Quick Noob Question

[Jman]

First things first, I love Rogue System and really appreciate all the hard work that's being put into it. I know it has a long way to go and a lot of systems are unfinished right now, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something obvious. I've had the game for a while and I check in pretty often, but I haven't visited a lot of the places to see yet.

How exactly are you supposed to find a station in orbit of a planet and then get yourself into a matching orbit alongside it so you can dock? I found this great writeup that lists some of the different stations and what planets they orbit.

So how do you actually go from being in orbit around a planet to docking with a station there? Using the sensors you can find a target (presumably the station) and lock onto that, but that just gives you a distance direction and relative speed (?), which isn't enough information, right? Is the only way to rendezvous with a station to look up the correct orbital data outside the game and then match that? If somebody could point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it :)

[pacoo2454]

I'm sure there are more efficient ways to solve the problem (doing some math and a Hohmann Transfer?) but this is what I do to find another station.

When I arrive at my new location I will put myself into an orbit like the stations and circularize. I will then lock onto the station I am looking for and figure out where it is relative to me. You can do this by pointing yourself at the target and finding out where they are relative to your markers. If the ship is toward your prograde it is in front of you, retrograde it is behind you. Half way in between and it is on the other side of the planet/moon. From here I will determine if I need to speed up or slow down to meet up with the station. Change orbits to meet this need then wait. A lower orbit will make you go faster while I higher orbit will slow you down. Eventually the only distance between you and the ship will be from your difference in orbits. Then burn towards the ship, get closer, burn away to slow down, repeat a few times and you will eventually arrive at the station.

Some tips, typically you want to approach the station from behind so if it is behind you and you slow down to meet up with it, waiting for it to get a bit past you first makes it easier to meet up with it.

Another tip, there are buttons which will reverse the thrust of either MES or MTS (which ever engine you use, I typically start with MES then finish the last ~25k with MTS) so when you start burning away from the station you don’t need to spin around. Just hit the switch and instead of pulling your green prograde marker (that is prograde relative to your target) you will be pushing it.

Hopefully this makes sense, this is the first time I have tried to describe this so feel free to ask for clarification. If someone else has a better technique I would love to hear it also! I learned orbital mechanics from KSP so it might not be the most efficient but it works! :D

[dariusz1983]

Usually those stations have a somewhat high orbit. What I do is to get into a lower orbit like 100km. Then hit U until I see it on my radar. If I can see it on radar closing in, speed up time untill it starts moving away. And since fuel is cheap, point at it and activate your MTS boster. Enable tracking in the VMS. Keep adjusting the velocity vector so you're flying right at it. Keep activating your booster to maintain a reasonable approach velocity. Closing in slow down. Don't panic if at a certain point the orbital data readout suggests you're on impact course. Once close enough to the station, cancel out your velocity and there you go. Is this fuel effective? Hell no. But it works 😂

[bjameswilliams]

No, you're not missing anything, there's no particularly easy way to do this at the moment. I assume there will be, eventually.

Everything in the sandbox is in a more or less circular, prograde, equatorial orbit. So if you can guess the station's altitude, then it's just a matter of either orbiting higher to let it catch up, or lower to catch up to it. Once it's close, point towards target retrograde to null out velocity, then point your nose at it & go.

One of the main reasons that I made that guide you linked to was so that other people wouldn't have to play the 'guess the altitude' game. Usually, I would get into a high orbit and wait for the target to pass under me, right between me and the planet or moon. Then, you can make a pretty good guess at it's altitude: target's altitude = your altitude - your distance to target.

[Jman]

Thanks for the advice, I'll see if I can make something work :)

One other problem I've been having is that I *always* have temperature issues. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, either. I've tried running the TMS on low and high settings, with and without the lazer cooler, and with and without the radiator panels. No matter what, my battery 2 always overheats, then the TMS system itself, and then everything breaks. I feel like this must be something I'm doing wrong, but besides having the TMS turned on there isn't any other way to manage heat, right?

