Kerbal Space Program
- Thread starter Leonel
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warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
It sounds like you can do either, but I haven't tested this.
Here
Here
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
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I am trying to complete a challenge that involves construction of a space station that can be moved to or built at Duna. The station must have at least one full orange fuel tank and must also host a reuseable lander. The lander will detach from the station, land and then return and redock with the station.
Before construction I had to analyze the task and choose the most efficient means to accomplish this. There were several things to consider:
1) Should the station be constructed in Kerbin or Duna orbit?
2) Should the station be constructed of empty tanks and refueled after it is built? If it is constructed empty, should I only refuel it enough to get to Duna and then send a tanker after it or should I fully fuel it before I leave for Duna?
3) Should the landers be sent seperately to Duna or attached to the station?
____________
Preliminary Design Study
1) From my limited experience in orbital construction, I chose to assemble the station in Kerbin orbit before sending it all to Duna in one piece. Doing this allows me to make sure that all of the parts work together and replace/relaunch defective components without the extra hassle of a Duna injection.
Also, assembly in Duna orbit also necessitates that each piece be capable of propelling themselves to Duna individually or be ferried by a seperate rocket. That is simply much more effort than I felt was necessary. With LKO construction, I can build each component with only rudimentary or expendable propulsion (enough to make the orbital rendevouz with the rest of the station) and have one dedicated propulsion module to propell the whole thing to Duna.
2) As for wet or dry - whether or not assembly should be done with empty or full fuel tanks - I chose wet. For one, I have a heavy launcher capable of delivering a full orange fuel tank to orbit; many rocket designs can deliver an orange tank to orbit but they typically tap into the tank to use the propellent it contains to do so. I also have experience putting together large stations with full orange tanks. I also decided that since I have never sent a station to Duna, I would attach 3 orange tanks to it even though the challenge only calls for one.
I am reasonably certain that I will have enough fuel left between the 3 orange tanks and smaller auxilliary tanks to make the trip to Duna with enough fuel left over to fill one whole orange tank. After the trip to Duna, I may develop a seperate tanker system to deliver fuel to Duna to top off the station or install the Kethane mod to use Ike as a refueling base.
3)To decide whether or not to attach the landers and fly them to Duna with the station or send them seperately took some thought.
For one thing, a lander sent seperately to Duna need only be about half as big as a lander that can fly from Kerbin to Duna, land and return without refueling since it can refuel at the station. Also, if each mission were flown without significant error, the total amount of fuel used will be roughly the same if the landers are sent seperately as if they were all flown together since the same mass is going the same distance either way.
However, I am not a perfect pilot and piloting errors spread across 5 missions (I decided to include at least 4 landers in the total mission) will quickly add up and cost me a ton of fuel. Also, a mission where landers are sent seperately means I would have to do 4 orbital rendevouz while in LDO, negating the benefits of LKO station construction. A lander that is flown to Duna attached to the station will be roughly the same size as one flown seperately since it only has to do the landing and LDO rendevouz, so lander size didn't really figure into my calculations here.
The deciding factor though was the safety factor that having 4 attached landers offers. If I send a station with 4 landers on it to Duna and encounter problems, I can draw from the fuel, RCS gas and power systems that each lander has in an emergency. It also means that I would be able to save at least part of the station'
s compliment in a worst-case 'abandon ship' situation as the landers could return to Kerbin under most failure modes.
To meet all of the scientific, logistic and political objectives of the mission, I would need a design that met the following criteria:
Must have 1 orange fuel tank (I went with 3 for redundancy + auxilliaries)
Must have 1 reusable lander (I went with 4 for redundancy)
Must have a science payload
Must have living space for all the kerbalnauts
____________
Space Station design and Orbital Construction
It was decided that the core of the station would include it's own orange fuel tank, a transverse truss that would allow for the attachment of 2 additional orange tanks, auxilliary tanks, a propulsion module with 4 NERVA engines, primary solar arrays and an attachment point for the forward station components.
The design I chose for the station core is this:
The next phase of design and construction involved creating the 2 fuel tanks and attaching them to the core. My first design effort had a few flaws which I will point out:
First off, I used 2 detachable engines to make the orbital rendevouz. There is no fuel crossflow from them to the orange tank so I do not use any of the orange tanks propellent. While the 2 engines were found to have just enough fuel, they did not have sufficient thrust. I used the small LV-909 engines and when I had to do an orbital correction to match the stations orbit, they could not provide enough thrust to kill the velocity differential before the station flew past.
I also designed the engines with seperate unmanned command pods so that I could manually deorbit them after detachment. However, when I tested them and detached them while in orbit, the game treated them like debris and would not let me control them. Because of this, I decided to set orbital debris tracking in the settings menu to 0.
