So what's up with the controls?

[Kogure]

I grabbed KSP on the summer sale, and although I had a lot of fun with it already, one thing seems to be particularily annoying. Namely, the "manual" rocket controls. Q and E control the spinning, and that's pretty straight forward, but WASD are very counter-intuitive. When I'm pressing W, I expect the nose to go down whatever the position of the camera is. When I'm pressing A, I expect it to turn left. Same goes for S and D. Instead, the controls do completely different things. Sometimes just one button moves the nose both up and left. I very often end up spinning out of control and having to abort the mission (I don't have SAS yet).

So what's up with that? Why are the controls completely different than in any other aircraft simulator?

[orb]

Controls aren't relative to the (external) camera but to the vessel's (control module's) orientation. They aren't completely different from any other simulator. You can see orientation of the vessel with relation to the gravitational body under which sphere of influence you are by looking at the nav. ball. You can switch to chase camera if it's hard for you to control vessels by just looking at the nav. ball. In the chase mode orientation of camera is relative to orientation of the controlled vessel.

[Scarecr0w99]

orb is correct, you have to fly using your navball, that is not different from any other aircraft simulator. Every flight sim (plane or spacecraft) has a navball and use it for orientation. chase mode is something one usually only uses for docking, i find it personally annoying to fly with it.

and if you use a manned command module you will always have SAS ( atleast as long as you have electric power) just press "t" to activate it.

[ZariaGalaxy]

Originally posted by Cycon101:

and if you use a manned command module you will always have SAS

No, all pods have SAS.

[Zombo]

Fly in chase view to keep your view orientated to the controls.

[Kogure]

Don't worry, everything is fine now. I took some samples and reports around the space center, and I was able to unlock the first SAS module. It doesn't really change the controls, but fixing my mistakes will be much easier.

[Zombo]

You can also bind the controls to different keys that suit you better. And use a joystick, for standard flight control.

[Bubba Fett]

Other than using the chase view, you could put a marker on the upper spine of your ship. Small batteries are nice since they light up. This way you can roll the ship so up on the navball is also up on the screen.
The side facing the open door of the VAB is normally considered the belly of the craft.