General questions from a beginner

[Wulfonce]

I picked up KSP a few months back. I really love it! I have a few ingame issues that I lack the skill/knowledge to deal with that's making the gameplay very frustrating at times.

Orbital docking:

There's 2 parts to this story. Firstly, I sent a crew of 3 to the Mun. All went well until I tried to return. I didn't have enough fuel. I then send out Rescue Pod I. It lands on the mun with no problems. Two of the kerbals board the rescue craft, the third had to much to drink and bumped into the side of it. The Rocket tipped over and broke in half. Oh, did I mention that the game autosaved seconds after this happened?

Then I send out Rescue Pod II, an unmanned version of Rescue Pod I. It makes it to muner orbit without problems. Landing was a bit sketchy due to the terrible controles with unmanned craft. I end up burning way to much fuel bouncing around trying to touch down safely. It finally lands and I speed up time waiting for the sun to rise. I fly my 4 kerbals into Rescue Pod II without problems. Then I find out that the ship is totally dead. Yup, I didn't realize that unmanned ships need power...

I then send out Rescue Pod III, a slightly larger manned version of Rescue Pod II. It carries a little bit of extra fuel due to the extra weight. I land it down safely on the Mun. The 4 kerbals board the ship, now I have 5 in there total. I fly away from the moon watching my fuel reserves quickly dropping. I escape the Muns gravity and drift toward kerbin. With about 10 seconds of fuel left I burn a new orbit to a crash course with kerbin. It doesn't work. I run out just shy of 200,000km from kerbin.

Now my crew of 5 needs a 4th rescue... They're stuck in a football shaped orbit that extends well beyond the Mun. I've tried and tried to rescue them but I can't seem to get close enough. The kicker is that after about 30 orbits they get sucked in by the Mun and crash. I have no idea how to get close enough to save them.

Docking problems continued...

I got so frustrated with trying to rescue them that I decided to ignore them and build a space station. I got a science bay into a nice stable circular shaped orbit around kerbin. It has 4 docking ports on it. I'm trying to attach a section of solar panels to it, but again, I can't get close enough. Even with perfect orbital conditions the closest I've came is 27km. I don't understand what all the orbital info means, which is why I probably suck so bad at it.

One last question...

The science bay was spinning wildly out of control. I managed to almost stabilize it by strategically bumping a kerbal into it. This seems wrong to me, surely there's a better way. If the science bay had power would I be able to stabilize it? Or maybe I was suppose to stick a cockpit on it? I don't know. There's things about this game that I don't understand and most of the guides make no sense, because they assume you already have a grasp on the game dynamics.

Oops one more question...

Suppose I wanted to store fuel on my space station. If I stick a full tank to a docking port in orbit, will there be an option to transfer fuel from one tank to another? Or is a fuel pump required, which honestly doesn't make sense because how would you stick it to another tank without being in the build screen... Idk

I'd really like to save those 5 kerbals, any help would be great.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Wulfonce

[Epthelyn]

You should've quicksaved (F5) before loading the Kerbals

Going to number the questions in the order they appear:

1 & 2: I could try to explain but I'm not very good at doing so and would probably confuse you further. I'd recommend you find a rendezvous tutorial (like this one:

) or wait for someone else to attempt to explain it. Sorry

3: If the science bay is completely out of power and/or has no means to control itself then the only options you have are to:

A) Stop the rotation with another craft/Kerbal in a similar way to the one you described

Timewarp, which instantly stops all rotation in the universe and solves your problem, albeit in an unrealistic and slightly 'cheaty' manner.

4: Yes. Hold alt and right click on one tank, then alt and right click on the other tank. In/Out buttons will appear. You don't need a fuel pump and can transfer from any part of a rocket to another, regardless of what parts are holding it together between the two tanks. The fuel tank has to be docked to the station though; you can't transfer fuel between two separate vessels (although I don't think you intended to try that).

[Alshain]

No offense to Scott, but this is a better tutorial.

Scott Manley is a very smart person and sometimes he has a tendency to speak in terms that a lot of people don't know at first.

