Do you use Mechjeb?

[teacherboi]

I do use MechJeb, but mostly for the Smart A.S.S. I would live to see R&D in KSP where we have to research new tech. That would be a great way to unlock features found in MechJeb through standard play.

[Captiva]

Never have and never will. I like doing things myself. The journey is more important then the destination.... usually.

[Tiron]

Yup

I also firmly fully believe there are people who do and say they don't lol.

Edit: Its an amazing teaching tool, I used it exclusively for much of the first month I played and just from watching it have learned much of what I know.

It can't teach EVERYTHING you need to know to be a great pilot but man oh man does it help!

I was the other way around... in part because I started playing in the 0.13.3 demo which couldn't use Plugins at all. I DID manage to land on the Mun in it, completely manually. Using fins for landing legs. I'd heard you had to do that, but wasn't sure how you got them low enough...so I had them on radial decouplers placed as low as possible on the fuel tanks, with the fins as low as possible on the decouplers. It was BARELY long enough to touch the ground before the LV-T45, but it worked. I discovered later the actual way of attaching the fins was different, but I forget what it was now...

[Uncle Mort]

Never have and never will. I like doing things myself. The journey is more important then the destination.... usually.

usually ~ you must have experienced London's tube network at some point.

[Tiron]

usually ~ you must have experienced London's tube network at some point.

Not necessarily... I've never been within 3000 miles of London, let alone on the tube.

[macegee]

Because in Game Terms, KSP is more or less equivalent to 'Lego Orbiter'. It's supposed to be relatively simple and easy to just jump into, while still allowing for a surprising degree of sophistication.

Well, I don't see it that way. Even if so, game currently can tell you lot of stuff about celestial bodies, such as atmospheric scale height, escape velocity, and even standard gravitational parameter. But it can't tell craft's delta-v or it's TWR. That's "top-heavy", and has nothing to do with being "Lego Orbiter".

And if Maxmaps or other Squad guys are still reading this, can you clarify on this "more ingame info" matter?

[Caelib]

I started using it several months after I started playing the game because I felt like I had mastered the mechanics as best as I could. After having used MechJeb for a few months, I can definitively say that it actually *improved* my skills because I watch what it does and learn from it. I still fly manually about half of the time, just to keep my skills sharp.

As many people have stated in the past, the autopilot does remove a lot of user-skill from the game, but there's no denying how incredibly useful the information it provides -- in fact, I would say that anyone who has been playing the game for a few months and doesn't use it (or something similar) just for the information about delta V, TWR, etc is doing themselves a great disservice.

[FITorion]

At one point I had it installed. It had a nice radial model that would kinda sorta look like R2D2 on my X-wing... That's all I had it for. To look like R2D2. I didn't use any of its functions.

Later I decided having it was going to be too much of a hassle and deleted it of my craft. Apparently I didn't get rid of it entirely out of my game files though because when .20 rolled out it broke my save file. It's now completely gone and never to return most likely. The stock game will likely add things that accomplish most of its functions anyway... I'll look into mods again after KSP ver. 1.0

I have several successful rockets I pilot to space all the time... when I first got Mechjeb I put it on one to try out this auto pilot everyone was talking about... It blew up my rockets. It could not get a single one to space.

[Guest]

usually ~ you must have experienced London's tube network at some point.

So very true! Or try driving downtown Saint Paul, MN, with only the directions provided to you by a local to go by.

[ASnogarD]

I use it for the information it provides, and occasionally I will test various configurations of my craft with Mechjeb piloting to eliminate pilot variations.

I do pilot my craft manually when I am playing and doing missions, I like having the Vessel Info page up to keep track of the crafts weight and overall TWR and the Delta V status page while building craft, and Orbiting information when launching... havent messed with the other stuff as yet.

I wouldnt give a toss if others liked to let the app do all the work, or dont touch the thing with a 10 ft pole... its each players choice, not a case of 'cheating' in my humble opinion.

[Benie]

I'm surprised this hasn't turned into a flame war yet.

But first, a story. I was all "I don't need MechJeb! I can fly this rocket perfectly without it!". But trying to rendezvous manually with my space station caused more rage than my body can handle. I managed to get somewhat close, but couldn't slow myself down fast enough to match the velocity of it.

Then I got MechJeb. It's a godsend. It's saved me a lot of grief and rage. I'll never go back.

[Travisfv]

Never have and never will. I like doing things myself. The journey is more important then the destination.... usually.

This really only applies to National Lampoon's Family Vacation and it's sequels.

Other than that, if you ask an Astronaut how his flight to the moon was he'll be baffled that that's what you want to know.

Just like when you are talking to family who just took a vacation overseas. You ask once, "How was your flight?". From then on you talk about their actual vacation.

[Tiron]

I'm surprised this hasn't turned into a flame war yet.

But first, a story. I was all "I don't need MechJeb! I can fly this rocket perfectly without it!". But trying to rendezvous manually with my space station caused more rage than my body can handle. I managed to get somewhat close, but couldn't slow myself down fast enough to match the velocity of it.

Then I got MechJeb. It's a godsend. It's saved me a lot of grief and rage. I'll never go back.

It mostly saves me a lot of boredom...and botched maneuvers because my attention wandered off. Given my ADHD that latter is especially important. If nothing's happening while I coast to Apoapsis, it's rather difficult not to get distracted by something else and miss it, botching my orbit.

[Jarin]

And now that I've heard about Engineer... I don't think I'll be using MekJeb anymore. I really just want the stats features.

