Tips and tricks you found out yourself

[Excalibur]

I've got one.

Putting Nukes on the quadcouplers and activating them seems to have their sheilds destroy the others, right?

Before you activate them, quicksave. Then activate them, they should all have their sheilds blow off and break all the other engines. F-9 back to last quicksave. Your ship will appear with no sheilds, and you can activate the nukes with no explosions. Took a while to figure this out.

Already mentioned that one buddy!

These 'effects' have put me into a rage more often than I care to imagine. Rather serendipitously I found an elegant solution.

Make sure that the decoupler below your LV-N is not in the same staging group as the engine. Once you've jettisoned the preceding stage DO NOT activate the LV-N (this will jettison the fairings with the expected unpleasant result). Instead make a quick-save (obviously you must be out of atmo/throttled down). When you quick-load the aforementioned save the fairing will have magically disappeared!

So you can build your nuclear-powered craft any way that you like, even so that the LV-N fairing is completely enclosed by other structures. No need for awkward VAB-based workarounds!

[Brapness]

Only figured out this one recently by accident. If you hold shift and use the arrow keys in the VAB and SPH you can translate the camera.

[Skorpychan]

1) For six-wheel rovers, steering lock on center wheel pair helps a lot.

I find that locking the rear steering and reversing the center steering works better. Crabbing > Sudden turns.

Stick probe cores to everything if you can.

Large inertial stabilisers are lighter AND save weight in rockomax adapters on my bigger craft.

Small cylindrical monopropellant tanks are more mass-efficient than larger ones, somehow.

Ion engines are boring.

Landings are best dry-run first with a few probes.

Send the fuel first.

The more parts you stack up, the bigger the wiggle.

Edited January 13, 2014 by Skorpychan

[federicoaa]

To launch to rendezvous from KSC, wait until your target is on top of the small peninsula west from KSC. For a 80km orbit I always get the AP and encounter almost on the same point (and with less than 10km separation).

[Matt]

I found out ( a long time ago, maybe in .17 or .18 ) that if I want to decrease my looooooong burn in space ( you know, in space you cannot use physics time warp, only in atmosphere!) BUT I found out that if you hold alt and press on the time warp button it'll toggle physics time warp! and BOOM!

Alt + your usual time warp key and you have physics time warp in any situation. Very handy for those low TWR burns.

[Streetwind]

For the longest time I believed that activating time warp meant hands-off, no control.

Then I discovered that you retain full steering and staging control during physics time warp (the 2x-4x one).

[arkive]

1) If you run out of electrical power, you can EVA out and use the RCS in your suit to nudge the craft towards the light (assuming you have some of those always-out solar panels plastered somewhere).

2) When you start migrating to deeper portions of space, consider using staging on your fuel tanks too. You'll save fuel in the long run using two half tanks and a decoupler instead of a full length tank.

3) This may seem like a no-brainer to most, but when designing a craft that's going to dock/RCS, configure the ship in the configuration it will be when you're docking/RCS (disconnect any staging that will be absent, etc) and then turn on center of mass. Use that to precisely place your RCS thrusters. RCS placed at exactly the CoM or equidistant from it will translate better in space and reduce the occurance of rotation when using RCS.

4) Use the Alarm clock mod, especailly if you run concurrent missions as it can track multiple ship's activities and notifiy you accordingly. Definitely use it every time you're making an SOI change and you're feeling impatient. Warping through an SOI change can drastically affect your approach distance to the new object, but the alram clock can pull you out of warp a few seconds before it happens so your periapsis is consistent with what you see before the SOI change..

[Z-Man]

Having trouble getting your perfectly flight-capable rockets onto the launchpad because the game essentially throws them there and the resulting shock breaks stuff? And you don't want to use KJR for some reason? Try these alternative launch clamp constructions:

Below your engines, place a decoupler, a girder and a launch clamp attached to that girder bottom. The decoupler goes to the stage that also fires the engine, the launch clamp can stay engaged. In flight, your engine has to support the weight of the rocket (and more), so why not pre-launch? Well, apart from the bit where a real engine would not find it very nice if you blocked it like that at full power, but we're working around a malicious physics bug here, so I'm personally fine with exploiting a missing realism feature.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/687097840244570456/8A8BDF7848C500B568646D56705B4B5B3E1EFE22/

The girder adds a little flex to cushion the shock. You can stack multiple girders if you need a softer cushion. Of course, this will not stabilize your rocket sideways very well.

Useful instead of side-attached plain launch clamps:

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/687097840244601044/3D96004AE75CF1AACB93713C1FDBB3143FE7CEFB/

Radial decoupler, large I-Beam and launch clamp mounted to the beam from below. Both decoupler and clamp go to the same stage. Can support the weight of about one orange tank, and unlike the plain clamp, the connection is very flexible and cushions your rocket nicely. The decoupler and beam get ejected to the side far enough to be safe. Added bonus: the distance between the clamp tower and your rocket increases.

