Docking has killed my Kerbal fun

[Uncledad]

Here's a pic of the 'action':

Every thing is aligned or has just moved past alignment as you can see on the nav ball. and the ports are just about to touch. you can see the other 2 successful docks behind.

Edited August 17, 2013 by sal_vager
You need to use the link to the actual inage ;)

[sal_vager]

You're triple docking? If those ports are of even a little bit....

[Anton P. Nym]

None, I'm defiantly inside the range for the pull... even if it was to just throw me off.

There's a chance one (or both) docking ports are not installed correctly. Docking adaptors are directional and they don't necessarily flip the right way in the VAB/SPH when mounting them. When you look at the docking adaptor, you should see a hatch with a handle; if you just see a "plus sign" then the adaptor's on backward. That's what tripped me up at first.

-- Steve

[sal_vager]

Oh I see what you are doing, I cant see why it isn't working though, not from that pic anyway.

[Uncledad]

The '+' Sign is not visible.. However if i clip inside the docking port i can see it from the other side.

Short version: It's stuck on right

[Tiron]

Definitely, I wouldn't go by that "tutorial" at all. Anyway, like people said, I'd give the Lazor Docking Cam a try, it really helps a lot. I learned docking before installing it and now I just feel like I'm cheating.

A couple of my friends swear by it, but I've never used it. Although the fairly new 'Docking Alignment Indicator' mod looks like it may be best of all, since it just adds new UI elements to help you line up the ports without requiring any new parts. Apparently it's even able to indicate relative rotation, so it might be an absolute godsend if you're trying to be precise.

Another possible alternative is to use KAS instead, although this won't work for all situations. KAS connections are a bit floppy even when 'locked', so for structural assembly it's terrible. But if you're just refueling say, there are some theoretical advantages (which I've honestly never tested myself, fair warning.)

For a start, almost all the weight is concentrated on the winch side: a non-detachable radial connector port only weighs 0.0075t, less than half what a Clamp-o-Tron Jr weighs(0.02t). The winch weighs 0.1t (the same a shielded Clamp-o-Tron, or two regular Clamp-o-Trons), and the connector is another 0.0075t, so the total weight of a KAS dock including all parts on both sides is 0.115, so it's a little heavier than a stock dock. But again, it does concentrate almost all the weight on one side, which is a huge advantage for say, an SSTO spaceplane.

It also doesn't have to get the ports precisely lined up in the first place: The cable's 50m long. This does have the potential disadvantage of the docked craft drifting around on the end of a 50m cable, but if you retract it all the way, it'll go into 'locked' mode which only allows some flopping about (which is curable with docking or quantum struts). I can see retracting the cable all the way being a bit tricky, as KAS has a habit of yanking on things rather hard when the cable initially runs out, which could very well send the docked craft flying at the station faster than the cable can actually retract. You CAN avoid this if you're careful and patient, though. (I may not have KAS Docked in orbit before, but I *have* used a grappling hook to grab a piece of debris before. That was...educational.)

The main disadvantage, however, is that you need an EVA Kerbal to plug the connector into the port in the first place, so it doesn't work on completely unmanned things. You could use a grappling hook unmanned, but it can't dock craft, just connect them.

Edited August 17, 2013 by Tiron

[Rufus Callahan]

did you select the docking port as your target?

[sal_vager]

That isn't really necessary, though it's useful, you can dock without targeting the port and all it really does is set the waypoint marker on the navball.

[Uncledad]

did you select the docking port as your target?

I did.

I think I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board for this craft anyways as i never saved the first design properly... so getting further additions to align 3 ways would be near impossible. I'm still wondering if this particular docking port has a life of it's own.

[Tiron]

I did.

I think I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board for this craft anyways as i never saved the first design properly... so getting further additions to align 3 ways would be near impossible. I'm still wondering if this particular docking port has a life of it's own.

Both the VAB and SPH automatically save the most recently launched craft. It's listed as 'Auto-Saved Craft' in whichever you launched it from(they each have an auto-save that's separate from the other's). If you've launched something else from that same hangar since, it will have been overwritten. If you haven't, it's sitting there, saved, waiting...

