That moment you realise you're good at this game...

[Drunkrobot]

We all remember our firsts-first orbit, first Mun landing, first interplanetary mission-but we never give that much thought to how we do it again, then again, and again, until we've done it so many times, we can do it with grace.

Just know, I realised I just had one of those moments. You know how most Mun landings, you burn a bit, cut the engine, burn a bit, cut the engine? Well, during the Apollo missions, the landing was done in one, long burn, from orbit to surface. The descent engine couldn't be cut, then ignited again. For the first time, I managed to do that. Managing so many things at once (attitude, true altitude, vertical velocity, horizontal velocity etc.) is a tall order for me, so going from several hundred metres per second to kissing the ground at three metres per second in one continuous burn felt so sweet.

Do you have any memory of doing something incredible, and doing it like a boss?

Edited October 19, 2013 by Drunkrobot

[AmpsterMan]

Yeah. Back in 0.16 I had mastered getting to Mun pretty good. So much so that I actually tried launching straight from Kerbin to Landing on Mun without circularizing at either end. Very fun indeed.

[SkyRender]

I have a long, long memory of many such "like a boss" moments stretching back all the way to my first successful Mun land-and-return mission in the days before patched conics. But my favorite by far was my insane suicide burn to land on the Mun in the dead of night. Without SAS or RCS. Or lights. I did it in one try without even tipping slightly when I landed. That was pretty freaking epic.

[michaelphoenix22]

right after .22 dropped i didnt have any mods and no mechjeb. I was a lil paniky at first, then i launched, did my gravity turn and set a circular orbit like it was just another launch. Then i went to the mun and back without any issue.

I did eventually get mechjeb going for interplanetary trips.. because i HATE figuring out IP trips.....

I figured out i wasnt using mechjeb as much as a crutch as i thought i was.

[Brotoro]

...Well, during the Apollo missions, the landing was done in one, long burn, from orbit to surface. The descent engine couldn't be cut, then ignited again.

The LM descent engine made two separate firings. The first to de-orbit the LM, and the second was the burn for braking/landing.

[alacrity]

My like a boss moment came when I built a 17 tonne rover and landed it on a no atmos celestial. lateral thrusters on action groups, with a main engine pointed straight down, no parachute assist, 1/2 tonne off balance to the front, and with a working crane on board. Duna easy... Mun made me want to cry

i really hated that thing

Alacrity

[katateochi]

One of the things I love about this game is its a series of wins, and each one dwarfs the previous one.

I'd been pretty pleased when I could consistently land in-between a small group of base components on Mun, but more recently (in 0.20) I topped that by landing on top of a docking port inside another craft on Duna. (thou I did train for that maneuver on Mun).

One of my fav got-it-first-time wins was landing on Mun purely in IVA mode and just using the dials to judge it. That was fun and so immersive.

[Sundancer]

That's how I've been doing my landings. It's just a matter of regulating the throttle and your angle relative to the retrograde marker to dictate exactly where and how hard you land. I've never actually landed where I intended to though

The sense of accomplishment when you stick any landing for the first time is huge though, imo. Not sure how I'd manage in a situation like Skyrender's though. Shadows are how I did it on the Mun all three times that I've been there.

Minmus is easier since if you aim for one of the lakes(?) you can use the altimeter. That said, I certainly wouldn't want to try a Minmus landing in the dark due to how close I came to the surface on my lake-landing. It's quite unnerving knowing that your landing site is "just over that cliff", but that cliff is approaching your lander at three or four hundred metre's per second (minimum!).

[SuperWeegee4000]

As long as I have a capable lander, I can take it down to just about anywhere. Okay, to be fair, I've only ever been to the Mun and Minmus. I recently realized I can land on those really easily. But with a couple of quicksaves, I could learn pretty quickly on almost any body.

I can imagine the nightmare Tylo must be....

[Procyon]

lol, wonder how many ppl are doing the no mech jeb thing?

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

I can imagine the nightmare Tylo must be....

You don't even know man...

*cires and hides in the wardrobe*

I still find it amazing when I've mastered orbital mechanics and differential caculus (helps with deltaV and stuff) when people at the same age as me think Jesus was born in Africa

[boolybooly]

umm well I dont know about good exactly, this was a recent mission which went badly wrong but which I rescued in an ingenious way, which made me very chuffed

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[benzman]

I have only been playing this game for about a month so I can't claim to be 'good', but some of my early fumblings resulted in three three-Kerbal command pods drifting around in weird Kerbin orbits with no fuel. It took about two weeks to figure out how to mount rescue missions. Without going into boring details I eventually got everyone safely back home. Now THAT was satisfying!

[Spatzimaus]

I can imagine the nightmare Tylo must be....

