Kerbal Space Program

[hobbsyoyo]

No I don't mess with control from here at all.

I visually find the port on the target station that I want to dock with. I right click on that port (not on anything else, just the port). I select 'set as target'. Now I'm locked on that port as my target and nothing else - not even the other ports, the command pod, nothing. Just the port I want is what I'm locked on to.

I honestly don't know what the control from here does but I am certain it does not tell your navball which port you want to dock with as your target. I don't bother with it for either my own ship or the one that is my target. I just set the port on the target as my target. This is will tell your navball which port (out of however many there may be) you want to dock with. This is what you are trying to do with the control from here function, which doesn't do that (AFAIK) Hope that helps.

 

[trader/warrior]

I've only ever used the "control from here" functionality to switch to a docked ship before undocking, which is fairly redundant since you could just switch normally right after undocking it.

I found this which seems it might be related to your issues.

"Control from here" definitely changes the navball orientation to the docking port or command pod you select, so if your docking port is sideways, the navball will "look" that way, but the target indicator etc. will still be in relation to the command pod or probe core because ships cant be controlled by docking ports. Thats my theory I guess.

Oh, and about frustrations with docking:

Spoiler :

SIX dockings ridicoulusly close together in one sitting... I think I was traumatized for life.

At least docking is easier for me now

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Well, i am still trying to build the ideal lifter. I have given up my ultra-heavy project with a payload to LEO of 160 tons (more than the Saturn V ) so 4 jumbo tanks, since it had too many stability and structural problems, and now i am trying a more affordable and simpler one with half that capacity:

Spoiler :

It works sometimes with some luck, but only if i pilot it personally, however since i am a bit tired of doing the same thing myself i want mechjeb to do it for me, however there are several issues: first usually the autopilot losses the control at the end of stage 6 at about 25000-30000 meters, i suppose it is because the four big jumbo tanks which feed the four radial mainsails become empty so the mass center goes up, however when i am piloting it i can control it manually with some aid from the ASAS. Also the rocket does not seems that unbalanced compared to real life counterparts, at least at a first look so i dont know. Second, when the first burn ends the autopilot waits for the apoapsis to turn them on again for circularizing, however it waits too much and when it does so the apoapsis is right there and is quickly left behind so it cant raise the periapsis enough and the rocket ends falling again to the surface, i though that the problem was lack of power so added four solid boosters more for circularizing (a genial solution i thought) but the autopilot lost control and the rocket ends out of the solar system. Sometimes however it does it well (without the boosters) and does not wait that much for the apoapsis so it can reach a circular orbit. So obviously i am doing something wrong, or it can be a problem with mechjeb and the rockets or between mechjeb and other module (for instance i am using Ferram Aerospace Research which claims to add a more detailed drag model, ence the nosecones).

So it seems i am going to settle for punny little rockets for now, any ideas?

 

[warpus]

No I don't mess with control from here at all.

I visually find the port on the target station that I want to dock with. I right click on that port (not on anything else, just the port). I select 'set as target'. Now I'm locked on that port as my target and nothing else - not even the other ports, the command pod, nothing. Just the port I want is what I'm locked on to.

I honestly don't know what the control from here does but I am certain it does not tell your navball which port you want to dock with as your target. I don't bother with it for either my own ship or the one that is my target. I just set the port on the target as my target. This is will tell your navball which port (out of however many there may be) you want to dock with. This is what you are trying to do with the control from here function, which doesn't do that (AFAIK) Hope that helps.

No no, you're not understanding. (I don't think, I'm tired though, could be wrong!)

Say you have a giant space station with 20 docks. There's an approaching tiny ship. You right click on its docking port, while controlling the station, and set target as.

What then? Your space station has 20 docking ports. When you align with the target, still controlling the space station, which direction is it going to point in? Unless there is a docking port on your nose, none of your docking ports will align with the target.

Right?

I realize you should be docking by controlling the smaller ship, but let's consider that hypothetical scenario.

Scenario B: If neither of your ships that you want to dock has a docking port on its nose.. What then? How do you align stuff using 'set target as' ? In my mind, you'll right click on the docking port, set it as the target, but then the nose of your ship will point towards it, not the docking port on your vessel.

edit: @trader/warrior, a bug! Dang.. I wonder if that's what was messing me up.

I am still very curious how the above scenario would be handled by you guys.

 

[Antilogic]

I didn't even know about the docking cam mod--I do everything by dead reckoning and magnets (when you get close). Setting the port target is useful only in the sense that it gives you a distance to the ship. Right after the first few successes I put the ICP on youtube to talk about miracles.