[Naiba]

Batteries heat up while charging. Charging both batteries at the same time will lead to an overheat no matter what situation your cooling systems are in. It's best to only charge one at a time unless you want to micromanage it. Shut the auto-charge off when the temperature starts creeping up over, say 100F? and leave them to cool a little while between charging periods.

You are opening the cargo bay doors to allow the radiator panels to deploy, right?

You can also turn your ship so the sun isn't directly hitting your radiators. Doing that will help them cool faster. (Even if you need to be facing a specific direction for a burn, you can rotate the ship so the sun hits the side of the panels rather than a face of them.

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Another thing to keep in mind is that temperature bleeds from high temperature systems to low temperature ones. If you see a temperature creeping up for seemingly no reason, look around for the hottest running system on your ship.

Once the temperature of the system you're worried about reaches the temperature of the hottest system on your ship, both temperatures should equalise and start cooling down together. (Unless there really is a problem, or the system is generating its own heat as part of its function.)

[Jman]

I didn't realize charging both batteries would cause an overheat. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks :)

[bjameswilliams]

I've never noticed this being an issue, personally. I always leave both batteries on auto-charge as long as they're on an LENR-backed bus and I've never noticed overheating issues.

[Naiba]

Originally posted by bjameswilliams:

I've never noticed this being an issue, personally. I always leave both batteries on auto-charge as long as they're on an LENR-backed bus and I've never noticed overheating issues.

If the battery's fully charged, it doesn't generate any heat just leaving the auto-charge on. If you tie battery 1 to bus 1 and 2, you probably never use any of battery 2's charge in the first place.

[Jman]

Hmm I'm not sure what the issue could be then. Every time I play, my battery or TMS system ALWAYS overheats and breaks. I'm sure it's some mistake that I'm making, but I don't know what I could be doing wrong.

[bjameswilliams]

Originally posted by Naiba:

If the battery's fully charged, it doesn't generate any heat just leaving the auto-charge on.

For some reason I thought you meant that leaving auto-charge on would generate heat, but you just meant actively charging, I gotcha now.

Originally posted by Jman:

Hmm I'm not sure what the issue could be then.

By any chance does it break while you're using time acceleration? The only really wonky behavior I get out of RogSys is when I play on my (under-spec) laptop; if I push the time acceleration past like 2x I get weird temperature issues & systems breaking.

[pacoo2454]

You aren't actively bypassing either the laser cooling or radiators, are you? sometimes it will activate by itself but if you leave it alone it will eventually switch back to not bypassing. The only other thing I can recommend is to ALWAYS have laser cooling and radiators active and your pumps at high until you are told by STC to stow your deployed equipment. I found myself having overheating issues also when I deviated from the proper startup procedure (simulating a lifeboat/low power scenario) but once I switched back to always having them activated my overheating issues stopped.

[Jman]

Well I got farther than before thanks to all the advice here. By switching one of the batteries off charging mode I didn't run into any heating problems :)

I don't think I did the burn correctly because after putting it into the computer and set up the burn, I ended up going the wrong direction :P

I think eventually I'll get the hang of it though, especially as the game continues to grow :D

[Naiba]

Yeah, you'll want to make sure to set the navigation computer to Destination Attitude Reference and Destination I/C Prograde.

Although your problem may have been as simple as having the view screen set to look behind you. ;)

Oh, and the map is sort-of-upside-down* right now.

*It's looking up from underneath the system when you're above looking down on the map. It's not 'wrong', it just goes against standard convention for showing star systems. Rolling your ship so the planet or moon is on your right when you face prograde should help with navigation using the map.
At least till the map's fixed. ;)

[Jman]

Oh, that makes a lot of sense.

What's the difference between "Dest Orbit Pro" and "Dest IC Pro" when trying to get yourself to another planet?

I assumed that I/C course would basically target you straight-on to the planet so you fly right into it, but Dest Orbit would insert you into orbit. Is that not the case?

[Naiba]

I believe I/C stands for 'intercept'. I assume 'Destination Orbit Prograde' does something like point you directly at your destination rather than along an intercept course that takes acceleration, deceleration and travel times into account. I've never used it though so might be wrong on that guess.