I noticed that this write up is old (2014), so most of the designs shown won't work in the base game anymore. That's good, because why should you be able to launch what looks like a wedding cake?
I've been playing this game regularly for 3 years now. It has a vibrant modding community, and recently some of the more popular gameplay mods have made their way into the core game (mainly more realistic aerodynamics, resource mining, my favorite, "deadly reentry"). It's basically a SimCity game, but with rockets.
The one downside is that while it's a lot of fun at the beginning, it gets kind of monotonous at the end (if you can call it an end). Flying crew to and from Duna is hard. I've never done it. Even just sending a probe is hard to hit it.
I was amazed at how over-engineered their first rockets were. Having always played career mode I was 'forced' to do the minimum, getting to the Mun with only 2 or 3 engines total.
Flying to other planets is really difficult, something I still can't reliably do with hundreds of hours played. I've only sent probes to 3 of the other planets (Duna, Eve, Jool).
It can get monotonous, but when I play I am strongly motivated by trying to achieve something I never have before. (Or if I'm playing mods such as 'Real Solar System', but that's another step up again in difficulty).
It's mostly a question of dv. Getting the perfect transfer window is hard, but eyeballing a good enough one and doing some mid course correction is significantly easier.
If you put the sun at the center and kerbal at 3 o'clock, you get a good enough transfer window by waiting to having duna at 1 o'clock. You can then eject tangentially from kerbal sphere of influence and correct half way trough.
The only real plugin that I strongly suggest there is the aereobrake plugin, that'll show you the predictoion for aerobraking directly on the ksp map.
Back when KSP released their first version with other planets (2012 or so), I was a forum mod and tester for them, and I build a small website to simplify interplanetary transfers: http://ksp.olex.biz. It's still running and up-to-date, and apparently still used, despite there being a ton of other sites and ingame plugins that provide the same data in much better ways.
Thanks for your contribution! I've flown many interplanetary missions with your tool.
For more accurate and realistic missions, there's this tool [0] to calculate pork chop plots [1] to find minimum energy transfers. (you surely know about this)
I think calculators and mission planners like this should be a part of the game proper. Switching to a web browser mid-game to do mission planning is a big turn off for me.
It might be a part of their game design, there are very few numbers and data presented in game. But I don't think it works very well apart from some very basic moon missions. A lot of the information is there but it's just difficult to find (e.g. want to know your inclination? select moon, and then look at ascending/descending nodes in map view).
I enjoyed the eyeball method initially but you grow out of it soon. I liked the "fire prograde when moon rises over horizon" moon missions and I even achieved a rendez-vous in 0.17 [2] before there were maneuver nodes or other helpful gadgets in the map view.
But once we got maneuver nodes, intersection markers, etc that playing style was out of the window. Now I'd really want to have some proper mission planning utilities (similar to some MFD modes in Orbiter).
I think the game should (at minimum) have a transfer window planner, a patched conics solver (with optimization), a pork chop plotter and a rocket burn planner for ascent and powered descent. Perhaps a Clohessy-Wiltshire-Hill equation solver for pinpoint accuracy rendez-vous too.
yeah that tool is great if you know how to translate it in game, but you know the original protractor method[1] ain't bad and one can kinda eyeball it like in the old days when we timed the mun burn based on the moment it dawned on kerbin... good times XD
Knowing the transfer window is the key. Check out Launch Window Planner for KSP. It tells you when to start your transfer down to the second. If you're within a few minutes of that window, or even within a couple of days in that same section of the orbit, you'll get there fine with slight mid course correction.
Now that KSP lets you plan your intercepts several sphere of influences away also makes planning easier. Just adjust your maneuver nodes until you see an intercept, then follow them.
I've been playing this game regularly for 3 years now. It has a vibrant modding community, and recently some of the more popular gameplay mods have made their way into the core game (mainly more realistic aerodynamics, resource mining, my favorite, "deadly reentry"). It's basically a SimCity game, but with rockets.
The one downside is that while it's a lot of fun at the beginning, it gets kind of monotonous at the end (if you can call it an end). Flying crew to and from Duna is hard. I've never done it. Even just sending a probe is hard to hit it.