This way, I could fly the tanks and station parts to orbit with detachable engines that I could jetison and they would then disappear so I don't have to worry about them. I don't mean to cheat; it's just the game wouldn't let me do it the hard way (i.e. manual deorbit of all expended engines)
Also, the way I buried the docking lights within the ASAS unit made them unselectable and thus unuseable.
Here is a typical orbital rendevouz profile.
Here is the improved design:
Here is the core module with the first fuel tank attached:
Aftere delivering the first fuel tank, I decided to adjust the RCS thruster positioning. On my second design, the thrusters were asymetrically positioned so that trying to use the translational controls would cause the tank to turn. I attempted to solve this by temporarily detaching the fuel tank from the rest of the rocket. Then I turned on the Center of Mass indicator and used a ruler to attach thrusters at points equidistent from the indicator. This did not work; the tank still rotated when the translational controls were used. In the future, I will only attach one set of RCS thrusters directly above the CoM. This will make larger parts turn very slowly since there is basically no moment arm for the RCS thrusters to leverage, but this will still be preferable to unwanted turning.
Here is a pic of the failed RCS balancing process:
I don't know why but I just think this pic looks really cool. It kind of looks like I'm orbiting Laythe instead of Kerbin for some reason.
Success!
CFC will not let me attach any more pics to this post, so I'll have to double post. Sorry.
Before construction I had to analyze the task and choose the most efficient means to accomplish this. There were several things to consider:
1) Should the station be constructed in Kerbin or Duna orbit?
2) Should the station be constructed of empty tanks and refueled after it is built? If it is constructed empty, should I only refuel it enough to get to Duna and then send a tanker after it or should I fully fuel it before I leave for Duna?
3) Should the landers be sent seperately to Duna or attached to the station?
____________
Preliminary Design Study
1) From my limited experience in orbital construction, I chose to assemble the station in Kerbin orbit before sending it all to Duna in one piece. Doing this allows me to make sure that all of the parts work together and replace/relaunch defective components without the extra hassle of a Duna injection.
Also, assembly in Duna orbit also necessitates that each piece be capable of propelling themselves to Duna individually or be ferried by a seperate rocket. That is simply much more effort than I felt was necessary. With LKO construction, I can build each component with only rudimentary or expendable propulsion (enough to make the orbital rendevouz with the rest of the station) and have one dedicated propulsion module to propell the whole thing to Duna.
2) As for wet or dry - whether or not assembly should be done with empty or full fuel tanks - I chose wet. For one, I have a heavy launcher capable of delivering a full orange fuel tank to orbit; many rocket designs can deliver an orange tank to orbit but they typically tap into the tank to use the propellent it contains to do so. I also have experience putting together large stations with full orange tanks. I also decided that since I have never sent a station to Duna, I would attach 3 orange tanks to it even though the challenge only calls for one.
I am reasonably certain that I will have enough fuel left between the 3 orange tanks and smaller auxilliary tanks to make the trip to Duna with enough fuel left over to fill one whole orange tank. After the trip to Duna, I may develop a seperate tanker system to deliver fuel to Duna to top off the station or install the Kethane mod to use Ike as a refueling base.
3)To decide whether or not to attach the landers and fly them to Duna with the station or send them seperately took some thought.
For one thing, a lander sent seperately to Duna need only be about half as big as a lander that can fly from Kerbin to Duna, land and return without refueling since it can refuel at the station. Also, if each mission were flown without significant error, the total amount of fuel used will be roughly the same if the landers are sent seperately as if they were all flown together since the same mass is going the same distance either way.
However, I am not a perfect pilot and piloting errors spread across 5 missions (I decided to include at least 4 landers in the total mission) will quickly add up and cost me a ton of fuel. Also, a mission where landers are sent seperately means I would have to do 4 orbital rendevouz while in LDO, negating the benefits of LKO station construction. A lander that is flown to Duna attached to the station will be roughly the same size as one flown seperately since it only has to do the landing and LDO rendevouz, so lander size didn't really figure into my calculations here.
The deciding factor though was the safety factor that having 4 attached landers offers. If I send a station with 4 landers on it to Duna and encounter problems, I can draw from the fuel, RCS gas and power systems that each lander has in an emergency. It also means that I would be able to save at least part of the station'
s compliment in a worst-case 'abandon ship' situation as the landers could return to Kerbin under most failure modes.
To meet all of the scientific, logistic and political objectives of the mission, I would need a design that met the following criteria:
Must have 1 orange fuel tank (I went with 3 for redundancy + auxilliaries)
Must have 1 reusable lander (I went with 4 for redundancy)
Must have a science payload
Must have living space for all the kerbalnauts
____________
Space Station design and Orbital Construction
It was decided that the core of the station would include it's own orange fuel tank, a transverse truss that would allow for the attachment of 2 additional orange tanks, auxilliary tanks, a propulsion module with 4 NERVA engines, primary solar arrays and an attachment point for the forward station components.
