What are the most important things you've learned about playing KSP to pass on?

[CaptainKipard]

One of the most important tips I can think of is:

Make building and flight checklists. I have launched too many rockets only to realise that I'm missing a part, or that I missed a window for science gathering.

[Kryxal]

I've had some issues where I was trying to line up a rendezvous for the next orbit, but it insisted on showing a point not too far from my maneuver node for the intercept ... so I plunked down a SECOND node after that "intercept", then kept working with the first node!

[celem]

Shift makes your Kerbal run on EVA, this can never be mentioned often enough.

[John FX]

The issue is that your position above the ground will not just librate, but unless the orbital period is precisely 6 hours, it will also progress in one direction. E.G. I got a spaceplane to KEO with a period of 6 hours and 2 seconds. That means that every day, it falls behind another 350 meters.

i found that when using remotetech, I couldn`t get the orbit close enough to perfect (even when my orbit was perfect to the second) so when I did a few hundred days of timewarp I had to realign the satellites.

I found that launching a craft with 8 minisats on it and setting them off from LKO (at an unused orbit height) at a speed difference relative to the launching craft of 0,1,3,5,7,11,13,17 m/s means that it is a very very very long time before you need to look at them again. I would say that a new game version would come out before they align again and you have restricted coverage. It`s a LONG time.

Then you can ignore geostationary orbits or even getting them close to ideal. just set them off and get on with other stuff. They take a couple of orbits to get to full coverage but after that they just don`t lose it.

A couple of relay stations on polar orbits and you are set to explore the solar system.

Then issues like libration, progression, regression are non-issues. There will always be another minisat coming over the horizon before the last one is gone.

Of course this will mess up the TV on Kerbin but nothing is without costs.

Try it, it works.

If you wanted you could build your own minisat with a seperatron and fill each seperatron to differing amounts and set them all off at once but that`s a bit flash.

[Phylan]

I've had some issues where I was trying to line up a rendezvous for the next orbit, but it insisted on showing a point not too far from my maneuver node for the intercept ... so I plunked down a SECOND node after that "intercept", then kept working with the first node!

THANK YOU for this. I thought I was going insane trying to set up a maneuver to intercept a sun-orbiting object, only to find once I executed it that the intercepts it was plotting had no bearing on reality. Is that a bug or just some orbital mechanic I'm ignorant of?

[sumrex]

Using the + and - sign to zoom in during rocket construction. You can zoom in past the outer layers of the rocket to see the inner tanks as well and put struts in the middle connecting the main parts where they belong instead of spaghetti stringing on the outside. You will find your rockets are far more rigid this way and are less prone to disintegration or burning fuel and rcs to correct wobble.

[Rowsdower]

I might be stating the obvious, but one of the things that can get lost among the large list of hints, tips and suggestions is this: Have fun, experiment and play the game your way. If some of these tips or mod suggestions don't work for you, try something else, play the stock game, do whatever you want. Getting the maximum enjoyment possible is key.

[Benno]

So you miscalculated your dV, accidentally jettisoned a crucial stage, or forgot to drain the rover before leaving the Mun? And now you find yourself stuck in orbit and out of fuel with a bunch of anxious Kerbals and hard won science data on board....

Get out and push!

A kerbal or two on EVA, using RCS to give the command capsule a bit of a nudge at apoapsis, can bring your periapsis down far enough to aerobrake and land. It's a bit time consuming, but I've rescued a few missions this way.

[KvickFlygarn87]

So you miscalculated your dV, accidentally jettisoned a crucial stage, or forgot to drain the rover before leaving the Mun? And now you find yourself stuck in orbit and out of fuel with a bunch of anxious Kerbals and hard won science data on board....

Get out and push!

A kerbal or two on EVA, using RCS to give the command capsule a bit of a nudge at apoapsis, can bring your periapsis down far enough to aerobrake and land. It's a bit time consuming, but I've rescued a few missions this way.

Well, this pretty much sums my post up.

[Space_Kraken]

I learned how to KSP.

[Benno]

Well, this pretty much sums my post up.

Sorry Kvick, did you already post this? I did read the thread again but must have missed it.

[Kryxal]

THANK YOU for this. I thought I was going insane trying to set up a maneuver to intercept a sun-orbiting object, only to find once I executed it that the intercepts it was plotting had no bearing on reality. Is that a bug or just some orbital mechanic I'm ignorant of?

I don't quite follow what you mean. I was just having trouble with it only showing the first two near-approaches, so I used a no-thrust node to make the first near-approach irrelevant. Do you have an orbital plot or something?

