Display resource amounts in mass units.

[cantab]

I would like to see the amounts of all non-massless resources displayed in mass units, either kilograms or tonnes, rather than the current system of arbitrary units.

This could be done without any code changes, simply by updating the resource definitions and part .cfg's appropriately, although that would mess up the balance of existing mod parts. Alternatively the game code could be changed to accept resource amounts in part .cfg's as either the legacy arbitrary-units parameters or a new mass-units parameter and convert automatically to display in mass units, thereby not changing existing mod parts.

I feel this change would make the game more transparent. At present there's nothing to directly tell the player whether 100 units of fuel weighs more, less, or the same as as 100 units of monopropellant, or even how much they *do* weigh. It creates an additional needless barrier to understanding and using the rocket equation oneself, which is something I feel players should do - delta-V should not be a "black box".

[Red Iron Crown]

I'd like to see this as well. The units in stock just seem arbitrary.

[Renegrade]

Alternatively the game code could be changed to accept resource amounts in part .cfg's as either the legacy arbitrary-units parameters or a new mass-units parameter and convert automatically to display in mass units, thereby not changing existing mod parts.

Doing this bit would be trivial and is probably the best path to take. It would just need to update the VAB, right click, and resource panel (does anybody use the stock one though? It's horrible). There is a bit of a usability issue though - Xenon in particular is used in very small quantities - 700 units is 0.07t (70kg). Of course if the indicators were better, they could automatically switch between scales (that's 70,000 grams, 70 kilograms, 0.070 tons, 0.000 070 kilotons, etc*) as required...

Another minor issue is that electric charge and EVA propellant is massless (the EVA propellant being massless is it's own separate epic fail)... that could be handled simply by displaying them in their legacy units of course (of course if you consider it carefully, you realize that the legacy units are probably a volume measure so.. 100 kerbal liters of electric charge?)

It creates an additional needless barrier to understanding and using the rocket equation oneself

Strongly agree. I actually have (effectively) a little table of mass conversions for these durned things..

I'd like to see this as well. The units in stock just seem arbitrary.

SEEM?

A ton of LF/O is 90 LF, 110 O, a ton of solid fuel is 133 and a third (yes, a third!), a ton of RCS is 250, a ton of Xenon is 10000....

* - damn metric. So sensible. In my day, that would have been 1,714 and 8/12ths millifirkins of water. If it's broke, don't fix it!

[Joonatan1998]

The only thing where I think this could be an issue are life support mods that like to use an "kerbal day"(6 or 24hours?) as an unit.

But if modders chan choose if they use this or not then this would make the game easier to understand for new players.

[Azimech]

Totally agree with this!

[BudgetHedgehog]

Excellent suggestion, would make things a lot easier to understand.

[Starwhip]

I'd like to see this as well. The units in stock just seem arbitrary.

Reason may or may not be that they are arbitrary. Warranty void if developers admit that propellant resource units are arbitrary.

[Whirligig Girl]

Last I found was that a unit of Fuel or Oxidizer is equal to about 5 liters.

[Red Iron Crown]

Last I found was that a unit of Fuel or Oxidizer is equal to about 5 liters kilograms.

Fixed for you. The wiki treats units as liters themselves, but that leads to some unusual results if you calculate volumes.

[AbacusWizard]

I'm highly in favor of all measurements being given in standard SI units. Just because some real world engineers are foolish and use imperial units doesn't mean Kerbals can't be smart for once.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Resource units are arbitrary units of volume. Please don't talk about realism, all that's being asked for is showing the mass of onboard resources instead of their volume.

This can easily be done as a toggled option, or indeed simply alongside the arbitrary, easily readable and comparable volume units.

I could agree with it in part, if only because it makes sense to. Rocket efficiency is about the fuel mass flow rate, not volume.

However I would strongly disagree with removing the volume display entirely. I find readouts in the form of abstract units to be far more descriptive and easy to gauge than any hypothetical mass readout. "2125 LiquidFuel" is an easier number to process than "10.625 tons LiquidFuel", to me.

Edited March 7, 2015 by Sean Mirrsen

[tntristan12]

"Dude, it's Squad!" -Regex

That said: I absolutely agree. It would make designing rockets so much easier!

[Xannari Ferrows]

If you take a look in the resource folder, the density is listed at .005. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but since the standard unit of mass in the game is metrik tons, I would assume it means 5 kilograms per unit?

[Red Iron Crown]

If you take a look in the resource folder, the density is listed at .005. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but since the standard unit of mass in the game is metrik tons, I would assume it means 5 kilograms per unit?

That's exactly right, for fuel and oxidizer. Units of other resources have different masses (0.1kg for a unit of xenon, 7.5kg for a unit of solid fuel, etc).

[Guest]

The modding community is trying to standardize on 1unit = 1liter through CRP, and even RealFuels is folding into it. I really think Squad needs to standardize their "unit" so that everything is consistent and understandable. While I think a display in mass would be great as a choice I let the computer calculate my delta-V, so having the number of liters displayed ("arbitrary units") is just as meaningful. It would be simple GUI code to switch between those two choices.

[Xannari Ferrows]

Well, given that the volume of a FL-200 fuel tank is 4.909 [approx] m³, and 200 units of a resource type in total. Since they both weigh the same, we can combine them.

4.909/200 = .024545 cubic meters for every one unit of both.

.02008 total cubic meters for fuel, and .0299995 total for oxidizer. [Approximations used]

Well, squad, you got a good math adviser [and calculator].