Tips and tricks you found out yourself

[Traches]

I'll throw in a few I've figured out:

-My personal first rule is instead of building bigger lifters, build smaller spaceships. Saving as much weight as possible will have huge payoffs in the end, especially when dV is critical.

-For the reasons stated above: If all you need RCS for is a couple docking maneuvers, there's really never a reason to bring more than 2 of the small radial monopropellant tanks (and even that's too much, it just makes symmetry easier.) If you're tight on dV and are done with your docking maneuvers, burn the rest of it off! RCS thrusters have terrible isp. You might be tempted to save it as an emergency backup, but you'll get more total dV from your engines due to your ship being lighter.

-If you can, drop stuff when you're done with it. Why carry ladders and landing legs back to orbit?

-I-beams make awesome landing legs, if a bit heavy. I usually try to leave them on the surface.

-Gravity assists are your friend, if you don't mind time wasted. I rarely go to moho without catching an assist from eve, it saves tons of dV, and with its short orbital period you won't have to wait too long to get an intercept.

-To rendezvous with a planet (or anything else), you don't have to match planes with it; You just have to get either the ascending or descending node in the right place.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Traches

[Madrias]

Rover wheels make great light-aircraft landing gear for two reasons: One, they're powered and can shave a lot of delta-V on the runway for takeoff. Two, I think they might be lighter than landing gear (unless I'm mis-remembering from 0.21 and they've changed that in 0.22). Either way, they do a good job as long as you don't exceed 60m/s when landing or accelerating down the runway.

[WhiteWeasel]

You could close landing gear individually to help level your base. I wish the shocks were manually adjustable, but this is close enough. Best used if you have lots of landing gear.

[Superfluous J]

I just found out you don't have to go to the space center when doing multiple evas, you just need to use ] and [ to switch between the Kerbals and ship. Helped doing a 24 man eva mission.

You don't even have to go to the space center for farther away things (though sometimes its easier). All you have to do is go into map mode, right click the thing you want to control, and click "switch to".

Sometimes it bugs out and you can't do that, but 99% of the time it works 100% of the time

[PeterTaylor]

If you want some RCS for large ships but don't want to use the large RCS or have small radial tanks bolted to the side, then place them inside of a large separator. (The large separator is the only one deep enough to hold the tanks)

When you stage they will fall away with the tank below.

This is perfect for having RCS on a ship with a Mk1-2 Command Pod.

I sit the RCS directly below the command pod and it drops away during re-entry with the engine and fuel tank.

NOTE: They will only sit in one direction (Legs pointing down)

[longhornchris]

The close your landing gear manually trick is also good for landing rovers. I used this to land the rover on its tail (tripod) and ditch the radially attached tanks (landing fuel, leftovers not needed). I raised only the gear on the 'wheels' side of the rover and it gently dropped onto the wheels.

After running around Mun for a while, I used SAS to tip the nose high (another neat trick). I couldn't get it back onto its legs, but it was enough to fire the engine and get off the ground (Mun). After getting some altitude I was able to pitch up more to clear the mountains and eventually make orbit.

One more SAS tip/trick and warning. SAS is great to help keep a lander upright when you land on a slope BUT be very careful when you disable it. If your control indicators are't zero (i.e. SAS is helping keep the lander upright) tap the 'F' key to null out the SAS. If the lander starts to fall you need a better spot to land. If you make the mistake of having your 1 Kerbal go EVA and you don't also have a probe core onboard (say mechjeb) then the lander will fall over... as Jeb found out the hard way on one of my early landings on Mun. Getting out of that mess was... interesting.

[Traches]

If you want some RCS for large ships but don't want to use the large RCS or have small radial tanks bolted to the side, then place them inside of a large separator.

That's awesome. Definitely going to use that in the future.

[Traches]

Oh! Thought of another one:

Don't get sucked into the trap of installing tons of parts packs. They take up your ram budget very quickly, which will make your game crash. Once you start getting rid of them, any ship with parts that are no longer installed will disappear when you load your save, so you're kinda stuck with them.

UI mods and plugins are fine though, go crazy with them. I'm just saying don't try to run B9, NovaPuch, FusTek, Kethane, and KW rocketry all at once. Pick a couple, and also dive into the mod folders and delete parts you don't use. (B9's structural bits are a good place to start!)

[Mitchz95]

Don't uninstall your old version of KSP until the new version has most of the bugs worked out and all your mods have been updated.

[Superfluous J]

Don't uninstall your old version of KSP until the new version has most of the bugs worked out and all your mods have been updated.

There, I fixed that for you. I have 3 versions of KSP installed and only play in one (the newest). By the time the older versions would eat up too much hard drive space, the universe will have cooled to a point where there won't be enough usable energy to run my computer.

[Jon Tash]

... By the time the older versions would eat up too much hard drive space, the universe will have cooled to a point where there won't be enough usable energy to run my computer.

I don't know why but I literally visualize what you just wrote and it just made me sad.

If you want to play with tons of mods (like me) but don't use all the parts from the mods, just delete the unused parts from the folders (or save them somewhere else). You don't need to have tons of different fuel tanks when the game comes already with fuel tanks or you can always use the stretchable tanks mod (and SRBs) to save space and memory.