The design I chose for the station core is this:
Spoiler :
The next phase of design and construction involved creating the 2 fuel tanks and attaching them to the core. My first design effort had a few flaws which I will point out:
Spoiler :
First off, I used 2 detachable engines to make the orbital rendevouz. There is no fuel crossflow from them to the orange tank so I do not use any of the orange tanks propellent. While the 2 engines were found to have just enough fuel, they did not have sufficient thrust. I used the small LV-909 engines and when I had to do an orbital correction to match the stations orbit, they could not provide enough thrust to kill the velocity differential before the station flew past.
I also designed the engines with seperate unmanned command pods so that I could manually deorbit them after detachment. However, when I tested them and detached them while in orbit, the game treated them like debris and would not let me control them. Because of this, I decided to set orbital debris tracking in the settings menu to 0.
This way, I could fly the tanks and station parts to orbit with detachable engines that I could jetison and they would then disappear so I don't have to worry about them. I don't mean to cheat; it's just the game wouldn't let me do it the hard way (i.e. manual deorbit of all expended engines)
Also, the way I buried the docking lights within the ASAS unit made them unselectable and thus unuseable.
Here is a typical orbital rendevouz profile.
Spoiler :
Here is the improved design:
Spoiler :
Here is the core module with the first fuel tank attached:
Spoiler :
Aftere delivering the first fuel tank, I decided to adjust the RCS thruster positioning. On my second design, the thrusters were asymetrically positioned so that trying to use the translational controls would cause the tank to turn. I attempted to solve this by temporarily detaching the fuel tank from the rest of the rocket. Then I turned on the Center of Mass indicator and used a ruler to attach thrusters at points equidistent from the indicator. This did not work; the tank still rotated when the translational controls were used. In the future, I will only attach one set of RCS thrusters directly above the CoM. This will make larger parts turn very slowly since there is basically no moment arm for the RCS thrusters to leverage, but this will still be preferable to unwanted turning.
Here is a pic of the failed RCS balancing process:
Spoiler :
I don't know why but I just think this pic looks really cool. It kind of looks like I'm orbiting Laythe instead of Kerbin for some reason.
Spoiler :
Success!
Spoiler :
CFC will not let me attach any more pics to this post, so I'll have to double post. Sorry.
Attachments
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 26,575
For the next phase of construction, I need to add some science equipment as well as living space for the Kerbalnauts. Also, due to the RCS imbalances in my orange tank designs, I had used far more RCS gas than I had intended so I decided to add additional RCS gas tanks to the the science/living space module. Here is the design I chose:
Here are some pics of the construction process for this module:
Due to the RCS imbalance, I ended up using most of the RCS fuel this module carried which means I will have to bring more to the station.
The last major piece of the station proper was the cockpit section. I decided that the cockpit must have a command station, additional living space, RCS fuel, extra antennas, RTG's for emergency use as well as the docking module for 4 landers. I meant to add a docking port at the front so I could add a torpedo-firing module, but I forgot.
Here it is:
I hadn't set out to make a Y-Wing look alike, but after I added the 2 orange fuel tanks, it kind of looked like the back of one so by the time I got to the 'cockpit' section, I said what the hell and made it look like one as best I could. The antennas at the front form the blasters from the Y-Wing and the antenna just behind the command cockpit are supposed to be like the defensive blaster on a Y-Wing.
Here I am coming in to dock the final part:
And here it is after I jetisoned the orbital engines:
So now the station construction is complete. Next, I will have to design landers and deliver 4 of them to the station. Then I will have to deliver 10 additional kerbalnauts to fill out the living spaces I provided. This will bring the crew compliment to 17 without landers and 33 if I use 3 Kerbal landers.
Some problems I will have to address before I head to Duna:
Wobbliness is a problem (I will check out that EVA struts mod)
RCS thrusters will have to be disabled since the station now has many more than it needs
RCS gas will have to be delivered to top it off
I may have to add some additional docking ports so that I may attach additional propulsion modules (not sure if 4 NERVAS can push this to Duna in a reasonable amount of time) and possibly a torpedo launching component.
Stay tuned, my next update should show me fitting out the station for the trip to Duna.
Spoiler :
Here are some pics of the construction process for this module:
Spoiler :
Due to the RCS imbalance, I ended up using most of the RCS fuel this module carried which means I will have to bring more to the station.
The last major piece of the station proper was the cockpit section. I decided that the cockpit must have a command station, additional living space, RCS fuel, extra antennas, RTG's for emergency use as well as the docking module for 4 landers. I meant to add a docking port at the front so I could add a torpedo-firing module, but I forgot.
Here it is:
Spoiler :
I hadn't set out to make a Y-Wing look alike, but after I added the 2 orange fuel tanks, it kind of looked like the back of one so by the time I got to the 'cockpit' section, I said what the hell and made it look like one as best I could. The antennas at the front form the blasters from the Y-Wing and the antenna just behind the command cockpit are supposed to be like the defensive blaster on a Y-Wing.
