing I do in lieu of being able to set a maneuver node to see where the blue mark is.)

But really I want to know if I'm the only person who has encountered this behavior (can only set a maneuver node on the brown line, not the blue), and what others have done as a workaround if they've encountered it too.

[xooll]

I've had that problem too. My not-very-good solution was more or less the same as yours.

[Daisy Blossom]

I also have this issue; you're not alone. Would love to hear of a fix/ workaround. Always happens right when I'm trying to setup crucial mid course corrections.

[semanticman]

If you include a screenshot of the map view, it might help people understand the particular circumstance and suggest a solution.

[rryy]

Try zooming in and adjusting the camera angle so that the current and post-encounter trajectories are separated enough so that you can place a maneuver node on the current orbit.

[Mr Shifty]

I use MechJeb: you can have use its maneuver planner to add a maneuver node to, say, circularize your orbit 120 seconds from your current epoch. Then you can use the maneuver node editor to zero out the delta-V's for the various axes and adjust whichever you want. If you download the Better Maneuver Nodes plugin, you can use the num-pad to adjust each axis separately so you don't have to fiddle with the twitchy mouse controls.

[durk]

You can also try to warp time a second or so, that usually fixes it for me.