Building Stations right in Space?

[A-Rob]

I often thought about a way to build really large Space Stations.

But looking at the fact that i (and some others, too) suck at docking, i hope to get a mod, that allows me to build my station in an orbit around Kerbin.

Some of you (and that is your full right) may see in this an option to destroy the fun ingame, but for me it would increase the fun A LOT!

I have a lot of imaginations for really huge Space stations with 500+ Parts.

There are maybe people wo have already build stations this big with fully manual docking, my respcet to them, but i can't do that

So, is there a way to craft right in space?

[Demon_82]

You can use Hyperedit to get things in orbit in a matter of a click, or use MechJeb to dock for you the parts of a modular space station, I think that covers your necessities.

[Deadfingers]

You may want to use UbioZur Welding Ltd to weld parts together unless you have a beast of a computer.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/ubioweldingltd/

[A-Rob]

Okay, i donwloaded Mechjeb and Welding Ltd. I will try both in the next days, thanks

[KerbMav]

I am still waiting for something to allow connecting parts in space like in the VAB - pushing two station modules against each other and "dock"/weld them together (with help from a "rotation assistant") forever.

[zrikz]

Any tips on getting Mechjeb to work with docking / rendezvous ? Having trouble getting it to work, a couple times if I take control and make some changes I can nearly get it there, but MJ doesn't seem to help me too much unless I'm using it wrong. I unfortunately have no beast of a computer.

[Roxette]

...is there a way to craft right in space?

I put some thought into this, as I prefer simple launch vehicles of realistic proportions, and came up with a plan for a modular system using all stock parts...

Ship up a bunch of girder sections pre-assembled with docking ports...

It flies pretty well, fortunately for now aerodynamics in KSP is lacking in reality...

The arrangement of docking ports and girders at the top holds the five girders together, there's struts at the bottom, which conveniently evaporate when the ports are undocked...

I had yet to notice a flaw in this plan due to over-enthusiastic rapid assembly...

So I sent a rescue tug out from the station, one that actually had RCS fuel, not just the thrusters

Here's the star of the show, and what makes this plan workable in the absence of being able to get a bunch of kerbals in EVA to wield spanners and work as a team - a micro-tug, simply a small remote guidance unit with RCS tank, thrusters, and docking ports (I have one with standard and junior, and another with standard and senior). Shown here moving one of the conical standard/junior port adapters I added just because they would fit and will probably be useful. It's so light that maneuvering it with nothing attached is surprisingly tricky, but the upside is that it attaches to docking ports very easily even if the approach angle is wildly off axis.

Clearly it's reasonably important to have docking ports on the girders and things that are close to the center of mass so they handle without too much difficulty. Here's a large girder segment being moved from the shipping stack to fit onto a hub.

Job done. This station will take a while to assemble, and it's frustrating at times with the tricky maneuvers needed, but there will be a great sense of achievement once it's complete

[Demon_82]

You should select as target a docking port in the target ship, and select "Control from here" in the docking port of your active ship that you want to dock. Also you need RCS thrusters and fuel onboard, and it must be somewhat well balanced, other than that I don't know what to say.

[Stone Blue]

I'm no expert on docking/rendezvous, but mechjeb usually can get me within a good rendezvous distance of 50-100 meters. But for docking, i've found mechjeb to be useful only for the first part of docking. ie getting to maybe 20-30 meters, and getting my crafts lined up.

For me, if i try to use mj under 20m, it starts doing weird things, like unnecessary rolls, or accelerating toward my target, making me overshoot, or crash. So i usually just use mj for 'coarse' docking alignment, then i take over manually for 'fine' control and final docking.

I suggest looking at the Docking Indicator and/or the Romfarer Docking Cam mods. They help tremendously, and add to the realism, of docking.

[enki]

Any tips on getting Mechjeb to work with docking / rendezvous ? Having trouble getting it to work, a couple times if I take control and make some changes I can nearly get it there, but MJ doesn't seem to help me too much unless I'm using it wrong. I unfortunately have no beast of a computer.

I strongly suggest looking at the Docking Alignment Indicator mod and never using the mechjeb docking or rendezvous again. This will help get the angles you want when you dock also.

[sumghai]

I used (and still use) MechJeb's Rendezvous and Docking Guidance modules very extensively and managed to put together this monstrosity - the latter has a neat rotational alignment features that allows me to get compartments lined up precisely:

Unlike some folks who would spam lots of Clamp-O-Tron seniors, I use the standard (and more realistic sized) Clamp-O-Trons or my own IACBMs, and secure the docked connections with JDP's docking struts add-on.

