How to Tutorial Mission #2?

[4ntidote]

So I launch the tiny tutorial ship, make it fly a high arc, stage the chute at the highest point and then watch it tear a crater into the ground because it's much too fast for the chute to deploy. I've tried playing around with the altitude and pressure setting but the chute either rips or won't deploy at all.

I get why it does that, what I don't get is why the ship is so fast. According to the tutorial guy the ship is supposed to slow down the closer it gets to the ground but that's not what I am seeing.

I guess it's safe to say I am doing it wrong. Halp!

[miklkit]

Too much high and not enough arc. Try laying it over at a 45 degree angle and see what happens, but only after getting 100 M/S in speed up first.

[Pembroke]

Can't remember what the mission was but some generic tips for the situation you describe:

1) Do you need to get as high as you are now going? If not, then reduce the amount of fuel if you are using a solid fuel booster (Flea, Hammer) or throttle the engine back to a lower thrust if you are using a liquid fuel engine.

2) Do you need to stage the parachute at the highest altitude? If not, and if you are using a manned command pod, have a decoupler just below the pod and detach the pod from the rest of the rocket when you are at the top of your arc. The pod is built to aerobrake so it will decelerate when you hit the thicker atmosphere. When you have decelerated to a low enough speed (parachute icons white; not red or yellow) and are at a reasonable altitude, say, 5000 meters then stage your parachutes.

I think the default parachute deploy altitude of 1000 m is a bit risky. Mostly it's enough, sometimes it's not. If you are not in a hurry to get to the ground 2000 m works better. Besides, you can time warp after you are happily floating down with your succesfully opened parachutes.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

If it's the one called "Basic Flight", that is a really badly made mission IMO.

My suggestion is to right click the parachute and set the pressure as low as possible and the altitude as high as possible before take off.

When you take off, try to turn to the right 45 degrees with the D key. When your booster cuts out, hold the A key, that will try and turn the nose of the rocket upwards and slow you down significantly; If you hold it long enough the rocket will get unstable and start to tumble - That's a good thing. Deploy the parachute at this point, you should have slowed yourself enough that it will deploy fully before you get too fast.

Unfortunately it will take a long-ass time to get to the bottom, but at least you'll do it :) Once you've got that nailed down, you can do it again with the parachute at the normal settings, and once you deploy try to keep the nav-ball pointer on the retro-grade marker - that's what you would be aiming for in a real rocket launch.

But, this mission is HORRIBLE for teaching you to re-enter or use parachutes. If you were bringing an entire rocket back like this, you'd normally have SAS on and/or drogue chutes to try to keep it aimed at the Retrograde marker so that you slow yourself down. And normally you'd not be bringing something back like this anyway.

[4ntidote]

Yes, the setup of this mission is rather odd since it forces the player into a scenario they should avoid to encounter in the first place (like attempting to land with solid fuel boosters attached).

I have tried everything you suggested and the only viable strategy to survive this mission is to aim for the ~45 degree angle and not sit back and wait for everything to go automatically (like tutorial guy suggests) but to try and descend engine first, which I found rather difficult to accomplish with the booster still attached. In terms of reducing speed this seems to make all the difference.

In can finally move on now. Thanks a lot everyone!

[GunsForBucks]

I think the tutorials are kind of bad intentionally. <aside from the broken state the last update left them>

They make mistakes etc.... the whole idea is to try to get the player to think for themselves beyond what they are being told.

Personally I took that ideology to heart and just stopped with the tutorials after the first two or three and just learned by doing. I had enough of the tutorial to teach me how the UI worked in basic terms, that is all I really needed to get started.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

I'm not sure if it's that or that they were made when the physics were different. I know they've changed a lot over the years, the amount of dV to get to orbit has changed significantly. But I can't remember what it was like when I first did the tutorials, but I don't remember having this issue... Then again that was a fair while ago so maybe it did and I've blanked it from my memory out of frustration lol.

It seems like a lot of people have trouble with them. Maybe the text should be altered to imply the person should figure out what to do, because at the moment it specifically tells the player to just sit back and watch. Either way, it's pretty bad, you can't even enable SAS during the tutorial, or at least I couldn't when I tested it for this discussion.

[4ntidote]

I agree, the tutorials seem fairly outdated. Another issue I've encountered is being instructed to add parts that are not available in the list. But who knows, perhaps the sole purpose of the tutorial is to prepare players for the inevitable frustration they will have to deal with later on.

I don't think there even was a tutorial when I last played KSP. It is true that a lot has changed since then, or maybe I just don't remember, but from here on out I'll switch back to the trial and explosion type of approach.

[GunsForBucks]

Originally posted by 4ntidote:

I agree, the tutorials seem fairly outdated. Another issue I've encountered is being instructed to add parts that are not available in the list. But who knows, perhaps the sole purpose of the tutorial is to prepare players for the inevitable frustration they will have to deal with later on.

I don't think there even was a tutorial when I last played KSP. It is true that a lot has changed since then, or maybe I just don't remember, but from here on out I'll switch back to the trial and explosion type of approach.

As far as the parts in other tutorials

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2597242366

Things got messed up when they added construction and you have to look for the parts now.

Not a great situation... I believe when the game first came out it didn't even have a tutorial so your memory is probably correct in that.

Seat of the pants learning is probably the most fun though... at times I wish I could forget what I learned so I could easily blow stuff up by mistake again. Good times although could be frustrating... makes it all the better when you succeed.