Here I am coming in to dock the final part:
Spoiler :
And here it is after I jetisoned the orbital engines:
Spoiler :
So now the station construction is complete. Next, I will have to design landers and deliver 4 of them to the station. Then I will have to deliver 10 additional kerbalnauts to fill out the living spaces I provided. This will bring the crew compliment to 17 without landers and 33 if I use 3 Kerbal landers.
Some problems I will have to address before I head to Duna:
Wobbliness is a problem (I will check out that EVA struts mod)
RCS thrusters will have to be disabled since the station now has many more than it needs
RCS gas will have to be delivered to top it off
I may have to add some additional docking ports so that I may attach additional propulsion modules (not sure if 4 NERVAS can push this to Duna in a reasonable amount of time) and possibly a torpedo launching component.
Stay tuned, my next update should show me fitting out the station for the trip to Duna.
Attachments
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Also, include a rover 
I love rovers.
I love rovers.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 26,575
Hmm I hadn't thought of a rover. If I decide to add some attachment points for torpedoes, I might also attach some rovers and maybe some communications satellites to set this colony up right.
Usually, rovers are a serious pain because of the lack of suitable parts (only one set of wheels damnit!), but since I'm going to have to get that EVA strut mod, I might as well bite the bullet and got some rover mods as well.
Usually, rovers are a serious pain because of the lack of suitable parts (only one set of wheels damnit!), but since I'm going to have to get that EVA strut mod, I might as well bite the bullet and got some rover mods as well.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
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- 26,575
Had an idea for my next project after this one wraps up.
A global defense satellite constellation. I am thinking 48 satellites in different orbits, each loaded to the teeth with torpedoes. They will have xenon propellent to deorbit as needed and possibly a bunch of permanently attached sepatrons to accelerate them for kamikaze attacks.
Btw, has anyone found a good use for xenon yet? I have put them on some satellites just cuz, but there isn't many practical applications for them since they are so power hungry and low thrust.
If I could turn on Xenon engines and tell the satellite to hold course through a time warp, I could use them a lot. As it is though, they take so long to accelerate that they are impractical - with time warp disallowed under acceleration, it takes hours (or days) for a burn.
A global defense satellite constellation. I am thinking 48 satellites in different orbits, each loaded to the teeth with torpedoes. They will have xenon propellent to deorbit as needed and possibly a bunch of permanently attached sepatrons to accelerate them for kamikaze attacks.
Btw, has anyone found a good use for xenon yet? I have put them on some satellites just cuz, but there isn't many practical applications for them since they are so power hungry and low thrust.
If I could turn on Xenon engines and tell the satellite to hold course through a time warp, I could use them a lot. As it is though, they take so long to accelerate that they are impractical - with time warp disallowed under acceleration, it takes hours (or days) for a burn.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
There is a guy on reddit who wanted to see how close to the speed of light he could get, and he ended up using ion engines for that project I think 
I can't find the link now, but he got up to 30,000 m/s I think.
Another guy posted after him with a speed much much closer to c, but I think he cheated.
btw the ant rover is nice
bit small but i like it lots
I can't find the link now, but he got up to 30,000 m/s I think.
Another guy posted after him with a speed much much closer to c, but I think he cheated.
btw the ant rover is nice
bit small but i like it lots
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
This little guy
I am about to screw around a bit with docking again. Docking attempt #2 shortly underway!
I hope I still have stuff in orbit I can dock with, I totally don't remember what I left up there when I quit in a semi-rage last time
edit: by the way, don't you have a wife or something? How do you manage to get so much gaming done? Teach me your secrets!
I am about to screw around a bit with docking again. Docking attempt #2 shortly underway!
I hope I still have stuff in orbit I can dock with, I totally don't remember what I left up there when I quit in a semi-rage last time
edit: by the way, don't you have a wife or something? How do you manage to get so much gaming done? Teach me your secrets!
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 26,575
Oh I have been on Xmas break from classes and work. I didn't actually get to game very much because I was visiting my parents for 3 weeks. However, since I was going to go back to school today I decided that I should have at least one day of vegging out.
My wife's best friend came over this weekend and I cooked them an awesome dinner and did the dishes and cleaned up. My reward was I got to sit and play KSP non-stop for a full day after she left and during that day I got the station up.
I just hope I have a chance to play some more before summer. This semester is going to be rough.
My wife's best friend came over this weekend and I cooked them an awesome dinner and did the dishes and cleaned up. My reward was I got to sit and play KSP non-stop for a full day after she left and during that day I got the station up.
I just hope I have a chance to play some more before summer. This semester is going to be rough.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
quite a busy life you lead there. good diplomacy re: dinner
I just recently realized that my rockets don't have enough thrust to be efficient at getting off Kerbin. I realized this when trying out mechjeb and it always putting thrust at 100%, which seemed.. broken. I assumed it was a bug, but in fact my rocket just needed more than 100% of thrust to be fuel efficient. Anyway, I'm adding more solid fuel boosters.
and paying attention to that "you should have this much m/s at this altitude for best efficiency" chart during ascent
I have no idea how I managed to launch a mission to Duna and back that I was able to land with and return from.
