Favorite Part Slots

[p1t1o]

It would be of immense use to me, at least, to have several "slots" in the VAB/SPH into which I can drag those few parts that I use most frequently - stack separators, antennae, struts, that sort of thing.

Visible at all times, or at most one click away, it would save a lot of repeated page-flipping.

Anyone vehemently agree?

[Red Iron Crown]

You can already do this with custom categories.

[Sampa]

You can already do this with custom categories.

I still need to learn to use those...

[p1t1o]

Are these functional in-editor? Can I create a new custom category and add parts to it whilst building a craft? I thought you had to alter configs and things to create custom categories?

[Red Iron Crown]

It's available in the editor, the interface for adding parts is similar to saving subassemblies. You *can* do it by editing config files, but you certainly don't have to.

I don't have KSP available to me at the moment, if you have trouble getting it to work post back and I'll put up some screenshots later.

[p1t1o]

Cool, I'll check it out next time I get a chance.

My life currently revolves entirely around thinking when I will get to play KSP next, and for how long.

As far as suggestions go, finding out they are already implemented is pretty satisfying!

Thanks for your help!

[monstah]

Are these functional in-editor? Can I create a new custom category and add parts to it whilst building a craft? I thought you had to alter configs and things to create custom categories?

That was my understanding, which is why I never messed with them before.

[Red Iron Crown]

A very basic image tutorial on creating custom categories:

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[Whirligig Girl]

One super-useful thing I think would be a hotkey for placing struts. like, press K or something and a strut would spawn. If you fail to place it, it won't spawn an annoying little strut endpoint floating at the side, and after each placement it defaults to another strut. Would be really useful for those times when you need to do a multiplied combination of "Strut ur Stuff M8" and "Apply struts liberally."

[p1t1o]

UPDATE

To be honest, custom categories do not really fulfill the requirement for "favorite parts".

Yes, you can separate parts out into a category as you so wish, but say you are in the middle of building a craft and you want one of your "favorites", you need to click the advanced tab, then click your category, and then select your part. Now you are out of the menu you were originally in, so you must now navigate back.

Sure, that sounds fast, just a few clicks of a mouse, but it is no faster than finding the part in its original category.

The idea of "favorite part slots" is that they are faster to retrieve, ideally they would be constantly visible (one-click away would be acceptable - click, select part and done) and be separate from navigating the regular part menu so you dont have to navigate back to where you were (say you are looking at fuel tanks and decide you need a decoupler - go to faves, get your fave decoupler and done. At this point you dont want to have to find that fuel tank you were interested in all over again).

I stand by the suggestion of "favorite part slots"

[Uzric]

What if the UI let you drag a custom category out of its place?

Say, you create a category just like RIC showed, then instead of clicking it to show it on the part list of the left, you drag it to the middle of the screen (or wherever you like to drag it to) and the category turns into a sort of emergent (or rather, floatable) window. Clicking a cross button or something would remove the floating window and put the category back into its place.

So in the end you have like the normal parts on the left and a little emergent window elsewhere with your favourite parts.

[p1t1o]

@Uzric

Sure, that could work it matches, to a certain extent, the sort of ideas I had in my head.

In my head I envisioned either:

A permanent row of say 5-10 slots along the bottom of the screen or the top, into which you could drag+drop parts. The slots would then function exactly as regular menu slots. They would probably be miniature in size to save window space.

Or:

A menu button would pop-up a window which would auto-hide again on selection of your favorite part.

[Superfluous J]

Someone recently (I thought it was GregroxMun but my memory sucks) posted a full custom part config that essentially eliminated the need to use the default categories. If you used that, you could set up your favorites and they'd only be one click away, not 3. Same number of clicks anything else is, really. Instead of clicking "command pods" you'd click "my favorites" and then your part would be there just like the Mk1 capsule is there in command pods.

[CaptainTurbomuffin]

Solution: Be able to assign a hotkey to certain parts. For example, You press K, and a booster will be selected, because you assigned the booster to your K key. On the little plus, there could be such an option lke 'add hotkey'. And anityme you press your booster or strut key, you will have the part sticked to your cursor, just as if you clicked on it from the part list. Also, be able to assign hotkeys to subassemblies.

Also, a search option is necessary. Not only you could search for the parts' name, but each would have tags. For example, if you search for 'ladder', you will have the Pegasus Mobility Enhancer, even if it has no ladder in its name. Just like as it was done with LOL. When LOL was finally translated to hungarian, every item you used had its name transleted, and you couldn's search for their names. However, if you searched for their original english name, you could still find them. It helped a LOT, and it could help KSP a LOT again. Especially if your mod count is above 50.

[Red Iron Crown]

Someone recently (I thought it was GregroxMun but my memory sucks) posted a full custom part config that essentially eliminated the need to use the default categories. If you used that, you could set up your favorites and they'd only be one click away, not 3. Same number of clicks anything else is, really. Instead of clicking "command pods" you'd click "my favorites" and then your part would be there just like the Mk1 capsule is there in command pods.

It was Alshain.

[p1t1o]

Someone recently (I thought it was GregroxMun but my memory sucks) posted a full custom part config that essentially eliminated the need to use the default categories. If you used that, you could set up your favorites and they'd only be one click away, not 3. Same number of clicks anything else is, really. Instead of clicking "command pods" you'd click "my favorites" and then your part would be there just like the Mk1 capsule is there in command pods.

I'm not a huge fan of this as it requires setting up new categories etc. - and wouldn't it involve navigating out of the menu you are currently in, as described earlier?

I assumed that this forum was for suggestions for addition to stock, mods that "kinda" do it are out of scope IMO

...etc...

I do like the hotkey idea, especially as it leads to minimal additional clutter on the screen (probably the most difficult part of the suggestion - screen space is at a premium in VAB/SPH, especially with multiple mods installed)

[Red Iron Crown]

I assumed that this forum was for suggestions for addition to stock, mods that "kinda" do it are out of scope IMO

It's not a mod exactly, it's someone having done the work of better categorizing the parts and sharing the cfg.

It still doesn't do exactly what you're after, which I agree would be handy.

[waterlubber]

I would prefer a small indicator, that on mouseover, would slide open to reveal favorite parts. It could be bound to a hotkey or disabled.