[KhaosCorp]

MechJeb is HORRIBLE at docking...I wouldn't use the MJ2 docking assist if ya paid me to....thats how bad it is..

Best docking mod ever is HydroTech (though the autopilot sucks about as much as MJ). Its more like a docking assisnt than docking autopilot, but the features it has for maintaining craft possition and regulating the flow of Monoprop to the jets are matched by none! I have docked 60+ ton modules to my stations before using this mod...docking took about 5min total (starting from about 160meter approach) and used somewhere around 40ish units of Mono.....MJ2 cant do that even on its best day =P

Honestly, if you have issues docking look into it: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/hydrotech-rcs-autopilot/

[dpraptor]

Hi A-Rob,

You can build some pretty large stations. I dont know the part count of mine - but it must be around or over 800 or more, possibly over 1000 - as there are many small parts that are decorative, I can do without those in future builds. But Attaching them requires docking. If you can get the ports fairly close, Mechjeb will do the final docking for you, but you need to maneuver them fairly close.

But docking is really not that hard once you try it for a bit. But I do sometimes use mechjeb to help out. You can use it to get very close, then do the final maneuvering, get it closer with the ports lined up - then mechjeb will do the final docking.

You can build them in dock-able stages, launching each part and assembling in space. I built this ship in 0.19, before they had optimized the game more, so by the time i was adding the last few sections it was terribly laggy. I am working on a new massive station to see the limits of the number of parts before it gets laggy again.

When you build really large ships, i recommend using the Tri-port adapters for the central connections, as it has 3 ports to attach and has a much stronger hold than just one one port. As you will see, I use that on all the areas that I add significant sized sections.

here are a few screens of the one I built, The H.M.S. Wileen:

This is the first base part of the ship. I decided to make the connections to the other main parts via tri-docking ports, which hold much more securely in a large ship. You can see 2 of them on the left/right sides. I did make a mistake by using the wrong kind of ports on 2 of the sides(front and back), I should have gone with tri-ports on all 4 of the sides. I will be doing that on my new station. I also added a tri-port on the top to connect with the upper section. I left the bottom with tanks and engines in case I needed to move it.

One thing I needed was to have the Tri-port docking parts on BOTH top and bottom of parts, so I had to devise a method of attaching them to the rest of the ship. This was the method I used, using 2 tri-ports facing each other and adding a separator ring on each:

This allowed me to undock the tri-ports from the engines, although it did leave a little debris in space!

Here I am docking the Base section to the communications section using the Tri-port docks:

A little tricky, but once docked, it was quite strong. Just make sure to line them up right!! Funny thing, This was only my 3rd or 4th docking attempt! So it really is not that hard.

I built 2 of these antenna arrays, more for looks that function! Again - the tri-dock ports were used on both ends, one to attach, and one to add another section to later:

And here is the final docking of the 4th section, again - lining up the tri-port docks carefully. You can see the tri-ports on the back of the other section already attached, so i can add another large section to it.

HAHA!! One thing to watch for is lag... I used mechjeb to assist adding the 6th section - and it didnt go to well, but the ship did not break apart, I believe that was because of all the tri-ports I used:

So always save before you begin approaches!!!!

Here is the final station H.M.S. Wileen, I added a set of escape pods on the right (upper), and a science section on the left (lower). This is a pretty massive station, If it didnt lag out so bad i still could have enlarged it even more, by using the front and back docking ports, but I would have wanted to use the tri-ports there.

i found the station to be very stable when rotating or even moving. It does shake a bit, so i think I work to make one more compact, without the long leggy extensions, but using more tri-ports on the central base to expand on.

So it is both possible and a lot of fun to make big stations!! Highly recommended!!

Edited October 17, 2013 by dpraptor

[Motokid600]

Hm. Sorry if this strays from the topic a bit, but has anyone noticed the performance increase .22 implemented? Was supposed to help with large stations. I've yet to try it.

[Roxette]

...has anyone noticed the performance increase .22 implemented?

Hell yes, it seems a lot slicker. The other change I've made which really improves performance a lot is reducing the part count by using the UbioZur welding plugin ( http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/ubioweldingltd/ ) - and sometimes subtle editing of resulting part config files - to combine multiple passive (i.e. structural or visual-only things with no associated actions or internal spaces) parts into subassemblies.

[KhaosCorp]

Hahaha...800 parts is not a big station....thats like a big launch vehicle. When you hit the 2k+ mark is when stations get big =P

of course i wouldnt recomend trying that on anything more than 50% graphics settings lol