Tips and tricks you found out yourself

[Vector]

If you fly by a planet and arrange it such that after the encounter your orbital period is equal to (or an exact multiple) of the planet's orbital period you will intercept again, AND the direction in which you left the SOI will match the direction in which you enter the SOI on the next encounter. This makes it possible to do an Eve fly-by, leave Eve's SOI at an angle parallel to Gilly's orbital plane, then on the next Eve encounter, aerobrake into an orbit that already matches inclination with Gilly, no inclination burn required. Or if you simply want to get an equatorial orbit around Eve, the same technique works.

In response to an earlier post, cutting throttle with X is not quite the same as disabling the engines because jet engines take time to throttle down. When using jet engines as an early stage and dropping them, it can be helpful to actually disable them. Or what I do is usually (un-)balance them such that they fly away from the craft when separated and still powered.

For fine adjustments for gravity-assists, the keyboard throttle control is too coarse and I could find no sensitivity setting. Using a joystick, I configured one of the axes as incremental throttle control with low sensitivity. This way I can increase the throttle by a very small amount and execute maneuvers much more accurately without having to resort to superfluous tiny engines.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Struts can be attached to struts. This is extremely useful for Girders.

Some context: I was building, basically, a docking port on a stick, but it looked a little unstable, so I decided to add struts. Unfortunately, I found out that the second strut end ALWAYS defaults to the very top of a girder segment, but obviously the first strut doesn't. So, I hit upon an idea, what if I attached a strut to another strut. And it worked, giving me much greater freedom with my girder stabilisation.

[vexx32]

Woah, wait, what?! Struts attach to struts?!

[Sgt. Cookie]

Yes, but it's a little tricky, you have to attach the second strut nodule to the first strut nodule of the first strut. Here's some pictures to help:

The first step is the first strut nodule, like so:

This attaches to the booster, like so:

Now, the above image also contained the second strut, this one attached to the booster. THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT:

Only the second strut nodule of the second strut will attach to the first nodule of the first strut. Do it right and the strut will go thicker than normal:

Again, the order must be Secondary Nodule to Primary Nodule, it will not work the other way around.

And a close up of the strut-strut connection:

So, to reiterate once more:

Strut nodule 1A connects to object A, Strut Nodule 2A connects to object B. Strut Nodule 1B connects to object B and Strut Nodule 2B connects to Strut Nodule 1A.

And yes, you could add Strut 3 into this, in which case, Strut 3B would connect to 2A. The same holds true for Strut 4, Strut 5, Strut 6 and so on and so forth, attaching the second strut nodule to the primary nodule of the strut before it.

Hope this helps.

Edited November 24, 2013 by Sgt. Cookie

[antiquark]

Things I've figured out...

- Try to get all the science sensors as soon as possible, even before bigger rocket engines, etc. It will expedite your progress through the technology tree.

- Always (ALWAYS) put two small square solar cells on your craft, facing opposite directions. They serve as an emergency supply if you forget to unfurl your main solar panels.

- Generally reduce the part count on your craft, to reduce lag.

- Override the "Brake" action to only apply to the rear landing gear on an aircraft. This will prevent it from flipping over when coming to a stop.

- MechJeb is your friend!

Edited November 24, 2013 by antiquark

[Madrias]

When driving a rover, shut down the steering on the rear set(s) of wheels. This will greatly increase your turning circle, but allows turning at higher speeds on higher gravity worlds where you might wish to not destroy your science miner.

Also, turning off power to the rear drive wheels will cut your speed to about 66% total, but will increase battery lifetime. Useful for when you have to stop, align your panels to the sun, and transmit your science in a hurry.

Also, applying single-panel solar cells is never a bad thing. It only takes 5 at worst- one on each potential facing side of your rover- and it'll at least give you enough juice to maintain control by applying brakes or gently decelerating, then expanding your solar panels for a full recharge.

Set an action group for front/rear independant braking on rovers. This will save you many headaches when you're flying down a hill and need to stop before you flip and smash your antenna array.

More Communotrons is not a bad thing if you provide sufficient power. This eases the headache of science dumping taking forever by relaying said forever to your solar cell recharging device.

It's not a bad idea to drop a "solar base" on any planet you plan to do massive amounts of research on. Ideally consisting of 3 Kerbals minimum, lots of solar cells, and one communication antenna, but has docking ports to accept your rover, and no action groups. This way your rover can still send science and can steal power for recharging.

Open air jump-seats placed close to the ground allow gathering of surface samples while on the move. You can also transmit EVA reports and surface samples from a jump seat on a vehicle equipped with communication devices.

[3_bit]

If you burning at various angles between retrograde and vertical positions, you can keep yourself on track for a pinpoint landing, while still slowing down. This is because while you are slowing down laterally, your vertical drop rate is slowing down as well, buying you time for your lateral velocity to carry you to your landing site. I use this method a lot. It looks cooler and is more efficient than dropping out of the sky (deorbit burn at altitude to 0 m/s)

[Madrias]

Capsule torque on your rover is not your friend. It eats power and spins you sideways faster than flipping over. Shutting it down helps maintain control.

Don't be greedy. High speed eats batteries and causes expensive accidents. Slow your rovers down when cruising.

[Thomas988]

Don't begin orbital tilt until you're going at least 300 meters a second.

[Don Quixote]

For heavy spacecraft: Add small engines in front of your vessel, facing prograde. For small speed corrections, switch between these and the main engines (using a hotkey). This saves a lot of time and nerves as opposed to flipping your craft 180 degrees around or using thrusters. Also very useful for docking.

