Orbital Maneuver Guides & Nearby Solar Systems!

[Eoal123]

Orbital Maneuver Guides

As it says on the title, 'obviously'

This suggestion would really really help those who need help in planning maneuvers to reach bodies nearly impossibru to reach.

It's like, when you targeted a body or an object, a new button if you clicked (Bloop!) will already set a maneuver to reach the target,

and now you'll just have to worry about your fuel load.

It also enhances the time before you burn through the Delta Vector.

For example...

You assigned a maneuver. Let's say you will burn through Prograde Vector to add 1000m/s to the velocity. However, It will take time and can overshot the desired trajectory because you burned like more than 30 seconds.

My point is, a marker will be shown where you will burn when it has been reached, leaving the desired trajectory perfect.

I hope you see this post and find it useful for the future versions of KSP!

Thanks for reading this post!

[r4pt0r]

i advise all players who cannot plan manuvers to just play with the nodes for a couple minutes. learn by experience rather than having the game hold their hand.

[UbioZur]

As much as the current system is not perfect nor finish, I would disagree with the press a button and it's all done for you. (Squad have talked a lot about their desire to not have automation on the first release or even stock game).

The experience (as r4pt0r said) and the knowledge of the current system will be your best friend.

Also I would suggest you change your title which talk about Nearby Solar system (there is only one solar system in game atm, and more system are on the what not to suggest list), and you don't talk about them.

[Red Iron Crown]

i advise all players who cannot plan manuvers to just play with the nodes for a couple minutes. learn by experience rather than having the game hold their hand.

Or maybe an in game tutorial for it, showing how to manipulate maneuver nodes for an interplanetary encounter with one of the closer bodies. Then leave the rest for the player to figure out.

[deltalambdamu]

Let's say you will burn through Prograde Vector to add 1000m/s to the velocity. However, It will take time and can overshot the desired trajectory because you burned like more than 30 seconds.

I always begin my burns 25-30 seconds early (sometimes 5 or 10, depending on how much DV I'm going to gain). I'll aim to finish the burn at the 0 second mark. I also try to get within 1 m/s, but no more than 5 m/s of the target velocity. And it almost always works great. The most trouble I had out of it was getting to Eeloo. But that probably had more to do with when I started the launch and the unbalanced rocket itself.

But do play around with the nodes and stuff as r4pt0r said.

[Pulstar]

To be honest a proper transfer window calendar/clock (or a built in protractor telling you the current and desired phase angle, as it is more educational IMO) and a tutorial scenario on interplanetary travel would be a better idea. Without an ingame tool a tutorial is a bit pointless, unless you want the game to tell new players "download a plugin or grab a protractor from your desk before clicking next" in a tutorial message.

It's pretty much impossible to figure out the stuff on your own, unlike getting to orbit or landing on the Mun. I think that interplanetary transfer is too obscured for new players and bar the few souls who put a physical protractor to their screens, everybody uses some kind of plugin for interplanetary travel anyway. We should have that functionality in stock, just saying when you should go but not how to get there exactly. A player should know when he should start tinkering with maneuver nodes to get to a desired planet, but how to plot his course should be left to him to figure out.

[Deathsoul097]

Well, we ARE getting new tutorials in 0.24, IIRC. This will probably be a part of one, if not the focus of it.

[Justin Kerbice]

To be honest a proper transfer window calendar/clock

[...]

I agree.

Maybe an integrated window planner tool like the two well know web tools (Launch Window Planner for example), inside a new building: mission control/design (something like R&D building, clikc => new UI similar to the planning tools and perhaps create a manoeuvre node for use when craft is in orbit)

[Pulstar]

The calendar/clock should be an UI widget accessible in flight if you ask me. Being accessible from the tracking station/mission control as well wouldn't hurt if you need an overview from the KSC screen before you choose where to go next or what contract to take. But knowing the phase angles/launch window time while you are controlling a vessel is simply necessary. Having to jump to the space center and back to check them would be tedious.

Also we already have a mission control building at the KSC, it's just that it does nothing and you can't click on it to open a window yet. But it will be accessible in 0.24 since it will be sued to manage contracts.

[Kegereneku]

I think we should start by getting a delta-V indicator (like Kerbal Engineer or Mechjeb) as a basic tool.

How can you expect players -experimented or not- to just guess if they have the deltaV required for a maneuver without trying, failing and reseting to VAB ?

It will be easier to understand how orbital navigation work if the player can understand the relation between fuelmass/payload right in the VAB and see that Delta-V is an universal metric of navigation.

Then, if you really want to OPTIMIZE your launcher so a stage drop at the right altitude or just before the final orbit insertion (to avoid putting debris in orbit) you need a tool like that. The KSC should really give the player the tools to plan a missions without any mods.

[Pulstar]

The game is perfectly playable without ever telling you how much delta-v you have left, you either have more than enough fuel or not enough fuel. I mean sure, there's more room for failure because you don't know it. But if you guess the amount of fuel for a mission you are indeed quite likely to succeed, if only because you'll take more fuel with you just in case to be on the safe side. Guessing transfer windows on the other hand is a bit like winning the lottery, you need an exact value and not an "exact value or higher than it" so learning them by dumb luck trial and error is a lot more difficult and tedious.

I'm on the fence when it comes to showing spacecraft delta-v. On one hand it does make the game easier, although without memorizing the delta-v map you still need to learn how much delta-v it takes to get/land anywhere yourself. On the other if you want to know it without mods, all you need to do is divide the fuel you have by the consumption rate per second, and set up a maneuver node with burn time as long as the time it would take to burn all the fuel you have left. So all in all hiding it away from the player is a bit pointless now that I think about it.

We could also use total thrust and mass per stage values in the VAB and the vehicle information tab. TWR calculation can be done by the player since it is not hard. You know what, an in game calculator would also be nice. The game already gives the player a lot of useful values, why not encourage him to count (simple) stuff himself.

[Eoal123]

Yea, haven't change that yet. Srry

[Kegereneku]

While I'm fairly confident the common player know how to subtract divide or multiply enough to calculate the deltaV, the process is so tedious that most people interested at all, will download a mods to avoid mindless repetition. It's not like we wouldn't understand the math if we can use the result of those particular equations.

"Why do the job of a calculator when you could be learning actual math ?"

- me

[deltalambdamu]

The problem with remembering DV maps is (similar to):

Okay, remember yellow is 12, red is 5, orange is 3.3

When I need to remember it:

Where did the brown one go? And why are there yellow ones? All I want is the one for 9...

Short of keeping note cards for every game I play, how am I supposed to remember something I will rarely use? And guessing how much DV you have currently? I recently sent a two part ship to land on the Mun. I launched a refueling mission for the second part of the ship. I was going to transfer some of the second-stage's leftover fuel, after docking, to refuel the second ship. I used twice as much fuel as I anticipated to get docked with it. After transferring all of it, I barely had enough to get into Munar orbit with the second ship.