How to land ... at all?

[Kasuha]

Sure enough I am a newbie in KSP and I am having serious issues whenever it comes up to landing. I have no problems with docking ships in orbit but when it comes up to landing my ship almost always either crashes to the ground (that's less often) or falls over (almost always).

I mean landing without using parachutes of course. I have no problem deploying parachutes and waiting till it safely falls down.

And without using mods. I know there are mods that can land for me but that's not what I have on mind.

I understand the general rule is to "kill horizontal velocity" in sufficient height and then brake the fall until I am on the ground. But I never manage to kill that horizontal shift well enough. I usually kill most of it using my main engine, then aim upwards and try to get the rest using RCS. But I never manage to put my own aim exactly at the center of the navball and the main engine thrust always adds some acceleration in random direction which is usually not visible when my vertical velocity is more than 5 m/s but is enough to make my ship fall over when I touch the ground. Also the main engine thrust never matches the gravity, I am always accelerating either down or up, which makes me "bunny hopping" all over the place as I never manage to kill all velocities at once.

Landing on slopes (which is almost anywhere on Mun now) is another story as I can't see the slope gradient on my navball, I found chase camera completely useless for landing and the fact that my ships are usually symmetric mean that I have no idea which direction should I be driving on navball to make it up slope.

Is there some kind of trick to it or do I just need more practice?

Edited September 13, 2013 by Kasuha

[stupid_chris]

Well first things first, for slopes, you might want to head for the bottom of craters, they're probably the best place to land on the Mun right now. Actually, if I were you, I would head to Minmus to practice landing, it's really the perfect spot to get some practice.

Then, to land, the best thing is to keep aiming at your retrograde vector. Just follow it around and it should do the biggest of the job, then when you come up close, you again, want to chase it until it gets nearly lined up vertically. Landing with absolutely no horizontal velocity is hard, usually having a bit isn't that bad. If you tip over, it might be because your lander is top heavy or has a too small landing carriage. Here pics would help.

[Specialist290]

You're always going to have a bit of horizontal velocity to deal with, unless you're using an autopilot to give you a picture-perfect descent (which I'm assuming you don't want to do right now).

One thing that helps: Once you get your velocity slowed to a manageable level and more-or-less more obviously "vertical" than "horizontal," you don't need to tilt all the way at the retrograde marker to account for horizontal drift. Just nudge your craft a little off-center in the direction of drift, and let the marker drift slowly back to vertical.

As for slopes: I agree with stupid_chris; your best bets for good landing spots are going to be at the center of craters. If you absolutely have to land on a rather uncomfortable-looking slope for whatever reason, try to slow your descent as much as possible right before contact; the gentler the touchdown, the more likely your lander is to keep its footing, even on relatively severe gradients. You could also consider designing your landers to have a wide footprint, making them less prone to tipping over.

But yes, above all, get plenty of practice. The more landings you perform, the more comfortable you get with the procedures, and the more you learn to develop an "eye" for the terrain and a "feel" for what your landers are capable of.

Finally, above all: Don't panic.

Hope this all helps!

[Kasuha]

Landing at bottoms of craters has one major problem: I can see where the bottom is on my screen, but I can't see where it is on my navball and which controls do I need to use to get there. I can hunt the retrograde vector on the navball using my controls as they correspond to each other but I have issues translating that to the real terrain I can see.

[Vanamonde]

Design of the ship is also a factor. The lower and wider it is, the less likely it will tip over.

[Traches]

Try building a practice ship and flying around the KSC, maybe land on top of the VAB. Best way to get better is to practice!

If your ships keep tipping over, build them shorter and with a wider base. I like to use I-beams for a landing gear rather than landing struts-- they're incredibly sturdy and can withstand some pretty wicked impacts.

As far as flying, I like to rotate the camera around (or just turn the ship) until left and right are left and right, and then try not to rotate the ship. To kill your horizontal velocity, once it gets down pretty low keep your heading really close to vertical-- I try not to go outside the first ring of hashmarks. RCS can be handy but it's not that important-- just pitch towards the retrograde marker (but only a little bit!)