[Hidden Gunman]

Double check everything, and always 'walk' through a mission and see that you have the right gear for the job. Nothing is worse than returning to Kerbin for splashdown and suddenly finding out that you don't have parachutes.

[SlinkyBlue]

I'm sure veterans understand this, but when I figured this about about nodes and burn times, it really pretty much allowed me to get wherever I want, provided I built a good ship.

Whenever you do a burn, to be completely accurate you have to make sure your burn takes place 1/2 the time before the node, and 1/2 the time after the node.

If you have a 30 second burn, start your burn at T-15s. 1 min 12 second burn, start at T-36 seconds.

For months I made the mistake of waiting until T-0 seconds to start my burn; I hope this helps someone.

[Mitchz95]

Leaving Kerbin's SOI on the morning side will increase your solar orbit, making it easier to reach planets farther out from the sun like Duna and Jool. Leaving on the evening side will shrink the solar orbit, allowing easier access to Eve, Gilly, Moho, and the Sun itself.

Fuel efficiency is more important that time efficiency. Don't be afraid to orbit the sun a few times if it gets you a better maneuver node.

Always quicksave before attempting an aerocapture. One kilometer too high or too low can - and often will - doom the mission.

Efficiency is usually better than raw power.

Always include at least one docking port on all manned ships so you can refuel it if necessary.

Don't forget your parachutes!

[Luckless]

I'm guessing this had been mentioned, but one helpful thing I've found is that putting your control node (ie, probe body) near the middle of a longer craft, especially one put together in orbit with docking clamps) will handle far better for yaw and pitch than if you put the control point on the very front. They wiggle and wobble far less that way.

[magnemoe]

Capsule torque on your rover is not your friend. It eats power and spins you sideways faster than flipping over. Shutting it down helps maintain control.

Don't be greedy. High speed eats batteries and causes expensive accidents. Slow your rovers down when cruising.

Yes, on the other hand an sas module keep an small rover rock solid.

For rovers like probes you want to keep the weight down. an light rover survives things who will disintegrate an heavier one.

Static solar panels survives a lot use them during driving, use the large then doing science or on flat areas.

[CalculusWarrior]

Don't begin orbital tilt until you're going at least 300 meters a second.

Except on Gilly...

[3mon]

Just found out that if you make a small rover with a probe core, an antenna and a command seat, and mount a kerbal, you can take surface samples and make EVA reports and transmit them all without getting down of the rover. Its fun to take surface samples while driving lol

[DMagic]

While poking around in the SAS system I discovered something about RCS translation controls that may be a bug.

While in staging mode (the default flight mode), using the translation controls with the HNJKLI keys will not activate the SAS damping mode (the orange arrows on the SAS indicator). However, if you switch to docking mode and use the WASD keys for RCS translation, damping mode will activate.

The behavior of this is not entirely predictable, and damping mode won't remain in effect as it will when using WASD in staging mode, but it could make docking more difficult. In fact, you can turn off RCS, enter docking mode, and using the WASD keys will still activate damping mode, even though there is no movement. The shift and control keys don't activate it though, even with RCS on. I suspect this is not intended and I'll submit a bug report when I get around to making some stock test crafts.

But for now I would say that you should use the staging mode translation controls for docking as this unnecessary activation of damping mode could complicate things, especially for larger or more unbalanced crafts.

This also affects rovers when you try to use docking mode to drive. These should be more stable if SAS consistently remains in locking mode.

[RadHazard]

Gyroscopic stabilization.

I forgot to account for the the unbalanced weight when I built a solar-satellite-deploying rocket and was stuck trying to make a ~1000m/s burn with unbalanced thrust. Since I didn't have enough monopropellant to counteract the torque for the whole burn and I didn't have enough reaction wheel torque, I came up with a unique solution: Point the rocket prograde, start rolling till I couldn't tell which way was up, engage the engine, and hope nothing falls off.

I kept the throttle at 1/6 the whole time and it managed to stay pointed fairly close to prograde. It never veered much farther than it is in the picture now.

[Cooly568]

Kerbals in seats can fit in modular girders.

[RogueMason]

I've been subject the effects of the LV-N being the only engine in the game to have fairings which actually have collision meshes:

Note how the fairings have blasted right through the rear end of my lander in this picture. This first incident was a while ago in 0.20. However, I have perpetuated this in 0.21, so I decided enough was enough; if I was going to tightly wrap the fuel tanks around a nuclear engine, I needed to avoid sticking a decoupler on said engine. A little bit of thinking and the result is a way of detaching the payload, in this case another lander, from the launch vehicle. Without exploding.

A radial decoupler stuck to the bottom of one of the outer fuel tanks, and rigged to the rocket with I-beams. The whole mess is secured with struts, et voila! The LV-N has no fairings to cause trouble with, and I get an efficient landing vehicle

[Liowen]

Locking the space bar so you do not separate SRB's while they still have fuel and running, makes things go boom.....badly.

[Superfluous J]

Not in-game, but game related...

You can create a new sandbox game, and delete the "ships" folder from it, then create a symbolic link to your "ships" folder in a career game using the mklink command. Doing this will allow you to build a ship in the career hangar and then, if you want to test it without fear of mucking up your career, you just exit out, load the sandbox game, and your ship (and all other of you ships) are there ready to fly. No fuss, no muss.

Except when they blow up on the launchpad.

[Excalibur]

I've been subject the effects of the LV-N being the only engine in the game to have fairings which actually have collision meshes.

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!

[RocketPilot573]

I just found out something new:

While controlling a Kerbal on EVA, you can right click the pod and "store samples," without having to actually go in the pod.