Various questions from an intermediate player

[wibou]

I have been playing KSP for two months now and I consider myself an intermediate player.

I have satellite around every celestial bodies and habited space station around Eve and Duna... so I guess I kind of know what I am doing, although I do it very inefficiently (i.e. I suck at plotting transferts, I just compensate by packing extra delta-V).

That said, I still have a lot of issues I can't seem to fix. Being uncomplete, a lot of stuff in KSP is not quite explained so I often have the feeling I am missing stuff that would make my life way easier.

So here is a list of what's bugging me... if you have useful tips, please share them with me

1. Maneuver Node
   I have a love-hate relationship with the maneuver node: they are VERY useful but somehow VERY frustrating.
   First, it's very hard to pull the correct "arm" (e.g. prograde or normal) without accidently pulling another one, screwing up the orbit.
   Second, there is no safe way to "slide" the maneuver node around the current orbit when unzoomed... Let's say I am trying to fine tune a transfert orbit from Kerbin to Duna, the only way to test the effect of "sliding" the node is to zoom to kerbin, slide, zoom back to duna, observe the result, zoom back to kerbin again, slide, back to duna, yada yada... It gets frustrating VERY quickly.
   Finally... while it is possible to click on AP and PE so the information stick, those are exceptions. The only way to observe the result of a modification to a maneuver node is to move the mouse from the node to the "target". As example, if I am trying to fine tune a rendezvous, I have to slightly adjust the node, then pass the mouse hover my target, then adjust again, then check with the mouse...
   How do you guys work with the maneuver nodes? Is there something I am missing? Hotkeys, special focus, anything?
   
2. Navball VS Ship (aka Stage) View
   Of course, I can navigate only using the Navball... but sometime I'd simply like to point my ship in a certain direction (in the stage view) but I find there is no easy way to "map" what you see from the stage view and what you see on the Navball.
   Example case: I am in the final approach to landing a rocket near my land station and realize I am a bit off... what I would like to do would be to point the node of my ship in "that way". Unfortunately, because the camera, the roll-orientation of the ship and all that, there is never a way to know which way is "that way", I can never know beforehand if I need to press W, A, S or D.
   I took the habit of putting red and green light of left and right side of my ship, it slightly help but it's not heaven yet... Any hints?
   
3. Precise encounter
   Usually, encountering a body "from behind" would accelerate you (I believe?) and would give you a counter-clockwise orbit. Encountering "from the front" slow you down and give you a clockwise (i.e. 180degrees) orbit. Problem is, while planning an encounter, I find it very difficult to tell which way I am going to "get grabbed" by the gravity. No matter how I zoom or change the focus, I end up guessing wrong 50% of the time. And it is way worse for bodies that far away from the maneuver node since it's really tiresome to test various variation on the maneuver node (because of the #1).
   To make matter worse, high gravity (and no-so-high) bodies will "curve" (i.e. incline) your trajectory when you get too close... but it's really hard to tell how much before the actual encounter, so I sometime end up in very difficult situation (e.g. unwanted polar orbit).
   Because all that, my encouters are always very imprecise and I end up spending way more delta-V than I would need. How do you guys do it? Is there something I am missing here.
   

So that's about it for now... I have more but I think I will just start with those

Edited January 12, 2015 by wibou

[Anquietas314]

1: Get the Precise Nodes mod, it solves all your problems with maneuver nodes, even if the way it does it is a bit messy (GUI with numbers/buttons).

2: While it's not great for landings, you can switch to the "chase" camera which orients the camera so that "up" in stage view is the same as "up" on the navball and so on. Great for docking. You can also use certain asymmetrical markers on the ship (such as the hatch location on lander cans) to help orient yourself. For some capsules like the Mk1-2 this doesn't work quite so well, but you can always have a system where, for example, the RCS thruster closest to the ladder is "left".

3: If you focus view on the planet/moon you're going to encounter, you get the orbit prediction for your encounter. While you're still planning the maneuver node, tweak the different vectors just slightly to see how your orbit changes. The end that moves the most is the opposite one to the one you arrive at. The Precise Nodes mod helps a lot with this . The curvature you mention is actually very helpful for determining the orientation of your encounter, if you know how to use it .

Technically you don't need to get the encounter direction just right though - unless you're going to Moho, it's really cheap to just fix it when you get there; do a radial burn "inwards" as soon as you enter the SoI.

