Kerbal Space Program beginners tips?

[Saregon]

It seems these threads are very common for Dark Souls, but I couldn't find one for this game. So I just started playing KSP. I'm having fun with the building aspect so far, but I can't get my rockets to fly. I've done the tutorials, but they don't explain sequences etc. Which means my ship's twin solid fuel boosters start firing and the parachute deploys at the same time. If I don't mount a parachute I'm fine (until I crash). It seems like a game I could really enjoy, I just need some tips to get started. Anyone?

 

[Llil]

I would recommend watching Scott Manley's tutorials on youtube: playlist

He makes by far the best Kerbal related videos, and this tutorial series is really good as well. You don't need to watch all 13 videos at first, just the first two or three. Those will show you the basics.

 

[Schadrach]

Figure out how staging works. Once you understand staging, here's an important trick:

Fuel lines go in one direction, and engines always pull fuel from the farthest fuel tank possible. You can use a concept often called "onion staging" to maximize your fuel/engine power/mass to take advantage of this. I'll describe it below.

For example, draw out a 3x3 grid, and number the blocks 1-9, going top left to bottom right. Imagine these are liquid fuel tanks with engines underneath, and all but #5 are attached to 5 with radial decouplers, with your payload attached to 5. Then connect fuel lines going from 1->2->3->6->5 and 9->8->7->4->5. Then you set up staging.

You fire all the engines in the first stage, then rig 1 and 9 to decouple together, 2 and 8 to decouple together, 3 and 7 to decouple together, and finally 4 and 6 to decouple together. You power it up and launch it, then as soon as a pair of tanks runs dry, you decouple those tanks and their engines. So, essentially you run all the engines off tanks 1/9 (because they are the farthest accessible), then drop them and their engines weight and repeat until you are pretty high up and have only one liquid engine and a single full fuel tank.

The same technique works for however many engines you want to use, and you can even build a second ring of engines farther out, though keeping the fuel lines straight gets more complicated at that point from a practical perspective. A dozen+ mainsail in that kind of config can get some fairly obscene things into orbit.

The other thing I'd recommend is modding -- there are lots of useful ones out there, including ones that will do some of the math for you to help you figure out if you have enough fuel/thrust for your mass, as well as MechJeb which is an autopilot mod if you're having trouble figuring out how certain types of maneuver should be performed (like how to do transfers or docking).

Also, ion engines are awesome once in vacuum, but utterly worthless in atmo.

 

[Fractral]

Once you've sorted out staging, the trick to getting into orbit is to begin your gravity turn around 13 kilometers up. The atmosphere thins out around that point which makes it a lot more fuel efficient. Begin burning eastwards (towards the sea) at about 45 degrees until your apoapsis is between 80 and 90 kilometers, then make a maneuver node to circularize your orbit. Also work out what half of the predicted burn time is, and begin you burn that long before the node so that it evens out.
As mentioned above, Onion or 'Asparagus' staging is the easiest way to lift large payloads into orbit. Use Solid Boosters but don't rely on them, and if you've got rings of engines make sure you put struts in place as they tend to snap the decouplers, which can send what is essentially a ballistic missile straight into your command module.
Ion engines and Nuclear Engines have fabulous fuel efficiency but terrible thrust, and have very low efficiency in atmosphere, so don't use them for landings. Ion engines are really only useable on small probes and have very small tanks, but Nuclear engines can be used on any interplanetary voyage, and are all but required for the longer ones.
That's all that comes to mind. Watch Scott Manley's videos; he's godly at the game.

 

[BoogieManFL]

Start small. Don't go for something real elaborate until much later on. Simple advice, but it's important. Ease yourself into the parts and get a feel for the basic fundamentals early.