It's rough, since you have to spend a lot of fuel on the way down as well as up. In my case, I got around that using the Kethane mod, which allowed my lander to refill its tanks on the ground there. (And before anyone complains, what do you think will happen once the new resource system is in place? Land a mobile refinery on the planet, and drive it to wherever you landed your probes.) Tylo doesn't have any terrain to speak of, and without an atmosphere you don't have to worry about tumbling or anything; when I was doing my Grand Tour I actually had a harder time landing on Duna, as its atmosphere kept causing my lander to tumble out of control while still being too thin to let the parachutes keep it stable.

As to the original question, I'd say my first time refueling my space station. Docking's probably the hardest single skill to learn in this game, especially with two ungainly craft, but once you've got that under control it's all downhill.

[Cooly568]

Oh yeah I do.

Full Joolian Tour, and I'm planning a full grand tour, with only one ship.

[kiwi1960]

I also have not been playing this adverture for long, and I use MechJeb...

BUT.... there comes a time when the Mun and Minmus have overstayed their usefulness...

That was when I decided to send a probe to Eve...

WOW.... hundreds and hundreds of days JUST for the alignment to be just right before I even left Kerbal

But then... Mechjeb started acting screwy... actually, it was my fault. Mecjeb told me the match planes with Eve first, but I couldn't figure out how to do that, mechjeb refused to do it... (I know now that I should target the Mun and match planes with that first... then target the planet I want to go to...)

Anyhow... by hand, I started making course corrections, using mechjeb when I could, but mostly by hand...

Then, I got close enough and made my orbit circular... eventually working it down till I was 100K above the surface.... then I noticed it was a death orbit, so I have to land fast, Mechjeb was screwy again so started by hand till mechjeb could take over...

I landed in one piece...

I am NOT going back to Eve till I can competently control a spacecraft without mechanical help.

I did pat myself on the back... when I first started playing this adventure (its not a game IMHO) and this had happened, I would just has sat their waiting for the fly past into unknown space or the impact onto the moon I was heading for...

As my son used to say when he was little....

"I's a big boy now..."

[Aragosnat]

Never used MechJeb. My boss like moment is. I can sort of land where I want to on the Mün as long as I have enough fuel. Still working with Kerbin only was able to recently hit the small island north-east along the coast above KSC and I am not talking about the big obious one either. One right smacked dap against the coast line the blends in unless you are close enough to see the water lines.

[SkipSpikowski]

When I put this beast into orbit with a full Rockomax orange, docked it with the station, and then brought it back to land under it's own power, I was pretty much happy with what I had accomplished.

[Wallace]

On my first Mun mission, during launch, the nuclear engine that is supposed to take me to the Mun drops clean off for no reason, I decide, meh, I'll keep going as see what happens, the stub of the final stage takes me to the Mun and I circularise using the lander engines to tow the ruined return stage which is now just a floating fuel tank with RCS, I land, plant the flag, mess about, then I head back up and rendezvous, or course I've spent too long on the surface, the lander has a solar panel, but the return stage only has a bettery and it's totally dead. Furthermore, the lander has no RCS to save weight: commence the RCS-free docking to the powered down tank. Now previous to this I've only docked once, so this is my second ever docking. Result: nailed it, lander comes in butt-first and docks the the drifting tank perfectly, flies home, victory, even splash down within view of the KSC.

[Sof]

I went to the Mun first time I tried before ever orbiting either Kerbin or the Mun. The entire trip was a direct burn because I knew nothing about how spaceflight worked and the map wasn't like it is today.

[Dean Harper]

They say a picture is worth 1000 words. When I was going through the screenshots of a recent mission, I realized how far I had come:

I was just trying new things, building what I considered the "next step" to what I was already doing. I never really planned it, but I ended up with an orbital fuel station capable of giving my space planes the power to visit other celestial bodies. When I finally landed on Minmus, I stopped and realized that I had become, at the very least, good at KSP.

(The first two images are from my Mun mission. The third from Minmus. Just figured I'd mention that out now before anyone decided to point out the slight differences in the plane from one photo to the next)

[AlternNocturn]

Wait, people cut the engines in and out during landing? I've always been doing it in one burn. I'm not even bragging or anything, I literally thought that was how most people did it.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

The Moment I realize that I am good at this game is still in front of me.

It will be me, launching a multistaged Rocket from the surface of Eve and returning to Kerbin with it

But before that, I have to do the same from Tylo and Moho.

[Scarecrow88]

Despite having visited the majority of bodies in the system, all flown manually, I'll not consider myself good at this game until I've been able to put a manned lander on Eve, and got them back to Kerbin safely.

[sickboy]

I don't know if that counts by a day or two after 0.22 came out, i was orbiting gilly to do some science, i looked at my fuel and realised i had a lot more than i anticipated, so out of the blue i jsut decided to break my orbit and land on top of my 4 nuclear engines, on a very steep slope, in the dead of night. But it was on Gilly so iguess it's pretty easy.

anyhow, i don't really consider myself "good" at the game, i have issues doing any land and return mission on any planet with an atmosphere and i have trouble building stable ships in orbit