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

[ShadowDragon8685]

I've figured out something new to pass on, too.

Don't go to Orbit.

Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking, but bear with me here: after you've achieved suborbital spaceflight but before you've orbited Kerbn, you can take suborbital tourist contracts. And only suborbital tourist contracts. They won't generate for, say, the Mun, or Minmus, or even Kerbin orbit.

These contracts pay well, and more importantly, they give you huge reputation boosts, which you can, with some investment in the admin building, parlay into big science boosts, courtesy of unpaid internships.

Cheesy? Yeah, probably. But this will easily get you into the mid-tier techs without once circularizing your apoapsis, and get you decent bank in the process.

[cephalo]

I recently discovered that you can destroy ships and debris from the tracking station. Useful for all those empty pods from rescue missions.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I just learned two very important things about Kerbal Space Program.

1: Tourists CAN, in fact, go on EVAs, if you click on the hatch from their IVA. (I'm not SURE any of my mods add this, but I suspect RPM, if it's a mod.

2: Going on an EVA during a boost phase is highly inadvisable, but survivable, if you have the Vanguard Technologies parachutes mod with the submod plugin that gives all Kerbals parachutes from the get-go installed.

[Coga19000]

1) Forget all advice posted more than 3 weeks ago regarding ascent profiles. The "straight up till 10 km, then bank 45 degrees" hype is nothing more than an easy way to get killed since the official release.

2) Despite popular opinion, and especially in Career mode, smaller is really bigger in rocket construction. Most of the time, you will find that overbuilding a rocket "just to be safe " just makes you waste enough money for funding 2 or even 3 smaller rockets that will also complete the task just fine. Heck, that's what rocket science is for -calculating Delta-v, TWR, etc. is a complicated matter, but ask this number -crunching is why our ridiculously large rockets are not ridiculously larger.

2a) When building landers, smaller is bigger, but wider is much bigger. Narrow bases make a lander land not to well, and tripping on most bodies is generally the equivalent of ripping apart your ticket home.

Well, on most bodies, at least. If you trip over at Minmus, it's no biggie, as the SAS alone is generally powerful enough to lift you right up. And for Gilly, don't even bother to pack heavy landing gear and waste Delta -v; just touch it down gently to is side and you're golden

3) Do download MechJeb. Early on it's readings and predictions are going to be a humongous help, and by the time you unlock Ascent Guidance(quite late into the game, last time I checked) , orbiting a planet will be a trivial task to perform, and manual launches will only serve to bore you out of the game eventually.

3a) As regards Landing Guidance, try not to abuse it. The first landimgs on each celestial body are going to be much more satisfying if manually done. Once you are off exploration and into body exploitation, though (space tourism, resource mining, colony assembling), yep, let MechJeb take the heavy load.

4)After the first 3 tiers into your Tech tree (which should all be bought), researching the bottom first yields better results early on. As stated in 2), you're not gonna need bigass 2.5m rockets for your early milestones, and the bottom nodes are an assortment of useful gadgets: more parachutes, a more efficient engine, electrical storage and low generation (real useful if your early game is focused on probes -see below), and the most logic investment you could make with your Science: instruments for doing more science!

5) Real life itself has given an almost beautiful tip for satellites: unless you plan for an atmospjeric reentry, or to land all spent stages back on Kerbin (which is generally not beginner material, especially if SSTOs are concerned), try to build your probe into your last stage, and not as a separate stage. Otherwise,any fuel into that last stage is wasted, you have to haul the weight of that extra Decoupler up to orbit, the decoupling force will throw your sat of its orbit (if it's important for the mission or something, which generally is not in Stock KSP worth so much precision), and you have an inert object orbiting Kerbin -possibly dangerously- close to your probe,for no apparent reason. They are not to important reasons, it's just not worth it.

6) Despite everything stated in 2), always pack just some extra fuel, especially on manned missions. Whether manual or MechJeb, not a. Single use of the engines will be perfect (especially during landing and ascent), and a rocket made with Delta-V over logical amounts of redundancy may find itself having a veeeery bad time.

6a) However, if not needed, any extra fuel is still useful. Generally, any fuel remaining in a stage after it has completed its purpose cannot just be ignored; just be thankful that every single engine in KSP is fully throttlable and indefinetely restartable and use up that fuel anywhere it does not hinder safety (you should use fuel in the transfer stage to perform part of a decent deceleration, but obviously not for the whole landing), or on situations where getting rid of space debris is important.

And one last tip for Remote Tech users, based off 5) and 6a): if you have to leave a stage in orbit while departing for/ landing on another planet, what the heck, it might as well be a simple Comms Sat. It doesn't even need an actual probe core: all you need is set your dishes to their targets prior to detach (or via Kerbal if need be), deploy your omnis, and provide some energy until you leave its loading range, and voila!