Oh, and struts. Use lots of struts to reinforce your designs, especially the bigger they get and more "layers" of parts.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I would recommend watching Scott Manley's tutorials on youtube: playlist

He makes by far the best Kerbal related videos, and this tutorial series is really good as well. You don't need to watch all 13 videos at first, just the first two or three. Those will show you the basics.

yepp, this is one of those games where it's good to dink around in the game, then watch some tutorials to learn some vocab and see how things should work, and then go test it yourself. *rinse and repeat until you are godly at the game*

the game definitely has a learning curve to it, but once you get past it the game is bloody brilliant.

 

[renegade7]

If you really want to get into some crazy stuff rather quickly, try to find a book about spaceflight. It doesn't need to be an astronautical engineering textbook, but there are plenty of very detailed books that thoroughly explain everything while keeping the math optional.

Also, play with career mode. It actually works surprisingly like a tutorial. You have to learn to use the parts to get enough science for the next ones.

 

[Laughing Man]

"onion staging"

Still less efficient than Asparagus staging though it does have the advantage of being a tad more stable though.

Asparagus staging works by attaching the outer fuel tanks to the next closest tank inner tank by fuel lines. For example you have a 3 stage launcher, stage 1 would be the outer most tanks, they would be attached by fuel lines to the Stage 2 fuel tanks and these in turn would be attached to the Stage 3 tanks (centre most) by fuel lines.

You fire all the stage engines at the start and then as the fuel tanks run out you detach the stages leaving you with full fuel tanks at each stage start.

Here's a quick video of my Project Unity launch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5oXOgzxwRU

It shows the Stage 3 separation, if you look at the fuel loads left in the left hand column you'll see as Stage 3 detaches the fuel loads go from almost empty to suddenly full.

The payload on that flight was around 150tons if I remember correctly.

Oh and to prove that even if you think you know what you are doing here's a video of me testing the launcher prior to launch and it goes, badly wrong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCvmus51e8M

Staging is simple enough in the VAB the staging is located on the right hand side, you can select these icons and then move them around as well as create and remove stages from your launcher. For the most part KSP does stage stuff for you quite well but when you get on to more complex stuff you will need to check and test launchers to get the staging right.

Finally a quick video showing how to do encounters (this is basically setting your vehicle up so that it's orbit will bring it in to a position that allows it meet another object in orbit knowing how to do this is vital to reaching other moons, planets as well as building space stations, refuelling in flight, pretty much everything and the principles in the video are pretty much the same for all encounters), the video should help a little bit but really needs an explanation to make it clearer. I'll happily give you one when you reach a point where you are ready to do orbital encounters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVjwIdCC3SM

My final tip would be to learn how to do everything yourself (by all means ask for tips, watch videos, read tutorials but their is also a host of tools and mods that can do everything for you; launch , reach orbit, encounters, landings and dockings, all done automatically for you. I used a few of these in my early days and it hampered me. I learned so so much more when I got rid of these tools and in turn it greatly helped with my understanding of how to build and manage the space craft.

 

[Souplex]

Watch all of Robbaz's KSP videos.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD1262982675D497A
Just do the opposite of everything he does.

 

[Britpoint]

NerdCubed just put up a very helpful video of how to play KSP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2pJM1xAALM

The gist of it seems to be "It's more fun to not know what you're doing".

 

[Johnny Impact]

Step Zero, watch tutorials. This is a difficult game that tells you NOTHING about how to play it.

Step One, accept that it's massively difficult to do anything more than quick pop-and-drop rockets using only one or two fuel tanks. You will try many, many times to find optimal construction/trajectory/staging. You will then launch your pride and joy only to watch it destabilize and tumble end over end into inevitable explosive demise for no goddamned reason whatsoever. Next time, not enough fuel. Time after that, explosion caused by overheat. This will happen over and over. Try to be amused by this because you are simply NOT going to avoid it no matter how many tutorials you watch.

Second, baby steps. You don't even need rocket engines on your craft to start accumulating science!

Third, science. Earn it at every opportunity. Take every upgrade that allows you to earn more.