Any docking cheats or better docking scripts than mech jeb?

[crazyewok]

Im through with docking. Completly and utterly through with it. Its destroying the enjoyment of my game and im a inch close to getting a steam refund.

Any cheats or better docing scripts?

And before I get the "Docking easy I can do it in 5 mins" posts DONT BOTHER, just dont, I neither care not want to hear it. I have a condition that affects my directional perception so I just can not do it and couldnt care less if you can. I just want to remove this wretched aspect and reminder of what wrong with me from MY GAME.

[ArthropodOfDoom]

I am willing to bet significant sums of money that you are not properly placing your RCS ports around your center of mass, not aligning your two crafts to North\South, or not right-clicking to target the port you intend to dock to. Also, stop being mad and go watch Manley's tutorial.

[edit]: I should note that the importance of proper RCS placement is crucial to the ability to translate.

[crazyewok]

I am willing to bet significant sums of money that you are not properly placing your RCS ports around your center of mass, not aligning your two crafts to North\South, or not right-clicking to target the port you intend to dock to. Also, stop being mad and go watch Manley's tutorial.

[edit]: I should note that the importance of proper RCS placement is crucial to the ability to translate.

I have. I have watehced every damed tutorial there is. I Place my RCS as they should. I Have everything clicked right. I just can not dock. I dont want lmore tutorials or being told "Im not doing this or that" I just want to know how I can remove this aspect from my game. Mods,cheats what ever I want it gone.

[Dedjal]

hyperedit has a function that allowes you to rendevouze (or how it is spelled) with a target you select. In as, bringing you close to the target.

But for actual docking I have no idea.

Maybe use that function and then use mechjebs docking would make things simpler.

[blizzy78]

I have a condition that affects my directional perception

I know you have written about that a few times now. What is the name of that condition? Personally I find it hard to believe that it might be difficult for someone to navigate left/right, up/down, and forwards/backwards, all the while it is possible to do that in separate steps instead of all at once. I'm not saying that such a condition does not exist, though, so I'd like to know more about it.

[Ravenchant]

Hmm. I couldn't dock for the life of me, even after watching the tutorials, even in chase mode, until I stopped looking at the ship(s) and started looking at the navball markers almost exclusively. Let's face it, docking can really f*** with our sense of direction, what with the different orientations and all.

But if you ignore this and just point the green marker onto the purple marker, then it pretty much reduces to maths. If the docking target is controllable, switching to it and rotating the port towards your ship can make the difference between a successful docking and a furious Alt+F4 as well. (Speaking from personal experience)

[crazyewok]

I know you have written about that a few times now. What is the name of that condition? Personally I find it hard to believe that it might be difficult for someone to navigate left/right, up/down, and forwards/backwards, all the while it is possible to do that in separate steps instead of all at once. I'm not saying that such a condition does not exist, though, so I'd like to know more about it.

DCD. And its a huge pain in the rear end when it comes to left/right/up/down and doing it all in perfect timeing.

[blizzy78]

doing it all in perfect timeing.

Which is a bit of my point. When docking, there is no need for perfect timing. You figure out the distance, thrust up to go into the right direction, wait until you're there, then thrust opposite to stop. Timing is relevant only if you take too long, because the target would spin (or rather not spin) in front of you. But other than that, you have all the time you need.

[capi3101]

Try http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/dock-align-indicator/ . You still have to do the work yourself but it does help matters quite a bit.

And if that's not good enough for you, apparently Mechjeb can do the job; I haven't tried this myself and others have reported it being a wasteful piece of crap when it comes to docking, but it may be worth a shot.

[Mobjack]

Hmm. I couldn't dock for the life of me, even after watching the tutorials, even in chase mode, until I stopped looking at the ship(s) and started looking at the navball markers almost exclusively. Let's face it, docking can really f*** with our sense of direction, what with the different orientations and all.

But if you ignore this and just point the green marker onto the purple marker, then it pretty much reduces to maths. If the docking target is controllable, switching to it and rotating the port towards your ship can make the difference between a successful docking and a furious Alt+F4 as well. (Speaking from personal experience)

That is how I do it. Just put the green circle inside the pink circle in the navball then coast at about 0.2 m/s. Half of the time it will dock right away, and the other half it will just require a minor adjustment when they are 1 meter away. Just don't look at the ships until they are very close.

I have a good sense of direction and docking get me confused.

Looking at the navball helps a whole lot. I also align the camera and ship so when I press left, the ship goes left. Also put docking ports on the top of the ships only, so that way the ship will go in the direction you want to. Having them placed in other places will get your directions confused.

Unforunately, the best way to figure out how to dock is for you to practice it. Try it out with two small maneuverable ships first. The first time could take you an hour but after a few times, you will get it.

[Soda Popinski]

Use Navy Fish's docking port alignment tool. Resize it to fill up most of your screen, and ignore the view of the ships.

Do one thing at a time.

Pitch until the target is on the horizontal line.

YAW until the target is on the vertical line

Translate up or down to put the prograde marker on the horizontal line

Translate left or right to put the Prograde marker on the vertical line

Translate forward or back to adjust approach speed

Edited January 23, 2014 by Soda Popinski

[DerekL1963]

MechJeb works just fine... Please post a picture of your ship so we can step through and find the problem. You were given one possible solution in the MJ thread (being sure you've selected the proper "control from here" part) but have given no indication as to whether or not you've tried that.

[Tex_NL]

Use Navy Fish's docking port alignment tool. Resize it to fill up most of your screen, and ignore the view of the ships.

