Ideas to warn of overheating parts.

[DundraL]

So in many other threads, I'm seeing alot of people asking for a way to know of a part getting too hot in ways other than seeing it explode.

People want to know of problems before things start exploding so...

Once a part get to a threshold of heat, say 80% of the temp it explodes at, have it emit DARK BLACK smoke effects. IMO, it would be much more fun to see parts smoking before they went up instead of looking at whatever dials, right click menu ETC for a status on temp.....

But this smoke should be different from regular exhaust in the following ways:

-The particles comprising it need to grow from very small to large RAPIDLY.

This is to allow a player to see with more detail what is overheating, while being very noticeable. Is it the battery on the side or the hull its attached to thats burning? This whole effect is essentially an arrow pointing to the part that's cooking after all.

-They need to be a very dark BLACK, to be noticeable even amid the shock heading, mach effects and engine exhaust. If it looks like anything else, it wont be noticed, and wont be useful.

-It need to be dense smoke to be noticeable, as ships suffering from overheating tend to be moving extremely fast. Having a puff of smoke every 100m isnt gonna warn of anything. This means rapidly spawning particle effects. To prevent loss of frame rate, they also need to be short lived.

-They need glowing orange sparks in the black clouds. This it to make the effect useful and visible in the black background of space. Of course there wond be any real glow effect, just orange sparks on the sprite used for the particle effects.

-Optional: Add more and more sparks and even flames as the part gets closer to overheating.

And... that's it for now. Any one got other/ better ideas? It's the best i got on short notice, that doesn't break immersion, and still lets you see what part is having trouble.

Other solutions I've seen:

right-right clicking every part looking for trouble spots would be tedious and doesnt help you if you dont ride around with right click menu open.... right click info would be useful, but not as a warning of impending doom.

Hearing an alarm going off would let you know something is overheating... but just that... *something* is overheating. You still have no ideas whats overheating and you have no clue whats if the impending explosion is tolerable and to keep going, or would be catastrophic, and you need to be trying to get your kerbals out alive.

And of course seeing an explosion isn't even all that informative until you hit F3. Unless your craft is already falling apart and then yo are just cussing anyway.

Placing bacon outside of craft. While delicious, it is hard to retrieve bacon in situations that allow for cooking.

Lemme know if you guys have better ideas for warning of impending thermal doom.

Unrelated, but still important to me, since it got worse in 1.0 :

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92819-An-arguement-for-a-simple-intake-jet-engine-tweak

Bump it if you agree!

Edited May 1, 2015 by DundraL