one more bug:
during time acceleration beyond 1,000x, the world around the LEM moves faster than the LEM. once i hit 10,000x aceleration, the deltaglider traveled around its orbit 10,000x faster, but the LEM stayed at its previous 1,000x faster, ruining my well organised synchronisation trajectory. can you think what could cause the lander to disobey orbiter, and not increase its own time compression?
also, ive found that theres not much room for error during landing, due to the low dV available. i find that after a good de-orbit, leaving me in a good position to start my approach to a pad, that i only have a minute's worth of fuel, which requires a rapid and hasty descent, with almost no chance of putting her on a pad.
whilst this is realistic in that the real apollo craft could never have landed within 10m of their target (and would instead settle for getting it within a few kilometres), it makes things even harder for less experienced pilots, who don't get the initial descent right, and may require a number of aborted descents. in short, perhaps you could increase the ISP a little, somewhere between 5% and 10% more should do it.
again, the ascent stage is similar. whilst i can get it docked rather easily given the dV budget of the ascent stage, im not sure that the less experienced ("casual") pilots could, so perhaps an ISP increase across the board would be best
and finally, heres a detailed mission plan for those people trying to get the hang of this (only orbiter autopilots used):
from the "orbital" scenario, you find yourself in a descending orbit. undock straight away, and prepare for the flight. tune the Brighton VOR and circularize the DG's orbit (he's not coming down with us).
next, burn retrograde to lower the PeA to about 10Km (your ApA should be roughly 100Km), then wait till you come within 500km of brighton
using the VOR/VTOL MFD (or MapMFD) wait till you pass the 450km mark. before you reach this point, orient yourself to be facing Zenit (your back to the moon, looking directly away from it) with your engine pointing prograde (so firing it is burning retrograde). as you pass the 450km mark, hold numpad 0 to engage your engines (full power). you are now performing your descent, from this point onwards, if anything goes wrong, you need to abort, and try to regain orbit, staging when necessary.
now, during the descent, you will mostly be just decelerating. using the Surface MFD you can get the right slope, just make sure that you hold a roughly constand descent rate of 20m/s. make small adjustments to your attitude, and use the VACC readout to get it just right. once your speed gets below 200m/s (after a long burn), you should be ready to pitch down, and look for your landing point.
now things get interesting. you will probably not be able to get right on top of a pad, so aim to get within 5km of the target (a rover can pick you up from there), but dont make any strong movements, or you will most certainly lose control, and waste loads of fuel, which is not good at this point. if you have overshot the target, just stay pitched up as your speed reaches zero, and move back towards your target, though you will have to use only your instruments from now, since turning round whilst pitched can be very difficult.
make a steady descent, and hit numpad [*] once you drop to 5m altitude, with almost no vertical speed, you will then touch down nicely.
ready to ascend? wait for your host craft (GL-NT) to pass overhead (ideally five degrees before it actually passes over), and stage. the ascent engine will automatically fire. pitch forward straight away to roughly 50 degrees down, then pitch down as necessary to hold your vertical speed around 30m/s upwards, decelerating at 0.1m/s^2
as your speed approaches 1.6km/s, check that your vertical speed is low, and aim to get it as small as possible, then cut your engines as your PeA reaches your altitude.
from now on, the "hover engine" is difficult to use, and low on fuel, so you may want to use the RCS in translation mode instead. perform a normal synchronisation and dock, then dispose of the lander safely (deorbit it
)
if im not clear enough, let me know and il take a little more time writing it
thanks