Here are my seeds of wisdom for today. I shall depart now, hoping that others will also reap of what I sow.

[Benno]

When using remotetech and thinking you can use one of those 'place a satellite in a keostationary orbit' contracts to net some spacebucks before repositioning said (comms) satellite in to a useful orbit, it pays to remember that if it's not in sight of the KSC when you deploy, it's gonna be kind of.. ah... stationary... without radio contact. Doh! Can be fixed with another mission.

Oh, and when planning to land a probe on the Mun, it pays to remember that stayputniks don't have any reaction wheels... doh! Can be handled with some expert gimballing skills and some spare deltav.

[Fishslap]

Not to time compress at 10 000 times speed before Kerbin reentry.

[Bev7787]

Read contracts carefully. Because reasons

[DerpyFish]

This is the most important things i learned while playing KSP:

1. Always remember parachutes especially in carrer mode...

2. Check staging before launch...

3. Test rockets before launching them to other planets...

[TORCHWOOD]

I started playing with remote tech and ferrum. Haven't looked back.

The learning curve can help in a lot of situations.

[mattinoz]

The learning curve is as steep as your ambitions. The higher and faster you throw yourself, the stronger you'll hit the ground. Unless you succeed at achieving orbit.

"The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss"- Douglas Adams.

[Venusgate]

Trick for getting equilateral Sat network around Kerbin (as for RT):

1.Send up one rocket with however many satalites you want (because i'm different, we'll say 5 for this example).

2.Establish orbit for first satalite. Say, 2.868Mm, or a bout 6 hours orbital period.

3.Release your first satellite (make sure the antennae are extended first )

4.Decrease periapsis by 1/10^th the time to previous periapsis(in case of 5 satellites. In case of a different amount, 1/(x*2), x being # of sats, for example, for 4 sats, decrease by 1/8th the time) In this case, that is 3-.3 hours, or 2 hours 42 minutes.

5.Complete one full orbit back to apoapsis, and burn back to a circular orbit.

6. Congradulations! You are 1/5th the way through your orbital plane, and can release your second satalite! Repeating this with the other three will generate an equadistant satallite pattern.

Edited May 20, 2015 by Venusgate

[Benno]

Trick for getting equilateral Sat network around Kerbin (as for RT):

1.Send up one rocket with however many satalites you want (because i'm different, we'll say 5 for this example).

2.Establish orbit for first satalite. Say, 2.868Mm, or a bout 6 hours orbital period.

3.Release your first satellite (make sure the antennae are extended first )

4.Decrease periapsis by 1/10^th the time to previous periapsis(in case of 5 satellites. In case of a different amount, 1/(x*2), x being # of sats, for example, for 4 sats, decrease by 1/8th the time) In this case, that is 3-.3 hours, or 2 hours 42 minutes.

5.Complete one full orbit back to apoapsis, and burn back to a circular orbit.

6. Congradulations! You are 1/5th the way through your orbital plane, and can release your second satalite! Repeating this with the other three will generate an equadistant satallite pattern.

Nice... why didn't I think of that.

Of course, if playing on career mode, you'd be doing very well indeed to be able to launch more than 1 comms satellite at a time early on. I'll definately be doing this though once I have some better tech unlocked and need to replace my dinosaurs.

[Anglave]

1. You do not have to follow the perfect ascent: turn at 10km and keep turning until at 70 km. Turning to 45 degrees at 10km and staying there until you're apoapsis is at 75km+ is fine.

In gameversion 1.0 and later, keep your rocket going straight up until 20km, then turn east and proceed to orbit as before. A 45° turn at 10km is no longer controllable because of the new aerodynamics.

Advanced players may try 5° right off the pad, and follow a very slow curve to orbit, but no big turns low in atmo!

2. Start burning 1:30s to 0:30s before apoapsis: you can get up to speed sooner and have more of a margin for error.

Start burning half your estimated burn duration in front of the marker. In other words, start a 1 minute full throttle burn at t -30 seconds.

[NASAHireMe]

Hey all,

Updated my condensed list of all your tips and tricks with the latest changes for v. 1.0.2 since I last posted in here.

[moondogccr]

Always "lock" a bit of battery for reserves. I typically "lock out of use" the battery on pods to fire up engines on emergencies or turn devices off... to avoid losing a ship because of battery life.

[RidiculousRichard]

Thank you all for your tips; they are making my entry to the game more manageable

Richard

[pandaman]

Success is great, but failure is a much better teacher.

[huntingpickel]

The first thing anybody who's playing KSP for the first time needs to know is this: KSP is an extremely difficult game. No matter what you do, who you are, or where you go, trial and error will always be hovering over you serving as a reminder of the difficulty. I myself am still struggling to get into orbit let alone land on another planetary body due to my impatience and perfectionism. My motto is "Do to learn. Don't learn to do."