[smunisto]

By your description I am guessing your brain is still getting confused by trying to make a connection between the navball, markers and the actual ship view.If this is the case, as it was with me, you have to practice and forget about looking at your ship when landing, aside from visual height indicators such as shadows and light from ship light sources shining on the surface.This is the best way to land and with some practice and getting used to the TWR of your ship and the celestial body gravity you can manage perfect landings even on steeper slopes. Another thing I suggest, as a way of landing is cutting all power to the engines when you are 1-2m off the ground.

[Hodo]

Honestly landing on Minimus is harder for me than on the Mun. But the easiest way is to put a few lights on the bottom of your lander, and watch for the lights to show up on the surface then you know you are close, REAL close to contact. I think range on the lights is around 100-200m. The other option is, go IVA, and watch the radar alt gauge. That will tell you exactly how far above the ground you really are.

[Kasuha]

As far as flying, I like to rotate the camera around (or just turn the ship) until left and right are left and right, and then try not to rotate the ship.

I tried that too but it usually makes me facing the wrong direction.

I guess I'll try to add a down-facing decoupler below the crew module and try controlling from there during landings, that may allow me to use chase camera and have a little more control over things.

[smunisto]

Once again, as mentioned in my previous post - never land by visualising the directions. Use it only for relative altitude and landing site identification.Navball for the actual landing.

[Zwenkwiel]

I often eyeball a lot of my movemement (such as aiming for a specific landing site)

but as for the actual landing goes I just use the navball

one thing I found to help kill horizontal velocity is that you can sort of push your retrograde marker around by burning just outside of it.

just have to burn opposite to the way you want it to move, basically if you want to move it left burn slightly to the right of it

use this to get the prograde pointing staight up well before landing and you'll only have to worry about vertical velocity and distance when doing the actual landing

[SRV Ron]

Landing on Minmus's seas are easy. However, you need to do so in daylight so you can see the approaching shadow and kill all horizontal drift. Even then, taller ships can tip over as they bounce on landing. Kicking on the SAS and RCS when touching down can help stabilize the touchdown.

Landing on planets and moons with an atmosphere are easier since parachutes can be used in place of rockets engines. Duna is an exception in that you need rockets to slow down to a safe touchdown since parachutes alone won't slow you down enough.

Finally, if not landing in a sea, the external altimeter on the top of the display is unreliable. You either have to visually see a shadow to judge distance, use lights to do the same, or go inside the manned landers and use the radar altimeter.

A good place to get experience in landing is to practice landing a lander on a specific area of Kerbal with parachutes and later with rockets only. Get that down pat and you are ready to lane elsewhere. (Except on Jool or the sun. It is impossible to land there due to the heat and pressure.)

Edited September 13, 2013 by SRV Ron

[Kasuha]

Once again, as mentioned in my previous post - never land by visualising the directions. Use it only for relative altitude and landing site identification.Navball for the actual landing.

"for landing site identification" is not "only" for me. I need to visualise directions when I'm trying to get from unsuitable-for-landing-here to suitable-for-landing-there. And for fine-tuning horizontal velocity I find visual better than navball as well because visual gives me direct clue at how big my horizontal speed is, while navball only gives me it relatively to my vertical speed and is quite useless when vertical speed is significantly higher and constantly changing.

[smunisto]

Which is where your problem with crafts tipping over comes from. Your muscle memory tells you one thing, while the actual directions are only correct on the NavBall(unless you can think very fast and pan the camera around). In any case landing sites should be identified from orbit, not when you are already killing speed. A few other points: 1. Doing suicide burns is only good if you produce medium to high-TWR craft with atleast 1.5 times the fuel amount needed for a normal landing, since killing all rvel while in orbit results in large dV losses. You pick most of the speed back on the way to the surface, so you end losing almost twice the default dV required for a landing. 2. I didn't say not to use visual navigation, I suggested you should use it for anything but directional movement. 3. Your Navball has different modes like Target, Surface and Orbit. In any of the three cases it shows relative velocity with the appropriate markers needed for gaining/losing it, not just vertical. If it showed only vertical velocity the pro/retro-grade markers would always be in the top/bottom centers of the navball. 4. If you are more used to suicide burns (however bad this would prove when you try to land on another body, not just the Mun, Minmus and Duna, being the easiest to reach) you should not have almost any horizontal velocity to start with. Even if you have any, that high up in the orbit, you have more than enough time to kill it on the way down by pointing your engine at the prograde marker and burning in short bursts until the marker centers on the "top" of the Navball.

