Running List: Simple Suggestions

[Wcmille]

3 hours ago, Geonovast said:

I would kill for the blue trajectory line in not-map-view.

 

What do you mean by that?

[Geonovast]

3 minutes ago, Wcmille said:

What do you mean by that?

The blue line in map view that shows you your orbit.  I would love to have that when you're focused in on the vessel.

[Wcmille]

24 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

The blue line in map view that shows you your orbit.  I would love to have that when you're focused in on the vessel.

How would you use that? Wouldn't that just be whatever is dead ahead when looking prograde?

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, Wcmille said:

How would you use that? Wouldn't that just be whatever is dead ahead when looking prograde?

Not at all.

[Fireheart318]

A tiny radial decoupler would be great. Also a tiny cockpit like the Spitfire from ThorTech. It would also be nice to have everything be radial-mounted (as well as nodes)

[Blaarkies]

3 hours ago, Geonovast said:

The blue line in map view that shows you your orbit.  I would love to have that when you're focused in on the vessel.

The trajectories mod now has that. You see a line from prograde, following your trajectory down to the surface. There really isn't much to see, it's not useful at all since the perspective from the craft shows a mostly straight, short line.

The landing/impact marker on the surface in flight mode is somewhat useful though

[Geonovast]

6 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

The landing/impact marker on the surface in flight mode is somewhat useful though

That's pretty much what I'm after.  Couldn't care less about the line in orbit, but for landing where I want.  I'll look into the mod.

[sevenperforce]

Make "Control From Here" apply to engines and to any stack decouplers, not just command units and ports. Make "Set as Target" apply to command units as well as docking ports.

Make docking ports enable EVA.

Edited January 18, 2018 by sevenperforce

[SnailsAttack]

Not sure if it's been listed here but I'd definitely appreciate the ability to dump fuel and other resources that aren't needed and just subtract from your ship's delta v.

[XLjedi]

8 minutes ago, SnailsAttack said:

Not sure if it's been listed here but I'd definitely appreciate the ability to dump fuel and other resources that aren't needed and just subtract from your ship's delta v.

Oxidizer... I'm looking at you!  ;-D

[SnailsAttack]

3 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

Oxidizer... I'm looking at you!  ;-D

god yes the damn oxidizer that i keep carrying on my nuclear engine rockets lol

Edited January 18, 2018 by SnailsAttack
error

[sevenperforce]

9 minutes ago, SnailsAttack said:

Not sure if it's been listed here but I'd definitely appreciate the ability to dump fuel and other resources that aren't needed and just subtract from your ship's delta v.

How about an "active cooling" tile? Functions like an ablative heat shield, but instead of consuming ablator it consumes other resources from your ship, and you can surface attach it to heat-shield other parts. I'm tired of being stuck with circular heat shields and no heat-resistant structural parts.

Like the Convert-O-Trons, it would have toggles to select which resource to use. Different resources would have different heat-sink capabilities. It would have an activate/deactive toggle and a "dump rate" slider at the top, which allows you to choose how rapidly to dump your selected resource (from 0 to 100), and a toggle to choose whether dumping is done manually or automatically.

Then you could use it to dump non-essential resources, or you could use it to build a regenerative heat shield.

[SnailsAttack]

4 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

How about an "active cooling" tile? Functions like an ablative heat shield, but instead of consuming ablator it consumes other resources from your ship, and you can surface attach it to heat-shield other parts. I'm tired of being stuck with circular heat shields and no heat-resistant structural parts.

Like the Convert-O-Trons, it would have toggles to select which resource to use. Different resources would have different heat-sink capabilities. It would have an activate/deactive toggle and a "dump rate" slider at the top, which allows you to choose how rapidly to dump your selected resource (from 0 to 100), and a toggle to choose whether dumping is done manually or automatically.

Then you could use it to dump non-essential resources, or you could use it to build a regenerative heat shield.

That's a cool idea. Another I've seen from a mod is the injection of oxidizer in nuclear engines to give them a colossal increase in thrust at the expense of ISP. Anyways, that'd be a good alternate use for the stuff.

[XLjedi]

11 minutes ago, SnailsAttack said:

god yes the damn oxidizer that i keep carrying on my nuclear engine rockets lol

Would seem like there'd be some way to maybe dump the oxidizer into the nuke engine exhaust for some sort of an afterburner effect?  ...maybe get a little thrust boost in the process.  With no detrimental effect on liquid fuel use of course.