[TheHockeyPlayer]

I used to use MechJeb, but I stopped because I realized that it was sucking all the fun out of the game. When I got it, I kind of used it to learn how to play the game. As I learned from it, I stopped using some of it's functions, until I finally got rid of it.

[IllicitMedic]

I was the other way around... in part because I started playing in the 0.13.3 demo which couldn't use Plugins at all. I DID manage to land on the Mun in it, completely manually. Using fins for landing legs. I'd heard you had to do that, but wasn't sure how you got them low enough...so I had them on radial decouplers placed as low as possible on the fuel tanks, with the fins as low as possible on the decouplers. It was BARELY long enough to touch the ground before the LV-T45, but it worked. I discovered later the actual way of attaching the fins was different, but I forget what it was now...

Awesome, I started in 0.19.1 Thanks to Orbiter I was able to easily achieve an orbit around Kerbin the first week before I discovered mods and MechJeb although it was never perfect lol.

I was able to make it to the Mun manually once, but crashed the landing lol, that's where MechJeb has REALLY helped me, landings and pinpoint reentry's, thanks to MechJeb I can easily do it by hand now.

[TheHockeyPlayer]

And now that I've heard about Engineer... I don't think I'll be using MekJeb anymore. I really just want the stats features.

I did the same thing. I got rid of MechJeb and picked up Kerbal Engineer.

[roosterr]

My only uses for Mechjeb right now:

- real-time flight info like apoapsis-periapsis, time to target, closest approach to target

- create efficient launch ascent profiles

- hold orientation (prograde, retrograde, normal, anti-normal, etc..)

- OCCASIONALLY use landing autopilot, if it is a common landing site/craft that I have stuck manually many times (more of a time saver thing)

Future uses for anything that I master manually first.

[Wheffle]

I don't use mechjeb simply because I like to keep my mods to a minimum to avoid complexity.

[Geschosskopf]

I use it without shame or guilt. I've been doing flight and space sims since the 1980s so long since ran out of things I needed to prove to myself as a pilot. Besides, according to the KSP intro blurb, my role in the game is head honcho of the whole space program. I'm the big suit in the corner office. I pay peons like Jeb, Bob, and Bill to fly my rockets for me . And anyway, to me the funnest part of KSP isn't the flying, it's the engineering challenges in designing and building working ships, especially for complex missions with tight dV budgets.

In general, I use MechJeb for the following things:

• Landing at specific spots, because if I'm flying myself, I can't appreciate the cool view of the approach to the base camp
  
• Rendezvous and docking, so I can get another beer after a long string of failed launches
  
• Creating and using carefully designed ascent profiles. Mostly I just use the aiming marks MechJeb puts on the navball while flying it up myself, but sometimes (especially if it's a probe rocket), I let MechJeb fly it.
  
• Using the maneuver node editor to type in the exact dV I want in each direction for transfer burns as computed by the launch window web site.
  

That's about it. Except for rendezvous and spot landings, and the occasional launch, I create and tweak all my own maneuver nodes and do the burns manually. I find Kerbal Engineer's dV information more useful than MechJeb's because the former can be set to any heavenly body. I've never quite been happy with SmartASS and have never been able to get the rover autopilot to work.

[adios_1984]

I've picked "No'. Since 0.21 update i don't use it. I did use MechJeb in previus versions because of crappy SAS/ASAS - didn't like old toggle, new one is a piece of art. I may use it in the future for some enormous rockets, that lag the game way to much for it to be playable.

[TheDarkStar]

I don't use MJ, since I find that it makes the game much less fun. I tried it back in 0.15, but it took too much away. I play mostly stock, with a few mods like Kethane and KAS for less serious missions.

[AncientAstronaut]

I've been playing KSP since December of 2011 and I really love using MechJeb. Sure, I can pilot any mission manually without it. I proved that for the initial four months before plugins even existed of my gaming experience with KSP, and then later in summer of 2012 when I went purist for about a month. The fact is, though, MechJeb is convenient and it gives you more to look at on screen. It feels much more realistic.

[bigdad84]

No, I used it back in 0.17 because for the life of me, I could never figure out planetary ejection angles and such. When 0.18 and maneuver nodes came along, that all changed so no more MJ

[ThreeMartiniLaunch]

For many months I was a staunch stock player.

After playing for a while just throwing ships together and hoping they would get the job done, I started learning the math and began making purpose build ships.

Eventually, I got tired of tabbing out to a spreadsheet, or using a calculator and writing stuff down. This kind of thing really should be in the game.

So, I got MechJeb. (I did not know about Kerbal Engineer at the time and by the time I learned of it, I was already used to the way MechJeb presented data.)

I would just use it in the VAB to show stats and would take it off before launch.

More recently, I started working on a challenge that required a lot of probe core ships. With the old SAS system, turning some of these would take several minutes (I have not yet tried them with the new system.) Sitting there with my finger on the D key for five minutes is not particularly challenging and I don't think I'm missing anything by bringing up Smart A.S.S. and clicking Prograde.

During construction of a Mun base, I got tired of F5, land, oops - too far away, F9, land, oops - too far away, F9, land, oops - explosion, F9, land, perfect. So, MechJeb can land for me. I know there are people who can land on a dime, or, if not, take off again and maneuver around effortlessly to position their craft exactly where they want it. I'm looking at you, Harv.

I can't. It's not for lack of practice. I'm fumble fingered. In addition, pressing "left" and have the ship tilt forwards and to the right puts my head in a swim.

So...MechJeb.