[kfunk]

if you're having difficulty rendezvous-ing with a circular orbit, doing it in a highly eliptical orbit will be nearly impossible.

in relation to your unmanned probe being difficult to land, there are 'precision' controls which you can turn on with caps lock. it knocks down the amount of input you get for a given control and may be helpful in situations like that.

it doesn't take a lot of power to get from Mun orbit back to kerbin. i like to burn prograde when my rocket is between mun & kerbin, usually can get home with minimal fuel.

wobble/spin problems can sometimes be an SAS problem. too much/too little. try turning it on/off and see if that helps.

when you're trying to rendezvous in orbit the idea is to close the gap with orbital maneuvers to a few km (i like < 5, but you can do it from 10 if you have the fuel) then use your docking controls on final approach. if you have craft 1 in a circular orbit and it's 'ahead' of you, you'll need a lower orbit to catch up, if it's behind, you'll want a higher orbit to slow down and allow it to catch up to you. for 27km distance you'd want your orbit AP/PE to be within 5 of the target craft.

the last poster was right in that you should find a video that shows how it works, its a multi part step. once you figure it out you'll wonder why it was ever difficult at all.

[eataTREE]

1. Press F5 to quicksave, F9 to reload that quicksave. Press Alt (or Option if you've a Mac) + F5 to make a specific, named save that you can restore later.

2. So, "rocket juice" is measured, both in KSP and the real world, in a quantity called delta-V. You can look up the exact equation if you want, but basically the more fuel you have left on board and the harder you can burn that fuel, the more delta-V you've got. Everything you want to do has a fixed "price" in delta-V: getting off Kerbin into orbit, transferring to the Mun, and so on. There is a big chart of these costs here. The point being that if you know how much delta-V your rockets and landers have, you will know if you can successfully fly to the Mun and pick up your dudes or if you are just adding to the Munar dance party. To calculate your delta-V you can either do a whole bunch of math or use a mod like Kerbal Engineer, the latter option being rather the more convenient one.

3. You need some sort of stabilization system, or you're not going to be able to counteract any unintended rotational forces -- as you are seeing! Attach a stabilizer (the "inline stabilizer" from the "Control" tab) to your vessel, and make sure it has electrical power to operate. This means batteries and probably a solar panel or two. Other options for stability include RCS -- monopropellant tanks and thrusters located around your vessels, and, within an atmosphere, control surfaces, i.e. wings and fins. Without some sort of control system and power to operate it, you will inevitably tumble out of control as soon as you are not under thrust (assuming your rocket is gimbaled and you attempt no particularly wild maneuver, otherwise you'll tumble out of control then too).

4. Docking is tricky. Get to the point where you can reliably fly to the Mun and back before you start assembling your orbital space station. There are good tutorials on orbital rendezvous and docking on this subforum.

5. Lifting a large mass is exponentially harder than lifting a small mass. You will need to use multiple stages and boosters.

6. Yes, you can transfer any resource between two things docked together, including fuel, oxidizer, monopropellant, electrical charge.

[Superfluous J]

Firstly, I sent a crew of 3 to the Mun. All went well until I tried to return. I didn't have enough fuel. I then send out Rescue Pod I. It lands on the mun with no problems. Two of the kerbals board the rescue craft, the third had to much to drink and bumped into the side of it. The Rocket tipped over and broke in half. Oh, did I mention that the game autosaved seconds after this happened?

The game does not quicksave. It autosaves. You quicksave by hitting F5. Do it liberally and often. You can even alt-f5 (don't accidentally alt-f4!) to create a named quicksave file. F9 restores your latest quicksave and alt-f9 brings up a dialog where you can pick between quicksaves you've made the past.

Then I send out Rescue Pod II, an unmanned version of Rescue Pod I. It makes it to muner orbit without problems. Landing was a bit sketchy due to the terrible controles with unmanned craft. I end up burning way to much fuel bouncing around trying to touch down safely. It finally lands and I speed up time waiting for the sun to rise. I fly my 4 kerbals into Rescue Pod II without problems. Then I find out that the ship is totally dead. Yup, I didn't realize that unmanned ships need power...

The controls for unmanned ships are exactly the same as for manned ships, so I'm not sure what you mean up there. And yeah, the power thing is something even I forget sometimes and I've been playing almost daily for over a year.

I then send out Rescue Pod III, a slightly larger manned version of Rescue Pod II. It carries a little bit of extra fuel due to the extra weight. I land it down safely on the Mun. The 4 kerbals board the ship, now I have 5 in there total. I fly away from the moon watching my fuel reserves quickly dropping. I escape the Muns gravity and drift toward kerbin. With about 10 seconds of fuel left I burn a new orbit to a crash course with kerbin. It doesn't work. I run out just shy of 200,000km from kerbin.

At least you're making progress!

Now my crew of 5 needs a 4th rescue... They're stuck in a football shaped orbit that extends well beyond the Mun. I've tried and tried to rescue them but I can't seem to get close enough. The kicker is that after about 30 orbits they get sucked in by the Mun and crash. I have no idea how to get close enough to save them.