[pauix]

The most important lesson I've learnt is that understanding how the EVA controls work is a good training for whenever you want to dock. Also, I've discovered that the EVA jetpack has a lot of dV and that it can be used to push your ship when it runs out of fuel

5. Don't place your front landing gear in middle of you aircraft, because it makes your plane flipping on start.

So THIS is why almost every single plane I build never made it across the runway! Thanks a lot, man!

[Cerberus738]

I learned not to set the rendezvous distance to 0.0km......

[FREEFALL1984]

Ok, while I'm not the most experienced player, I found out a few things which could help true noobies...

1 - PLAY THE TUTORIALS, seriously, there is an abundance of them flying about and they provide a wealth of information to a new player

2 - Play the career mode, this will give you as much training as the tutorials, and by the time you get to the surface of duna, you'll know how to use every single item in the best way possible,

3 - Revert flight is your friend, I make a point of not returning to the space center until I'm exactly where I want to be, if you don't switch vehicle or return to KSC from the start you can revert to launchpad even when walking on minmus.

4 - Run a checklist, if there is one thing I've learned it's that a good checklist saves you a lot of time, and a lot of heart stopping moments, for instance on a recent trip to Duna with my new prototype fuel vessel, I made a clean insertion, performed some next level aerobraking and got within 200 meters of my rendezvous target, only to find that I positioned my RCS tanks too low and they went back to kerbin with my lifter. I had no monoprop but I had a fuel tanker with enough fuel for a return trip back to kerbin and enough spare to fuel my SSTO several times over. Thankfully I had some monoprop in my main station so I had to make my spacestation dock with the fuel tanks. I had a similar issue with a visit to the jool system and a science lab with no crew.

5 - Test test test test, If you're making a lander to touch down on a small moon with little gravity and no atmosphere, test it on minmus first, if you want to land on a large moon with little gravity and no atmosphere, test in on the Mun, if you want to test its performance in an atmosphere, then test in on kerbin. if he mission you're planning involves many components, test them all, in fact perform multiple tests, Nothing worse than getting on a nice approach with your target and realizing you're going too fast and having your parachutes tear your ship apart every time.

6 - Add a probe body. Even if its a crewed vessel, put a probe body on anywhere, it can prove vital.

7 - Get used to orbital fueling, its easier to get a ship off the ground when its empty, then send the fuel up later, its my standard method. also if its a ship with lots of thrust consider using the fuel in the transfer stage to circularize your orbit and rendezvous, since you can always top it up later

8 - if in doubt, strut.

9 - Mainsails are bad, they might be powerful and it might be funny to sit a kerbal on top of one with a tiny fuel tank then use the fuel cheat to send him into the heart of the sun at almost light speed, they have terrible ISP and eat through fuel really really fast, if you do need them, use them on lower stages only.

10 - Learn to play the game without mechjeb by using mechjeb.

11 - Have fun, sure KSP might be filled with boring moments where you have to spend 10 minutes thrusting constantly or waiting half an hour because you're aerobraking too high and are too low to warp but too high for the aerobraking to have and significant effect. but it is pretty satisfying to another reach planet and performing a perfect landing within 100m of your kerbals.

[Othuyeg]

Always, always, make sure you have a source of electricity for your probes. And do not leave SAS on during time warp. One solar panel is not enough as it can get stuck in your own shadow and then you are going nowhere.

[lockpicker]

1-When in doubt autosave.

2-Never switch ships when you are trying to make an interplanetary encounter

3-Moar rockets is not always the solution.. sometimes you need bigger rockets too!

[Benno]

Ok, while I'm not the most experienced player, I found out a few things which could help true noobies...

...

9 - Mainsails are bad, they might be powerful and it might be funny to sit a kerbal on top of one with a tiny fuel tank then use the fuel cheat to send him into the heart of the sun at almost light speed, they have terrible ISP and eat through fuel really really fast, if you do need them, use them on lower stages only.

10 - Learn to play the game without mechjeb by using mechjeb.

11 - Have fun, sure KSP might be filled with boring moments where you have to spend 10 minutes thrusting constantly or waiting half an hour because you're aerobraking too high and are too low to warp but too high for the aerobraking to have and significant effect. but it is pretty satisfying to another reach planet and performing a perfect landing within 100m of your kerbals.

Thanks Freefall, I really enjoyed your post. I'm going to have to try that lightspeed in to the sun thing! Also, #10, brilliant comment, learn to play the game without mechjeb by using mechjeb. A nice icing on the cake to the whole mechjeb flame thing that happened a little while back (myself included) in this thread.

So, can't post without contributing something useful....

