Gimme your weirdest tricks!

[alacrity]

my biggest trick I had to come up with is the lateral thruster rigs i builds for landing my weirder rovers.

This beast, when being transported to its destination, is surrounded by a cage. Primary decel thrusters are standard but with how lopsided these things tend to be I place small thusters firing left and right. Once I get to the point of near direct downward descent. with some careful action groups they act as overpowered rcs. Even the most ungainly of designed can be landed on all four wheels.

alacrity

[Vector]

Not really "weird," and something people probably already know, is what I call a "split Hohmann transfer". Instead of spending a half-orbit in the transfer orbit, I'll use a longer one-and-a-half transfer orbit. And then, rather than burning all the delta-V at once, it's split so some of it is burned initially and the rest is burned at the second pass through periapsis. By varying the fraction burned on the first and second passes, the timing of the intercept can be varied widely and accurately, and it doesn't cost any more fuel than a regular Hohmann transfer.

The downside (and it's a big one) is for interplanetary transfers you lose the Oberth benefit for the second portion of the burn.

[Lord_Demon]

When designing a lander part, add two lamps that point down. Tilt them bit, so they are not straight down, but just a bit (5 degrees?) towards the craft center. When landing, put the lights on. The distance lights are from one another helps estimate distance from the ground.

I've also used Jet engines as the first stage of smaller rockets. They are more fuel efficient, and you can often get to about 20k before they cut out even on one intake/engine. They even have fuel left at this point. Just make a separate keygroup that disables the engines, fires the decouplers and starts rocket engines/solid boosters in one go. If you just use decouplers, you risk the runaway engines hitting the craft. Downside is that the rocket usually has low velocity at that point.

[lewisd]

When designing a lander part, add two lamps that point down. Tilt them bit, so they are not straight down, but just a bit (5 degrees?) towards the craft center. When landing, put the lights on. The distance lights are from one another helps estimate distance from the ground.

I just started using this trick. Works great. Straight out of the Dam Busters WWII mission.

[Galane]

Extending landing legs to work with the Mainsail engine. Need them father down for longer engines? Use longer I-beams.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/49557-Mainsail-Landing-Demonstrator-1

[magnemoe]

Extending landing legs to work with the Mainsail engine. Need them father down for longer engines? Use longer I-beams.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/49557-Mainsail-Landing-Demonstrator-1

Not weird but smart. it also keep the profile narrower who is useful it you try to build something like falcon heavy reusable.