The new non-impulsive maneuver editor

[vossiewulf]

22 hours ago, intelliCom said:

I mean, it's not like I haven't used radial in/out before. I really only use it if I'm trying to circularize my orbit more precisely.
To my understanding, radial out puts the periapsis behind me and the apoapsis ahead of me, while radial in does the reverse.

I guess what I'm really trying to understand is how it's useful beyond circularisation?

Radial In/Out rotate the orbit around the point of the burn. This is usually very handy when transferring to another planet and you need to generate an interception of the target planet's SOI. They're also handy to get satellite contracts to the exact right orbit.

[Lowi_Sace]

On 10/29/2022 at 11:24 AM, intelliCom said:

I have some suggested thoughts for non-impulsive maneuver planner. Next to each suggestion is stars between 1-3 to indicate difficulty of implementation, just in case actual devs see this:

1. ★★☆ - Ability to specify between a range of possible DV usage, between minimum and maximum
   • "Minimum" refers to the usual Hohmann transfer we're all used to; the minimal DV usage for an interplanetary transfer
   • "Maximum" refers to using all the DV in the craft for the fastest one-way brachistocrone trajectory possible.
   • Before generating the maneuver, the player can see how long the transfer will take based on their chosen DV amount.
2. ★★☆ - Any slight deviation from the first maneuver (e.g, being off by about 2 m/s out of 2000) and the game will adjust future maneuvers to follow as closely to the original as possible.
   • This was always a really annoying problem in KSP1. You would set a chain of maneuvers up, only for you to have finished one maneuver slightly off. This required adjustment to all the other maneuvers. Having the game automatically adjust them based on subtle variation in the previous maneuver would be extremely helpful.
3. ★☆☆ - Allow a chained maneuver plan to be generated by the player, back at the VAB (or any other launch site)
   • This means that the spacecraft's DV can be planned to follow the maneuvers, instead of the other way around.
4. ★★★ - Gravity assist generation
   • This is pretty difficult, so implementation of such a feature would be a miracle. But if it were included, it would allow players to minimise the DV on their spacecraft and get more science done.

Point 1 and 2 will probably be implemented. With the torch engines point 1 is very practical and point 2 almost necessary for interstellar travel (you need to plan a long deacceleration burn)

Point 3 could be easily implemented. Being able to say how much fuel you reserve for a certain stage of the mission. Gravity assists were hard in ksp1. Predictions of orbits/encounters did not go far in the future and we didn’t get a map/timeframe when certain gravity assists were practical/possible to use