I just realised that when you set a target and see the 'time to encounter, distance from target' nodes, if you then subsequently add a maneuver node, the target encounter nodes update accordingly! So, I can get to within a couple of kms of my target within one orbit, rather than warping for a dozen orbits until they start to line up....

I now feel a bit dumb for not realising this a long time ago. It just never occured to me to try it.

[JiWint]

1- F5 and F9 are your best friends.

2- Doing stuff without mods is waaay much more rewarding

3- mainsails for the beginning,skipper for the middle, 909 or lvN for the spaaaceee

4- alt + > or < does the physics warp,so you can make long thrust a short one!

5- it IS possible to get to every planet there is

6- Less is more

[neamerjell]

I have to agree with the posts stating that you can learn how to play without MechJeb by using it early on. I can successfully enter orbit and have attempted my first fully manual Hohmann transfer - I brought back TONS of science on that run and got back to Kerbin in one piece!

One thing I haven't seen in this thread (sorry if it is here and I missed it) is the fact that there is much science to be had from several different biomes right on Kerbin. Make a small rocket just big enough to make a ballistic trajectory (orbit not required) across the oceans. I would say have at least two radially mounted parachutes if you have the materials bay - you want to land that gently. Early in career mode, you can make a poor-Kerbal's space plane with a vectoring engine and several stationary fins. I went to and planted flags on both north and south poles with no landing gear, no jet engines, and no solar panels.

[neamerjell]

If in orbit, and you want to go down, thrust against your movement. This will slow you down, which will speed you up even faster once you get down.

If you need to catch up to something in your orbit but a bit ahead of you, *slow down*. that will drop you down, drop your altitude, which speeds you up, and allows you to gain on it.

To a newbie, this would make absolutely no sense at all, but having seen it in action on one of Scott Manley's videos it is definitely true. He even explained why it worked - given that they both have the same velocity, objects in lower orbits will eventually overtake objects in higher orbits because they have less distance to cover, just like a race car driver going to the inside of a turn.

[HazelPine]

Many of the things in this list were discovered out of nessecity:

1- Kerbals can open solar panels by hand to save your precios satellite.

2- 2 orange tanks and a mainsail make for a good launcher if used properly.

3- Take out the science from science things on the surface of moons and planets then dump them away for the ride back home.

[Dfthu]

1. Learn to dock.

2. Test EVERYTHING so it doesn't break and go wrong in the middle of a mission.

3. Make sure you have enough fuel for the trip.

4. Use liquid fuel boosters on upper stages that decouple from the main ship and you should have fuel lines form the boosters to the main ship.

5. Don't do any long term things unless you don't want asteroids in your save.(you dont get them in old saves files,because of the ARM update)

6. Check staging.

7. Name your ship and save it.

8. Check for ASAS,RCS(If you need it) and power.

9. Use docking for big ships.

10. Autosave is your friend use it.

Hopes this helps!!

Edited March 27, 2014 by Dfthu

[ShadowDragon8685]

I have a new Most Important Thing.

Keptin's Basic Aircraft Design Tutorial, but it could just as easily be titled "Planes for Dummies." If you follow this guide, you will fly. Maybe not very well, or very gainly, but you will get airborne and probably be able to get back to the runway in one piece.

[DovaJeb]

Jeb's Basic Tips!!!

No. 1: Never, EVER, attempt to land on the dark side of an object without lights. You WILL fail. Miserably.

No. 2: The prime deities of the Kerbal universe are Nuclear Engines, Asparagus Staging, F5 and F9, and Maneuver Nodes. Use them. Always.

No. 3: Do it without MechJeb first. It will help you in the long run.

No. 4: Remember to extend your Solar Panels before time warping.

No. 5: Use RCS for precise orbital maneuvers, not just rendezvous. It's much easier and precise.

No. 6: When it comes to interplanetary, slow and steady/super-efficient wins the race. Ions may be like watching paint dry, but when that paint dries, it's beautiful. And science-filled.

No. 7: Use. Phase. Angles. It will save you hundreds, thousands of deltas.

No. 8: Go unmanned before risking your Kerbals. If you don't want to or can't do the math, replace the capsule with a probe, add more weight until you have the same weight as if you had the capsule, and go on your mission. Or use the glorious F9. Either way.

No. 9: Add moar SCIENCE! The more science equipment you have on your ship, the more science you'll get. Of course, your ship will weigh more, so make sure you can still complete your mission. No use bringing that last SC-9001 on your Duna mission if it makes you unable to get to Duna!

No. 10: When in doubt, just get out and PUSH, dang it! Ain't nothin' more satisfying than making it back to Kerbin with the power of ingenuity and a powerful jet pack.

There we go! The knowledge of an experienced ksp'er passes to to the masses of bright, promising newcomers!