Just got the game, boy do I have questions ...

[JumpsterG]

Actually I would suggest the other way around.

I started with Mechjeb.

...

Also the readouts Mechjeb gives you are invalluable to me personally.

Tons of people suggest avoiding mechjeb to newbies in favor of learning the hard way. Seriously, did a portion of the community learn to swim by being thrown into the deep end?

Mechjeb can be like a big brother to a new player:

He'll show you how he plays the game

When you get fed up, he's someone you can hand the controller to to get you past the hard part

Since you haven't learned all your math, he'll do that for you

He's not perfect, and discovering something you can do better than him is priceless

Even when you no longer need him to do it for you, he still gives you good information

All that said, I should admit that Mechjeb won't be very helpful to someone new to KSP until SOME basics are understood. You need to know what's possible in the first place before you can ask Mechjeb to do it!

[anarkhon]

"Tons of people suggest avoiding mechjeb to newbies.."

Yea,you really need to know when MechJeb fail before "he" lead your Kerbals to their doom,if you dont know the game you dont know why and how to work with MechJeb

...and of course MechJeb has written by peoples,you really want give your ship controll to another peoples?

MechJeb is a serial killer but KSP just an arcade game without it.

[The_Rocketeer]

There's a bunch of getting started walkthroughs and tips on Steam. Also I found the Wiki invaluable for the basics of manoeuvres.

[Sirrobert]

"Tons of people suggest avoiding mechjeb to newbies.."

Yea,you really need to know when MechJeb fail before "he" lead your Kerbals to their doom,if you dont know the game you dont know why and how to work with MechJeb

...and of course MechJeb has written by peoples,you really want give your ship controll to another peoples?

MechJeb is a serial killer but KSP just an arcade game without it.

Most people talk about learning how to land and dock before Mechjeb though. That's not basics, that's highly advanced stuf.

I keep an eye on my Mechjeb though (except for the launch autopilot. I've seen so many rocket launch it's gotten boring), so he hasn't killed anyone yet for me.

I like the big brother comparison. Very accurate

[Oddible]

I'd advise NOT using MechJeb to fly for you until you get the basic down or you'll be leaning on it for everything and won't learn some core flight mechanics. Using it for dV calculation of stages or maybe even Hoffman intercept or interplanetary intercept maneuver nodes, sure.