1.0 is great, but I think it needs something more

[Kaito]

First off, congratulations to Squad for 1.0. It's been a long journey for them, and this game has been an incredible ride from the first time I bought it all the way in .12. The release has brought a ton of much needed features to the game, and while it is in a much better state than .90, I still feel it needs some polish to get that nice shiny feel that releases need.

(As a note, I only dabbled in contracts once, and quit almost right away. I don't like the way it was done, so I only play sandbox. My experience with contracts and science comes with what other people tell me and with what I read.)

*Solar Panels deploying in the VAB/SPH: Landing gear, service bays, cargo bays...all of these can be deployed in the VAB/SPH to see how they fold out and such. Why are solar panels left out?

*Connections of control surfaces: I feel I have become complacent with this. Every time I try to place a control surface on a wing, it always defaults to an unexpected rotation, or sometimes refuses to connect in ways I expect. This is in the spaceplane hangar, not the VAB. When you grab a wing or a fuel tank or whatever, you just expect it to connect in a certain way. Control surfaces don't do this, and I imagine it will be very frustrating to new players who aren't used to it.

*Heat sensors: Now that parts can heat up and explode, we need to be careful how we build things. I had a plane where the engine exhaust was accidentally heating up a tail piece, and it was exploding before other things were. This was infuriating because I had absolutely zero idea why or when it would explode. I have a solution to this problem: Heat sensors. This would be a separate part that you would attach to parts of your craft, and then based on your pilot experience, it would tell you certain information:

* Pilot level 0 or 1 would allow you to right click on the heat sensor to detect it's temperature

* Pilot level 2 or 3 would put a little display on your screen (maybe above the kerbals?) whether a part is at over 80% it's heat capacity or not.

* Pilot level 4 or 5 would have a permanent display (above the kerbals?) of the parts temperature.

This give mores use to skills, and a very real use as well.

*The Delta-V readout should tell you possible destinations: Maybe once you upgrade one of your buildings more, like the tracking station and mission control, the Delta-V readout would tell you things like "If flown perfectly, you have enough Delta-V to reach Jool." This would be a purely mathematical calculation and not take into account possible inaccuracies in pilot flight (maybe as you upgrade those buildings more, you get given a little percent deviation?)

*Adapters for older parts, fuel containers for newer parts?: Look at the adapter for mk2 to 1.25m: It's in the fuel category.

Look at the adapter for 1.25 to 2.5: It's in the structural category.

Why? Why is there this dependency between the adapter locations for "old" parts and "newer" parts?

*Invisible struts connect intersecting parts:

In that plane, you can clearly see how the tail pieces are clipping through some wing parts. What happens when I actually launch it?

Exactly what I expected. What I propose is that when you have parts clipping through each other, some invisible struts connect the two parts together (in this example, the tail piece connects to the wings.) Why do it this way? Because this means that the part strengths are what you would expect, and it also means that you can move the tail pieces without messing up the rest of the connections.

As an extension to this, I also propose that adjacent wing pieces (ones that are barely touching) should also be connected by these invisible struts. It would make building planes a lot easier and honestly, a lot more professional than having ugly, visible struts connect everything.

While none of these are exactly simple to do, I feel that these changes would greatly add a lot to the game. Even a few of the "small" ones (like better logic for control surface connections and solar panel deployment) would give it a more polished feel that a 1.0 release deserves.

[Octa]

The Mk2 Adapter is not just an adapter, but also a fuel tank. The Rockomax 1.25-2.5 does not contain fuel and is purely structural.

Nice idea with the auto-strutting for intersecting parts.