How did I suddenly get so good at KSP?

[tutrakan4e]

I found KSP 1 year go when Nerd3 reviewed it. I bought it but I could barely get into orbit. I landed on the Mun somehow but never came back.

Then I stopped playing KSP and started watching HOCGaming and Scott Manley for half a month. Then when I came back, the first rocket I built went to the Mun and returned Apolo-style.

How did I get o good at KSP so quickly? Is this a normal phenomenon or am I just a genius?

P.S. I know landing on the Mun doesn't make me a pro, but still... I get into orbits and land so easily now.

P.P.S. Is this the correct sub-forum? If it isn't I will move it.

[Vanamonde]

Like any problem, taking a break from it sometimes helps. Maybe you forgot some bad habits while you were away?

[thiosk]

I don't think its the right forum. But its a good question nonetheless. the mod didn't move it

This game takes a faux-physics approach to spaceflight. When you get an internal conceptual framework for how it works, typical spaceflight becomes trivial. Its like driving a car, you know innately how to navigate turns and stay in your lane. Spaceflight is the same way, its just that you need that internal concept that space is sideways, not up, and you slow down when you want to speed up. You've learned orbital mechanics the same way you learned how to drive a car-- got some basic instruction, and practiced.

It took probably 100 hours of steam-played-time before I made mun landing truly trivial. I'm now up to 300 hours in (note, this includes a lot of idling in the constructor, so its not really a good measure) and am mastering the use of gravity slingshots to save dV for various activities, have fully mastered docking, and am now embarking on an effort to build bases on many of the moons and planets in the game, while improving designs of ships beyond "good enough" and up to "really frigging cool."

Krag's planet factory might see an install here soon (SIDE NOTE: HEY, wasn't there a Kerbol Remixer mod that put kerbin around jool, and jazzed up a lot of the planets?)

[Panichio]

Seems as though all the little mistakes you made at first in design and flight were subconsciously corrected as you watched it being done properly over and over again. When you went back to play it yourself, you've been using all the same design characteristics as the people you've been watching without noticing I would say. Same goes with flying. The whole start-gravity-turn-at-10km is something I saw Scott Manley doing a couple years ago, and I haven't changed it since, whether it's always the most efficient way or not.

[Taki117]

(SIDE NOTE: HEY, wasn't there a Kerbol Remixer mod that put kerbin around jool, and jazzed up a lot of the planets?)

You are looking for Alternis Kerbol (I don't have a link handy) but to answer the OPs question, your subconcious probably took in Scott Manleys awesomeness and learned how to do what he did how he did it and so now you know.

[Sirine]

Just realize this is your 1st post. And welcome to KSP.

Edited January 13, 2014 by Sirine

[Nobody]

I find this happens to me from time to time too. After struggling to under stand something with much frustration the pieces just drop into place. After they do your left wondering WTF happened to cause it to make sense or how you could have been so stupid to not have seen what is now so obvious.

[DrMonte]

And one day you realize that MechJeb su..s at everything unless you are having a dinner while your ships are docking.

[Seret]

Then I stopped playing KSP and started watching HOCGaming and Scott Manley for half a month. Then when I came back, the first rocket I built went to the Mun and returned Apolo-style.

I think you've answered your own question there. I found Scott Manley's videos incredibly helpful for getting a massive leg up the learning curve.

[Runboy]

Same happened to me.I went away from KSP for a while and watched a shipload of scott manley tutorials,and suddenly came back and did everything awesomely

[Hyomoto]

If you mean Apollo-style in the sense that you went there and came back, sweet! If you mean you built an Apollo-alike rocket and followed the mission pattern, then wow. Not to suck fun out of anything but with Kerbal Engineer, the Cheat Sheet, and maneuver nodes, anyone should easily be able to perform really ANY mission in KSP. Using a launch window planner doesn't hurt if you are going further. And at that point I suppose there's fun to be had, but I've started to go the other direction.

I've built bases, mined Kethane and dabbled with all manner of craft (I have about five hundred hours right now, and I don't leave the game idling) and now have fun just going into orbit. Why? Mostly because I stopped putting the whole game on the rockets, or in space, or on Duna. I enjoy the planning of missions, the building a rocket, thinking about what I'll need, what I want it to do and how it needs to do it. Doing training flights, plotting launch windows, calculating deltaV, planning contingencies. The actual mission isn't 'the purpose' any more, it's just the climax, it comes at the end of the story. Then it feels fun when either everything goes according to plan, or things DON'T go according to plan and I have to either use my contingencies or come up with another possibility. It usually takes a few days for me to complete an actual mission. For instance, my Kerpollo mission took nearly two weeks of planning, training and design. The actual flight? A few hours.

As a fun fact, the Kerpollo mission in my video is actually the second Kerpollo mission. The first one was eaten by LightWorks, and in that one, NOTHING WENT ACCORDING TO PLAN. Every single possible thing that could go wrong did. So I ended up just doing it again, and this time it went off nearly without a hitch. Hopefully once you have a few hundred hours in as well, you'll be telling a similar story to someone else.