[bloodfacu]

I did.

I think I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board for this craft anyways as i never saved the first design properly... so getting further additions to align 3 ways would be near impossible. I'm still wondering if this particular docking port has a life of it's own.

Did you tried the Gemini tutorial?

here

It's easy to dock little spacecraft.

Also:

If you are using shielded docking ports, did you open them?

It already happened, not kidding.

[JohnnyG]

Docking in the game is easy (a lot easier than in a real spacecraft I'd imagine!).

You might as well spend your time more productively on other things old chap.

[Tiron]

Docking in the game is easy (a lot easier than in a real spacecraft I'd imagine!).

You might as well spend your time more productively on other things old chap.

It's very different IRL. For one, no super powerful magnetic attraction between ports. For two, the ports aren't genderless: There's male and female ends. There's SOME wiggle room built in, but you have to get the alignment far, far closer to perfect in order to successfully dock than you do in KSP. Which isn't as hard as you might think, if you're careful. Hell, the *Russians* made an auto-docking system.

[Longsok]

When I first saw this, I was going to be like "Just Keep Trying!", but after I got two craft in the exact same orbit, and ended up running out of rcs on both of them, I kind of see where he is coming from. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure my problems were horrible RCS placement, as rcs that is put so it spins you around is not really great for docking. If your design sucks, just put extra RCS thrusters exactly at the center of mass of the stage that will dock, and make an action group to switch thrusters for when it is time to dock.

[ZenithRising]

Are you using the translation controls (IJKLNH on your keyboard)? Using those I managed docking without too much trouble on my first try.

[karolus10]

Have you tried Dock Align Indicator? I haven't had a chance to yet, but I gather it's pretty good. (I'm held up by the rover problems.)

I love this mod, it made docking fun again for me .

[iueras]

My god, I wish I had read the forum before I docked the first time. I made just about every single mistake you could. I made a triple barrel body design with a single docking port on each (so 3 ports), but put on the RCS not only unbalanced front to back but I put 4x symmetry on, so at no angle did the RCS ever fire in line with a docking port. I got to orbit and did not know about the rotating object bug, so I was trying to dock with a slowly rotating target. The craft itself was a mostly full orange tank with 3 nuclear engines, so it turned end over end like a slug on sedatives (remember, I did a lousy job on RCS placement). And even better, I put the smallest RCS tank on it and ran out after a single pass at the docking port on my new station module (the only one at the time, main power module).

So I wound up docking that (my first dock ever) 100% by eyeball, using the main engines on this sluggish tanker craft to accelerate AND decelerate, and when the ports got close finally (moving target, remember) I had to sort of roll the ship into place because the 3 port design meant nothing lined up 100% on any single axis. Oh, and I did not know there was a quicksave then, either.

After that, and fixing my RCS problems, docking has been a piece of cake. Like seriously easy. Although the setting a docking port as target and control from your own docking port sounds like it will be really handy, I'm going to try that tonight. I have just eyeballed it the whole time and have only missed a dock one other time, and even that one I got easily on the second approach, so practice practice is all I can say.

It is still attached to the top of my space station because I never want to have to dock that thing at the station again, even with RCS.

[NeoMorph]

Docking is real easy IF YOU BALANCE YOUR SHIP'S RCS...

Just follow these instructions -> http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28983-How-To-Balance-RCS-On-Your-Payload

A lot of people have problems because their ship is unbalanced for translation movement... when they hit the translation buttons they don't just go up, down, left and right but start to spin as well. If you use MechJeb "Keep Parallel -" you can overcome an unbalanced ship but to make it a lot easier you balance the payload before you even get to orbit.

I don't have any problems docking anymore because I follow those rules. When I can't be bothered to dock myself MechJeb manages to dock fast as well BECAUSE THE PAYLOAD IS BALANCED.

