At a wall with docking, honestly depressed about it.

[deltalambdamu]

Docking is hard If you've not done it before. In my first attempt ever, I tried to come in at a > 45 degree angle. I use the docking alignment mod (not sure of name - it's on the first page of this thread) and docking cam to dock now. But it can still be a pain.

I recently sent a docking deck to my station (pics later) for fuel tanks and ships. It was awful. Turns out that those Sr docking ports require a way more precise angle before they'll attach. And my RCS port placement didn't help. Translational controls made the ship want to rotate. I came in as lined up as I could get going 0.4 m/s from 4.5+ m. After the magnetic field took over, I stared at the ship for a few seconds wondering if it was going to connect. It did. Now I get to send three empty orange tanks so I can bring my temporary ships back home.

[TheGeoninja]

Biggest advice is to go to Minmus and work on docking there. Everything is much easier and slower for those that struggle with docking it is where I built my first station. Fuel requirements are low and there is no risk of falling into the atmosphere.

[FREEFALL1984]

In order to get close to the target, you can perform a hohmann transfer into its orbit, here's how I dock and its fairly simple after a couple of attempts.

1 - Launch the first vessel, get this vessel on a predictable orbit, I like to go for 150km, since this allows slightly faster timewarp, make sure the vessels orbit is perfectly (or as near as possible) circular. with 0 degrees inclination.

2 - you can time the launches, but for now I suggest you wait until the target vessel has just passed your launchpad (perhaps about 15 or more degrees around its orbit)

3 - Launch the second vessel, Achieve an orbit of about 130km, make this orbit as close to circular as you can,

4 - Match the inclination of the target vessel using maneuver nodes.

5 - now you need to wait until you near the transfer window. this is the point where your vessel is just behind the target vessel on its orbit. a good rule of thumb is to be about the same distance behind the target as the distance you are below the target. meaning the target itself is about 45 degrees off your prograde marker. if you miss the window then you need to come around for another approach, this can take several days. so timewarp until your slightly farther behind the target than last time and try again.

6 - Create a maneuver node just in front of your ship which brings your apoapsis up to the targets altitude,

7 - Now shift this maneuver node around your orbit a little, you should see closest approach markets, one of these markers will show the target location at closest approach. this needs to be as close as possible to the other marker.

8 - Make sure the closest approach markers have as low a distance as possible, getting within 300m (or 0.3km) should be fairly simple.

9 - Now as soon as you get close to this closest approach marker, you need to burn to match the targets velocity, the easiest method to do this is to match orbits, so create a maneuver node at apoapsis and bring your periapsis up to the same 150km to circularize,

10 - Now your speeds should be within 1 or 2m/s of the targets, in order to reduce the speed to zero, you need to first make sure the navball is set to "target" and then burn retrograde slightly, this will be a tiny burn so RCS would be best once your there you're prograde/retrograde markers will perform a celebratory dance.

11 - Now switch vessel to the target and rotate it so the docking port is pointed at your ship, best to do this by selecting the docking port you wish to use and selecting "control from here", then setting your other ship as target and aiming at the purple marker.

12 - Now switch back to your other ship and select the docking port you wish to use and select control from here.

13 - Now perform an RCS burn with the H key (N key is the opposite) (or a weak engine burn !not recommended!) and drift towards the target. dont overdo it, I recommend about 1m/s per 100m to travel, so if you're 500m away move at 5m/s, then as you get to 400m drop to 4m/s and so on until your at about 50m away, if you now would be a good time to quicksave (F5) and if you want you can kill your relative velocity but if your happy and moving nice and slowly you can continue.

14 - Once you're pretty close you need to double check the vessels orientation as you may of move out of line, as before, switch to the target, point it at your other vessel and then switch back and do the same.

15 - Now select the docking port on the target ship (you should be close enough to see it) and select set as target. the distance meter now changes from the targets COM to this docking port.

16 - continue to drift towards the target at low speed.

17 - Now looking on the navball, you should have a purple marker in alignment with your prograde marker, if its not then use the jkli keys to move it onto the target, this will be reversed so take care and since your relative speeds are so low this will massively effect your direction of travel so only use tiny burns.

18 - Keep your prograde marker lined up with your target marker as you close the distance.

19 - if you need to then bring your vessel to a halt and tweek the translation and orientation, although this will need to be done by eye as your prograde marker will dance around or turn into a retrograde marker, it might be helpful to switch to the other vessel and tweek the orientation again.

20 - As soon as the distance closes to less than 0.2m turn off your RCS and SAS and allow yourself to dock automatically using the magnetic force, this may take time to dock for really large vessels.

This is the most efficient way to dock short of launching directly into a rendezvous.

Edited May 2, 2014 by FREEFALL1984

[blizzy78]

There's no reason they shouldn't. the Scenarios already included go back to like .18 (except the ARM one of course)

Yes, but tutorials are not only scenarios (which are simple save files), but they also include a DLL to drive things and guide you through. Of course that DLL can break due to KSP API changes.

[xrayfishx]

When it comes to docking, the navball is the most important thing. I'm repeating people here when I say that you need to learn to understand what exactly the navball is telling you. The second most important is practice.

Ignore everyone who tells you to use Chase camera. When you're docking you need to see where your spacecraft is in relation to the other one. Move your camera around a lot, otherwise you will only see it from one angle and you'll be far from aligned without even noticing.

Before you rotate or translate using the RCS, tap the button that you think is the right one to see if it is indeed that. It's not going to take a lot of RCS or throw you far in the wrong direction if you try the wrong button like that, since you're looking at which thrusters are firing, not which way it's moving you. Eventually it will come to you naturally and you will simply understand which way your craft is without ever pressing the wrong button.

And again, move the camera a lot so you see where everything is.

When you are building your spacecraft, you could use one of the spaceplane cockpits to make things easier for you. You will easily see which way is up by looking at where the cockpit windows are.

Also, a bit off-topic. As an actually depressed person I am greatly annoyed when people misunderstand what depression is. You don't "feel depressed". Depression is a medical condition, not an emotion. You're not feeling depressed, you're feeling sad or angry.

[RW-1]

"When it comes to docking, the navball is the most important thing. I'm repeating people here when I say that you need to learn to understand what exactly the navball is telling you. The second most important is practice. "

Yep... Basically, in Aviation, you have the practical side, the actual flying to practice, and the Knowledge side, whereas you learn how to use your controls and instruments to accomplish what you want to do with your ship, be it a plane (boring, I CFII in heli's hehehe ....) or a spacecraft.

Once you catch on on what the navball (my pref) or other mod such as an alignment indicator is telling you, and follow the methodologies laid out, you will rendezvous and dock in no time, be patient and take it one step at a time.

[HeadHunter67]

Oh my goodness, thank you guys for all the great posts. Honestly earlier today I was just getting ready to quit the game.

That's a wall that every one of us know very well... if you take a look, we all carved our names into it before someone else showed us the light!

For many people, their savior was Scott Manley, for me personally it was Pebble Garden and Blizzy. And then NavyFish came along with his amazing plugin and now, the only time I have any docking trouble is when I'm flying a badly-designed ship (not enough torque and/or imbalanced RCS).

Which reminds me - docking is way easier if your thrusters are perfectly blanaced, and the RCS Build Aid plugin is an easy way to make sure of that.

[Tortoise]

I recently made a tutorial, OP.

http://youtu.be/A288M8gN8H0