[huntingpickel]

1. KSP IS HARD

KSP will cut your legs off and laugh as it watches you attempt to crawl away. KSP will crash when you're landing and only 1 meter from the surface of Eeloo. KSP is a brutal and unforgiving game and anyone that plays it needs to know that.

2. STRUTS

Struts, struts, struts! When dealing with lots of big and heavy parts, struts are the branch that you grab onto before you hit the ground. (Quite literally!) Did you add struts? Good. Make sure to add struts! Once you add struts, make sure you add struts. Are you sure you added struts? Now go and strut your stuff pal.

3. POWER

No matter what, you have to add a renewable source of power. You have many to choose from, like an RTG (Radio isotopic thermoelectric generator.) This is basically a rod thing that you stick on your craft and then BOOM! You got a seemingly infinite supply of power. (Although it doesn't charge very quickly.) Next there's a solar panel. This one's pretty straight forward. #1 rule of solar panels: DO NOT deploy them in the atmosphere unless you're 100% stationary. But you should do it anyway because it looks cool when they break apart.

4. MODS

If your computer can handle it (mine certainly can't), mods can be extremely useful for not only cosmetic purposes, but practical ones too. If you're someone like me who has to make sure that I'm not forgetting anything, my struts are present, and the craft looks even the slightest bit presentable, than mods can be your friend. Mechjeb for example is an incredible mod which basically makes everything easier. If you don't know what it is, look it up. But even when I have an on board computer to calculate my trajectories, preform my orbital insertions, and make me tea, it can still be kind of difficult to go to other planets. I've landed on duna before, which was absolute torture by the way, and I think I even did it without Mechjeb. So even if you're the most utterly inept person when it comes to rocket science, mods aren't always necessary. If you're a total beginner though, Mechjeb is very good at doing the hard stuff for you and will allow to to more easily learn about the game without doing a bunch of studying before hand. If you're brain is completely bare of any sort of KSP knowledge, get Mechjeb. It will save your ass more times than you can count.

5. SPACEPLANES

Spaceplanes are much easier to build and fly with the new 1.0 aerodynamics. For me, there are 3 crucial things to worry about when building a spaceplane: 1. Your plane needs to be aerodynamic. It needs to be able to cut through the air like a hot knife through butter. 2. You need fuel. This one isn't as important as the others because jet engines are so damn efficient. 3. YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE YOUR CENTER OF LIFT IS AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO YOUR CENTER OF MASS.

666. OBEY THE KRAKEN

Love the space kraken and all it provides us with. Doth must know that when he or she succeeds, the kraken flows forth it's positive energy throughout his or her reality. Obey the kraken. Love the kraken. Accept the kraken's actions no matter what.

7. ROVERS

Rovers are very fun to drive, assuming you can figure out how to attach it to your space craft. If you DO somehow get on the surface of another planet or moon, get ready to flip it the .... over and watch the chaos unfold. Please excuse my vulgar language but rovers are a pain in the ass to build, test, and fly to other planets. You need some serious patience to transport these things.

8. DOCKING

Docking sucks. It can be stressful as hell and anger the Almighty Space Kraken. If you're building a space station, you need a ton of of RCS and mono propellant. Getting close to another space craft can be relatively easy but when you're trying to dock, get ready for a world of hurt.

9. KSP IS FUN

Well, at least it can be if you have the correct amound patience and control over you emotions. KSP for me is a great game to just sit back and play. It's relaxing in some ways and can put me in a good mood if I successfully land on another planet or something. KSP is the ultimate space sandbox and I truly love it to death. If you haven't bought it yet for whatever reason and are interested in space and orbital mechanics and flight, this is a perfect fit. If you want it, don't pirate it. Just buy it. It's worth it, trust me.

I hope this helped any beginners out there and made it easier to understand the game. Also make sure to add struts.

TLDR: KSP is hard, you need electricity, spaceplanes are kind if easy, rovers are really hard, docking is really hard, Obey The Kraken, KSP is fun, and mods are really cool. Oh and make sure to add struts.

Edited May 27, 2015 by huntingpickel

[DCWarHound]

Boosters and go big.

If you can't get somewhere,you simply aren't using enough boosters.

[SignalCorps]

The end that fire comes out of, needs to point toward the ground. If it ever points up to the sky, you have done something wrong, and will not go to space today.

/xkcd

- - - Updated - - -

Mechjeb can make your game less frustrating. If you just want to build things, and connect them to other things while they are moving at 3000 meters a second in an oblong orbit at 450,000km, or just want to land on the Goddamn Mun without your landing craft looking like the neglected end of a salvage yard, and your poor kerbal standing there with no means of ever going home, and looking at you in despair, just ONCE in your miserable life, and you want to do all this without taking several astrophysics college courses and making friends with a math nerd, Mechjeb is the way to go.

