How in the World do you Dock?

[michaelhester07]

You can practice on the ground if you have the rover wheels unlocked. Launch 2 rovers out of the spaceplane hangar each with a docking port and practice how it looks on the ground so you know what to expect. You'll have to drive into the grass just west of the runway end.

Now on to space:

1. RCS design: You can either design your RCS so the ports are mounted where your center of mass is... or you can place 2 sets of ports at either end of your ship and let the computer calculate the thrust out of each set for you for the same effect. The latter method I recommend for bigger ships as the COM will change a lot.

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in space

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2. Select target mode navball indicators. Target the ship you want to dock to by double clicking it or selecting it in the map view. Now click the speed indicator on the navball until it reads "target". It will usually read "orbit", and "surface", and then "target" when you click on it. Usually target mode is selected for you when you're within 90km of the target.

3. Learn what your prograde and retrograde markers look like. Your ship's movement is indicated by the green makers on the navball. The prograde marker is the one without the X in the center of it. Thrusting toward this will increase your speed relative to your target. Thrusting toward the retrograde marker, the one with the X in it, will reduce your speed relative to your target.

4. Learn how those markers behave. Thrusting toward your retrograde marker makes the marker move away from your ship's center of thrust (the center marker on the navball). Thrusting toward the prograde marker makes that marker move toward your ship's center of thrust.

5. Learn the target prograde and retrograde markers. You should have seen these on your ground simulation too. They're purple. The large circle one is the target prograde marker. This is the direction toward your target. The one that looks like tri-foil is the target retrograde marker. This is the direction away from your target.

6. When you line up your prograde marker with the target prograde marker you're moving toward your target. When you line up the retrograde to the target retrograde you're also moving toward your target. If you line up non-matching marker types (prograde to retrograde) you're moving away from your target. Line up the markers by moving them as described above.

7. With RCS it gets easier: The W and S move you forward and backward according to your center of thrust. The shift and ctrl keys move the prograde marker up and down. The A and D keys move the prograde marker left and right, all according to your navball. This only works when RCS is enabled and you're in docking control mode with the translation mode enabled (blue indicator on the bottom left). To orient your ship you can swap over to ROT mode (green indicator) with the spacebar. Then the WASD keys change your orientation as before.

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now that the learning is done

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8. Zero your relative speed to your target when you're within 500 meters of it. Thrust toward your retrograde vector until your target velocity is 0. Use low thrust so you don't blow past it.

9. Right click your docking port, select "Control from here". This probably doesn't matter unless your docking port is not on the top of your ship.

10. Activate docking mode, select Rotation. Orient your ship toward the target prograde marker.

11. Activate translation mode. Turn on SAS and RCS. (T and R) Thrust forward with RCS (W key) until you see the green prograde marker. Now use shift, ctrl, a or d to align the prograde indicator to the target prograde marker. Remember how the indicator moves from step 7.

12. When you're close to the target's docking port switch to chase camera mode. This part is kind of an art now. You'll have to match the direction of the target docking port with your ship's docking port. In chase mode the RCS translation mode thrusts your ship as such: W - forward, S - backward, A - strafe left, D - strafe right, shift: strafe up, ctrl: strafe down. Strafe your ship to line up the ports, then thrust forward. When you're close enough the magnetic rings will take over. When they take over turn off SAS.

If you're docking 2 ships step 12 is different than if you're docking to a station. You can orient each ship to point toward each other's prograde vector when you're controlling from the docking port. This eliminates most of the strafing work as the ports are already lined up. It is ultimately easier to dock 2 ships than it is to dock to a station you can't reorient.