Gimme your weirdest tricks!

[Andr0s]

So, having played KSP for a couple months now, I've discovered I'm slowly building up a collection of odd tricks that use bits and pieces of game to help me pull of things they were evidently not intended to do. I play stock game, no mods to date, so I do find jury-rigging and part mis-appropriation to be a fun part of game's challenge. Anyway, I thought I'd see who else came up with weird ways to do things, and what are your favorites?

My favorite is, hands, down, the Munar landing beacon I usually mount engines radially on the lander; that leaves bottom of the lander free for a decoupler and a battery. Then, as I'm in final landing stages, I can decouple the battery, target it once it drops, and use it to get "true" reading on the altitude, lateral drift etc. It is pretty much the sole reason I am now pulling off <5m/s Munar landings smoothly as you please...

[Technical Ben]

Test, test and test again. Minimize part count to <150, preferably <80.

How? I've been using large batteries and a single, or just 2 RTGs. Then it does not really matter if the ship drains the battery quicker than the RTG can replenish, as long as the maneuver is done before it runs out (or lands).

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

using 2 rocket engines in opposite directions as a 'fuel dump'

[Specialist290]

I wouldn't exactly call them "weird," but a couple of clever tricks I'm willing to share:

1. Fitting OKTO2 probe cores under docking ports, allowing me to launch a craft manned or unmanned as I choose.

2. Building my own LES out of Sepratrons and structural pieces, then crafting a simple abort system that's more than just "frantically stage until the command pod separates and deploys chutes."

3. On that note: Fitting the decoupler for your LES upside-down is a great way to get rid of it once you no longer need it without creating too much extra debris or leaving an unsightly decoupler on your craft. Same goes for rover-skycrane combinations.

4. My personal favorite at the moment: Fitting a probe core onto a rover in such a way that I can land it on its wheels like any other lander, then drive it from the cockpit.

[TMS]

using 2 rocket engines in opposite directions as a 'fuel dump'

You know you can achieve this with one engine?

Just disable all the tanks oxidiser flows (right-click on every tank and depress the green triangle) and fire your engine. You won't produce any thrust as the engine won't ignite due to the lack of mix, but it will expel fuel. After that's at the level you want, re-enable the oxidiser and disable all the fuel, then burn until the oxidiser is at the level you want.

You'll need to know your desired oxidiser/fuel ratio before you do it.

[lvallen702]

2. Building my own LES out of Sepratrons and structural pieces, then crafting a simple abort system that's more than just "frantically stage until the command pod separates and deploys chutes."

I just recently realized you could A) Do this. Configure the ABORT action group so the backspace button actually does something.. I don't know how long I've been wondering when they're going to implement the abort sequence option .. Go me

[Dkmdlb]

-Small probes don’t need landing legs. You can just land them on their fuel tanks as long as you keep the touchdown velocity low. Manned Landers on small bodies don’t need ladders. Let the guys use their RCS thrusters to get back in.

-Put a probe body, docking port, battery, and solar panels on the interplanetary drop fuel tanks. Then if you have any fuel left in them that you don’t need for the return journey, you can leave them in orbit and they will be an emergency fuel depot for any future missions.

-You can launch several (4 to 8) small probes at once by building them on a central core using symmetry in the VAB. Attach them with 0.625m decouplers and a strut. This is good for going to the Jool system.

-You can easily find your TWR for a different body if you know your TWR on Kerbin and the gravity on the other body. Round off Kerbin’s gravity to 10m/s^2. Thus, if your gravity is half of that on Kerbin (5m/s^2), your TWR will be twice as high, and vice versa. The math is easy to do in your head in just a second or two when you start from 10m/s^2 because 10 is a nice round number.

-On interplanetary ships, if you attach your LV-Ns radially on decouplers, as you burn through your fuel you can drop them in pairs to increase your delta-v. No sense in carrying around a bunch of heavy engines you don’t need once your fuel load gets a lot lighter.

-Put a single landing leg on the back of your rover for a kickstand to keep it from rolling away.

A lot of people already know these, and might have better alternatives.

Edited October 3, 2013 by Dkmdlb

[SkyRender]

One of my favorite techniques, mostly because I tend to use Kethane, is to set up my launch stage so that the final part is actually an orange tank with docking ports on either end, with a probe plus small fuel tank plus engine with solar panels attached to the bottom. When I'm up to my desired orbit, the probe below disconnects and deorbits itself, leaving me a perfectly functional orange tank in orbit that I can attach to a station and refuel via the Kethane mod.

[Starwhip]

I wait to retrograde burn during docking until the last 10 seconds before I collide with the station. It slows down just enough that the final adjustments take about 30 seconds and the total time on RCS ~60 or less.

[SRV Ron]

"Building my own LES out of Sepratrons and structural pieces, then crafting a simple abort system that's more than just "frantically stage until the command pod separates and deploys chutes.""

You can directly stage by right clicking on the decoupler under the command module after shutting down the engines.

Two weird tricks using maneuver nodes, both extremely fuel efficient;

Major change in orbital plane using a slingshot maneuver;

Orbital capture around Laythe using a retrograde slingshot, very difficult to get. The maneuver mode even showed complete capture at times;

[Dkmdlb]

Nice plane change. I'm going to have to use that one!