Yup... Balance is the primary key to docking followed by watching the relative velocity rather than what speed you are going.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I've discovered the easy way to dock with no mods is to have a rocket with the ability to translate with RCS (you'll want several thruster ports and an Adv. SAS) as well as a docking port on the nose (I use a shielded docking port), then it's just a game of making small advancements and staying in control at all times. You can save every time you perform something well, and then reload every time it goes wrong. I'm new at docking but I save several times while doing it. This tutorial will work on a ship with no RCS, but it's even easier with RCS.

Here's the basic movements, refer to the image below for visuals:

1. When you get your close approach to your target, turn to the green circle with an x on your nav ball, turn on SAS, and thrust gently till your velocity in relation to the target is approx. nothing. A bit of drift is okay as long as it looks like your target is approximately still. (image figure 1.) If you're having difficulty getting your ship to turn the way you want it to, just remember that the movement controls always stay oriented the same way from your view of the nav ball. Looking at your ship may confuse you. If so, just ignore it and look at the nav ball instead.

2. Orient your ship directly toward your target, so you should be pointing at the pink broken circle on the nav ball, then turn on SAS. Then thrust up a bit briefly, to get your ship moving toward the target. How fast depends how long it'll take to get to your target and how much time you need to turn around again. (image figure 2.)

3. After you cut your engines, turn off SAS and turn the ship all the way around, and align with the green circle with the x. (image figure 4.) Do not align with the pink tri-crosshair, that orients you away from your target, not away from your line of thrust. You may have the crosshair and x-circle right on top of each other but I usually don't. Turn on SAS when aligned and watch the target get closer, and when you feel it is close enough, thrust just enough to cut your speed. If you overshoot, you can turn on RCS and tap the N key to translate down. You may have to do the first 3 steps more than once if you do not end up within a hundred meters or so of your target. Protip: try to stop your ship in a position such that one of the docking ports on the target is directly facing your ship.

Make sure both ports are open, if they are shielded. If you need to open the one on your target, go to the space center (when your ship is stationary) and fly the target. Open the port. Now go back to the space center and fly your ship.

4. When you are positioned near a docking port and have relative velocity at 0.0m/s, target the docking port and orient your ship to the pink broken circle on the nav ball, then put on SAS. Try to get the alignment as exact as possible. If you are moving a heavy ship, you might try turning off RCS when you are close, and doing the final aligning without RCS to take advantage of the slow and gentle movements. (image figure 1.) Then thrust up just a tiny bit, till you are drifting toward that docking port. You may have pushed your ship exactly toward the port but chances are you're a little off. (image figure 3.) If you have RCS, you can easily translate your ship on course. If, like the image, your heading (green circle) is to the lower right of the docking port (pink circle), then you need to translate your ship in just the opposite direction, so you would tap both I (up) and J (left). K is down and L is right. Just translate until you see the pink and green circles on top of each other. If you do not have RCS, you need to orient the orange heading cursor to the opposite side of the pink circle, just like in the image, and thrust enough to double your velocity. It should place the circles on top of each other.

5. Now hurry! You must align your heading back onto the pink broken circle before the docking ports come into contact! Move your camera (screen view) into a good position to watch it happen, but don't take your eyes off the nav ball. It'll go haywire right as they make contact, but if it drifts off course before then, you have to correct it! Make sure you turn off SAS before or right as they make contact. Having it on can prevent the ship from being able to finish docking.

You should probably save after most of these steps so that you can try again if you mess it up. If you smack your target and knock it into a spin, you can just time accelerate to 5x and back to 1x to make the spinning stop. If your ship and your target get locked up with each other and you can't free them, you might want to just reload. It's not uncommon that your eyes may misjudge the distance to the target and think it's still a little ways away when you're already moving past it, so move your camera around often so that you know what's going on. You should be using the nav ball for course corrections, and the camera for flight data.

Edited August 18, 2013 by thereaverofdarkness
updated image figure 3

[JiWint]

I hope it helps.

Here's my quick guide to docking.

Go into orbit.

Raise your apoapsis to target orbit.Keep periapsis low (not too low though)

You should be flying faster than your target.

Make sure you did set target as target.

When you see that you'll be going faster than your target (little purple/violet/yellow marks),raise your periapsis.