I just recently realized that my rockets don't have enough thrust to be efficient at getting off Kerbin. I realized this when trying out mechjeb and it always putting thrust at 100%, which seemed.. broken. I assumed it was a bug, but in fact my rocket just needed more than 100% of thrust to be fuel efficient. Anyway, I'm adding more solid fuel boosters.
and paying attention to that "you should have this much m/s at this altitude for best efficiency" chart during ascent
I have no idea how I managed to launch a mission to Duna and back that I was able to land with and return from.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
k I'm having huge problems docking and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong
1. My main problem is that I'm not sure how to line up the docking ports that I want to dock. I set the docking port on my station that I want to dock with, and sure enough a target marker comes up on my navball. But that target doesn't point me towards the docking port I want to get to. It's slightly off. For a while I was using it to guide me and eventually I realized that I was in the end pointing at a totally wrong part of my station. The target marker looks okay when I'm far enough, but when I get closer it becomes clear that it's actually pointing somewhere else, maybe the centre of mass of my station. I made sure many times to pick the docking port as target, not the whole station itself, so I'm not sure if that happens by design.. or.. what other way do I have to line up my docking ports? I can use the docking camera, but when things are slightly rotating, and they always are, it doesn't really help. I can be pointing at the docking port, but the angles are off, so I'll never dock. I find myself looking around with the arrow keys from different directions to try to see what I need to do to align myself better, and I've gotten a lot better at using the RCS controls (although the V key just reorients my camera and does not alter what the keys themselves do, or at least that's what it seems like. I'm better at rcs but it still feels like a guessing game, which doesn't help at all during such sensitive operations) but that's not nearly enough context to align myself. So I have to use [ ] to switch from craft to craft, over and over and over, looking around, trying to align my ships. I've basically got them to the point where they're floating right beside eachother with virtually zero relative velocity.. save a tiny bit. But I still can't align my docking ports because there's no seemingly good way to figure out which way to point each one.
My larger station's targeting system is WAY off as well - and I can't use it to orient my station towards the docking port of the approaching ship at all. My station is very manuverable, so I can move it in whatever direction I want easily enough, but the the target marker on my navball is this time even more off than when I do it from the other ship. It points to the middle of nowhere.. I right-click on the docking port on the station (when I'm controlling it) and selecting "control from here" and then selecting the docking port on my other ship as the target. When I orient my ship towards the target marker, my docking port points to butt f nowhere. So I have to manually try to estimate and guess where the other ship is approaching from, and at this point the damn sun disappeared behind the horizon, so it got a bit dark.
Either way, that is my main stumbling block right now - I just don't know how to align my docking ports and which tools to use to achieve that.
2. Killing relative velocity WRT the other craft when I'm 5-10km away during an intercept seems almost impossible. The only way I've been able to do it is to repeat the process 5-10 times. Basically what happens is when I get to 1-3m/s, the retrograde marker starts jumping around.. I try to estimate the burn well enough anyway, but it never seems to end up exactly right, because I might get it to 0.0m/s, but then the velocity will slowly start changing over time. At first I thought it was because my orbit differed from the other craft's, but our orbits were very close, AP and PE were both within 5km of eachother. So how much variation could there be in that sort of movement? Where was it coming from?
Each time I repeated the process, there was less and less such movement whenever I finished the burn and reached 0m/s again. So basically at this point I'm burning retrograde, it goes to 0, it starts increasing again, all on its own without any help from me, i wait a bit, start burning towards my target, then after a while I turn around because the markers are way off, burn retrograde, and repeat the process. I repeat all that say 4-7 times and only then am I on a not too crazy approach trajectory towards my target..
And even then, when I'm very close to the station, 100-300m, none of my markers on my navball behave at all when I have a docking port selected as a target. They fly around everywhere and become useless to me, making it a lot more difficult to stabilize my movement wrt to the station.
So basically both of my issues, 1. and 2., mean that my navball becomes fully useless during docking. I have to try to eye it, and that seems very impossible. Believe me, I tried very hard. I had both docking ports touching, but the angles were just slightly off.
Listen.. maybe I'm an idiot... but maybe you can only place a docking port on a pod? Because the port I'm trying to dock to (on the station) is attached to one of those big struts. If that's what the problem is then I guess I'll be somewhat relieved, although it means I have to do everything over. And it might even explain problem 1. ... but 2. ? How the hell do I prevent that from happening? It basically means that I can't kill my relative velocity closely enough so that I can just point right at my target and start burning towards it. Cause by the time I get there, there will be lateral movement wrt to the station and like I said before I'll have to repeat the process again.