[MonkeyFuzz]

I changed my RCS translation controls to the arrow keys and right shift and control. This is much easier to use and memorize. I also changed rover steering and throttle to the arrow keys, as this allows you to use torque and drive separately and at the same time.

I went with mapping RCS translation to the number pad. Up/down 8/5; left/right 4/6; forward/back 7/9. But likewise, it makes maneuvering much, much easier IMHO.

[technion]

During docking, if you're not perfectly aligned when the two vessels are trying to mate, just kill SAS and they snap into place real quick and real easy.

I keep hearing this, but my experience is always "kill SAS and one will start rotating uncontrollably".

[Mic_n]

Not in-game, but game related...

the mklink command.

This is also exceedingly useful if you play on two different computers. You can move the save folder to a network share and then create links to it on both.

Works especially well when combined with Google Drive. Move your save folder into your google drive directory, create a link to it back in your KSP dir.

You now have your save games "in the cloud", able to be accessed from anywhere!

(also works for things that aren't KSP, but we won't mention that here!)

[Mitchz95]

When you complete an aerobrake and emerge from the planet's atmosphere, do not forgot to redeploy your solar panels. I learned this the hard way.

[Themohawkninja]

1. When launching a ship with the intent to dock with a craft already in orbit, launching when the orbiting ship is right above the circled point in the picture below tends to line up the ships quite well.

2. Putting the back landing gear just behind the center of mass allows for the greatest amount of torque to be applied to the craft when launching.

3. Never forget to deploy solar panels... ever...

4. ksp.olex.biz is a god-send.

5. Acceleration is important when doing escaping burns (I'm not a fan of multiple burns)

6. Asparagus staging is the greatest thing when it comes to launch vehicles.

7. Insertion-aerobraking for Duna: No more than 15 km and no less than 14 km.

8. Insertion-aerobraking for Kerbin: 40 km from Mun or Minmus and 30 km for interplanetary.

9. Insertion-aerobraking for Jool: ~125 km

10. When it comes to non-atmosphere landers (or Duna), double LV-N's all the way (except for Tylo... that might need quad-LV-N).

[LostElement]

I have several, I guess you could call them tricks. rendezvousing and docking are like nothing to me. It comes natural for me to do it. Every rocket I build always fly and the majority of the time, get into orbit.

[Mitchz95]

7. Insertion-aerobraking for Duna: No more than 11 km and no less than 9 km.

Fixed that for you.

[ArmchairGravy]

Fixed that for you.

I disagree. I did 11.5k on my last insertion, and had to burn prograde a bit to keep my orbit.

[numerobis]

1. In order to reach orbital velocity off turbojets on Kerbin, you can just barely make it with one ram air intake per tonne of mass at launch. Then you'll need about 30 m/s of rocket thrust to circularize into a 75 km orbit.

2. You need half as many intakes on Laythe.

3. The small control surface with all controls disabled is by far the most efficient wing.

[Mitchz95]

I disagree. I did 11.5k on my last insertion, and had to burn prograde a bit to keep my orbit.

You must've been coming in pretty slowly. I always fly right back out the other side and back to Kerbol unless I go 10km or lower.

[Whackjob]

I will advise on the construction of the very large.

When building big, there comes a point where you start suffering horribly from spontaneous resonant calving. Specifically, large chunks of your assembly will begin shearing off inexplicably. You will add more struts. And then another section somewhere else will shear off. And it will slowly drive you mad, as you add more and more and more struts. Eventually the same section will shear off again, showing you that you've progressed none at all.

The cure is simple and sweet. Grab the smaller truss rectangle, rotate it 90 degrees so it's flush against whatever you're strutting, and do the same at the target point. Then simply run a strut from truss to truss. The resultant bond is far stronger than any bundle of struts. The reason is simple: Struts have great hold, but cannot flex. Trusses can flex, and have decent hold. Combined, they are Captain Whackjob.

Additionally, a truss cage is ideal for lifting odd-shaped cargo. Build the boosters around the sides of the cargo, and run a network of trusses around it, with struts in between, strengthening both the booster ring around your cargo, and locking the cargo securely in place.

Figure A, showing the secret to immortality.

[Kianykin]

When i was trying to balance fuel drain on my spaceplanes i found running a fuel lines back and forth between tanks like this will cause the engine on the connected stack to drain from that stack first instead of the fuel from the other tanks.

Was useful having my side jet engines to drain from their connected stack tanks first before they drained from the center forward tank that my rocket engine was attached to. Didn't have to shift the fuel or disable/re-enable tanks on most of my designs after i figured this out.

[katateochi]

*snip The reason is simple: Struts have great hold, but cannot flex. Trusses can flex, and have decent hold. Combined, they are Captain Whackjob.

snip*

That's a very cool tip man. I'd done that kind of join before, but hadn't realized the reason behind it working so well. +1 for that!

[Markus Reese]

My favorite thing I discovered for myself.... hrm.....

To pick one, it is definitely the ideal placement for a slingshot escape. I can, if needed slingshot myself pretty far out of system saving tons of fuel when interplanetary. Plus it is pretty nervous skimming my interplanetary landers at 5000sub meters. Learned the hard way to close my large solar panels when at the peri... :x