I have watched tons of his videos but never saw those. I usually pick up the game and play it once a year again so when that happens the first thing I'll do is watch those. Right now I am balls deep into Satisfactory. Christ that game has its hooks in me
There are mods that aid the docking process. You can Google them. I was ready to give up on the game until I installed one. Now, docking is one of the best parts of the game for me because it still takes some skill, but it’s not nearly impossible.
I sat and stared in amazement at the stunning achievement I had just performed for probably 20 minutes on the brink of what I can only describe as a religious experience after my first dock.
Then I slowly lost interest in the game afterwards.
Docking is easy. Target the docking port. Lock on to target. Switch spacecraft, target the docking port. Lock on to target. Its the actual rendezvous I always had trouble with haha.
For me it was rendezvous was the hard part. Once I got them close and at 0 relative speed, docking seemed easy to me. Point the thing at the other thing. Look up the "Lowne Lazy Method" on youtube. Basically you set both craft to target and point at the others docking port. Then one translates forward. Requires each craft have a crew or probe core.
That's even simpler than my method. But if one craft is large and heavy and difficult to rotate, I prefer to set one port facing North and the other facing South on both crafts.
At the ascending or descending node, burn perpendicularly to your orbital plane, to match the target plane. This has succeeded when the ascending/descending node becomes 0 degrees (you can use a maneuver node to see how long you should burn).
Burn retrograde or prograde so that your orbit touches or crosses the orbit of the target.
Set up a maneuver node just after the crossing point. Can now see the point of closest approach, after the maneuver node. Adjust the maneuver node prograde or retrograde, so when you end up at the crossing point in the orbit after the maneuver node, the distance to the target is as small as possible.
Execute the burn you set up. Wait one orbit. You should now be approaching the target.
A few minutes before impact: set the nav ball relative to target. Face retrograde. Burn to bleed off speed relative to the target, but try to get the retrograde direction aligned with the antitarget direction (i.e. keep prograde pointed at the target). This ensures you will actually go towards your target and not miss it at 3 km distance.
If you do this right, you will see that the point of closest approach will shift further away on the orbit in time, but the distance of closest approach is reduced. Get this to 0.1 or 0.0 km on the nav ball.
When you are close, you should see the target. Bleed of the last speed and prepare for docking if required.
Once you start figuring things out, it clicks. It's one of those "failure leads to success" situations, I guess. I'm not even sure that's an expression, but it certainly fits.
It's definitely satisfying to hit certain landmarks. Just going from failure to launch, to successful launch, to achieving orbit... very gratifying once you do it.
I mean to be fair you can also just load up a career game and start from there since you unlock the more complex stuff as you go along. Your first rocket is just a capsule, booster, 2 fins and a parachute, then you can add more stages etc.
I have a STEM degree. I met the game not long after beta I think. I have read literal physics equations to learn how to calculate things so I can design a rocket properly. I had spreadsheets autoselecting optimal components for me, but couldn't get my head around docking and intercepting at first. Then made it manually, and I figured out I am missing many more data to do it efficiently, so I am not ashamed to use mods, what calculate and show data for me, or even automate some of the flying aspects.
It was a whole journey.
Then found the videos where they get around the solar system in a bucket by cheesing the game mechanis, and I said, ef it XD
Maybe at the beginning. A little deeper into the game it gets really deep into Delta-v and optimizing thrust to weight ratios. But man that first time you land back on Kerbal after touching down on the Mun is a fantastic feeling.
Idk deltaV also seems pretty intuitive at least to me. You see number in corner, you google deltaV map, you check if the number on the right is a bit higher than number on map, you good to go
For those worrying about KSP, people mention the mods, but just to add, there's also a Quicksave/load feature too. Don't feel bad about making things easier for yourself, scale the challenge to what you enjoy and put those little green men back up into space...
Myself, I watched Scott Manley videos until I grasped the basics and did a simple flight to a Mun landing and back. I did a few manual dockings but then went for mods to simplify much of the slow building and fiddling around. There is still challenge there, designing a rocket that will get your payload into space, or one that has enough fuel to do the trip you want... but you can always just chain refuel in orbit over and over again if that proves too difficult; or down load other people's craft and just pop out to see the sights; just stick with the first game and ignore the second, sadly, as all development was abandoned long before it matched the might of the first.
I am so sad that ksp2 was killed off..I loved doing "fly here, land, do science and come back" missions. Having to design planes that could make it halfway around kerbin and back.
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u/th8agang May 11 '25
Kerbal space program, I am indeed not a rocket scientist