It depends on your priorities really. Like I know some people in KSP that have been to and landed on every orbital body, yet never managed a successful dock cos its
really hard the first few times and I had done a mun landing before I really got docking nailed down.
Though, in general (and especially in SFS) I agree that docking should be learned before you go outside Earths SOI or try landing anywhere.
If I was making a list of priorities for newcomers to learn to become proficient in this and other realistic space games, I'd suggest this order
- Get off the ground. Doesn't have be efficient, or even half decent. Just learn what it takes to get a rocket off the floor.
- Attain LEO. Again, not looking for super efficiency or weight lifting competitions. Just learn how to reliably get into space and stay there.
- Orbital manoeuvres. What prograde/retrograde (and by extension normal/radial etc) are, what they do for you and how you do them.
- Encounters. With anything, be that a planet, moon, space station, whatever. Learn how to cross paths with a thing in space.
- Docking. And I don't mean space stations, just attaching yourself to something else floating in space. This includes something as simple as flipping the CSM over and re-attaching in your classic 'Apollo' mission
- Celestial encounters and staying inside a new SOI. Why docking first? Because if you can dock, you can get into an orbit with a new body.
- De-orbital actions and landing, parachute assisted first and then powered.
After that, then build crazy shit like spaceplanes and kiloton capacity re-useable starships and incrementally go bigger and better with it. If you go too hard too early, it ruins the game for you.
An example I'll use, is friend of mine I used to work/skydive with went from skateboarding to freefall parachuting to BASE jumping inside of 12 months and skipped all the stuff inbetween in search of MAOR. He freely admits that he made a mistake progressing so fast because once he started jumping off buildings in London city centre,
everything else is boring, including getting out of an aircraft at 15,000ft. And he reached that point before he hit his early twenties. Now if skydiving is boring, can you imagine how boring theme parks are? It ruined his enjoyment of everything that wasn't standing on a cliff edge in Norway or an antenna next to the M4.
SFS is the same. They've bought the DLC, downloaded the most mahoosive launch system available, put a bajillion tons into jupiter SOI in the first day they had the game and then gone 'I'm BORED, give me ideas plz' and not gone through the game itself, how the mechanics work, failing loads (I'll speak for everyone here and say that it doesn't matter how good you are, there's a quicksave for
every manoeuvre you do just in case it goes wrong) and (for a lack of a better term) earning the right to say you're bored because the game legitimately holds no challenge for you any more.
And then go on the challenge section here and test that theory out.
Try deep space docking, haven’t tried in 1.5 yet but I imagine it’s improved
That's one thing I never enjoyed doing in SFS or KSP, docking outside an SOI. I did a first asteroid capture friday night just outside Kerbin SOI and brought it back to a medium orbit inside but it was a lot harder than expected (not least because of KSPs spaghetti physics prevented me from getting it into the planned low orbit).