Edited January 12, 2015 by armagheddonsgw

[OhioBob]

Maneuver Node

I feel your pain. I experience many of the same problems that you do. I've just learned to live with it and managed to get better with practice. One trick that I discovered that helps is that I can use scroll wheel on my mouse to add/deduct velocity. If it's too difficult to actually click on and drag the correct arrow, I can just point at it with the cursor and then use the scroll wheel, which has the same effect as dragging the arrow. This also helps with fine adjustments.

Navball VS Ship (aka Stage) View

I usually just nudge my ship using the WASD keys as I'm beginning a maneuver to get myself oriented as to what my ship will do. I'll then roll my ship or rotate the view as necessary so that the movements I'm seeing on the screen mimic what I'm doing with the keys. This makes rotating the ship more intuitive and natural.

Precise encounter

After you've gotten an encounter with your target planet (you see a "Pe" on the map screen at the encounter location), click on and focus your view on the target planet. If you zoom in on the planet you will see the path your spacecraft will take through the planet's sphere of influence. While zoomed in on the planet, rotate your view until you can see your maneuver node in the background. You can now adjust your maneuver node and see the effect your changes have on the encounter trajectory. Tweak it until you get the encounter you want. When far away the encounter trajectory is extremely sensitive to very small changes in velocity. Initially just try to get close. You can perform a course correction latter on to fine tune it.

[Aethon]

Hit tab to cycle through celestial bodies until you are focused on your intended destination. That should solve a couple of your problems.

[KerbMav]

2. Change the view to "follow" mode.

[GoSlash27]

#1 You're not missing anything, they're just clunky like that.

#2a for approaches to touchdown, I always align my ship so that it's pointed retrograde and rolled inverted according to the navball. Then I place the camera behind the ship (looking forward at the top.) That way the controls will respond as expected throughout the approach.

#2b for docking, I place the camera behind my ship, disable RCS, and yaw back and forth to find my alignment. Then I roll the ship so it reacts as expected.

#3 I set the initial intercept to smack into the planet. Once I'm halfway there, I'll focus my view on the planet and it shows my trajectory. I am then able to fine-tune my encounter normal/antinormal and radial/antiradial.

HTHs,

-Slashy

[Red Iron Crown]

1. As mentioned, the PreciseNode mod is very helpful.

2. Press V until in chase cam mode. The NavHUD mod is also helpful in some situations, too.

3. You might be having conics patch issues, some modes make it easier to see than others. PreciseNode allows you to change conics patch modes on the fly until you find one that shows what you want.

[cantab]

+1 for PreciseNode. If you want to do any sort of gravity assists, or otherwise arrange your course precisely, it's invaluable.

[LethalDose]

For Q3, you may want to change your patched conic draw mode and limit in your .cfg files. More info here.

[MacroNova]

1. People have already mentioned Precise Node. It's invaluable! I'll add that you can do fine adjustments by dragging the opposite node inwards. Example: You want to increase your prograde burn slightly. You can get finer control by pushing the retrograde node towards the center of the maneuver node.

You also asked about having to hover your mouse over things to get readouts while planning nodes. In fact, you can click your projected periapse and apoapse markers and their displays will persist when your pointer mouses away!

2. I'm not 100% certain what you're asking, but it sounds like you are having trouble orienting your craft with the controls. The NavBall is your answer. Just remember that the center of the Navball is where your ship is pointing, and that (a) moves the pointer left, (d) moves it right, (w) down and (s) up. Then recall that pointing to the "top dot" on the navball means your ship is pointing directly away from the planet's center, aka straight up at the sky. I use this info all the time when I'm landing. Instead of looking at my ship and trying to guess which control input will keep it straight, I look at the navball and use the directional control that points the nose of my ship toward that top dot.

3. Again, people have given you good advice here, but I will add that you can be certain of the direction of your encounter fly-by by mousing over the Encounter and escape indicators. You're moving away from the encounter indicator and towards the escape indicator.

[DrD]

1. Precise node. You can accurately dial in delta V in any of the directions, and, change the time of the burn, which is equivalent to moving it. Best of all you don't have to see the node itself, it can all be done from the precise node window.

2. Each capsule has a reference for pitch. The mk1 is the hatch, that's "up," so pitching up moves in that direction and all else follows. For the mk2 pod it's the front facing windows that are up, or actually a spot midway between them. For the cans it's also the window. You can roll until the direction of the reference makes sense to you.

3. Best to focus on your target body, then you can adjust your node (see #1) until your future orbit is on the side of planet you want. If you're far away very small burns can change this a lot, I usually use RCS and if no RCS I set thrust limiter on engine to 10%. As per number 1 since you can adjust without seeing node it's quite easy to do while focused on planet (and placing node far away.)

