Two Minor Enhancements

[SteveD80]

Building an Eve landed I have come across two minor changes that I feel would be helpful to many.

1: Make stages collapsible, similar to sets of decouples and engines, but add it to the entire stage.  I have lots of parachutes on two separate stages and lots of engines on other stages, construction would be much easier if I could collapse stages that I am not working on.

2: Adjust explosions to be somewhat more realistic.  Empty fuel tanks should not explode when they hit the ground.

[p1t1o]

I'll +1 both of these

[TheDestroyer111]

On 31.10.2016 at 4:30 AM, SteveD80 said:

Building an Eve landed I have come across two minor changes that I feel would be helpful to many.

1: Make stages collapsible, similar to sets of decouples and engines, but add it to the entire stage.  I have lots of parachutes on two separate stages and lots of engines on other stages, construction would be much easier if I could collapse stages that I am not working on.

2: Adjust explosions to be somewhat more realistic.  Empty fuel tanks should not explode when they hit the ground.

No and no. The first one is just adding another useless button for 99% people, at the same time confusing 50% of people. The second one is just not enough kerbal - the game always had and shouldn't lose this "this is so kerbal" aspect 

[DrLicor]

When we're talking about mods, it can be so kerbal as you want it yourself or as realistic as you want. I do really like the first idea. It's a great thing when doing apollo-style missions. Maybe something that would regonize different crafts, so you get the staging per craft. As if you can select more then one root part per rocket. You could think of the seperator in the stagemenu can fuction as a storage for a lander. Once you seperate the craft, the seperator thing unvolds as in a dropdown menu. Also it would be really usefull when you launch more then one sat in a launch.

 

[p1t1o]

50 minutes ago, TheDestroyer111 said:

No and no. The first one is just adding another useless button for 99% people, at the same time confusing 50% of people. The second one is just not enough kerbal - the game always had and shouldn't lose this "this is so kerbal" aspect 

99%? 50%? Really?

The second part is a fair point

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I could definitely second the first one at least. That would be very useful, and I don't see how it would be confusing (unless you're that kind of person who gets confused by the minimize button on your internet window).

As for the second one: It doesn't take much fuel vapor to get a boom, so I'm fine with empty tanks going boom. Maybe they should have a somewhat smaller explosion, but they should still explode.

[Rath]

Empty fuel tanks explode IRL if they are still sealed.  A fact learned by my classmate who decided he should do rifle target practice using a empty propane canister.

[natsirt721]

6 hours ago, Rath said:

Empty fuel tanks explode IRL if they are still sealed.  A fact learned by my classmate who decided he should do rifle target practice using a empty propane canister.

Right, empty fuel tanks are not truly empty.  Its nearly impossible to utilize 100% of the carried fuel in microgravity without some sort of variable-geometry fuel tank.  If you look at the fuel budgets for the Apollo program as in this pdf (page 12) you'll see that there is 250 lbs of fuel mass labeled "Unusable", which works out to ~1.4 percent of the total fuel mass.  250 lbs of RP-1 and LOX will produce quite an explosion if detonated all at once.

Fuel management IRL is wayyyyy more difficult than Kerbal makes it out to be, but having to deal with propellant boil-off and micro-gee fuel transfer and fuel mixing and ullage and whatnot is not nearly as fun for the average player.  Behind every great spaceship are 100 great plumbers

[RatchetinSpace]

I like both of these.

As for the fuel tank suggestion, I think they need to make the fuel tank explosions significantly bigger, they just aren't representative of the fuel in them.

And yes, I think parts should just crumple if they are empty of fuel (although as many have pointed out, empty fuel tanks usually have vapor left that would probably explode, just not as violently as a full one)

[panzer1b]

For the first point i have to agree.  Not only that but i think its about time to allow players to disable staging on anything and everything that can be staged at all.  90% of my vessels use key binds for engines, ect, and all staging does is get in my way and has caused a massive number of mission failures because i accidentally hit space bar and staged something i explicitely never wanted to be staged at all (i think its about time to bind staging to something that isnt space bar ).

As for point 2, there is no such thing as a empty fuel tank, usually enough fuel remains (unless its a bladder style tank which is another story as you can kinda compress those until every last drop is used) to still cause some explosion (and tanks that are low on fuel should actually cause a larger explosion since the amount of vapor (the stuff that actually does the exploding) is greater.  Filled tanks should burn for a long time, empty ones should create a large explosion.

Also, while a bit off topic, i really think fuel tank explosions (if there is sufficient fuel inside) should create a shockwave and increase the heat level of parts nearby (tearing off very weak parts like science equipment, overheating weak parts, and most of all creating a chain reaction that will set off fuel tank stacks).  Right now an explosion is purely visual, but itd be so much more immersive and fun if a 3.75m tank goes up and then has the explosion propagate through all nearby "explosive" parts obliterating an entire stack of fuel tanks (not only is this realistic but i think its pretty damn kerbal to have the entire fuel stack go up in flames if one of the tanks blows)...

[pandaman]

@panzer1b.

Your evil plan has been uncovered .You just want to make more realistic bombs and missiles. .

[Kerbal101]

On 11/5/2016 at 5:25 PM, panzer1b said:

For the first point i have to agree.  Not only that but i think its about time to allow players to disable staging on anything and everything that can be staged at all.  90% of my vessels use key binds for engines, ect, and all staging does is get in my way and has caused a massive number of mission failures because i accidentally hit space bar and staged something i explicitely never wanted to be staged at all (i think its about time to bind staging to something that isnt space bar ).

 

Mod + L     Lock current stage (very useful before you accidentally hit the spacebar)     0.08.4

 

Edited November 8, 2016 by Kerbal101

[klgraham1013]

On 11/1/2016 at 6:46 AM, TheDestroyer111 said:

 at the same time confusing 50% of people.

If you're playing KSP, a bit of intelligence should be expected.

1:  Good idea.

2:  Yes.

Edited November 8, 2016 by klgraham1013