Correct your speed by raising/lowering periapsis/apoapsis.

When you're ~1km from your target,switch to target m/s (little above your navball).

Then make your prograde to be flying (SLOWLY) to your target (also watch navball)

Once you're 50m from your target,kill your speed.

Now set docking port as target,and use docking mode with rcs on to control (space to roll mode)

I will be making a video about that.When I get new computer :/

[Tiron]

*A bunch of Stuff*

You can avoid camera confusion by using the 'change camera' button (Default: v) to go into chase mode: This causes the camera to orient so that up-down-left-right for your craft are all correct relative to the camera, making moving in the right direction easier. It also causes the camera to move with your craft, which can be a bit motion sickness inducing at times, so be careful!

Rather than going to the space center, you can use the 'cycle backward/forward through active vessels' buttons, default [ and ]. This only works within close range. Going to the space center has the advantage of packing the ships up and then unpacking them, which stops any rotations, but you can do that just by blipping up to 5x time warp for a fraction of a second.

His control notes are for 'Staging Mode': IJKL are the defaults for the translation controls in Staging mode, which can be easier to use than swapping WASD between translation and rotation in docking mode. Note he's kinda half left two keys out, however: In staging mode, H uses RCS to translate forward, and N uses RCS to translate backward. It's frequently far easier while docking to use this rather than primary engine thrust for small directional adjustments.

You can switch into 'fine control' mode (default: caps lock) also: It's apparently now set up so that fine control mode will use the same logic the SAS uses in determining which thrusters to use. So fine control mode can potentially REALLY cut down on Monopropellant usage by using only the best thrusters. I don't have a lot of experience with it yet, but people are already swearing by it. You can tell if you're in fine or instant control mode by the color of the arrows on the Pitch/Roll/Yaw indicators in the bottom left corner of the screen: They're yellow in instant mode and blue in fine mode.

The key thing, in all phases, is PATIENCE. There's no friction, so your inertia will continue to carry you indefinitely, no matter how slowly you're moving. It's an excellent idea to take advantage of this by using slow movements rather than fast ones. Slower movements are easier to stop and easier to correct, with less change of overshoot (and less overshoot if you manage it anyway. It DOES happen.) It also uses less fuel both to initiate and to stop. Just being patient and taking it slowly and carefully will save you a lot of fuel and frustration.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Tiron

[SaturnV]

Have you tried Dock Align Indicator? I haven't had a chance to yet, but I gather it's pretty good. (I'm held up by the rover problems.)

This mod is very handy

You see, IRL astronaut will never dock anything with only their bare eyes and a relative velocity display, they have many sensor and do lot of math to make sure that docking is perfectly done in one shot. Kerbin is much smaller so the orbit speed is fast we don't have time to do math and align correction, some more precise information (like what the mod provided) is necessary since it's just a game, player shouldn't spent hours to do the same basic thing again and again.

I could understand those who insist to do all the thing stock, but personally I don't think that's what a astronaut should do, it's more like a space cowboy.

[lajoswinkler]

I understand the frustration. I don't use mods (but I think I should, docking only), so it's a pain in the ass. Most of the time I have no idea what I'm doing, but so far I've docked two times. I just accelerate towards the pink prograde target, and then towards yellow retrograde target to return the orbit to its original shape. Little by little, the orbits get synchronized. I'm totally eyeballing it.

When designing a ship that you'll use in the final approach, turn on the center of mass marker and then add two sets of reaction control system thrusters up and down on the body, so their center of thrust matches the center of mass. Add an inline advanced stabilizer closeby, source of electricity (solar panel and large capacity battery or just one RTG) and plenty of monopropellant and you're good to go.

It would be good if there was an option to automatically position the vessel in the close vicinity and to synchronize the orbital motion, so the user could use RCS to finish the docking. Docking is a real bottleneck. It's in the way of getting more users to make more complex stuff in space. If Squad has larger plans, I'd seriously recommend them to implement something like this, but as an option.

Unless they want the user community to be small, unevolving, like the Orbiter community. That simulator is totally user unfriendly.