Of course you don't get to spend months learning savant-grade math and the difference that 20 delta-v can make, but you get to actually make space ships and get them to go places and only explode every other time instead of 49/50 times.

- - - Updated - - -

Docking. Especially with Mechjeb:

4 way RCS thrusters and a lot of them. But you need to make sure they cover ALL axes (that is the correct plural of axis). For example I spend an hour designing and redesigning a mk2 chassis shuttle to dock with my space station so the 5 kerbals would have a ride home anytime they needed. After all that time of getting it to space in a non-exploded state, I was having trouble docking because I put my thrusters on either side (1 front and 1 back x 2). I could go up and down and front and back, but I had no side to side. And when your docking port is near the nose of your craft, and you find yourself 2 meters to the right of where you need to be, not having side thrust makes it rather hard because you have to turn (which throws and off center docking port out of whack), move forward, and then turn back and hope it was not too much or too little. Even Mechjeb was having a hard time docking, and sometimes it just gave up.

You can always just put a single port RCS thruster to cover the one axis you're missing. It may not seem like much, but damn does it matter.

[Benno]

Mechjeb can make your game less frustrating. If you just want to build things, and connect them to other things while they are moving at 3000 meters a second in an oblong orbit at 450,000km, or just want to land on the Goddamn Mun without your landing craft looking like the neglected end of a salvage yard, and your poor kerbal standing there with no means of ever going home, and looking at you in despair, just ONCE in your miserable life, and you want to do all this without taking several astrophysics college courses and making friends with a math nerd, Mechjeb is the way to go.

Of course you don't get to spend months learning savant-grade math and the difference that 20 delta-v can make, but you get to actually make space ships and get them to go places and only explode every other time instead of 49/50 times.

Oh, it's a bit of a pain, but it's not that hard. Make sure your lander is short and fat; tall rocket shaped things tend tip over at the slightest touch in low g. And use Kerbal Engineer Redux, it will give you all the info you need to land well without actually doing it for you. Main thing is horizontal velocity (but nav ball can help you out there) and suicide burn distance (so you don't use too much fuel). The hardest part is trying not to land on the slope of a mountain... in the dark.

- - - Updated - - -

When docking, orient your target ship so that the docking port is vertical (pointing north (up) or south (down)), and approach from above or below. This way, the docking port's orientation remains stable, rather than constantly shifting as you orbit. That's assuming you're in an equatorial orbit; if you're polar then you'd want to keep the port horizontal.

[Sharpy]

1. Put three headlights radially around your docking port, each different color(R,G,, all facing forward with a little overlap in the middle. Makes the final approach *vastly* easier: if the target port is lit white, you're on course. If it's any of the colors, you know which direction is off.

2. Minmus is better. The delta-V needed to reach it is really little more than what's needed to reach Mun, and coming back from the surface is considerably cheaper. Add better science multipliers, friendlier biome alignment, lower gravity for suborbital hops - the only bother is aligning planes (easy) and a somewhat harder encounter (still easy).

3. For easy startup science, build a science car and explore the KSC facilities.

4. Too many RCS thrusters is a thing. For docking purposes, better a bit sluggish than too twitchy.

5. Placing engines above the center of mass

. Good reaction wheels and RCS make it self-balancing.

6. If you're going for a splashdown in something that hasn't been specifically designed to float, keep your cursor on where "recover craft" will appear. With good reflexes, you will save the day.

4. Rovers are fun... for about 30 seconds... then they flip over.

That's why you put the wheels on both sides. Plus some landing struts or enough RCS thrusters in case you land sideways.

- Don't ever, ever put SRBs on any stage above the first one.

Actually, before getting separatrons, you may consider putting the smallest thrusters with like 5% fuel in them upside down and a bit sideways, on some stages that give you trouble Also, 3-stage "6 SRBs / 1 SRB / payload" is a nice, quick setup for testing reentry of your small probes in suborbital flight, before you send them far away.

[TheXRuler]

SRB's are cheap, semi reliable "trash cans full of boom". If you want to go cheap use many SRBs, if you want to go light use liquid fuel. And Pure SRB first stages with or multiple stage SRB lifters are fine, just make sure they fire at the same time and then arrange staging by adjusting burn time or using different SRB sizes. E.g. one KD-25k set to 80% thrust and 6 BACC will boost you up very nicely very cheaply.

[Harry Rhodan]

4. Too many RCS thrusters is a thing. For docking purposes, better a bit sluggish than too twitchy.

Or use precision mode with capslock.