Rendezvous with wonky orbits are some of the harder things in the game. Try to get your apoapsis near the target's apoapsis, and then out there burn normal to get the orbits close. Then at that same apoapsis try to get your periapsis just touching the periapsis of your doomed ship. Set it as a target and when your orbits are really close, you'll get light blue encounter markers.

Ride your orbit down to just past that encounter marker and burn retrograde to slow down a little. The other ship's encounter marker will come around and eventually touch or get really close to your encounter marker. Now your two ships will - on the next orbit - be really close to each other there. Ride around another orbit, switch to target mode on your navball, and burn retrograde until your relative speeds are 0. Then burn toward the ship slowly and coast in to the encounter.

There are more fuel efficient ways to do encounters, but they generally involve crazy planning and perfect execution and you should get a couple rendezvous under your belt before trying them.

And quicksave at EVERY step so you can restore. You CAN do this but it will take a bit of trial and error. The game is all about error, but you have to quicksave or you'll not be able to do the trial part.

Regarding your second question, once you nail the first one it should become easier.

[Simes]

You do still have a source of propellant on your stranded spacecraft, because your crew all have EVA suits.

In other words, they can get out and push. As far as I know, as long as you remember to get back into the capsule before the propellant runs out, it can be refilled as many times as you want.

It might take a while to get your orbit adjusted the way you want it but in an orbit like the one you describe, it doesn't take a lot of dV to drop your periapisis into Kerbin's atmosphere, and from that point on you should be golden. Better than smashing into the Mun, at any rate, which is why I did it.

[Kryxal]

For that highly elliptical orbit, I'd probably either go for a rescue craft which intersects the other craft's orbit near periapsis, or get out and push retrograde at apoapsis to get the periapsis closer to the planet.

On second thought, 200,000 km ... are you sure of that number, and that it's not 200 km? I mean, 200 km is close enough for getting out and pushing, but 200,000 km is about 4 times further than Minimus!

[MarvinKitFox]

Well, you sure are making the beginner mistakes.

You are also learning from them, which is good!

first thing: F5 !

Whenever you are in a safe situation, and about to do something brave/stupid/risky/fun, press F5. This quicksaves the game(F9 quickloads)

and DONT press it again until you are again in a good safe situation.

Measure once, cut thrice,

or measure twice, cut once.

You definitely need to put a bit more thought into planning ahead.

About your stranded explorers..

"after about 30 orbits they get sucked in by the Mun"

30 orbits, out to Mun distance, is a loooooong time.

Changing your orbit by even 1m/s will change your location after 30 orbits enough to avoid the mun.

Have one of your kerbals climb out, and use hid EVA jetpack to push/bump your ship against its orbital direction. A slight nudge retrograde will shorten your orbit.

And remember to press F5 before you do so!

And again, after the maneuver, but only AFTER you have checked that the change made is to your benefit.

As for your docking woes.... I can explain perfectly how to do it, but it will take 5 pages and get us both lost along the way.

There are some great tutorials out there.

But frankly, first build some confidence in handling one ship, before you worry about meeting with another.

Getting rendezvous and docking right is easily 10 time as hard as landing your first lunar lander.

[Wanderfound]

Congratulations! You are having a classic new-to-KSP experience.

Virtually everone starts out by stranding dozens of Kerbals on the Mun, crashing or stranding countless "rescue" ships, and utterly failing to dock with anything. It's all part of the learning process.

My first half dozen Mun landings turned into impact craters. My first "successful" Mun landing saw the legs flex just enough to let the engine strike the ground and explode. The one after that tipped over.

By the time I finally got the hang of it, I think there were about twenty Kerbals on the Mun and another fifteen or so stranded in orbit (including one who had accidentally departed the Kerbol system and was on his way to interstellar space). My first successfully orbited SSTO spaceplane crashed on landing.

Try to appreciate it as much as you can; once you do get good enough to be able to casually perform all these tasks, that part of the game is done for you. Eventually you'll be able to pop down to the Mun with 100% reliability and complete ease, but by the time you get to that point an uncomplicated Mun landing is about as exciting as catching the bus, because you've done it a hundred times already and there's no tension.

It's still a fun game; there's plenty of other stuff to do (look around at all the people who've been regularly posting on these forums for years; this is a game with serious staying power). But there's nothing quite like your first successful docking or Mun landing (or interplanetary trip, or SSTO, or spaceplane landing, etc.).