(Since the navball always points at the center of your target and not at the port, I eyeball it but use the navball to kind of triangulate velocity and how I'm aligned. It's tough to explain, but I can kind of see the geometry in my head.)

 

[cardgame]

If you target the direct port you need, the navball points exactly where you need it to.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Oh ok Warpus, I'm sorry I was misunderstanding you.

Hmm yes I would not try and move the station with 20 ports on it other than to orient it in the general direction you want to go. When constructing my stations (that have multiple ports) I do try and roughly line up the desired port with the other ship, but I don't fuss over making an exact line up. I do that with the other ship, and I don't really start fussing on it until I'm pretty close.

With the very inaccurate, buggy controls we currently have (watch the prograde indicator dance!), I personally don't see a reason to try and do anything more than a rough alignment until I'm withing 50m or so. Sometimes I don't even do that - sometimes I come in at 30 degrees and just let the magnets pull me and align everything.

Of course, if it's going to mess up your symmetry if your part attaches upside down relative to the station, then you do have to be careful with your alignment. But for basic station construction, I don't care and just put the pieces together.

I do understand what you meant with your use of 'control from here' though, sorry that took so long to get it through my head. Also, sorry that it's apparently bugged.

Now if both my sides had off-center ports, I guess I would have to use the control from here function. I don't see any other way of doing it other than eyeballing it and hoping I'm close enough for the magnets to engage. Of course, the control from here is bugged so I guess I'd have to redesign one or both of the ships.

Sorry for all the confusion. I tried though.

And with SAS off on both parts, you can dock at very bad angles, the magnets will pull you in and straighten you out.

@Thorgalaeg - I wish I could give you some tips but I've never been good at designs such as that. My rockets all have to be pretty symmetrical in the x and y planes and use old-fashioned asparagus staging. You can check out my heavy lifter in the write up I did for the Duna station. I haven't done the math but it can lift a pretty absurd amount of weight. I honestly don't think you can lift anything bigger with a different rocket without mods.

I tried adding a 3rd row of fuel tanks to the rocket but then it doesn't have enough thrust due to the Mainsail's tendency to rapidly overheat at 100% power. (Which is stupid since pretty much all rockets lift off at 100%+ of max power)

I tried adding radial engines to compensate but when you throttle down to keep your mainsails from overheating, the side engines throttle down as well. This mean they were firing well below their maximum power level (~50% or less) and as such barely added more thrust than their own weight and basically only sucked fuel without much benefit. I just couldn't find a good combination of radials + mainsails.

I also tried small-engine clusters per Cardgames suggestion but I saw now benefit. My best cluster wound up with less than half the thrust and about the same ISP and less thrust vectoring (I've never had problem's with the mainsails thrust vectoring as many other's have).

 

[warpus]

If you target the direct port you need, the navball points exactly where you need it to.

It never has for me though - it seems to point either at another part of my spacecraft or out into space. It's either off enough to be useless or so much I just laugh.

And with SAS off on both parts, you can dock at very bad angles, the magnets will pull you in and straighten you out.

I could have docked!! Dammit. I wonder what my last save is

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah, just start up a random mission and hold down F9 to load that last save. Hope it works this time!

 

[warpus]

It works sometimes with some luck, but only if i pilot it personally, however since i am a bit tired of doing the same thing myself i want mechjeb to do it for me, however there are several issues: first usually the autopilot losses the control at the end of stage 6 at about 25000-30000 meters, i suppose it is because the four big jumbo tanks which feed the four radial mainsails become empty so the mass center goes up, however when i am piloting it i can control it manually with some aid from the ASAS.

I've had issues like these and I resolved them by sticking those v8 winglets (or whatever they're called - looks like you use them on your rocket so you should know what I'm talking about) at the bottom of your middle core - the one that's left after the rest are out of fuel and you get rid of them. There's not much room there, but stick a couple in there, if you don't already have any. It will help keep your rocket stable. You could also make that middle core shorter, but that could be annoying.. Maybe move your rcs thrusters on that middle core to the centre of that tank, too. That's what I tend to do, but I'm not really sure what's better.

Second, when the first burn ends the autopilot waits for the apoapsis to turn them on again for circularizing, however it waits too much and when it does so the apoapsis is right there and is quickly left behind so it cant raise the periapsis enough and the rocket ends falling again to the surface, i though that the problem was lack of power so added four solid boosters more for circularizing (a genial solution i thought) but the autopilot lost control and the rocket ends out of the solar system. Sometimes however it does it well (without the boosters) and does not wait that much for the apoapsis so it can reach a circular orbit. So obviously i am doing something wrong, or it can be a problem with mechjeb and the rockets or between mechjeb and other module (for instance i am using Ferram Aerospace Research which claims to add a more detailed drag model, ence the nosecones).

