Ship building questions

[watmatt]

I've had pretty good success with basic ship design and getting my landers to Mun and Minmus with enough fuel for the return trip to Kerbin. But I'm having trouble building ships that have separate landing and return stages. My goal was to build a ship that used a Command Module (CM) as transfer/return stage for the trip to and from my target. Once there, I want to separate a lander for trips to the surface and back. I am using single Kerbonaut command pods that I will transfer between lander and CM as needed.

I was able to get my transfer vehicle and lander to Munnar orbit and separate the lander. As I was controlling the lander all the controls and NaviBall were reversed. ????

Any help or suggestions are appreciated.

-m

Edited May 12, 2014 by watmatt

[RW-1]

After you separate, my guess is.... that you were still focused on your other ship or you didn't re-designate where to control your lander from ... I'm not saying you have to but if we had a pic of both we could tell easily.

Try this, separate, then use [ and ] to switch, and when on your lander, select it's docking port right click and choose to control from here.

I believe that should take care of your naviball and control issue. It really comes down to making sure you are on your ship, and selecting the end for control that you want.

If not, please elaborate for the group, and we can go from there. I'm certain others will chime in here as well.

[Taki117]

The most common problem in this situation is that the new root part is upside down (Or backwards, or not in the direction you need) I don't know how KSP chooses the new root part for the undocked vessel, but if you either go IVA, or right click the docking port and select "Control from here" then it will reorient the Navball relative to the direction of the controlling part.

[cantab]

You can right-click any command pod, probe core, or docking ports and choose "control from here". That sets the navball orientation, and also the part that SAS tries to hold the orientation of (which matters for large and flexible ships). Hopefully you have at least one part in the right orientation on your lander.

[watmatt]

Root part upside down. I'm pretty sure thats it. I did clicked the docking port and selected control from here. When I added the docking port to the underside of the lander, I flipped it.

Thanks for the responses.