I don't use this mod myself but have seen it in action in Manley's video's. Looks very useful. Personally I use a combination of MechJeb's Smart A.S.S. and Lazor Docking Cam.

And I have to agree with what some others have said before. Rendezvous and docking can be extremely frustrating if you haven't figured out how it is done. But once you do (I know you don't want to hear this but I am going to say it anyway) it is easy.

Before all the pieces fell into place it looked like some kind of weird dark black magic to me too. I thought I would never figure it out. It took many failed attempts and a lot of frustration but suddenly it clicked.

P.S.

MechJeb's docking autopilot is horrendous. Calling it 'crap' would be an insult .... to what the dog left behind on the lawn.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Tex_NL

[Tex_NL]

One suggestion that could make your life a lot easier: Switch to chase view (cycle through camera's with [V] by default) and place your camera directly behind your ship. No matter how your ship moves, the camera will stay in the same orientation relative to your ship. Left/right/up/down will no longer mixed up by an illogical camera angle.

[crazyewok]

One suggestion that could make your life a lot easier: Switch to chase view (cycle through camera's with [V] by default) and place your camera directly behind your ship. No matter how your ship moves, the camera will stay in the same orientation relative to your ship. Left/right/up/down will no longer mixed up by an illogical camera angle.

Il have to give it another try with that.

[blizzy78]

Il have to give it another try with that.

I'm glad you said that, because I was under the impression that you have actually given up for real. Would it be too much of a bother to capture your attempt on video? Perhaps there is something that you do that can be improved to make things easier for you.

[Tex_NL]

Il have to give it another try with that.

Please keep us informed.

If this works for you I am sure we can make a docking ace out of you someday.

[crazyewok]

I'm glad you said that, because I was under the impression that you have actually given up for real. Would it be too much of a bother to capture your attempt on video? Perhaps there is something that you do that can be improved to make things easier for you.

No I havent given up. Bit peed off with some offensive comments here but still around. How would I go about a recording? I can manage a simple docking with just two bog standard ships my issue is when they get a bit bigger.

[Tex_NL]

To record you'll need a third party program. Something like Fraps works perfectly.

KSP itself can't record video.

[blizzy78]

How would I go about a recording?

I use Fraps together with Microsoft's Movie Maker to encode to MPEG 4. Then I just upload to Youtube.

[Mobjack]

One suggestion that could make your life a lot easier: Switch to chase view (cycle through camera's with [V] by default) and place your camera directly behind your ship. No matter how your ship moves, the camera will stay in the same orientation relative to your ship. Left/right/up/down will no longer mixed up by an illogical camera angle.

I find the chase view doesn't work that well for large ships because I can't see the ports. Then I feel like the ship isn't moving, but the whole world is moving around me which messes me up even more. I guess different people view things differently.

Either way getting the cameras set up in a position where you are comfortable helps a lot. Ideally there should be an option with a camera on the docking port itself. Maybe there is a mod for that.

[Tex_NL]

I find the chase view doesn't work that well for large ships because I can't see the ports. Then I feel like the ship isn't moving, but the whole world is moving around me which messes me up even more. I guess different people view things differently.

Either way getting the cameras set up in a position where you are comfortable helps a lot. Ideally there should be an option with a camera on the docking port itself. Maybe there is a mod for that.

Lazor Docking Cam gives you a separate window with a view directly from the docking port.

[Smidge204]

How would I go about a recording?

Mash F1 thirty times per second, then make an anigif out of it!

+1 for Fraps, but that's not free.

I did stumble upon a free utility that records video, unintentionally. MSI Afterburner is a free utility suite for tweaking video card performance, but also includes a screen capture and video recording function. Might be worth looking into since it's free, and not many worthwhile screen capture programs are.

=Smidge=

[briansun1]

+1 for msi afterburner

[SDEngineer]

Try http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/dock-align-indicator/ . You still have to do the work yourself but it does help matters quite a bit.

And if that's not good enough for you, apparently Mechjeb can do the job; I haven't tried this myself and others have reported it being a wasteful piece of crap when it comes to docking, but it may be worth a shot.

I got bored with doing docking myself quite some time ago (though I don't have a problem with it, it just is one of the games aspects that I no longer find "fun"). MechJeb has two features I use a lot now for these - Rendevous planner, which will actually go and compute the Hohmann transfer to the target (and execute it, fine tuning the approach to whatever desired distance, although I usually kill the planner and fine tune the approach myself to put myself in correct docking position above/below the target), and the Docking Autopilot which actually docks the two targets.

Neither is particularly efficient if you just let MechJeb do the whole thing. Both are reasonably efficient if you do some of the set up work for them. For the Rendevous planner, I generally either establish a significantly lower orbit (~1/2 the orbit of the target ) or a significantly higher orbit (2x the orbit) - this keeps MechJeb from doing a burn to get to a higher orbit to change the periodicity of the orbit to get a Hohmann transfer orbit earlier. For the Docking autopilot, if you line up the ships as if you were doing the docking manually (N-S orientation of the desired docking ports), then do a small burn (either with the main engines or using the RCS) to get above/below the desired port), then engage the docking autopilot, I've found that MechJeb doesn't waste much RCS at all (30t heavy landers dock at my space stations using only 20-30 units of RCS fuel, 120t+ heavy interplanetary ships dock only using 100-200 units - which for a really heavy and "bendy" ship is actually probably less than I would use). It's when you use it without doing any alignment that MechJeb wastes tons of RCS getting into position, and chasing the docking port around the target (which is exactly what would happen if I tried to dock without doing any alignment prep as well).