Necessary Very Long Burn Features: Instant Timewarp Cutoff, a Completely Different Maneuver Editing System, and Pro/Retrograde Hold During Timewarp

[Xheotris]

First off, I'm deeply enjoying KSP2, and I love the big improvements you've already made to the game. The burn during timewarp makes a HUGE number of missions, crafts and profiles possible. I'm excited for interstellar travel, and this post is looking forwards to that feature, so that we can make huge burns in a reasonable way.

 

Prograde and Retrograde Hold During Timewarp
Love the new burn during timewarp feature. However, with very slow crafts, such as large, or even modest, ion ships, we need to have the ability to make a spiraling constant thrust maneuver, as depicted below:

 

I know it's kind of against tradition, but allowing the vessel to rotate on rails, as it were, would massively, massively improve Ion Engines as a player-viable technology.



This craft is *almost* viable as-is, with a TWR way, way south of 0.001, but it's just a bit of a pain while still in LKO, since you have to cut timewarp to 1 very frequently for attitude adjustments.

 

Maneuver Editing
Next, we need a popup window or something for maneuver editing. It's absolutely untenable to make interplanetary course plots with draggable handles. That's enough for the Mun, but it's an absolute bear for anything farther out, especially with the new non-impulsive thrust. The final KSP 1 system was sort of able to do this, but it was still quite half-baked. If I was to list the features of an ideal maneuver planning system, it would be something like the following:

• A list view, from which you can select a maneuver node, in order of execution, without it being visible on screen. It's almost impossible to fine-tune a maneuver when trying to get a clean planetary intercept, because misclicks cause the node to vanish from view, and you need to pull map focus away from the target, find the node, click the node, which, often as not, is occluded by things like Periapsis, Ascending Node, other craft, etc., then you need to refocus on the target planet, swivel around your view to keep the node and the trajectory in view at the same time, and ever-so-gently pull on the node, all without a single misclick that will dismiss the node again.
• Discrete buttons to change a maneuver by a predictable amount. Perhaps 10m/s normally, and 1m/s with CapsLock on, or maybe 10m/s normally and 0.1m/s under CapsLock. This would allow you to test the effect of a small change in angle or magnitude, while being able to easily undo the action if it throws you in the wrong direction.
• Manual entry of values. This is the biggest part that KSP 1 got right, though it was still quite annoying to do, due to the above issues.

 

Instant Timewarp Cutoff
The way in which timewarp ratchets slowly to the next setting is absolutely disastrous for precise burns. At the very least, I need `/` to cut straight to 1x, bypassing the normal ratchet steps. It's useful that timewarp isn't fully on when you increase it, but the slow decrease has caused many, many quickloads and reverts for me.