There are plenty of guides and things out there, but try to give everything a good solid try before going to the tutorials. Repeated failure is an integral part of the KSP experience, and the view from the top of the mountain is always best when you've walked there yourself. The tutorials will still be there if you need them after you've had "just one more try".

Don't rush; make the most of it while you have it. You may miss it a bit once it's done.

[Wulfonce]

For that highly elliptical orbit, I'd probably either go for a rescue craft which intersects the other craft's orbit near periapsis, or get out and push retrograde at apoapsis to get the periapsis closer to the planet.

On second thought, 200,000 km ... are you sure of that number, and that it's not 200 km? I mean, 200 km is close enough for getting out and pushing, but 200,000 km is about 4 times further than Minimus!

Ah yes, 200km is what I meant to say.

I wish I knew about the quick saving and loading before. Now the stranded craft has slingshotted around the moon and orbits out to 73,384km and as close as 10,094km. Maybe I'll ignore them for awhile and hope for the best. At this point I lack the skill to do anything about it.

Thanks for the info everyone. I'll have a look at those videos and hopefully I'll understand them.

[Kryxal]

Sooner or later another encounter with the Mun is going to come up ... keep an eye out for it and try to push to shrink your orbit again.

[Reactordrone]

If your periapsis is only 200km then getting out and pushing is a very viable option. Next time the ship is at apoapsis point it retrograde, turn on SAS and EVA a Kerbal to the engine and push forwards to slow your ship down. It might take a few goes to get there but you don't have too far to go to hit atmosphere, at which point the ship will slow down by itself.

[Sirine]

Whenever ask for help.

1) Screenshot- helps a lot. Register an www.Imgur.com free account, and upload your pic to it and post it here.

Much easier.

2) Upload your save game (persistent.sfs)- Register a free file hosting site, such as www., and upload your save file there. Post the download link here.

Don't worries, with the save game, we are unable to extract your craft. As up to 0.24.2. So you remain to keep your unique special precious design craft with you safely.

With the above 2 done, I Guaranty you will have you help in minutes, and tons of solution comes up to you.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Sirine

[KerikBalm]

The Rocket tipped over and broke in half. Oh, did I mention that the game autosaved seconds after this happened?

Learning to quicksave has saved me a lot of trouble.

Then I send out Rescue Pod II, an unmanned version of Rescue Pod I. It makes it to muner orbit without problems. Landing was a bit sketchy due to the terrible controles with unmanned craft.

I'm not sure what you mean... were you using a hitchhier pod? The probe cores have very little torque on their own. You can supplement this with reaction wheels, RCS, gimballing engines (although this doesn't help much when you need to rotate but not thrust), or a manned pod that has its own reaction wheels (Not the hitchhiker module)

It finally lands and I speed up time waiting for the sun to rise. I fly my 4 kerbals into Rescue Pod II without problems. Then I find out that the ship is totally dead. Yup, I didn't realize that unmanned ships need power...

#1) Why did you wait, if it was for the sun because you had solar panels, then problem solved. You can add more batteries (some of them are even "massless" for the games calculations), or solar panels, or (if you're not doing science mode, as they are at the end of the tech tree) RTGs. Or if you have a manned pod cobined with an unmanned pod, you can still fire the engines, which if they have an alternator, will recharge your craft.

I then send out Rescue Pod III, a slightly larger manned version of Rescue Pod II. It carries a little bit of extra fuel due to the extra weight. I land it down safely on the Mun. The 4 kerbals board the ship, now I have 5 in there total. I fly away from the moon watching my fuel reserves quickly dropping. I escape the Muns gravity and drift toward kerbin. With about 10 seconds of fuel left I burn a new orbit to a crash course with kerbin. It doesn't work. I run out just shy of 200,000km from kerbin.

Did you use a manuever node to make sure you were being optimal?

Also, get out and push - its cheaty and time consuming, but your kerbals can refuel their jet packs indefinitiely and push your ship.

Now my crew of 5 needs a 4th rescue... They're stuck in a football shaped orbit that extends well beyond the Mun. I've tried and tried to rescue them but I can't seem to get close enough. The kicker is that after about 30 orbits they get sucked in by the Mun and crash. I have no idea how to get close enough to save them.

Those orbits are quite hard.... you need to launch a rescue craft, then kick its apopasis out to match the time and place of the PE of your other kerbals, and then at PE burn to match velocity - the timing is very important.

Even with perfect orbital conditions the closest I've came is 27km. I don't understand what all the orbital info means, which is why I probably suck so bad at it.

