Suggestion: Refueling locked notification (having trouble transfering fuel in Career Mode?)

[Taezel]

I'm sure everyone here has had at least one question about KSP that they just had to search on the internet. Sometimes, it just isn't easy to figure out. Like refueling...

It's in the tutorials. It's on the Forums. If you want to refuel, hit the mod key, which on Windows is Alt, then right click the fuel tanks you want to refuel. I figured this out many times, in creative and in the tutorial, but it wasn't working in Career. I couldn't figure it out, and it seemed like nobody else had the problem that I did.

So I spent the past 8 hours testing... I completed the entire docking tutorial, just to discover that my Alt key was in fact working, and refueling works just the way it should. So then I thought, maybe it's because the tutorial has kerbals on board? Or because it's using the shielded version of the docking clamp? Maybe only certain parts allow fuel to pass through them? I went into creative to test these things out. I built many different docking rovers and docked them all, and learned some things about refueling.

First, you don't have to alt+right click in any particular order. Someone mentioned that you have to right click the first one, then alt+right click the second one, and maybe pray for a miracle. That's just not necessary at all. You can alt+right click all the tanks you want! If you select more than two tanks, all the other tanks will receive or contribute fuel at exactly the same linear rate. If one tank is smaller than another, it will fill up or deplete faster, since it's not based on a percentage. (future option?)

For example, I have three tanks selected. Two FL-T400s, and a docked FL-T100. one FL-T400 is empty, the other is half full. The FL-T100 is full. If I press "Out" on the FL-T100's liquid fuel supply, 45 units of liquid fuel will be split evenly between the half-full FL-T400 and the empty FL-T400. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Additionally, you don't have to be docked to transfer fuel between tanks on an individual vehicle.

So now that that's all cleared up, I'd like to explain that the only reasons that refueling isn't working: Your mod key isn't working, you aren't docked properly (can you control the other ship, and does the docking clamp say "undock" ? ) or... you are playing in Career mode.

The thing about Career mode is that nobody tells you that suddenly, you have to unlock the ability to transfer fuel. The research and development building must be at least a level two before you even get the option, which is silly because you have access to docking clamps before that. It's also silly because.. here you are with seven parts of your International Kerbal Space Station, just randomly floating about because you can't transfer fuel to the required parts. And now you've spent all your hard earned money getting here, and can't take any more contracts because they are all related to building this space station. Looks like I'll have to cancel the contracts, beg for government bailouts, and pray for new contracts that are not related to building space stations.

Here's a couple suggestions for KSP devs:

1) Please leave a notification for the player when they attempt to transfer fuel, and have not unlocked the ability to in Career. The current configuration makes the player think they are doing it incorrectly.

2a) Move the docking clamp further down the tech tree, so that a player is forced to upgrade the R&D building to use the docking clamp. This proactive approach would eliminate any confused players, since the tutorial makes them think all they have to do is dock.

OR

2b) Mention that the R&D building needs to be advanced enough to use the refueling feature in the tutorial. That would be a more passive approach to the problem, but would still help.

Thank you for reading my very long post xD I hope that someone finds this useful after having trouble refueling. I tried to cover everything

[Rath]

In the upgrade description it says that.

[Taezel]

In the upgrade description it says that.

Indeed it does. The changelog is how I found the issue, eventually.