I love docking

[Wallace]

I hate letting mechjeb dock, it's sooo wasteful, it just flushes away bucketfuls of mono-propellant, and it's sooo slow going at 0.1 m/s from way out. I only let mechjeb dock when I am being profoundly lazy.

The best docking is when it's freaky shaped station components, it's a good challenge, I don't use any docking helpy widgets and don't use docking mode, only thing I used docking mode for is driving rovers . Usually I can dock with almost no mono-propellant used depending of the size and shape of the ship. On my first Mun landing, I even docked a ship with no RCS at all (rear facing port and radial engines helps..) to a powered-down fuel tank (the original design was for the tank (originally had an engine too but it fell off at launch making it just fuel tank) to use it's RCS to dock while the capsule just held still, but with no power the capsule had to take over the active part of the docking).

[Talonsin]

You are a better man than I am because after numerous attempts and hours wasted, I have resorted to mechjeb.

[adinfinitum]

I've just tried a new way of docking and its added a whole new joy to the process. Doing it in IVA mode (from inside the B9 M27 overview cockpit, the one with high visibility) and using a joystick, I've never tried that before. I've been using a small RCS tug craft to assemble a modular comms section for my station and its been too much fun, the views have been fantastic and it really felt very real. Doing it from IVA put my view close to the docking port on the tug craft so I guess that is a bit like using the docking cam (i've not used that) and made getting perfectly lined up very easy.

This times a thousand! I made a tug a couple weeks ago which had a Mk1 cockpit located just to the side of a central docking port, and it made docking so much better and more enjoyable. It gives you a sense of what all this stuff looks like to the kerbals, and also makes the magnetic force that pulls the docking ports together seem a lot more violent.

[thunderstar]

i just got some beautiful pics from a mun station , i'll post them here as soon as posible

also im planning to do a station building parts pack and im looking for modelers anyone interested PM me

[loknar]

You are a better man than I am because after numerous attempts and hours wasted, I have resorted to mechjeb.

I didn't even know mechjeb could do docking - must be awful though.

Docking is the single most fun thing to do. Maybe try to explain your problem. Do you have problem to rendez-vous? Or the final docking? Maybe we can help... I would have been bored long ago without (manual) docking.

[Lone K.]

Oh man, the first time I docked...

It was amazing. Now it's a skill to me, and it's that feeling that you get every time.

[HeadHunter67]

I relied on MJ to dock for me for the first moth or so, then I decided that I was going to get the hang of it myself. At first it wasn't easy, but Blizzy's interactive tutorial did the trick.

Docking is easy (and fun), learning rendezvous was much harder! (But thanks to PebbleGarden, I got that down too).

[blizzy78]

I didn't even know mechjeb could do docking - must be awful though.

It's quite okay. MechJeb's problem since 2.0.9 is that it doesn't use SAS at all anymore. Instead it relies only on its PID controller, which leads to constant wobbling in addition to constant RCS fuel use. (Of course the same can be said about its attitude controller, which has the same problem.) I haven't tried sarbian's patch testbed releases to see if it got better, though.

[1greywind]

After installing Docking Port Alignment Indicator plugin I realy enjoy docking in every way: docking a lander with mother ship after succesful landing, docking a orbital tug with refueling tanker, docking of multiport space station components and so on.

Docking provides way to construct space installations of weight and size not achievable while using direct launch approach.

Edited October 3, 2013 by 1greywind

[Monkeh]

...with mother sheep...

Ahhahaha. I love typos. Posting on a phone no doubt

[Rjhere]

I agree with Kataeochi, IVA and B9 is the best experience! Have yet to try with a joystick though... I have a Xbox 360 controller though!