Things I Never Knew

[urablahblah]

I discovered you can make Kerbals look to their left or right while on a ladder by holding shift and pressing a or d respectively

They bounce up and down the ladders though, bug I think...

Better yet, try pressing space when you have them looking one direction or another. They LEAP in that direction!

[Hallofo]

Here are a few recent things for me:

- The "click on the x-apsis on the map screen to make it stay" thing.

- Holding shift in the VAB with WASD to make fine adjustments.

- Engine clustering (GREAT for the early career mode heavy-lift stages).

[hobbsyoyo]

I recently learned that if you accidentally pass your apoapsis when trying to make orbit after launch, you can tilt your nose up a little to bring it back in front of you.

So simple, so obvious when I think about it, but it never dawned on me until I saw someone do it on YouTube.

Hehehe I've been forced to do this a few times but it really works best on small-mass craft with high T/W ratios. Anything big usually can't overcome the loss of altitude without massively wasteful deltaV expenditure.

Gah! I knew they stayed up if you focus on a world, but I didn't know that one! @^#%$*&! etc.

I also recently found this out....from another thread nearly identical to this one.

[nhnifong]

I found out that Alt-F4 does quit the game quickly but not save the game. (feel free to give tips I hate the very slow quitting process: wait for Space center, wait for menu, wait for desktop)

Quitting with alt-f4 still saves the game but does so in a buggy unpredictable way.

Some things I've found out lately:

There is a 64-bit build of KSP for Linux.

Pol has higher scatter density than any other planet.

You can cheaply intercept a body without any planning by moving either your ascending or decending node onto the orbit, and waiting for a close encounter. burn either prograde or retrograde at the orbit crossing node to lengthen or shorten your flight time.

Also, things yall might not know:

Tab and shift tab will focus different planets in map view. (careful, shift is also throttle)

Delete will reset your focus to the ship in map view. (careful, delete is also abort)

You can focus on maneuver nodes in map view

You can now recover a vessel from a hidden button under the altimeter. hover to make it appear.

Shift click any part on the ship to select the whole ship and scroll to move it straight up and down.

Edited October 23, 2013 by nhnifong

[Superfluous J]

You can cheaply intercept a body without any planning by moving either your ascending or decending node onto the orbit, and waiting for a close encounter. burn either prograde or retrograde at the orbit crossing node to lengthen or shorten your flight time.

This is only cheap (in terms of delta-v) for airless worlds. For worlds with atmosphere, until reentry is deadly (or until you install Deadly Reentry), it's far cheaper to burn as little as possible to intersect the target planet's atmosphere to kill all that delta-V in a huge aerobrake.

[rodion_herrera]

It took me forever to learn that you could actually drag maneuver nodes around the orbit to change where they'd execute. I had always assumed they were fixed.

You have NO IDEA how totally EXCITED I got, when I discovered I could do that back in 0.20 LOL!

[Smidge204]

I learned just a few moments ago that double clicking on the ring of a maneuver node puts focus on the node. Witchcraft!

=Smidge=

[boomerdog2000]

I didn't realize until a few weeks ago that on the map screen, if you click the little apo/peri tabs, the numbers will stay on the screen after you move the cursor away, so you can fine-tune maneuvers without having to move back and forth between the numbers and the maneuver planning controls.

I had no idea!. That will be incredibly useful for my current interplanetary missions.

[loknar]

I learned just a few moments ago that double clicking on the ring of a maneuver node puts focus on the node. Witchcraft!

=Smidge=

In my game, this works 30% of the time. 70% it deletes the node.

[FlamedSteak]

I didn't know that if you double clicked on a window in IVA mode you could look out of it......like a close up view...look out of it.....is this making any sense at all?

[FlamedSteak]

I had no idea!. That will be incredibly useful for my current interplanetary missions.

I also had no idea you could do that. I always thought it was daft that they didn't have this feature.....and now I find out it was there the whole time? Madness!

[Superfluous J]

I didn't know that if you double clicked on a window in IVA mode you could look out of it......like a close up view...look out of it.....is this making any sense at all?

It is, but I didn't know it. I assume you know you can... right click? Some kind of click. And then control where you look with the mouse. Then scroll wheel to zoom.

[Savage117]

I discovered in 0.20 that, while a Kerbal is EVA and has his jetpack active you can press the left mouse button and drag to make the Kerbal face different directions relative to the camera. Its kinda over sensative but makes getting into pods and on ladders much easier when they are at strange angles, it can also lead to hilarious disasters, like a Kerbal getting stuck in my mainsail engine during a sub orbital hop. Oh you can also use this to drop Kerbals from space and have them survive by hitting helmet first, at least in 0.20 a Kerbal space suit helmet is indestructible.

