gutterboy44
Member
I don't know if this metaphor is relevant to anyone who hasn't skateboarded before, but in skateboarding, the first trick you need to learn is the ollie as virtually every other trick is based on it in some form. So in KSP, you should get super familiar with getting ships, both large and small into 100,000m (100Km) orbit @ 90 degrees heading around Kerbin. This is the "ollie" of KSP in my opinion. It should just be second nature, approximate delta V needed without even using Kerbal Engineer, where to gravity turn, different reference points of if you are too steep or too shallow on your turn, and setting up a nice clean circular orbit ~100Km @ 90 degrees. From here you can easily start adding "tricks" Want to get to the Mun? Piece of cake, you don't even need the maneuver nodes. From a 100Km @ 90 orbit, just wait until the moon begins to rise on the horizon and burn pro grade until you get a Munar intercept path. Want another trick? Practice rendezvous. Getting in to orbit is muscle memory at this point, so you can start to figure out when to launch from KSC in reference to your orbiting target and maximize efficiency on the intercept. Now you can easily repeat a rendezvous and get better at all of the steps required and better understand where you are going wrong since you have the "control" of being able to effortlessly get into a "ollie" orbit. Want to have your rockets land back close to KSC after a mission? You can have your re-entry angles easy to eyeball at 100Km after only a few tries. I have landed on the Mun dozens and dozens of times, but I have probably put objects into a 100Km @ 90 degree orbit, hundreds and hundreds of times.
I think this stems from playing a lot of KSP before maneuver nodes were added to the game, so you had to have some points of reference, but now I realize it was a nice stable repeatable "trick" in which I could expand from and learn new things.
