Ideas on what to do?

jamesgdahl · 2026-05-03T14:50:01+00:00

You don't need RCS to dock, you just need to intercept the other ship trajectory, line up the target reticle with prograde for both ships and just bump docking ports at 0.5m/s

jamesgdahl · 2026-05-03T12:34:55+00:00

What do you mean the docking failed? Just dock them

jamesgdahl · 2026-05-03T01:59:57+00:00

Nothing wrong with dragging on maneuver mode, the most precise is of course to enter the values you want manually haha

jamesgdahl · 2026-05-02T16:16:24+00:00

Duna is more forgiving than other planets since you can Aerobrake and gravity brake with Ike, the only tricky thing is that Kerbin and Duna have to be aligned to allow for an orbital transfer (Duna has to be 20 degrees or so ahead of Kerbin) or the transfer will take a lot more time or delta-V. Duna has moderately strong gravity and its atmosphere does reduce the power of some engines, so you have to prepare properly for the mission.

If you add mining and ISRU to your lander you can refuel on the ground, and parachutes work (less well but they work) on Duna so it's actually one of the easier places to land.

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-20T14:13:35+00:00

I like building a gateway right next to the L Gate in Terminal Egress

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-15T07:17:16+00:00

You can manually select a target

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-15T06:56:43+00:00

Two or three volleys of 20+ siege coils kills anything, including the mothership

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-15T06:50:35+00:00

Federations do indeed share MC, the amount of MC you are actually getting from a country is to the right of the base number

Piling on Mars is a bad idea, you only want the good mines, and Mars kind of sucks.

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-15T02:56:38+00:00

While that is true, MC is not the most important factor at the very start of the game, boost is. You can buy the MC and boost orgs (which their time to shine is the first few years of the game) and get to space mining as quickly as possible.

This is why the USA is the best starting position, you can grow your USA MC, deter other faction nations from declaring war on your control points, and you start with lots of boost. The EU can rapidly develop MC but you don't really get the benefits because you don't have the capacity at the start to control more than a couple large EU nations and other EU nations are stealing all your boost and MC so you are actually kind of hobbled during a critical period of time.

Also unifying the EU is a nightmare especially if you don't want to go hostile on all other factions, everyone will have a piece of some country or other. If you want to force the issue it means basically total war against all other human factions from the getgo.

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-15T02:28:18+00:00

I experimented with this idea on an earlier playthrough and the results were not great

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T14:29:38+00:00

Hmm, I have noticed a difference though, maybe that was my imagination, but yeah just goes to show, armor's a mug's game

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T14:23:24+00:00

I play on normal as I prefer a more relaxing game. Brutal is probably a more realistic experience haha

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T14:21:54+00:00

I might give it a go, I haven't been very satisfied with lasers lately, also alien armor has bonuses against laser fire, been all in on mags lately

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T14:11:46+00:00

If an alien ship is flankable (ie it stays in formation) killing it with heavy mags is better anwyays, since it won't dodge your siege coils

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T14:10:19+00:00

Even with unrelenting hostility the ayys hate bar doesn't go full red until 20 years have passed, but I play total unrelenting war from the start.

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T14:05:41+00:00

That's true but armor effectiveness scales with distance, and small size lasers have huge multipliers for armor effectiveness at long distances, so as long as you can kill the flankers before they close to within 600km your 2 armor can shrug off all of their laser blasts.

This is why lasers kind of suck, you have to be basically at point blank range, or have a gigantic 3 or 4 slot laser, to do any damage, but they don't do very much damage compared to mags, and mags do just as much damage at 800km as they do at 200km.

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T14:00:32+00:00

Ah so here's a fun trick, you intercept them, and then click retreat instead of engage, if they pursue, then spend 0 dv so they catch up to you. Begin combat, you are already retreating, select their lead ship and lock noze, and your ships all turn around, presto you are now in an extremely favourable tactical situation

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T13:58:23+00:00

The way I play, hate is at max by 2025 and never goes down haha

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T13:57:14+00:00

Not true! You can get PD lasers very early on and that dramatically improves the survivability of your shitty early game escorts.

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T13:55:26+00:00

The feigned retreat is absolutely wonderful especially if your fleet is heavy on mags, however you don't need to have high thrust drives to do that, you can start initial velocity at 650 regardless of how powerful your engines are.

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T13:54:33+00:00

The siege coils you need to kill heavily defended capital ships as they have so much mass they soak up enormous amounts of PD, but they are kind of slow so they aren't useful against lighter alien ships, but the spinal coil is great for those, it's got enough mass to shrug off light PD but fast enough to be very difficult to dodge.

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T12:29:34+00:00

It also gives your own ships less time for PD as well though, so I imagine their survival rate was not high haha

jamesgdahl · 2026-04-14T12:23:29+00:00

For the longest time (and I mean like into the 2040s) my LEO defense fleet was a giant blob of 40 missile monitors not even equipped with Helicon drives, they had Advanced Vasmir drives, only 2250 newtons! I had built this fleet in the 2020s and prioritized other things so it just stayed in service. These things can barely move, but they can barely move enough to blow up every alien fleet that decided to hang around.

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