Downsides: Decoupler marks on your rocket, you should not clip clamp towers into one another any more. And increased part count on the pad.

Here is how both look in action for a ridiculously stupid rocket:

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/687097840244620536/83491E25DC20FB283D1F72E3C3ADF883386FA06F/

Another downside: your flightlog will be spammed with irrelevant crash and damage reports.

[katateochi]

snip*

Oh, also Eve is a purple h3^$ that devours probes' solar panels

I presume this is in ref to a probe which is landed. There was a thread a while back looking into the criminal theft of solar panels, we concluded that it only happened on planets with atmos and it was caused when the craft is reloaded, either when switching to it from KSC or if you'd traveled more than 2.2km away and then return.

So the tip/trick from that is; always pack you solar panels away when leaving a parked craft on planets with atmos.

If you forgot to bring an antenna for transmitting science and you want to do multiple crew reports all is not lost. Do first report, go EVA & right click on the pod to "take data". If you already have other stored results you will need to click take data twice. Then re-board the craft and now the first crew report is stored with the other results and you can now do another crew report. I guess this is how Kerbals drag and drop files between folders.

If for some reason when you launch your craft you are zoomed waaaaay out, rather than scrolling to zoom in, hit m twice to jump to and from map mode and you should be at the correct zoom.

[Superfluous J]

If for some reason when you launch your craft you are zoomed waaaaay out, rather than scrolling to zoom in, hit m twice to jump to and from map mode and you should be at the correct zoom.

Nice. That will save me a lot of scrolling.

[Mitchz95]

For those of you who like to suicide burn, I found that time warp is disabled when you're within a few thousand meters of the surface of an airless body like Minmus. So you can get away with warping at 10x or so until the cutoff, at which point you know you have to start braking hard.

[PDCWolf]

Not sure if already posted but double clicking the mouse-wheel will reset the camera offset (not the zoom/orbit) when in flight.

KSP doesn't simulate chamber pressure, that means you don't lose efficiency when throttling down so good throttle control can make you save loads of deltaV (This is exploiting/cheating for me but may be just what you need). With correct throttle control and good piloting you can get to Low Kerbin Orbit with only 4200m/s. And no, Mechjeb just lacks the amount of human thinking that's necessary for this to work.

You don't need to clip the camera inside tanks to stich-strut them, just move the mouse carefully around their top, you'll see the strut disappearing between the tanks and then click, then just click the tank above and that's it.

For replica builders: You don't need to use every tank you add. For realistic results/payload fractions/mechanics you can place tanks but reroute/disable them so that they are dead weight. This is even better now with tweakables, as you can just add empty tanks for height simulation.

Always do the orbit insertion burn at the periapsis, because at that exact point you are no longer fighting gravity, you are just moving laterally.

The most efficient TWR at lift-off is about 1.57. Launching at that TWR means you won't go past the terminal velocity unless you are ditching a lot of weight by staging causing your TWR to jump up.

[Pds314]

1. Especially true in FAR: rockets should basically the same ending trajectory as high-TWR spaceplanes. Likewise, high-TWR spaceplanes should have basically the same starting trajectory as rockets. In other words, a rocket going to 75 km should be still raising its apoapsis at 65 or 70 km.

2. Especially in stock since you can't see the intake air requirement met, one engine is better than multiple for high-altitude planes, so is putting the jets closer to the CoM.

3. If you are especially conservative with EVA fuel, you can land a Kerbal on Pol and lesser worlds (Such as Bop, Minmus, and Gilly), take off, reach orbit, and rendezvous with your spacecraft all on EVA fuel (and/or the spaceship's fuel for the rendezvous part).

4. If your lander runs out of fuel before reaching orbit and is still on a trajectory that will smash you into the moon or planet you are above, you can save the Kerbals and some of your scientific data by having everyone abandon ship and going into Orbit assuming that less than about 500 m/s of Delta-V are still required to do so. Keep in mind that if you want to rescue multiple Kerbals, you can only control 1 at a time, so you will have to send one into a high suborbital trajectory, quickly switch to one of the others and do the same, then burn, taking turns between Kerbals, until they reach orbit.

5. If your lander runs out of fuel BEFORE landing on a low-gravity world, you may have the Delta-V to either put your Kerbals in orbit or save at least 1 of them by making a soft landing.

6. Unless you plan on doing 360-degree spins through the tunnel at top speed, you don't usually need maneuvering rockets on pure-VTOL air vehicles. Just make a hotkey for shutting down and re-engaging the engine.

7. In FAR or stock, jets clipped through another vehicle for VTOL takeoff generate as much drag as if they were sticking out.