Edited January 18, 2018 by XLjedi

[Human Person]

14 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

Would seem like there'd be some way to maybe dump the oxidizer into the nuke engine exhaust for some sort of an afterburner effect?  ...maybe get a little thrust boost in the process.  With no detrimental effect on liquid fuel use of course.

No, that would likely reduce the specific impulse because the exhaust gases would have a much higher molar mass (18 instead of 2 g/mol assuming Hydrolox)

 

edit: wait, you said afterburner, so you want more thrust, not more ISP. Ok, you might get more thrust

Edited January 18, 2018 by Physics Student

[sevenperforce]

10 minutes ago, SnailsAttack said:

That's a cool idea. Another I've seen from a mod is the injection of oxidizer in nuclear engines to give them a colossal increase in thrust at the expense of ISP. Anyways, that'd be a good alternate use for the stuff.

Yeah, a LANTR would be really nice. I would like to see a 2.5-meter LANTR with "wet" and "dry" modes, plus the ability to run only the alternator (since it is, after all, a nuclear reactor), albeit with the need for cooling radiators. The "dry" vacuum TWR wouldn't be as good as the LV-N, but the "wet" TWR would be nearly as high as bipropellant engines, both in-atmosphere and out (albeit at a lower isp....like 500s or so). Then you could use the alternator to power ion engines when you're far from Kerbol.

If they introduced "active cooling" tiles, they'd have to be procedural to a degree. You'd lay one down, and then connect other tiles to it, and once you launch, the connected tiles all merge into a single part with a single set of tweakables.

3 minutes ago, Physics Student said:

No, that would likely reduce the specific impulse because the exhaust gases would have a much higher molar mass (18 instead of 2 g/mol assuming Hydrolox)

Yes, LOX-afterburning in nuclear thermal rockets boosts thrust dramatically but hurts specific impulse.

In the real-world, it would be trivial to build an SSTO with lox-afterburning nuclear thermal rocket engines, if it weren't for all the pesky people complaining about dumping nuclear waste into the atmosphere.

[sevenperforce]

30 minutes ago, Physics Student said:

No, that would likely reduce the specific impulse because the exhaust gases would have a much higher molar mass (18 instead of 2 g/mol assuming Hydrolox)

edit: wait, you said afterburner, so you want more thrust, not more ISP. Ok, you might get more thrust

If you afterburn a certain amount of LOX along with your primary fuel in a nuclear thermal rocket engine, your average isp will be lower than if you burned only your primary fuel, but your net dV will be greater than if you merely dumped the LOX separately.

If you inject water into nuclear thermal rocket engine exhaust your net dV will be identical to what it would be if you dumped the water separately. However, your thrust will be higher during the H₂O injection.

[sevenperforce]

Allow any engine to be used as a vernier.

[InterplanetJanet]

Put in a switchable - at least in the VAB/SPH, preferably in flight too - to allow ANY engine to be controlled by EITHER the RCS system OR the engine throttle.

And action-group-assignable.

[Geonovast]

The ability to launch a kerbal from the Astronaut Complex and plop'm right at the front door.

[Wcmille]

What do others think about [ and ] not cycling between flags and debris, but then adding <Special>+[ or <Special>+] to cycle amongst all types (in case you really want to cycle across all that stuff).

[InterplanetJanet]

4 minutes ago, Wcmille said:

What do others think about [ and ] not cycling between flags and debris, but then adding <Special>+[ or <Special>+] to cycle amongst all types (in case you really want to cycle across all that stuff).

Totally emphatically YES!!! 

Especially when you try to switch through some debris and can't get back to the original ship or your intended target because stuff moved! (or no apparent reason at all...)

[Kermunmus]

Regen-braking on rover wheels as a potential power-saving option for places with less power like Jool and Eeloo

[GrouchyDevotee]

I'm playing on a PS4 console. How about some more early game science gathering tools.

-sample scoop.

-radiation detector.

-IR scan.

-Snack scanners.

As far as other game play options, I'd like to be able to use RCS thrusters for fine detailed manoeuvres/course corrections while in map mode. 

As for other contracts that might be available, how about being contracted to launch a pre-built Hubble, Kepler or Webb telescopes in specific orbits. That might have to be repaired later on.

[sevenperforce]

6 minutes ago, GrouchyDevotee said:

As far as other game play options, I'd like to be able to use RCS thrusters for fine detailed manoeuvres/course corrections while in map mode. 

You can do this.