Do you use Mechjeb?

[Pingonaut]

Yeah, the informational UIs are very, very useful.

[Blake Gates]

I cannot officially vote yet as I am still new to the forums, but I will post my official vote once that ability opens up to me. Even though I am a week into playing KSP, MechJeb was the first mod I downloaded (pretty much because the YouTube video I watched that got me interested in KSP was using it) and I love it. My vote is for 'Yes' and will be official soon (hopefully lol)

[jshier]

I use MechJeb for the info windows (orbital, surface, rendezvous, vessel, dV), for plotting Hohmann transfers and other operations, and rendezvous guidance and automation. I dock myself, I just use MJ to match orbits and speeds until I'm close enough that doing it manually won't take forever. Oh, and executing long burns. I've had half hour burns before, so MJ is a lifesaver.

Also, auto staging and limiting my velocity during ascent, for a more optimal ascent. I do my own turns. I usually have MJ do the circularization though.

Basically, I use MJ to eliminate tedium, i.e. maneuvers that are always the same.

[Van Disaster]

I absolutely agree about docking wasting RCS, I've always done that manually, although I do let mechjeb help with the rendezvous sometimes...mostly in the form of the tgt+ and rvel- functions on the SmartASS.

SmartASS in general is worth the install. If anyone has an issue with the existence of the other bits, you can delete the windows...

I also really cannot strongly enough suggest not using the spaceplane autoland. The spaceplane guidance itself is somewhat dangerous, becuase it's abysmal at holding an altitude: It porpoises above and below it, which if you're not careful it's real easy to end up with a flameout, even with the flameout protection (which is NOT perfect, it can only really handle very slow, gradual intakeair decreases). The autoland doesn't do throttle control at all, just attitude, which I find is actually harder to land with than just doing it manually (which is saying something for me). After that time it put me on the runway backwards, and turned a great mission into a crash...no thanks.

If I'm keyboarding I fly a manual ( or at least SmartASS Surf ) path over the mountains and down the glidepath until about 1500m, and then turn the thing on. After that it's crazy W/S tapping and throttle management to keep it's descent ok, but it kinda works. I've tried landing by hand with a keyboard, and.... no.

The ascent autopilot is a godsend. I've flown enough ascents it bores the crap out of me now. The landing AP too, because it's far better and more accurate than I am. and the maneuver planner, for that matter, also much more accurate than I am.

I still don't think I've used the landing AP, but I like landing. The manoever planner does take some tedium out of repetitive manoevers, definitely. Not helpful for planning interplanetary burns from orbit, though.

[Tiron]

I still don't think I've used the landing AP, but I like landing. The manoever planner does take some tedium out of repetitive manoevers, definitely. Not helpful for planning interplanetary burns from orbit, though.

Well, it's not quite as good at that as the protractor, since you can't really tell how long it is until the next transfer opportunity...the hell of it is, last time I tried to use the protractor to get the timing right and mechjeb to do the actual transfer, it apparently disagreed with the protractor's assessment!

You can kinda sorta a bit achieve the same effect if you just create the node and don't execute it...problem is, if it's a long time away, then what the heck do you do...revert to launch and try to time it out? Ugh.

[Hoa_Binh]

Never really got into it. Like to fly my stuff by hand, of course some of the parts contained stuff I wanted but didn't really need so there was little motivation to get it.

[Feldynn]

I've never used it for anything myself, though I do hear good things about many of the features / information it offers. I just haven't really gotten around to investigating mods all that much yet, in fact the only one I occasionally use is Procedural Fairings and that's only on certain rockets and if I actually remember I have it .

[doggie015]

Mainly use it for Smarter A.S.S (It does a MUCH better job at keeping you pointed at the maneuver node than anyone can do by hand!) but also occasionally for the ascent autopilot. I'm an astronaut, not an aviator!

[BigDog]

I use it mainly for its information windows and node editing abilities. About the only thing I use any of the autopilot functions for is docking stuff to my interplanetary ships. These things are lag city with all the bells and whistles docked to them. As a matter of fact MJ is doing a docking right now for a fueling on one such said ship that is hauling a base to Duna. I checked the time and it is 10 real seconds to a game second. I have no intention of dealing with lag for an hour or two just to impress someone on the net I don't even know so infinite RCS on and MJ autodock. Like someone said earlier I play my games for my enjoyment.

[Ricovandijk]

if you don't like mechjeb, you might as well go back to 0.15 without the trajectory helpers

I love the landing/aerobrake predictions, timewarp helpers etc.

..do the landings and dockings manually though

[KerbMav]

• 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.

I plan on trying MJ out in my new .21 save and will most likely use it for the first part of a landing when starting ground bases/colonization.

The node editing is a real perk, especially when aligning from far far away.

If MJ cant tell me data for different bodies I think I will not give up on KerbEngi as planned, at least in VAB.

For now the extra data was enough for me, but I just dont like the design and the fact that KerbEngi gives you only one longish window with a list of numbers - its a good mod, but it presents its data in a very unergonomic fashion.

SmartASS will be handy until the navball shows me the shortest way to a marker - it doesnt show them at all now, which is tedious and makes my Kerbals space sick when I rotate real fast to find the marker in time for a correction burn!

There are just some actions in the game that cant be done stock without making it less fun for me.

My 2 cents: Maybe on these forums and as a KSP community we should concentrate (even) more on playing the game, helping each other and supporting squad with our ideas (and bug reports) to finally get a game that is really awesome and complete when finished, than arguing about the way it should be played - as we should worry more about the world we live in and the path our society is taking, than trying to dictate how others shall live their lives or judging them for what they are.