[Dave Kerbin]

This is a large part of the fun in KSP.

Finding a problem that seems impossible, then through trial and error having some lucky success that you can't replicate, then finally understanding the underlying concept and becoming very good at it very fast.

[tutrakan4e]

By Apollo style I meant that my ship had two parts: A lander and an orbiter. The rocket had 3 Kerbals of course and the parachutes were on the orbiter (although I thought bringing the lander back will be cool so I landed it)

[TheGeoninja]

KSP has a crazy learning curve, first landing on a moon was a major accomplishment now that and docking aren't a big deal. I still can't do proper interplanetary missions without ridiculous amounts of fuel and time.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I stumble around with everything in KSP until at some point I either figure out a great strategy or I learn one from someone else. 90% of my KSP flight skills I figured out on my own, and they are virtually identical to what other good KSPers do as well, though each of us has a different subset of skills from the whole. There's a right way to do most things, and it's not all that difficult to figure it out, but it makes a tremendous difference once you learn it.

The trick to interplanetary travel is making use of the oberth effect to perform a Hohmann transfer and subsequent orbital insertion while in low orbit of the body you are leaving behind. You wait until you're at the right point of your planet's orbit to go to that planet, then zoom in and wait until you're at the right point in your orbit around the planet. It's mind-boggling at first, but once you get the hang of it, you could do a manual orbital transfer from the mün to Laythe in one primary burn at the start and a final correctional burn as you enter Jool's SOI.

[Dooz]

Happens with me sometimes when you cant solve Something take a brake comeback and for some reason you can solve it?....... KSP works out your brain

And stuff

But yea

Edited January 16, 2014 by Dooz

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Step 1) Do something

Step 2) Fail at doing it

Step 3) ..........

Step 4) Profit!

[Wahgineer]

I had a similar experience: I couldn't launch to save my life, I tried Mechjeb, I watched tutorials, all of that stuff. I then took a break, after which I went straight into a career mode save (I got the game back when it was 0.18.4). I launched a small rocket for some science, cobbled together a small rocket and BOOM, the thing got to orbit without a problem. What surprised me about it was how instinctively I flew the thing. After that, just about every rocket I fly makes it to orbit. Now it's actually designing rockets that I need to work on (for some reason, I have problems with big rockets). In the end, things just seem to click in place.

[federicoaa]

Dooz let me correct you

Step 1) Do something

Step 2) Fail at doing it

Step 3) MOAR boosters

Step 4) Profit!

ON: Before I couldn't build a decent plane not to say landing it (unless explosions are part of the landing) Today I built an SSTO quite easy and landed it flawlessly, in the airstrip.

KSP has a quite step learning curve, first time you can't even lift off, then you learn, study, see what people do, ask in the forum (btw, people in this forum are excellent) and finally get to understand what you are doing.

All this learning and sharing is what makes KSP my favorite game so far

Edited January 16, 2014 by federicoaa

[Flixxbeatz]

A matter of repetition (and simulated repetition), in my opinion. You try something that you're (initially) bad at, do it many many more times, and all of a sudden you now get so good at it that doing it successfully again doesn't surprise you anymore (as it now becomes a part of your routine).

Before I couldn't even launch into orbit successfully, but I kept on doing it and now I launch things into orbit every now and then MANUALLY with minimal effort at all (depending on the payload).

Another one: docking. Took me an hour and a half to dock (or run out of fuel, whichever happens first) before. Now it takes me 10-15 minutes (depending on the spacecraft) to MANUALLY dock a spacecraft to another.

[MajorThomas]

...

How did I get o good at KSP so quickly?

Congratulations, junior rocket scientist!

Step 3) MOAR boosters

...and struts too, don't forget

[Vahal]

Yeah, moar struts cause if you forget that, your rocket looks like a big firework when you press your space bar

[obi_juan]

That is very similar than what happen to me. I never had problems to archive the first orbit... I have a degree in physics, and I was very interested in space exploration, so build rockets and make them fly was very intuitive for me. But I had several difficulties.

In the first weeks my space ships were heavy, the mass of my first munar lander was 67t (and was a direct lander). And for my was very difficult to make a heavy lifter, I download several Heavy lifters at Space port.

Later I take a break of 1-2 weeks and when I came back I found that my munar landers was more lighter (under 20t) and the whole Duna lander was only 50t (but this was apollo stile with two independent descent modulus)... And Using different design than all the heavy lifter that I already download I made several that could put in orbit 300t.

Now I'm taking another break because I started to feel that I was blocked again.

One person can not beat KSP, this game is different, I think that I will play for several years.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

so.. when are we going to tell the OP he's not that good at KSP yet?.... ;-) Just kidding, of course. I feel once the initial barrier is overcome, everything really opens up quickly

[TimMartland]

It happened to me too. Its a weird feeling