[Rhomphaia]

Manned Landers on small bodies don’t need ladders. Let the guys use their RCS thrusters to get back in.

Ladders don't have physics significance. No point not to use them unless you count the minor part count advantage.

[Awaras]

-Put a single landing leg on the back of your rover for a kickstand to keep it from rolling away.

OR you can just double-tap 'B' to engage the parking brakes...

[SofusRud]

This is an intake air trick i learned. No debug cheats and all stock.

I fit 3 ram intakes on a spot that would usually only fit 1, without enabling the part clipping cheat. To do this, place a cubic strut (no symmetry), place a ram intake on the back end of it and another on the front of it. this takes some fiddling. then place it so it looks like its on the end of the tank. Then place the third ram intake on the tank itself. Only now do you use symmetry. I use this on my single jet-engine SSTO, that way it has 6 ram intakes for that one engine and since there's only one it can't spin out.

[Dkmdlb]

OR you can just double-tap 'B' to engage the parking brakes...

Yes, but when you're dropping them from the skycrane, it's helpful to have the kickstand extended, especially if you have more than one rover that needs to get delivered. Saves having to switch back and forth.

[Axder]

I had problem with rovers tiping over their noses while quickly breaking I discovered that if I create action group thats says breaks on rear tires it stops almost instantly without any chance of tiping over.

[Rhomphaia]

I had problem with rovers tiping over their noses while quickly breaking I discovered that if I create action group thats says breaks on rear tires it stops almost instantly without any chance of tiping over.

You can also remove the front wheels from the Brakes action group.

[Ryu Gemini]

The best trick I can think of is to NOT mimick Whackjob.

Attempts to do so tend to end explosively.

[Whackjob]

"If at first you do not succeed, build bigger, and bigger, and bigger."

Edited October 4, 2013 by Whackjob

[magnemoe]

-Small probes don’t need landing legs. You can just land them on their fuel tanks as long as you keep the touchdown velocity low. Manned Landers on small bodies don’t need ladders. Let the guys use their RCS thrusters to get back in.

-Put a probe body, docking port, battery, and solar panels on the interplanetary drop fuel tanks. Then if you have any fuel left in them that you don’t need for the return journey, you can leave them in orbit and they will be an emergency fuel depot for any future missions.

-You can launch several (4 to 8) small probes at once by building them on a central core using symmetry in the VAB. Attach them with 0.625m decouplers and a strut. This is good for going to the Jool system.

-You can easily find your TWR for a different body if you know your TWR on Kerbin and the gravity on the other body. Round off Kerbin’s gravity to 10m/s^2. Thus, if your gravity is half of that on Kerbin (5m/s^2), your TWR will be twice as high, and vice versa. The math is easy to do in your head in just a second or two when you start from 10m/s^2 because 10 is a nice round number.

-On interplanetary ships, if you attach your LV-Ns radially on decouplers, as you burn through your fuel you can drop them in pairs to increase your delta-v. No sense in carrying around a bunch of heavy engines you don’t need once your fuel load gets a lot lighter.

-Put a single landing leg on the back of your rover for a kickstand to keep it from rolling away.

A lot of people already know these, and might have better alternatives.

Yes, for the nuclear engines you might want to go full nuclear asparagus, downside is that this increase part count.

As for the multiple probes here is an rocket underway to Mun with 9 probe rovers.

----

You can put anything on top of an docking port in wab, it does not need to have its own docking port.

This is nice as you can put an drop tank on top of an docking port, it will be drained first so you can drop it before docking.

[NGTOne]

The best trick I can think of is to NOT mimick Whackjob.

Attempts to do so tend to end explosively.

"If at first you do not succeed, build bigger, and bigger, and bigger."

I don't mimic, but I follow the same philosophy. The rest of my "tricks" are all structural engineering, which basically works out to, "clever strut placement is a lot more valuable than strut spam".

[Specialist290]

You can directly stage by right clicking on the decoupler under the command module after shutting down the engines

The thing is, though, I wanted an abort sequence that would activate the LES, separate the command pod, and shut down all other engines at the same time. So I mapped all that to my Abort Group, separated the LES with another action group, and deployed the parachutes with a third. Being able to do large numbers of things in sequence quickly is important when your launch gets wonky and you want to save the pilots' lives.

[FlamedSteak]

Not really weird but mounting lights around docking ports; makes docking on the dark side of planetary bodies a helluva lot easier.

[willy123]

I have an obsession with aesthetically pleasing space planes that can still do difficult tasks.

This has led me to stuffing things within things.

Scroll toward the craft until the camera is inside the craft and then place things in there as you please.

Tired of ugly rcs fuel, generators, sas, whatever? Stuff it inside the fuel tank.

Want more fuel but don't want to just hang fuel in the wings? Stuff more fuel containers into the existing fuel containers.

Want to get an ssto into space with only a jet engine and a nuclear engine, and have it not look like an abomination? Stuff the nuclear engine into the jet engine (tinker until it works).

This works with air intake, too. Though I have taken it a bit too far with 100s of intakes crammed within a 4x4 area, resulting in a intake shrapnel bomb upon launch.

Vanilla version.

[Zeroignite]

Trick I haven't seen before: upside-down airplane landing gear as rover rollbars. They're springy, so there's fewer explosions!