What the hell am I missing here? What makes it even worse is that whenever I switch between my vehicles, my goddamn targets disappear and I have to reset everything again. It doesn't make for a very enjoyable process.
If I have time, I'm watching a Scott Manley docking video. But if docking continues to be this annoying, I might just wait until they improve it or at least forgo it for now and have fun in the game in other ways. It's just too time consuming, and so detail oriented, yet the tools available seem to really suck donkey balls
1. My main problem is that I'm not sure how to line up the docking ports that I want to dock. I set the docking port on my station that I want to dock with, and sure enough a target marker comes up on my navball. But that target doesn't point me towards the docking port I want to get to. It's slightly off. For a while I was using it to guide me and eventually I realized that I was in the end pointing at a totally wrong part of my station. The target marker looks okay when I'm far enough, but when I get closer it becomes clear that it's actually pointing somewhere else, maybe the centre of mass of my station. I made sure many times to pick the docking port as target, not the whole station itself, so I'm not sure if that happens by design.. or.. what other way do I have to line up my docking ports? I can use the docking camera, but when things are slightly rotating, and they always are, it doesn't really help. I can be pointing at the docking port, but the angles are off, so I'll never dock. I find myself looking around with the arrow keys from different directions to try to see what I need to do to align myself better, and I've gotten a lot better at using the RCS controls (although the V key just reorients my camera and does not alter what the keys themselves do, or at least that's what it seems like. I'm better at rcs but it still feels like a guessing game, which doesn't help at all during such sensitive operations) but that's not nearly enough context to align myself. So I have to use [ ] to switch from craft to craft, over and over and over, looking around, trying to align my ships. I've basically got them to the point where they're floating right beside eachother with virtually zero relative velocity.. save a tiny bit. But I still can't align my docking ports because there's no seemingly good way to figure out which way to point each one.
My larger station's targeting system is WAY off as well - and I can't use it to orient my station towards the docking port of the approaching ship at all. My station is very manuverable, so I can move it in whatever direction I want easily enough, but the the target marker on my navball is this time even more off than when I do it from the other ship. It points to the middle of nowhere.. I right-click on the docking port on the station (when I'm controlling it) and selecting "control from here" and then selecting the docking port on my other ship as the target. When I orient my ship towards the target marker, my docking port points to butt f nowhere. So I have to manually try to estimate and guess where the other ship is approaching from, and at this point the damn sun disappeared behind the horizon, so it got a bit dark.
Either way, that is my main stumbling block right now - I just don't know how to align my docking ports and which tools to use to achieve that.
2. Killing relative velocity WRT the other craft when I'm 5-10km away during an intercept seems almost impossible. The only way I've been able to do it is to repeat the process 5-10 times. Basically what happens is when I get to 1-3m/s, the retrograde marker starts jumping around.. I try to estimate the burn well enough anyway, but it never seems to end up exactly right, because I might get it to 0.0m/s, but then the velocity will slowly start changing over time. At first I thought it was because my orbit differed from the other craft's, but our orbits were very close, AP and PE were both within 5km of eachother. So how much variation could there be in that sort of movement? Where was it coming from?
Each time I repeated the process, there was less and less such movement whenever I finished the burn and reached 0m/s again. So basically at this point I'm burning retrograde, it goes to 0, it starts increasing again, all on its own without any help from me, i wait a bit, start burning towards my target, then after a while I turn around because the markers are way off, burn retrograde, and repeat the process. I repeat all that say 4-7 times and only then am I on a not too crazy approach trajectory towards my target..
And even then, when I'm very close to the station, 100-300m, none of my markers on my navball behave at all when I have a docking port selected as a target. They fly around everywhere and become useless to me, making it a lot more difficult to stabilize my movement wrt to the station.
So basically both of my issues, 1. and 2., mean that my navball becomes fully useless during docking. I have to try to eye it, and that seems very impossible. Believe me, I tried very hard. I had both docking ports touching, but the angles were just slightly off.
Listen.. maybe I'm an idiot... but maybe you can only place a docking port on a pod? Because the port I'm trying to dock to (on the station) is attached to one of those big struts. If that's what the problem is then I guess I'll be somewhat relieved, although it means I have to do everything over. And it might even explain problem 1. ... but 2. ? How the hell do I prevent that from happening? It basically means that I can't kill my relative velocity closely enough so that I can just point right at my target and start burning towards it. Cause by the time I get there, there will be lateral movement wrt to the station and like I said before I'll have to repeat the process again.
What the hell am I missing here? What makes it even worse is that whenever I switch between my vehicles, my goddamn targets disappear and I have to reset everything again. It doesn't make for a very enjoyable process.
If I have time, I'm watching a Scott Manley docking video. But if docking continues to be this annoying, I might just wait until they improve it or at least forgo it for now and have fun in the game in other ways. It's just too time consuming, and so detail oriented, yet the tools available seem to really suck donkey balls
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
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Firstly, docking is extremely frustrating for everyone but experts and needs some serious improvement so you're not alone on that. Currently, it's too hard to be very much fun, the only fun that comes out of it is when you finally build a ship or a station. Of course then it wobbles itself apart, but anywhoo...
