FINALLY Docked A Ship!

[Mode7]

Man, my first dock took HOURS. Second one only took an hour or so. Third one was done in about a half an hour. After that it was easy, just something you learn I guess. Now go for an Apollo style Mun mission!

[Apollo13]

A guy named NavyFish just made your docking life easier. Get this mod NOW!!

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/dock-align-indicator/

[KSK]

Nice job and congrats on founding your first station!

Hetfield station would be some serious heavy metal - I say go for that

[Unistrut]

Ah, darn it. Maybe I can get away with saying that there was a clerical error.

...Or I could just rename it.

I'm imagining a Kerbal on EVA with a sharpie adding in the loop on the "d"...

Anyway, congratulations! Docking is one of the trickier things to do in this game, really only superseded by landing on Tylo and taking off from Eve. Heck, even real astronauts who've had training and stuff find it tricky.

[HeadHunter67]

My wife always laughs because, the moment just before two craft dock, I always yell "Now, KISS!"

[Unistrut]

My wife always laughs because, the moment just before two craft dock, I always yell "Now, KISS!"

Dagnabbit, now I'm going to think of that every time I dock.

[DChurchill]

My wife always laughs because, the moment just before two craft dock, I always yell "Now, KISS!"

Thanks for that. Now I'm going to hear that in my head every time I dock a ship.

Edited August 12, 2013 by DChurchill
Ninja'd by Unistrut.

[magnemoe]

Congratulations! Compared to rendezvous, the docking part is easy. I highly recommend Blizzy's docking tutorial thread and video, and install the docking trainer scenario he made for in-game practice.

Is it only me who find rendezvous trivial compared to docking, even landings are far harder.

rendezvous is just maneuverer nodes, then burn to zero target speed then towards target and repeat.

yes you can crash but its far harder to crash than during landings.

[DChurchill]

Is it only me who find rendezvous trivial compared to docking, even landings are far harder.

rendezvous is just maneuverer nodes, then burn to zero target speed then towards target and repeat.

yes you can crash but its far harder to crash than during landings.

Once you get the hang of rendezvous, it's pretty trivial. Still fun, IMHO.

[HeadHunter67]

Is it only me who find rendezvous trivial compared to docking

Well, I certainly find it the opposite. I can do docking in my sleep, but rendezvous is a pain in the ass. I suppose it would be less annoying if the map screen and maneuver nodes were easier to work with. I hate how if you're one pixel off when moving the ring, it applies a little thrust in whatever direction.

[Ittiz]

Docking difficulty seems to be directly related to port size. The first thing I docked trying to build a station was a weird asymmetrical corrector part. It was hard to maneuver, but easy to dock since it had 7 huge docking ports. Once the two parts got near they clicked together. My second docking attempt didn't go so well. The next part I was going to add I thought was going to be easy because it was symmetrical. Boy was I wrong. I used a medium size docking port for this one and it took me 5 hours to dock it! When I finally did get the parts to meet I had to keep them together for like 30 seconds before they locked, which was extremely difficult. I can only image how painful it is to dock using just one miniport.

[chri]

the first docking is the next step after the first Mun landing congrats

[The Jedi Master]

Hadfield Station is coming along nicely!

I think I can safely say that I am no longer a noob.

[itsme86]

Congratulations on the docking. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of the game for me.

Don't forget the lights though. Space stations are much cooler with lots of lights.

Also makes docking on the night side easier.

[LameLefty]

Congratulations on the docking. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of the game for me.

Don't forget the lights though. Space stations are much cooler with lots of lights.

Also makes docking on the night side easier.

Ditto! Good job on the docking and constructing your station.

With regard to lights, I made it my practice very early on to ALWAYS include a ring of 3 lights around the docking ports of nearly everything I build, simply to make sure I can see the darn ships and target points when I'm rendezvousing. It's too hard to always make sure proximity operations (proxops) always occur in daylight. And to that end, I have found the Aviation Lights mod to be superb! I can add steady or periodically flashing red/green/white beacons to my vehicles, like real-world ships and aircraft. They don't consume much power but really make a huge difference in my personal "situational awareness" when I'm trying to get a handle on how things are pointed and lined up in the dark behind a planet or moon.

[DChurchill]

Well, I certainly find it the opposite. I can do docking in my sleep, but rendezvous is a pain in the ass. I suppose it would be less annoying if the map screen and maneuver nodes were easier to work with. I hate how if you're one pixel off when moving the ring, it applies a little thrust in whatever direction.

Smart A.S.S. is your friend.

[HeadHunter67]

Yeah, but if you're using MechJeb, you might as well let it do all that for you, too. The idea is to wean myself off it. Also, SmartASS doesn't do a thing for repositioning a maneuver node. It doesn't let you slide the focus body to a better position on your screen so that yuour entire orbit is visible but close enough to work with and it doesn't lock the maneuver axes while you move the inner ring.

[DChurchill]

Honestly, that's why I stopped using maneuver nodes and started using MJ. Far too hard to get fine-tuned, plus all the things you mentioned. Trying to set up a node for interplanetary transfer made me want to pull my hair out. I don't need to use the node system to do yet another Hohmann transfer to the Mun to satisfy someone else's idea of what's proper.

If there were a better node system in place, I might be tempted to use it more.

[Guest]

MechJeb doesn't know my transfer windows, unfortunately, which makes all those porkchop plots and less-than-optimal launch times pretty useless. Honestly, I need to write a utility to calculate the delta-V for each axis from a given ejection angle. And then MechJeb needs to allow entering a given UT instead of "schedule the burn X from now".

[HeadHunter67]

Honestly, that's why I stopped using maneuver nodes and started using MJ. Far too hard to get fine-tuned, plus all the things you mentioned. Trying to set up a node for interplanetary transfer made me want to pull my hair out. I don't need to use the node system to do yet another Hohmann transfer to the Mun to satisfy someone else's idea of what's proper.

If there were a better node system in place, I might be tempted to use it more.

I'm inclined to agree, on all counts. I want to be able to do these things myself, but honestly, I spent four hours last night trying to line up a rendezvous and it was in vain. I can blame that on the inability to easily fine-tune a node's location without messing it up or losing it, and the difficulty in seeing a maneuver's effects clearly when orbits are close together (like 175 and 200km).

Finally accomplished it today, but it should not have been so hard to understand when I know what I'm supposed to be doing, and the system is impeding the how.