Start burning to circularize earlier, if there's not enough time to do it once you're @ apoapsis. Mechjeb assumes that your rocket design is perfect and that it'll have enough thrust to circularize by burning @ the AP, I think, but if it doesn't you can just burn manually a bit beforehand, and then let mechjeb at it.. or just finish the job yourself.

Hope some of this helps!

Oh, and about frustrations with docking:

Man, that's like showing us photos of you having sex with a supermodel.

So jealous

 

[warpus]

Just watched Scott's docking tutorial video. Good to see that he faces a lot of the same issues that I was .. gives me some hope!

I have a question for you hobbsyoyo

6)Burn when you hit the manuever node that you set while in manuever mode. There will be an icon next to your navball that will show how long (actually, how much delta v you have remaining in your burn) you need to burn for. There will also be a marker on the navball itself that shows you where to point. When this is complete, you will be set up to intercept the 1st piece at the point shown in your orbit shown in the manuever mode on the map screen.

7) Coast until you are ~10km from the 1st piece. Make sure that you still have it set as your target. Click on the velocity readout above your navball and it will switch from showing orbital velocity to showing the difference in velocity between you and your target.

8)While still having the first piece set as a target, point in the retrograde direction and burn until the difference in velocity between the two pieces is close to zero. If you have done this correctly, you are now in a matching orbit alongside the other piece.

Are you missing a step right after

7) Coast until you are ~10km from the 1st piece.

?

It seems like you want your orbits almost perfectly aligned.. at least that's what Scott did. Should there be a burn there to match orbits with the other object, once you're at the intercept?

I noticed that Scott wasn't pointing anything at the target on his navball - doing everything purely by analyzing what he sees using the camera mode - moving things around using the arrow keys. That's what I started doing after I realized that things weren't pointing at the right things.. but oh god is that ever hard to get used to.

I might try again in a bit.

 

[warpus]

Okay guys.. This isn't fun anymore.

This is torture. I have figured out everything about docking except the very last bit, where you need to use RCS. I hate RCS and RCS hates me.

The next version of mechjeb is going to have an autodock issue. F docking, I'm giving up on this crap until that comes out. It's not worth spending any more time on this, it's just making me go mad and it's totally not worth the hassle.

I want to fly to other planets and explore them. I want to put things in orbit and yes, I guess I want to build space stations too. But I don't want to sit there and try to figure out the annoying IJKL system that you have to do trial/error with. V helps, but not much.

I think spatially speaking my brain just can't wrap itself around an ever switching coordinate system, where up and down constantly change and shift, as I move the camera around and around to attempt to position everything just right. I got so close!! I just had to tap the right key and i'd have docked. Some sort of friggin indicator which way is which would help a LOT. Without it, my brain is clueless and can't orient itself. I need reference points.

This has very fast turned from "ooh I gotta achieve this, it would feel amazing" to an OCD idiot trying to balance one toothpick on top of another. It's just not worth it.

That one time I was close.. I was super super close.. just needed to move in one direction and I would have docked.. Which way do I go? Who knows? Maybe it's this key, maybe it's that. This trial and error BS just doesn't work for me. Until I know exactly which direction each keystroke is going to send me in, docking is just not going to be my thing.

I'll return to docking once they've fixed some things. That, and I'll start using mechjeb 2.0 for docking until then, because I do want to send another mission to Jool soon, and that would require orbital assembly for what I am planning.

Thanks for all your help, and I'm not even mad. I'm frustrated.... I was in a really good mood before this, and I like my games to be serene experiences, during which I can relax. This game is like that at times, but this? This is just torture. I can't do this anymore. I'm not one of those guys who can beat battletoads. I like calm and relaxing games. Skill is skill and I don't like to cheat, but I want more enjoyment out of this game, and I'm not going to get it by trying to dock manually in 18.2

edit: by the way, the "control from here" thing was what was making my target not point at the right thing, at least when I was in my little craft trying to dock with the larger station. I wasn't doing that this time, and the target was lining up fine. Still, there's no way as far as I can see to do the same thing from the larger station, to align it to the docking port on my smaller craft using the navball. If you spin the navwheel to have the target in the centre, your nose will point at the docking port - and if your docking port is elsewhere, you're SOL

Why the hell am I still talking about docking? I'm going to bed

 

[cardgame]

You need to establish your own reference points. Personally I turn so the navball is facing the horizon and up is up and down is down

From there, IHJKLN is easy to understand after a couple of test bursts. If you can't tell where you're going in space, just look at the navball and see how the blue shifts around. Position the blue directly over your prograde and you're golden. You don't even need to pay attention to space really, not until you get that established.