To target a docking port (just to reiterate, though it seems like you are doing this), you have to wait until the docking port on your target craft is visible on-screen. (usually just 200m out or less) Then you right click on the target's docking port itself, and a box will pop up and say 'set as target' with a green button. Click the green button and now your target will be the actual docking port and not the command pod (the command pod is usually what is selected if you just double click on the target).
Your targeting reticle (pink marker) shouldn't be jumping around...honestly that sounds like a problem that one of your mods is causing. I have no idea what's going on with that.
Always install docking lights for darkside docking.
When you press V, rotate the camera so that it is facing forward from a position directly behind the ship. Now your keys will be properly aligned with up/down/left/right and their should be no guess work.
I never mess with the 'control from here' thingy, I don't know what it does.
Your velocity marker (yellow one) will fly around wildly when you have almost no velocity. Your targeting marker should stay stationary but when you are going really slow the velocity marker will jump around. I usually stay around .5m/s, any lower and the marker is no use. If you are close to your target and going .5m/s and the velocity marker isn't lined up with your target marker, then you need to kill the sideways or up and down velocity with RCS translational controls until the 2 indicators are lined up (while also firing them so you move forward a smidge).
You will have to fire your engines several times to fully kill all your relative velocity. Even a 5km difference in your orbit will cause noticeable drift. It's extremely frustrating, and it can take 5-7 tries honestly. So at least your doing that part right. I know, it sucks.
What is a docking camera? Is that a mod?
You can place a docking port whereever you want, it doesn't have to be on a pod for it to work.
When you are about to make contact between ports, turn on SAS on both ships or your ports won't seal (frakkin stupid, I know).
Targets do dissappear whenever you change vehicles which is also really stupid.
See what I mean when I say docking needs serious improvement?
Let me know if this does or does not help!
To target a docking port (just to reiterate, though it seems like you are doing this), you have to wait until the docking port on your target craft is visible on-screen. (usually just 200m out or less) Then you right click on the target's docking port itself, and a box will pop up and say 'set as target' with a green button. Click the green button and now your target will be the actual docking port and not the command pod (the command pod is usually what is selected if you just double click on the target).
Your targeting reticle (pink marker) shouldn't be jumping around...honestly that sounds like a problem that one of your mods is causing. I have no idea what's going on with that.
Always install docking lights for darkside docking.
When you press V, rotate the camera so that it is facing forward from a position directly behind the ship. Now your keys will be properly aligned with up/down/left/right and their should be no guess work.
I never mess with the 'control from here' thingy, I don't know what it does.
Your velocity marker (yellow one) will fly around wildly when you have almost no velocity. Your targeting marker should stay stationary but when you are going really slow the velocity marker will jump around. I usually stay around .5m/s, any lower and the marker is no use. If you are close to your target and going .5m/s and the velocity marker isn't lined up with your target marker, then you need to kill the sideways or up and down velocity with RCS translational controls until the 2 indicators are lined up (while also firing them so you move forward a smidge).
You will have to fire your engines several times to fully kill all your relative velocity. Even a 5km difference in your orbit will cause noticeable drift. It's extremely frustrating, and it can take 5-7 tries honestly. So at least your doing that part right. I know, it sucks.
What is a docking camera? Is that a mod?
You can place a docking port whereever you want, it doesn't have to be on a pod for it to work.
When you are about to make contact between ports, turn on SAS on both ships or your ports won't seal (frakkin stupid, I know).
Targets do dissappear whenever you change vehicles which is also really stupid.
See what I mean when I say docking needs serious improvement?
Let me know if this does or does not help!
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
That's exactly what I do. Once it's close enough for me to see, I right click on the docking port I want to dock with and set to target. My target marker is the one that doesn't jump around, it's still, but it doesn't point at the docking port, it points off to the side.
Same thing when i switch to the larger station and repeat the process, once I'm within 100-200m. I right click on the docking port of the approaching smaller vessel, which I see almost hovering, almost lined up. Set as target, right click on the docking port of the space station I'm trying to align and set to "control from here".
My target again points way off to the side, not even at the approaching ship. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong but it doesn't seem like I'm missing a step. This happens with and without me doing the "control from here" thing.
Yes, lesson learned
Aha! Okay, that should help. I think I was doing that anyway, but wasn't sure if it was working properly, because I was spending so much time switching between vessels.
Well, say you have a space station and many ports. They each point in different directions. If you set your target to an approaching docking port on another vessel, how will the game know which docking port from your station you want to align to the target? That's what I thought the "control from here" thing does, because otherwise, won't the top of your pod point at the target? If your docking port isn't there at the top, this doesn't help you much.