[capi3101]

Really, you just need more practice. It took me a good dozen tries before I finally got it right, and there were times I wanted to put a discount brick through my computer right after a particularly spectacular lithobrake. It happens. Best you can do is try again - and use quicksave (F5) before you de-orbit. Hold down F9 to try again.

Having said that, you must use your instruments - if you're going to use the camera at all, you need to make sure you're looking at the side of your ship, with the surface down, and then only use it as a cue for final touchdown. Because the camera lies otherwise. Key instruments are your speedometer (set for "Surface" - that's key; click on it if it says anything else), the navball (it'll be completely blue when you're vertical or close enough for jazz), and the radar altimeter in IVA (use it to judge the final elevation of the deck; be below 10 m/s when you get down there, and just check it occasionally). Design of the lander is also crucial - lights help to an extent, I-beams help a great deal actually, tall and narrow tips over while short and wide lands. How do you widen the lander? If you're using an FL-T400 for a tank, swap it out with four FL-T100s - one in the center and three outboard, and connect the outboard tanks with fuel lines. You've added no mass, but you've definitely widened the base. An Fl-800? Use four FL-T200s. A Rockomax 8? Tack on some FL-T100s to the sides, or hell - use structural fuselage, I-beams, live gerbils, whatever. That base needs to be wide.

A pic of the lander or at least a brief description of it might give the rest of us some clues to give you more specific assistance. Not much else I can suggest; only other thing I can say is "good luck".

[Monkeh]

Yeah, keep eyes on navball and steer with that. Occasional glances to your ship and the terrain should be enough. Light underneath, I measured the range to be around 400m for the first glow to be visible. Watch for your shadow as well.

Ensure you've clicked the 'orbit' speed box to change it to 'surface' as well, then you know how fast you're moving in relation to the ground. That's a useful one to remember.

Keep in mind the thrust to weight ratio of your lander as well, a weak TWr will mean you have to start slowing down much earlier. Installing the engineer redux mod which will calculate that for you, is a big help here, it's not 'cheating', it's literally just a calculator and you can take those into maths exams! That will tell you your TWr as you fly so you'll know roughly how fast you can slow down.

Use the quicksave key, f5, when you start the landing attempt, then if it goes wrong just hold 'f9' to have another go.

Practice lots. It's get's easy after a while, honest.

Good luck.

[CorruptDB]

I know you said "no mods" but I find Kerbal Engineer Redux to be very useful for landing since it shows my my horizontal speed, vertical speed and actual distance to terrain instead of to sea level. I find the altimeter in the game to be lacking, on Kerbin it sort of makes sense as altimeters would use barometric pressure but for bodies without air, what is the stock altimeter supposed to be using to measure distance to the Mun's "sea level"? The spacecraft that have landed on Luna used radar altimeters (yeah, I know that this exists in IVA but it is a pain to use). KER doesn't perform any tasks for you but it does give you a lot of information that the stock game doesn't, if your no mods request was just to forestall people saying "Just have mechjeb land, duh!" you might want to consider KER.

[LostElement]

There are some pretty good videos out there that can explain this. Take a look at Scott Manley's videos. He gives a good tutorial

[Zwenkwiel]

" for fine-tuning horizontal velocity I find visual better than navball as well because visual gives me direct clue at how big my horizontal speed is, while navball only gives me it relatively to my vertical speed and is quite useless when vertical speed is significantly higher and constantly changing.

the navball works better IMO, don't look at the number of your surface speed, ignore that untill you're actually going to land.

your horizontal velocity is indicated by your retrograde marker, if it's not pointing straight up (centre blue) you still have horizontal velocity

what I find easiest is to kill all my horizontal speed while in orbit, by "pushing" the retrograde marker to point straight up, and than just go straight down for the landing trying to get the vertical speed down while making minor corrections to keep my retrograde pointing straight up

which means no horizontal speed upon touchdown and an accurate reading of vertical speed from the surface velocity indicator

in case the landing site isn't flat enough you can do little hops by slightly pointing in the direction you want to go and burn

but usually I can select a decent landing site from higher up

Edited September 13, 2013 by Zwenkwiel

[JiWint]

Kill the panic,and kill horizontal speed,go IVA (if possible) and zoom in to navball.There's a darker dot in center of navball.