Edited October 25, 2013 by Savage117

[boomerdog2000]

Something else I discovered, if you turn the conics mode to, 0 I believe, in the settings.cfg it shows your predicted orbit around the body in question instead of just randomly out in space, so you can zoom in on say Duna and watch your predicted orbit there.

[FlamedSteak]

It is, but I didn't know it. I assume you know you can... right click? Some kind of click. And then control where you look with the mouse. Then scroll wheel to zoom.

Your assumption is correct.

[jeti140973]

Something else I discovered, if you turn the conics mode to, 0 I believe, in the settings.cfg it shows your predicted orbit around the body in question instead of just randomly out in space, so you can zoom in on say Duna and watch your predicted orbit there.

I have not tried that yet. I suppose this is super useful when planning planetary interception, but makes it more difficult to plan gravity assists?

And the axial tilt thing: if you orbit a tilted body in a 0 inclination orbit - would that then be aligned with the orbital plane, or the body's equator? If that makes sense...

Edited October 25, 2013 by jeti140973

[loknar]

I have not tried that yet. I suppose this is super useful when planning planetary interception, but makes it more difficult to plan gravity assists?

And the axial tilt thing: if you orbit a tilted body in a 0 inclination orbit - would that then be aligned with the orbital plane, or the body's equator? If that makes sense...

It seems to me the inclination of every planet and moon in the game is always aligned 0º with the star's equator (not realistic). Thankfully their orbits can be inclined, but the equator is the same everywhere.

[Rickenbacker]

If you have passed the node, clicking on it brings up the "close node" button. If you haven't, you have to right click it to do that. So unless you've passed the node, double left clicking it shouldn't remove it.

[boomerdog2000]

I have not tried that yet. I suppose this is super useful when planning planetary interception, but makes it more difficult to plan gravity assists?

Actually gravity assists are easy too since your orbit after the flyby shows up normally. Say you're gravity assisting off the Mun. The part of your orbit that is affected by the Mun's SOI will show up around the Mun, so you can watch it and tweak that orbit using a manuever node around Kerbin easily. Then the part of your orbit after the Mun's SOI is back in its normal place around Kerbin.

[maltesh]

I have not tried that yet. I suppose this is super useful when planning planetary interception, but makes it more difficult to plan gravity assists?

Kerbin's moons are small, light, and moving perpendicular to the direction you ultimately want to head, and the game doesn't have a good interface for pre-planning trajectories. As a result, it is very, very, very easy to spend more delta-V setting up and aiming your Munar gravity assist than the small amount it could potentially save you over a direct burn from LKO.

If your destination is within the Kerbin SOI, or very near the orbit of Kerbin, and you've done the math and planning beforehand, and your fuel budget margins are razor-thin, a gravitational assist by the Mun may be worth it. For the typical interplanetary destination, it is probably not worth the extra hassle.

[JumpsterG]

Free-return flyby trajectories to/from Mun. Can't believe I was such a space noob, but upon learning how the real moon missions were done, I tried it out in KSP. When I first saw that figure 8 in map mode I nearly freaked from cool overload.

[khyron42]

Orbital adjustments: if you're on a long interplanetary and your closest approach needs some tweaking, get your orbits aligned and then play with moving your closest approach via -Radial and +Radial instead of doing prograde or retrograde burns. Over a long elliptical orbit radial burns can make large changes in intercept point without moving your Ap and Pe much.

Holding alt when you press the time warp buttons will let you do physical-warp even when outside the atmosphere; this helps on some of the long interplanetary burns.

[Mr Shifty]

If you place a maneuver node on your orbit, then place another one behind it, the second one will be for the next orbit. You can keep placing maneuver nodes, each behind the other, in order to plan several orbits ahead. Useful sometimes for interplanetary intercepts, where you have to wait a few orbits for a close approach.

[Andrew Hansen]

I never knew that the structural pylon is a decoupler that separates from both sides.

[phunk]

Yesterday I learned two things.

1) Gravity in KSP is calculated as if all of the mass is in a point at the center of the planet or moon. This is the obvious way to do it but I never thought about it until I found out:

2) Apparantly, at high warp, you can fly right through a moon.

I managed to do a 180 degree turn using Ike for a gravity assist. I didn't think to much about it, and setup the maneuver without zooming in that closely. I was warping way too fast and overshot what I was trying to do, so I reloaded the quick save from just before the encounter, and did it slower... and realized that the trajectory I had taken was right through the planet and the 180 was only possible because I passed very close to the center of mass.