If it is ahead of you, drop to a lower orbit (ie, take the inside track), time warp until you're very close to it, and then kick your orbit back up to its level. Do the opposite if its behind you.

Counterintuitively, this means that if it is ahead of you, you burn away from it (retrograde) to catch up. If it is in a very low orbit, you can go to a higher one, and let it get so far ahead of you that it comes up behind you again.

The science bay was spinning wildly out of control. I managed to almost stabilize it by strategically bumping a kerbal into it. This seems wrong to me, surely there's a better way. If the science bay had power would I be able to stabilize it? Or maybe I was suppose to stick a cockpit on it?

Only if the science bay had a "command" pod of some sort attached to it it, ie, a cockpit or probe core. Probe cores, as mentioned, have weak torque and should be supplemented with an empty manned pod or a reaction wheel unit. Otherwise, its essentially like floating debris.

Alternately, things stop spinning when you time warp- its a bit cheaty, but you can time warp to stop its rotation, and then try docking with it. Until you dock a command module of some sort to it, you'll always have this problem

Suppose I wanted to store fuel on my space station. If I stick a full tank to a docking port in orbit, will there be an option to transfer fuel from one tank to another?

Yes, You can click on a tank, and then alt click on another tank, and you should get the option to transfer fuel between them. You can do this to move fuel around in your single ships constructed as 1 unit (assuming you used more than 1 tank part) to try this out.

[Wulfonce]

I'm not sure what you mean... were you using a hitchhier pod? The probe cores have very little torque on their own. You can supplement this with reaction wheels, RCS, gimballing engines (although this doesn't help much when you need to rotate but not thrust), or a manned pod that has its own reaction wheels (Not the hitchhiker module)

I no longer have the exact build but it looked pretty close to this (keep in mind there's also an abomination of a craft lifting this into orbit). Note the lack of solar panels or batteries, oops. And why it handles so badly, as you said, is probably the lack of reaction wheels. I've never used those before.

#1) Why did you wait, if it was for the sun because you had solar panels, then problem solved. You can add more batteries (some of them are even "massless" for the games calculations), or solar panels, or (if you're not doing science mode, as they are at the end of the tech tree) RTGs. Or if you have a manned pod cobined with an unmanned pod, you can still fire the engines, which if they have an alternator, will recharge your craft.

I waited because I couldn't see well enough on the dark side. Then the wait drained all my electricity and I was dead in the water (no solar panels)

Those orbits are quite hard.... you need to launch a rescue craft, then kick its apopasis out to match the time and place of the PE of your other kerbals, and then at PE burn to match velocity - the timing is very important.

Here is the nature of the problem...

and here is the craft I'm using to get them back. It has a generous amount of fuel left over once it gets into orbit.

If it is ahead of you, drop to a lower orbit (ie, take the inside track), time warp until you're very close to it, and then kick your orbit back up to its level. Do the opposite if its behind you.

Counterintuitively, this means that if it is ahead of you, you burn away from it (retrograde) to catch up. If it is in a very low orbit, you can go to a higher one, and let it get so far ahead of you that it comes up behind you again.

Those videos helped. I was able to dock with the stranded science bay and transfer my 2 kerbals over to safety. I then knocked it out of orbit and reentered safely. The way I docked seemed really inefficient but with practice I think I can clean it up a bit.

Only if the science bay had a "command" pod of some sort attached to it it, ie, a cockpit or probe core. Probe cores, as mentioned, have weak torque and should be supplemented with an empty manned pod or a reaction wheel unit. Otherwise, its essentially like floating debris.

Alternately, things stop spinning when you time warp- its a bit cheaty, but you can time warp to stop its rotation, and then try docking with it. Until you dock a command module of some sort to it, you'll always have this problem

It had a "stayputnic" attached to it which I removed because I thought I didn't need it. lol. So I assume this means that every space station needs at least 1 command module?

One last thing. How long does it take till my posts no longer need mod approval?

[Wulfonce]

Mission success!!!

-The liftoff was nearly a disaster due to severe instability, I throttled back several times to avoid catastrophic failure.

-Burned off the last of the main tank entering orbit, and separated.

-after 10min of playing around with the maneuvers I get lucky.

-the last of the 6 kerbals boards the rescue craft

-Collision course set

-One final burn and separation

-coming in hot!

-touchdown!!!

I sort of have a grasp on the idea of intersecting and docking now. It's not as hard as I originally thought. With more practice It shouldn't be as difficult. Thanks for all the help everyone!

[Pecan]

Nice job :-)