How did I suddenly get so good at rendevousing?

[Thomas988]

My first and second dockings were insane, but now over the weeks I've good very good at rendezvousing and docking with spacecraft.

[blizzy78]

I even wrote in-game docking and rendezvous tutorials. (See signature. Please note that I haven't tested them yet with .23, but they should work.)

[LethalDose]

Yeah, I've had this, too. I got so frustrated after my first attempt at docking, I said f&^% it and had Bill do a 60 km space walk instead.

After my first successful rendezvous, which took hours of play and many attempts, there was a rapid drop in my docking times.

I'm not a bad@$$ at it yet, but I'm waaaaay better.

[ChrisMayhew]

I had an absolute nightmare attempting to dock my first every two ships.. Think it took me a good 3 hours to get close enough and even then I kept floating round each other.

Now I seem to be much quicker at it and I reckon I've only docked about 8 things in my total playtime.

[Moar Boosters]

I'm fine with getting a rendezvous, but I'm not that great at lining the ships up for the actual docking.

I use the easy method, where you switch between the ships, and rotate them both around so the docking ports face each other, and then gently nudge one into the other mostly just using the forward control.

I see lots of videos of people doing more advanced docking, where they arrive on the wrong side of a space-station and then just fly the craft round to the other side and then dock it there without touching the orientation of the station.

I'm not really a space-station guy though, so I have little need to learn these advanced skills. I only really use docking for re-arranging apollo style space-craft or re-attaching landers to command modules after they've gone to a planet.

I do love watching videos of people with big spacestations, effortlessly flying stuff around them and docking new modules or spaceplanes, I just don't really find it fun to do myself.

[MGCJerry]

I used to struggle to get into kerbin orbit due to crashing, I can now rain down rocket parts on KSC from 40K from an unspecified rocket failure...

I've been to Mun, one way... havent docked yet, created rescue mission, left kerbin SOI (and returned), etc... I'm still scratching my head on how to use the launch button.

[Rickenbacker]

You struggle through it, until one day it just clicks. Then you have no idea how you could ever find it so hard! It's one of the many ways this game is rewarding.

[alacrity]

Docking for me has always been a two edged sword... Timing launches, acquiring target and gettin to my target Easy Easy Easy...

The last 10 meters of aproach... HARD HARD HARD. No matter how many different styles or final approach I try I still spend 99.4% of my RCS on it. How S Manley does the docking without RCS I will never know. I have taken to mounting KAS system winches on the side of my docking ports and pulling my targets in. Gods I love being lazy.

Alacrity

[SpaceGremlin]

Alacrity, do you use Navyfish DPAI or Romfarer's docking camera? Those help a lot with the final approach.

[EvilotionCR2]

It's extremely easy for me,when docking was implemented (18.0),I did it on my first try. I cannot understand why is it so hard for other people.

[Tank Buddy]

Yes pal, you've come over the top of the learning curve. All downhill from there!

Docking is just one of those things that you need to let marinate in your brain, but once it clicks, you're set.

I actually just got after my shell after +1 years of playing KSP and went interplanetary. If I had thought about it, I would have done it sooner, but I was too afraid after one attempt. I guess I waited until I was "mature" enough, as I was an expert at anything you could do in the Kerbin System.

[Luckless]

Docking for me has always been a two edged sword... Timing launches, acquiring target and gettin to my target Easy Easy Easy...

The last 10 meters of aproach... HARD HARD HARD. No matter how many different styles or final approach I try I still spend 99.4% of my RCS on it. How S Manley does the docking without RCS I will never know. I have taken to mounting KAS system winches on the side of my docking ports and pulling my targets in. Gods I love being lazy.

Alacrity

I found the biggest thing is to get the relative velocity between yourself and the target down to less than 5m/s before you are within 200m or so. Taking things slow means you have more time to react and correct your path to ensure you're on target.

That, and Navyfish's docking tool that SpaceGremlin suggested makes docking far easier and more enjoyable.

[FlamedSteak]

Most things in life are easy once you know what you're doing.

[leax256]

I used to be terrible at docking till the new sas came along, now I'm alright. strange thing is some people still say the old sas was better for docking.

[Kerbart]

Aaah, the power of experience. The quality of your rendez-vous will improve too. In the beginning I would be happy if I started an encounter between two ships within 10km of each other, and started docking if they were less than 200m apart. Nowadays the initial encounter is more often than not less than 2.5km and ends around 50m at the right side of the target. Right meaning the docking port I planned on using, not "whatever is convenient" when multiple options (space station) are available.

[DisarmingBaton5]

Yes pal, you've come over the top of the learning curve. All downhill from there!

What he said.

[aleis]

I couldn't dock space craft so I installed Mech Jeb, when i got so frustrated at how horribly inefficient it was and terrible at handling wiggly ships and realized what it was doing wrong I could suddenly dock.

I couldn't rendezvous until I gave up even trying to watch tutorials. So I watched a couple hours of Scott Manly work magic doing fun stuff that just happened to have docking in almost every episode, that some of it must have worn off.

Now I can do both. Pretty much climbed the hill and it's just lay down and roll the rest of the way