I tried both approaches though - just setting the other docking port as target, and then I tried trial runs both with and without the "control from here". My target never points at the docking port I'm trying to get to, even if I'm in my tiny ship that has the docking port at the tip.
I should have been clearer, the target never jumps around. If it actually pointed at the docking port, I could dock easily, I think. I've gotten good at approaching the station, getting to within 20-50m, and then hovering right in front of it, with just a bit of lateral movement. After that, I can't do much, cause I don't know how to line up my docking ports.
That the jumping around retrograde markers happens to everyone is a bit of a relief, but surely they've gotta fix that.
You will have to fire your engines several times to fully kill all your relative velocity. Even a 5km difference in your orbit will cause noticeable drift. It's extremely frustrating, and it can take 5-7 tries honestly. So at least your doing that part right. I know, it sucks.
I'm a bit confused. Based on your instructions, your intercept is a lot more crazy than mine. I basically almost copy the orbit of the other craft, and slowly cruise towards it. Your orbit is a lot more elliptical and stuff. Why do I see all this drifting and have such huge issues with it, yet your orbit is a lot crazier, and you do too, but.. hmm.. maybe you do get a lot of drift than I do? And are just better at controlling the craft.
I really need to watch that Scott Manley docking vid.
Yep, a mod that helps with docking. The only thing in my arsenal right now that I have that will tell me that I'm pointing at the actual target. The thing is that you can only really make out the docking port once you're really close - i need something that will direct me towards the target a bit further away.
So I wasn't doing that wrong.. Good to know.
Hmm, I usually do leave SAS on my ships when i switch to the other one, so that shouldn't be an issue for me. My ships were maybe connecting at a 10-15 degree angle, so I'm not surprised the magnets didn't kick in. I wasn't properly aligned.
Targets do dissappear whenever you change vehicles which is also really stupid.
See what I mean when I say docking needs serious improvement?
Let me know if this does or does not help!
It helps, but now I have to figure out why my target markers aren't pointing at my damn targets.
I hope Scott will help
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 26,575
Shoot I meant to say turn SAS OFF. My bad. Once you are within 2m or so of the port, even if you are off-center, if SAS is OFF, then the magnets will pull you in and align you, even if there is 15 degrees of difference. Sorry that I mislead you.
If SAS is on, then the magnets won't engage.
Also, quicksave (F5) right before you dock or when you have a favorable approach vector so that you can replay it if you screw up.
If you set a docking port as a target, the game will know you mean that one, even if there are multiple ports on the target. Maybe the indicator points in a 'wrong' direction if the port isn't aligned in an axis. If say, it's pointed off to the left by 5 degrees, your indicator will show that and try and line it up with the ports actual direction and not what you think is the direction.
As for the prograde/retrograde jumping around, it does that because at close to zero velocity, any movement, even that caused by the SAS, will give you a slight velocity change. This jumps around because the SAS is constantly adjusting your path. It does need to be fixed because it makes the process more difficult than it should be.
I would just keep your forward speed at or slightly above .5m/s to compensate.
I do have a lot of crazy drifting and it takes quite a bit of effort to correct it and line up my approach. I've just done it a few times so I know the process. Once you've done it successfully, it becomes easier in that you know what you're doing but it doesn't get less challenging overall. You just know the type of manuevers you have to make.
If SAS is on, then the magnets won't engage.
Also, quicksave (F5) right before you dock or when you have a favorable approach vector so that you can replay it if you screw up.
If you set a docking port as a target, the game will know you mean that one, even if there are multiple ports on the target. Maybe the indicator points in a 'wrong' direction if the port isn't aligned in an axis. If say, it's pointed off to the left by 5 degrees, your indicator will show that and try and line it up with the ports actual direction and not what you think is the direction.
As for the prograde/retrograde jumping around, it does that because at close to zero velocity, any movement, even that caused by the SAS, will give you a slight velocity change. This jumps around because the SAS is constantly adjusting your path. It does need to be fixed because it makes the process more difficult than it should be.
I would just keep your forward speed at or slightly above .5m/s to compensate.
I do have a lot of crazy drifting and it takes quite a bit of effort to correct it and line up my approach. I've just done it a few times so I know the process. Once you've done it successfully, it becomes easier in that you know what you're doing but it doesn't get less challenging overall. You just know the type of manuevers you have to make.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
So I could have docked. I blame Zeus
No no, say you are in a space station with 10 docking ports, each one facing in a different direction. You set your target to a small approaching ship's docking port.
That aligns your ship with the docking port - not any one of those 10 docking ports. Right?
In my mind the "control from here" functionality tells the game that tthe port you picked is the one you want. Otherwise the game doesn't know which one you mean, and it will be the "nose" of your station pointing at the target instead, not any one of the ports.
How do you deal with that, if you don't use the "control from here" functionality? I might be wrong about what it's for, but how else can you do itif you have multiple docking oprts like that?