8. Putting lots of engines at the back of a plane can cause you to need to put wider wings near the back. This can result in a vicious cycle of needing more engines to take off, more weight near the front in fuel to give it range, and bigger wings near the back to make it work. Ever had a plane where it seemed like even with the wings at the very back, it was still unstable? This is probably why. The solution is to put the engines near the middle. This also help dramatically with maneuverability.

9. Putting fuel tanks near the front may seem like a good idea to move your CoM forward, however, the plane can easily become unstable when low on fuel if you do this.

10. When you see "VTOL" you should read it as "SAS."

11. If you need more than one parachute to land something, spread them out between parts, this way, the differential acceleration will not break the vehicle in half.

12. For SSTOs, get as close to space as possible before engaging rockets. hopefully, your plane can get into space and develop a periapsis before you engage rockets.

13. When you reach orbital speed in the atmosphere, wings are essentially worthless unless you are trying to stay IN the atmosphere.

14. Adding more engines has very little effect at high altitude without a proportional number of intakes. In fact, it adds weight, which may slow the aircraft down.

15. It is totally possible to land a spaceplane on its normal landing gears on Minmus.

16. ALWAYS use a gravity desist when trying to land on or go into orbit around anything without an atmosphere. That is to say, you should be in front of it in its orbit.

17. Flying wings act spin like flying saucers if you have nothing keeping them oriented in yaw.

18. Strutting two connected parts to eachother rarely does very much.

19. Building giant wings in an alternating "brick" pattern can often be more structurally stable than building them in a linear shape.

20. "Feathers" are very fragile and very critical, especially in FAR. If you build anything as a large bird, watch those operational limits.

21. Putting all of the fuel on a delta-shaped plane behind the CoM and then trying to land it on low or no fuel will result in a trajectory resembling that the other thing with all of the weight at the front and the drag at the back, an arrow. One might want to notice that very few people have ever used arrows as a means of transportation and lived.

22. Engines or fuel tanks on the wingtips mean high-speed roll == your plane asplode.

23. There should be exactly no control surfaces right near the center of your plane. These do nothing in their respective dimensions.

24. SAS can really help in an other-wise uncontrollable spin or stall.

25. Put landing gears on you wings if they are long and low.

26. Coming in too fast for a landing? Pull up into a loop you will lose some speed afterwards.

[koshelenkovv]

Or fearless driving? Does this work with rovers too?

You can use trim for driving.

Press Alt+Forward key (W or one you remapped forward to) and hold until desired speed achieved.

Press Alt+X to reset trim.

Such way you can drive even at 0.1 m/s simulating real rovers

[Rickenbacker]

If for some reason when you launch your craft you are zoomed waaaaay out, rather than scrolling to zoom in, hit m twice to jump to and from map mode and you should be at the correct zoom.

Thank you! This has annoyed me no end, since KSP doesn't seem to stop reading the scroll wheel when you alt-tab out of it.

[Lar-E]

Maybe everyone else knew this already, but I've been playing for about 7 months, and just figured this out... When you're in 'Target' mode, the yellow prograde and retrograde indicators on the navball show pro/retrograde *relative to* your target. (So, if like me, you notice your periapsis dipping dangerously low during the approach for a docking maneuver, switch to 'Orbit' on the navball before burning prograde!)

[ammonia_ocean]

You (or, at least, I) get better FPS during burns when the camera is located behind your ship.

[Spartwo]

Rapiers have an unbelievably high service ceiling(around 32km for a 4-1 intake ratio).

[match]

When trying to align parts during design, and are unable to use symmetry, and have no good reference point to work from... grab the whole craft (sh-click) and plunge it into the ground. The floor will provide a nice plane to reference from. Need to attach at uniform angles? Use the minute adjustment to turn the whole craft to the desired angle and plunge it into the ground.

As a matter of fact, may as well plunge every design into the ground before launching... most of them will wind up there anyway.

[MajorThomas]

As a matter of fact, may as well plunge every design into the ground before launching... most of them will wind up there anyway.

Hilarious!

[Mitchz95]

Not sure how useful this is, but the camera focuses on the active vessel's center of mass. So you can get a sense of where most of the weight is.

[rockbloodystar]

Just been reminded by previuos post, in flight mode holding the mouse wheel and moving the mouse changes what the camera focuses on. Double clicking the wheel moves you bacl to the original focus.

[Superfluous J]

Not sure how useful this is, but the camera focuses on the active vessel's center of mass. So you can get a sense of where most of the weight is.

It's very useful when docking without RCS. Aim yourself retrgrade and as you slide up next to your target ship you can burn right when the docking port is aimed at your ship's COM. Then, when you turn towards it your docking port will be aimed (pretty much) directly at theirs.

[Jank]

Love this thread, keep it alive! Endless lernin

[StrandedonEarth]

Once, when I hit F5 when I meant to F9, I recovered some time by quickly hitting Alt-F4 before autosave happened. When I restarted KSP I was back before my grievous error (can't remember what my error was though)