 

[warpus]

I am so torn right now.

This is like a girl who looks like your sister giving you looks from across the bar. Do I go talk to her?

 

[cardgame]

How long has it been since the game cockblocked you? An hour? Go for it if you're not feeling horribly frustrated still.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I am not tried docking yet so cant be of any help, but i predict it is going to be troublesome for me too due to the lack of a proper HUD and first person view in this game. I have experienced docking in Orbiter where you have lots of instruments showing all the data needed to know the 3D situation with precission and a first person view with a 360º HUD, and even then it can be challenging and requires time, tiny corrections and patience, so i cant imagine how difficult must be in this game...

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Last news! i finally managed to build a hyper-mega- heavy lifter. Weight at launch 4500 tons and is able to put 8 jumbo tanks at LEO (tested) and maybe more. I used some large engines from the mods at the page i posted previously. The thing uses a first stage with 48 huge solid boosters. And the most important, it works like a charm!

My creature:

Spoiler :

 

[warpus]

How long has it been since the game cockblocked you? An hour? Go for it if you're not feeling horribly frustrated still.

Last night.

I am going to try again tonight with a space stations that has ALL THE DOCKING PORTS, POINTING IN ALL DIRECTIONS

That should make docking easier.

I guess I haven't fully given up. Goddamn women/docking, can't live with them.. can't live without them..

@Thorgalaeg

That is awesome.. How is the lag?

 

[Antilogic]

...and I thought my space program was criminally irresponsible. That is one beefy launch system.

I hope your latest docking attempt works, Warpus. It takes some patience to figure out, but it sounds like you have orbital rendezvous solved and once you get close the magnets should do the rest.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It seems like you want your orbits almost perfectly aligned.. at least that's what Scott did. Should there be a burn there to match orbits with the other object, once you're at the intercept?

Yes, there should be a burn, it's in the next step:

8)While still having the first piece set as a target, point in the retrograde direction and burn until the difference in velocity between the two pieces is close to zero. If you have done this correctly, you are now in a matching orbit alongside the other piece.

You make that burn at the intercept, which is what I meant when I said 'within 10km of the target'.

Killing the relative velocity between you means you are orbiting together, you have changed your orbit such that it is the same as the target's orbit and you therefore don't drift apart very much.

I am misunderstanding you again?

I noticed that Scott wasn't pointing anything at the target on his navball - doing everything purely by analyzing what he sees using the camera mode - moving things around using the arrow keys. That's what I started doing after I realized that things weren't pointing at the right things.. but oh god is that ever hard to get used to.

I might try again in a bit.

My comment on this also applies to your next post.

Are you locking your camera with V and positioning the camera directly behind your ship? If you do this, the IJKL keys (or AWSD if you use the docking mode button) will be permanently locked to always make you go up, down, left and right. This will take out the guesswork of which keys to press to make you go the direction you want.

Even if you don't use the chase camera mode, you should try and memorize a camera angle that will make your RCS do what you want it to do when you press the IJKL keys. Then, if you move the camera to check things out, always turn the camera back to the default position before you use RCS so that the keys do what you want them to do.


Also, maybe you could try making a small docking target that is nothing but a port that is easily manuevered so you can practice docking with something small. I did this and it helped me quite a bit.

Until I know exactly which direction each keystroke is going to send me in, docking is just not going to be my thing.

Using chase mode (with the camera set up to look forward from a position behind the ship) should fix this issue for you.

I'll return to docking once they've fixed some things. That, and I'll start using mechjeb 2.0 for docking until then, because I do want to send another mission to Jool soon, and that would require orbital assembly for what I am planning.

I will probably be getting mechjeb just for automated docking, it's such a chore in it's present state and take a lot of fun out of the game.

Thanks for all your help, and I'm not even mad.

You're welcome, I understand your frustration.

edit: by the way, the "control from here" thing was what was making my target not point at the right thing, at least when I was in my little craft trying to dock with the larger station. I wasn't doing that this time, and the target was lining up fine. Still, there's no way as far as I can see to do the same thing from the larger station, to align it to the docking port on my smaller craft using the navball. If you spin the navwheel to have the target in the centre, your nose will point at the docking port - and if your docking port is elsewhere, you're SOL

There is no real reason to worry about getting your docking port on your station lined up with the other ship. Trust me as I've built a couple of big complicated stations now. It's enough to just point the port in the general direction of the other craft. Then use the other craft to do all the manuevering and lining up. This will save you a ton of heartburn dude.

If you find your big station/component drifts too much, put on SAS while the other ship approaches and then turn it off at the last minute.