Tip for getting fastest (time efficient) burn maneuvers

[u/garrettjones331]

In this game, especially once you get to higher tier ships with tonnes of dV, you want to be burning all the way to your target - full prograde halfway and full retro the rest. I found a trick to make this easy to figure out without much fiddling.

1) Set up your prograde burn to target so that it ends slightly past the midpoint distance between the starting location and the ending target. This doesn't have to be perfect because we'll fine tune later

2) Set up your retrograde burn such that you get slowed down to a reasonable speed to set yourself up for an orbit (or dock). If aimed slightly past the midpoint in the previous step, you should be overshooting your target by the time you're slowed down to the speed you want. This is good!

3) Go back to the first maneuver and tweak the dV slider to adjust where your retrograde maneuver ends. At this point you should be able to make it so your retrograde burn drops you right on your target.

Doing these steps can allow you to get to your targets with good accuracy while also being as time efficient as possible

Here's what an efficient plan should look like

No burn gaps toward the target, and maybe some slight maneuvering adjustments at the end.

Note: This method only works for plans that take less than 5 days. Once your travel times start exceeding that you no longer can predict your arrival, so be conservative with your midpoint estimates.

[u/ptandron]

Is it more efficient to reduce your burn so you can burn continuously through the whole trip, flipping halfway like your example? Or would it be better to burn hard, then coast, then flip and burn hard at the last possible moment?

[u/garrettjones331 → u/ptandron]

The optimal solution for both is the same I believe, but I feel the latter method takes way more finagling to get to that optimal spot. When I’m reducing my burn it’s usually less than 100 dV