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

[Colonel_Sanders]

Quicksave before aerobraking. If your altitude is off by just a little bit, you will probably not like the results.

[TK421d]

Quicksave before aerobraking. If your altitude is off by just a little bit, you will probably not like the results.

also, quicksaving with chutes deployed... gremlins eat the parachutes while trying to load the game.

[SDIR]

Think through your entire mission before launching it. It saves a lot of time and worrying when you know exactly how much fuel is going to be needed for a trip, and can just do the mission without needing to wait a year for a refuelling vehicle to reach your ship.

[LethalDose]

Build small, and efficiently.

[Dat_Spacewaffle]

Never be afraid to use mechjeb as a way to study how to do stuff, I let it dock some craft in orbit while I watched and then I tried it myself. I managed to pull it off.

[LVL 9001]

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Edited February 7, 2021 by LVL 9001

[mpk10]

In the VAB, you can separate radial decouplers into pairs of two for easier construction of asparagus staging.

That is, if you add 8 decouplers with 8x symmetry, you can click on them over in the staging on the right. They will expand from one icon that shows all 8, to 8 seperate icons. Click on each one to separate it from the rest, then you can drag them two at a time ( or however many) to a new stage.

This allows you to put your engines and rockets on with 8 or 6 times symmetry, but separate their decoupling for asparagus staging.

You'll have to add the fuel lines one at a time, i.e. with 1x symmetry, but this is way better than having to place your decouplers in pairs by eye.

Matt

[TheGreatSkeeve]

With rovers, just translate the movement keys to IJKL instead of WSAD so you don't have to worry about SAS torque getting in the way (if you have it on your rover).

Edited August 6, 2014 by TheGreatSkeeve

[TythosEternal]

Minimus is actually easier to safely land on, and safely return from, than Mün--and it has higher science multipliers, too! In career / contract mode, target Minimus first for a better return on vehicle investment.

[TheFloppyFish]

Quicksaves are your friend... for example when landing on Ike your spaceship tilts over and blows into millions of pieces and you quit for a week... This has happened, now I quicksave

[Zipmafia]

Engines that are pointing at the rock will just push it away from you, but will not affect your orbit.

"You mean i came all this way and your just now telling me that the asteroids @!* is to fat!"

[MerlinsMaster]

1. Learn to dock without the aid of MechJeb.

Hahahahaaaaaa!!!!!!! Have you ever tried to dock anything WITH MechJeb? Out of the couple of dozen times I turned on the docking autopilot, MechJeb completed the docking maneuver MAYBE two times. The rest of the time the craft just went RCSing out into deep space. The docking autopilot is beyond useless.

Just putting that out there.

[Red Iron Crown]

Hahahahaaaaaa!!!!!!! Have you ever tried to dock anything WITH MechJeb? Out of the couple of dozen times I turned on the docking autopilot, MechJeb completed the docking maneuver MAYBE two times. The rest of the time the craft just went RCSing out into deep space. The docking autopilot is beyond useless.

Just putting that out there.

When did you last try it? MechJeb's docking AI has gotten much, much better in the last few months as Sarbian focused on improving it. Still not as good as a skilled pilot, but not the monoprop-wasting wreck it once was.

[Zablonski]

Save money in first contract by ensuring your lower or boost stages have enough parachutes to float gently down. Use Check's parachute calculator to make sure they come down below their crash speed.

[cantab]

Aerobraking calculators are subject to Garbage In, Garbage Out like any calculation. Check your units: inputting an altitude in metres and telling the calculator it's in kilometres is likely to result in an unscheduled landing.

[GoatRider]

inputting an altitude in metres and telling the calculator it's in kilometres is likely to result in an unscheduled landing.

Even NASA has made that mistake.

[gazzareth]

Asparagus staging is NOT a requirement to get heavy loads into orbit.

In fact it is much easier and quicker to make a traditional rocket.

G

[Zablonski]

Once you get non-crap at the basics (rendezvous / Mun & Minmus landers) there is a tendency to treat this like work, ie: stack in orbital manoeuvres like back to back meetings so there is not a second to spare. At least, that is... I mean was..., my tendency.

Chillax.

While KSP may be multi--threaded, you are not. There may be times when you have a whole chunk of fast-forwarding to do, but for the sake of enjoyable rocketeering, don't think of that fast forwarding as wasted time. Think instead, of strategies implemented successfully ONE AT A TIME.

[eataTREE]

MechJeb managed to dock my enormous, ungainly space station lower section to the equally enormous and ungainly upper section last night, so just on the basis of personal experience I'd give it a thumbs up. The only docking I've actually seen it fail was one where I started in a very stupid position and ran out of electrical power on the one probe before it could get things finished. What I really appreciate from MechJeb is the rendezvous autopilot... matching orbits by hand is painful and tedious.

[gazzareth]

What I really appreciate from MechJeb is the rendezvous autopilot... matching orbits by hand is painful and tedious.

At the start of the week I would have agreed with you, making upwards of 10 burns to get within 10k and then going direct (what can I say I am still a noob). Now down to 2 burns to start and end the transfer and I am normally within 300m, unbelievable how much difference it has made.

G

[goduranus]

You know, I think the biggest takeaway from this game for the real life, is that ambitious missions require a lot of planning ahead and need to be worked out on a piece of paper or spreadsheet and be check listed before you proceed. Once you launch, it's often too late to make major changes.

Edited August 23, 2014 by goduranus

[MisterDoubleSevens]

Here's one:

Don't be a moron and immediately warp to 60-day-away maneuvers or SOI changes. Think a moment. Is the time long enough to start any more missions, perhaps send a rover with that lander, or two probes instead of one? Do so - by the time you realize "wait I shoulda sent more" the transfer window will close and won't reopen for a long time.

[Random Tank]

Don't know whether it's a KSP thing or a Windows thing, but while in Fullscreen mode (which is currently bugged and doesn't run in the background even if you enable it) you can press Alt + Enter to put it into windowed mode, which means it will run in the background... you can then press Alt + Enter to put it back to Fullscreen!

[Sigma88]

two words

scott manley

- - - Updated - - -

Don't know whether it's a KSP thing or a Windows thing, but while in Fullscreen mode (which is currently bugged and doesn't run in the background even if you enable it) you can press Alt + Enter to put it into windowed mode, which means it will run in the background... you can then press Alt + Enter to put it back to Fullscreen!

O.o

WOW thanks!

[Heimdall5008]

On Gilly the highest elevation is higher than the upper boundary for low space. So with the wrong orbit your science gathering in low orbit can end "with a firework".

At least the orbital velocity in this altitude is so low that there is a good chance that at least the command module will survive the impact