*offers global group hug*

[Philster07]

Yes and so far as of the new update I have put 1 satellite in an equatorial orbit. Can't dock with no autopilot and forget rendezvous further than minmus as I can't get enough efficiency and end up wasting fuel (despite playing the game for 3 months and reading up on orbital mechanics)

[Obsidian]

The learning curve is ALOT longer/larger without MechJeb, I'm going to use (yes I'm using it now) MechJeb until I learn the basic-> advanced maneuvers, and once I learn from watching/experience, I will turn it off and go vanilla.

[Flixxbeatz]

The learning curve is ALOT longer/larger without MechJeb, I'm going to use (yes I'm using it now) MechJeb until I learn the basic-> advanced maneuvers, and once I learn from watching/experience, I will turn it off and go vanilla.

You're not alone - some people here who are new to game also use MechJeb as a stepping stone before setting off by themselves.

[Beeburgers]

I used to, mostly to learn a bit more about basic maneuvers, and then, more advanced maneuvers. I've stopped since .21, but I haven't tried to rebuild my space station again, so we'll see if I continue to abstain once I get my space program really going.

[Death Engineering]

I tried it early on in my KSP'ing, but felt it took too much out of the experience somehow. Now using only the Kerbal Alarm Clock mod so that I can have lots of things happening at once.

[Cepheus]

Way back when I first started playing KSP in v0.8.5, there was no mechjeb- and when you were first starting out, getting into orbit was mostly hope-and-pray to see of you were going fast enough when you got to MECO1 for your apoapsis to be high enough (orbit maps were not introduced until 0.11), and that was monumentally harder than it is currently. Back in those days, I remember mission profiles becoming very routine, as well as massively laborsome. Sure, you got good at it, and you could eventually get into a 100x100 km orbit pretty reliably. And yeah, it was fun. But if you, say, wanted to launch a constellation of satellites (this is after 0.14, when they introduced saved flights), most people wouldn't really want to conduct 24 nearly identical launches, and many hoped for some sort of autopilot; just to make things a bit less laborsome.

So now that we have all these fancy things, yes, I use mechjeb for the vast majority of my orbital launches (spaceplanes are an entirely different issue). Mechjeb is far more reliable and predictable than I can ever be, and hey, if it's good enough for NASA, ESA, and Roscosmos, it's good enough for me.

However, on every clean install of KSP, there are 2 mission profiles that I always do... I launch to a 100km orbit without mechjeb or the map view, and I fly a mission to the moon, without mechJeb and without map view. Nostalgia, that.

[Flixxbeatz]

Way back when I first started playing KSP in v0.8.5, there was no mechjeb- and when you were first starting out, getting into orbit was mostly hope-and-pray to see of you were going fast enough when you got to MECO1 for your apoapsis to be high enough (orbit maps were not introduced until 0.11), and that was monumentally harder than it is currently.

Dude, the ability to achieve orbit before 0.11 is already enough to define what an expert KSP player is

[Valley]

Yes, I use it, but I still have some issues with even the newer version. I love the new docking system and it really seems to keep things stable when launching from Kerbin but I can't seem to figure out how to put a station or ship in orbit around ANOTHER moon or planet. I have crashed unmanned craft into the Mun trying to do this and wish to figure it out what I am doing wrong before putting any manned ships thru the same danger.

[JakeGrey]

Yes, I use it, but I still have some issues with even the newer version. I love the new docking system and it really seems to keep things stable when launching from Kerbin but I can't seem to figure out how to put a station or ship in orbit around ANOTHER moon or planet. I have crashed unmanned craft into the Mun trying to do this and wish to figure it out what I am doing wrong before putting any manned ships thru the same danger.

I had that problem as well. As soon as you enter the target body's SOI, select "circularise" in the Manouevre Planner and set it to take place at whatever altitude you need. 100km is plenty for landers, but fancy stuff like ISA MapSat survey probes need to be somewhat higher.

[Van Disaster]

Well, it's not quite as good at that as the protractor, since you can't really tell how long it is until the next transfer opportunity...the hell of it is, last time I tried to use the protractor to get the timing right and mechjeb to do the actual transfer, it apparently disagreed with the protractor's assessment!

You can kinda sorta a bit achieve the same effect if you just create the node and don't execute it...problem is, if it's a long time away, then what the heck do you do...revert to launch and try to time it out? Ugh.

I use the alarm clock to wake me up when the transfer window turns up, and then do the burn plan by hand - usually wants two nodes at least unless you're already in plane with the target but it's not a big deal. Not tried the manoever node editor but the old standalone editor works in 0.21 anyway. You're just burning prograde or retrograde from the body you're orbiting, it's not really that hard to do yourself it's when you decide you want to go *now* and you're nowhere near a window that it gets a bit more complicated.

[Fox62]

I use it all the time, because I like to design my rockets, without having to also be able to fly them myself.

[Sandermatt]

I like to automatize as much as possible. Sadly Mechjeb always seems to crash my rockets and pretty much unable to do the required maneuvers.

[Hiddos]

No, I do use Kerbal Engineer though

[Aedda]

I just signed up and cannot vote on the poll it says.

I use MechJeb, got it for the auto-pilot, old 0.20.2 kept tearing my rockets apart. Kept it in 0.21.1 for all the other useful information and casual shortcuts it provides.