[wibou]

Thanks all for the answer. My reply to all that below:

1. Maneuver Node
   I gave PreciseNode a shot and it seems promising. The UI seems simple enough, although the keyboard hotkeys will take me sometime to remember. But so far, it's great, FAR FAR more precise node maneuver (it's in the name, after all). I hope Squad do something about this node mess in Stock...
   
2. Navball VS Ship (aka Stage) View
   I still feel like I'm the only one with this problem... I am already doing most of what was suggested, even more (putting green/light navigation light on ship, etc..), I suppose my pilot skill are terribly bad
   Sometime I don't have the time to rotate the ship and must react quickly... or sometime the asymmetrical markers are out of sight... or I forget I moved the camera... so markers are really not that great.
   Some people also suggested chase (follow?) view, which is great in some case (docking) but really suck in some other cases (landing). So no win-win solution it seems
   I just hope Squad fix this eventually, either by adding something on the NavBall (some arrow pointing "the standard plane is THIS -> way"?) or somekind of HUD on the ship view (that would tell you that "W" is this -> way in the current camera angle).
   
3. Precise encounter
   PreciseNode really did help on that, I can now focus on a planet AND adjust the maneuver efficiently! That said, somebody mentionned I could had the "conic patches" problem... what's that bug?
   Sometime, even with PreciseNode what I planned during an early maneuver turn out not the be the actual trajectory when I finally enter the SOI of the body, could it has something to do?
   

I guess the mod fix most of the issues (2 out of 3 anyways) so I guess this can be considered "Answered"

[Red Iron Crown]

Conic patches aren't a bug, it's the method used to show how the trajectories around two bodies intersect. To experiment, set up an intercept with a body like the Mun and switch modes while in map view, you'll see that it has different ways of visualizing it.

As for crossing the SoI boundary messing up your trajectory, that's a limitation of the step-wise physics model, one frame you're a bit distant from the edge of the SoI and the next you're teleported to some distance inside. The deviation from the planned trajectory can be minimized by crossing the SoI at the slowest rate of "on-rails" timewarp.

[Anquietas314]

somebody mentionned I could had the "conic patches" problem... what's that bug?

Sometime, even with PreciseNode what I planned during an early maneuver turn out not the be the actual trajectory when I finally enter the SOI of the body, could it has something to do?

The conic patches thing LD was referring to isn't a bug; the game has different modes for drawing the patched conics. See the link for details on each mode (covered at the bottom of the page), but don't worry about the settings file - precise node lets you set the conic draw mode on the fly .

I think the issue you're having with the SoIs might be the time warp bug: if you time warp through an SoI switch, it slightly changes your orbit. It's not really noticeable until around 1000-10000x though, so just be careful to slow down as you're approaching it. At 100000x it can quite drastically change your encounter (also be careful not to warp right through periapsis with it... I've done that a few times ).

[cantab]

I gave PreciseNode a shot and it seems promising. The UI seems simple enough, although the keyboard hotkeys will take me sometime to remember.

For what it's worth I've used the keys maybe once. I tend to just do the clicky clicky thing on the window.

I still feel like I'm the only one with this problem... I am already doing most of what was suggested, even more (putting green/light navigation light on ship, etc..),

You're not. DasValdez's suggestion is to put a dorsal marker, usually the smallest battery, on the "top" side. But even then you need to either rotate the ship appropriately or do the mental gymnastics.

Sometime, even with PreciseNode what I planned during an early maneuver turn out not the be the actual trajectory when I finally enter the SOI of the body, could it has something to do?

Try not to timewarp through SOI changes. Yet another mod, Kerbal Alarm Clock, can help you with this.

[StrandedonEarth]

I haven't used PreciseNode, but if it works for you, maybe I'll give it a shot someday. I usually just rotate and zoom until my view shows me what I need to see. I agree moving the node can be a pain that way

I've learned not to get too fussy with the maneuver node since I rarely burn it precisely (no MechJeb). I get it as close as reasonable to where I want it and after the burn I fine-tune the approach with RCS. I learned this after spending too much time fine-tuning the node only to have to fine-tune again after

I second Kerbal Alarm Clock, it's invaluable. The first mod I get when I install a new update. Never warp through a maneuver node, or SOI change, again!

Most important: Learn the navball. Love the navball. Use the Navball. Be one with the navball. When docking, I don't even look at the ships anymore; I only look away from the navball if using NavyFish Docking Alignment Indicator. There's a simpler one called Navball Docking Alignment Indicator where I never look away from the navball, but if your closing speed is nil its hard to tell which way to go with that one. Navyfish has more info but takes up screen space.

Edited January 13, 2015 by StrandedonEarth