Post your helpful hints

[Australian Sloth]

Well, this is a thread for all of us to post hints that have helped us with anything in the game.

Here\'s some to start:

Take your time when playing, it helps to take it slow, especially when ordering your staging. Nothing is more annoying than having those external LFE\'s jettisoned instead of the lower stage jettisoned.

It also helps to have a goal when playing. Go to the mun and back, get into a solar orbit and return, the possibilities are endless.

[wired2thenet]

Use a MechJeb if you\'re uncertain about launch and landing (and return). Watch what it does, and when it does it. It\'s not always accurate (lift-off with Hvy rockets can often go awry), but look at why it fails. When you have a handle on it, and have analyzed the reasons for a failure and can see why it fails, leave it on, but turn it off and do the manual ascents/descents when necessary.

Saved many a Mun-base with this technique.

Once you get the hang of it, then MechJeb is unnecessary (but critical if you screw something up).

[Zephram Kerman]

Less is more. If you want to get to orbit or Mun, you can do it with a lumbering heavyweight monster, but everything gets better if you keep it simple. Better reliability, frame rate, efficiency, etc. Whatever size you build, try to give it a thrust-to-weight ratio of at least 2:1.

[BillWiskins]

It\'s in the controls mentioned in the game setup, but it\'s often overlooked: hit CAPSLOCK to enable \'precision mode\' controls. Useful for landing.

[Zephram Kerman]

Oh yeah, that reminds me: RCS translate joystick is IJKL.

[vexx32]

and H/N for up/down, don\'t forget!

[Misterspork]

Shift click- move entire rocket at once in VAB

Alt click- duplicate a stack of parts

Sometimes, bigger is not better. Often a smaller rocket can do a job better than a larger rocket, an extreme case being orbiting, which only requires 3(Or was it 2?) stock fuel tanks.

[sal_vager]

Control+Click a part of your rocket in the VAB to flip to the page that part came from, useful if you have a lot of mods installed and want to add more of the same part.

Most control issues are from engines twisting and wobbling, even a single strut can make the difference.

Are your solid rocket motors overheating? Put a strut on the motor and anchor the other end on something else or even on the same motor, the strut will act as a heat sink.

Rocket flipping over? Wings will help at lower altitudes, vectoring thrust works at all altitudes, RCS is best saved for maneuvering in freefall.

[Australian Sloth]

A good tip is to take advantage of fuel lines. They can save you valuable fuel trying to cart empty stages into orbit when it would be a better option to remove them.

[sjwt]

Although in early Beta and cost does not come into play, it might be worthwhile looking at the costs of parts and starting to think now 'How can I make that cheaper'

[UmbralRaptor]

Click on the velocity indicator (on the navball) to toggle it between surface and orbit mode.

Sometimes, bigger is not better. Often a smaller rocket can do a job better than a larger rocket, an extreme case being orbiting, which only requires 3(Or was it 2?) stock fuel tanks.

2 in 0.13.x, 1½ in 0.14.x. 3 is enough for Kerbin escape. Which reminds me of something...

Pay close attention to how the rocket equation works. Specifically, adding niceties like parachutes and ASAS (or, really, anything that can be counted as 'payload.') will exponentially increase how big your rocket is. Small increases in ?V require large increases in stage size, and this gets worse as the stage grows. At some point, you need to stick on a decoupler and add another stage. Excluding parallel staging (typically solid/liquid 'boosters' or drop tanks), lower stages should be substantially larger than upper stages. Otherwise, the additional stages will add little (and may end up reducing available ?V).

More thrust (especially in the form of more SRBs) is not always the answer. Sometimes more fuel will be a greater help.

[SubOrbitalGuy]

This took way to long for me to figure out by myself:

If you are building bigger and bigger rockets, at some point the engines will just 'fall off' before launch, just standing on them is too much force it seems. For me this happened starting at 4 stages and about 19 LFE boosters in the first stage.

To get rid of losing engines: Use struts to fixate them to some other parts of the rocket!

[sal_vager]

This took way to long for me to figure out by myself:

If you are building bigger and bigger rockets, at some point the engines will just 'fall off' before launch, just standing on them is too much force it seems. For me this happened starting at 4 stages and about 19 LFE boosters in the first stage.

To get rid of losing engines: Use struts to fixate them to some other parts of the rocket!

I just figured this one out yesterday as I didn\'t want to launch from decoupler 'feet' anymore

Once strutted, engines also become tough enough to land on, this weighs less than landing legs.

I mentioned decouplers as feet, this is another trick to help reduce rocket wobble and engine breakage on the launchpad, it also helps avoid sticky launchpad syndrome.

Another thing that can help is to make sure all the bottom stage engines are level, this spreads the weight more evenly.

[BillWiskins]

Based on the fact that I posted it elsewhere and at least one person didn\'t know about it: Use [ and ] to cycle through orbiting or landed craft when focused on another orbiting or landed craft. This allows to to focus on (and End the flights of) debris, as well.

Also, I did not discover this until recently: < and > switch between Time Acceleration modes (where available).

And \'X\' kills the throttle.

And you can mount decouplers on decouplers. Useful if your spent stages aren\'t clearing the rest of your rocket (and you can\'t/won\'t redesign it so it is BETTER). Or, you know, mounting things differently, ruining your thrust/weight ratio, or doing very silly things.