Add "Maneuvers" tab to tracking station

[Snark]

Suggestion: Add a tab to the list control on the left side of the tracking station UI. The two tabs are "Ships" (the currently available tab) and "Maneuvers" (the new tab I'm proposing). This tab would only appear once the player has upgraded the tracking station to allow setting maneuver nodes.

The Maneuvers tab would be different from the Ships tab, as follows:

1. It would be filtered down to show only ships that have maneuver nodes set. (If there aren't any, then it's empty, and some placeholder text appears in the list area, e.g. "No ships currently have maneuvers set," or some such.

2. The ships would be sorted in order of soonest-maneuver-first. Ships that have multiple maneuvers set would be listed multiple times, with some sort of text indicator ("Maneuver 1," "Maneuver 2", etc.) to reduce confusion.

3. Where the current "Ships" tab displays mission elapsed time, it would instead show time-until-maneuver. (Bonus points if there's some way to squeeze in a mention of the maneuver's dV.)

4. Any maneuvers that are past due will be colored red, or otherwise highlighted in some fashion that draws the eye to them. (Plus, of course, they'll just naturally be sorted to the top of the list due to the chronological sorting-- the ones furthest past due will be at the top of the list.)

5. The Tracking Station would remember which tab you have active, so that each time you go back to the Tracking Station, whichever tab you last used will be on display.

Reason why I really want this:

I find it incredibly tedious to keep track of upcoming maneuvers in the Tracking Station, and it seems to me that a simple UI tweak would make it much better. (Yes, I know that Kerbal Alarm Clock exists. I'm sure it's a great mod, I happen to choose not to use it. Whether something like that ought to be in the stock game is a separate discussion.)

My typical situation, after career has been ongoing for a while:

- I have a whole lot of ships

- Most of them are just sitting there and require no attention

- Some of them have upcoming maneuvers that I want not to miss

Typically, when I go to the tracking station, it's for one of two reasons:

1. "Okay, I want to do something with Ship X. Find it in the list and then fly it."

2. "Okay, what's the next thing I need to do? Find whichever ship has the next event coming up and fly it."

The current tracking station UI lists all craft, strictly chronologically by mission start time. That works okay for reason #1 above (the same ship is always in the same position in the list), though alphabetical would be better for that. However, it's completely tedious for reason #2. If I've got like 30 missions out there flying around, and 4 of them happen to have maneuver nodes coming up at some point, then the only way I can be sure to find the next one is to manually scan through every single ship in the list, make a mental note of which one is the soonest maneuver node, and go all the way to the end of the list, then hope I've remembered correctly to go back to the lucky winner.

That's just incredibly tedious.

[Dfthu]

I think that sounds great. I had to wait 5 days for maneuver but I could only time warp to like 50x so I had to go the tracking station to warp faster. I missed the maneuver.

[p1t1o]

Yes, totally agree.

This is the sort of thing that I have been half expecting to show up pretty much every update.

The utility of this would be quite enormous, no more having to refer to cryptic, third-party dV maps! Intuitive planning of gravitational manouvers! Complex mission routes made easy! Planning refueling and mining operations!

Seems like low-hanging-fruit to me, Squad!

[nikokespprfan]

[snip]

Yes, Yes: this would be a very good addition to the game.

[Alshain]

I agree with the caveat that for #2 to work they have to first correct the horrific burn time estimation.

[Snark]

I agree with the caveat that for #2 to work they have to first correct the horrific burn time estimation.

I assume you're talking about this:

2. The ships would be sorted in order of soonest-maneuver-first. Ships that have multiple maneuvers set would be listed multiple times, with some sort of text indicator ("Maneuver 1," "Maneuver 2", etc.) to reduce confusion.

...Why the caveat? Seems like it would work just fine now, since every maneuver has a specific time associated with it, and "soonest first" is what people care about, yes? Since they want to know "when is the next time I have to do something"?

Yes, burn time can make a difference as to "when exactly do I have to start my burn." But that doesn't seem important here. If I have one burn coming up 30 minutes from now, and another coming up 1 hour from now, and another 3 days from now, I want to see them in that order. I can't think of an occasion when I've ever scheduled maneuvers for different ships so close together that errors relating to burn-time calculation would have an effect on which one comes first.

Would it be better if they had good burn-time estimation? Sure... but I don't think it's a gating factor for the feature, it would work just fine with the current system of just list them according to the scheduled maneuver time. Fixing burn time estimation is an orthogonal feature to this one.

[krisdestruction]

On October 20, 2015 at 0:38 PM, Snark said:

1. It would be filtered down to show only ships that have maneuver nodes set. (If there aren't any, then it's empty, and some placeholder text appears in the list area, e.g. "No ships currently have maneuvers set," or some such.

2. The ships would be sorted in order of soonest-maneuver-first. Ships that have multiple maneuvers set would be listed multiple times, with some sort of text indicator ("Maneuver 1," "Maneuver 2", etc.) to reduce confusion.

Perhaps if there were 3 tabs: Ships, Ships with Manoeuvres, Manoeuvres. Ships would show the current screen. Ships with manoeuvres would chronologically sort ships with information about their next manoeuvre. Finally Manoeuvres would list manoeuvres chronologically as some ships may have multiple manoeuvres

On October 20, 2015 at 0:38 PM, Snark said:

4. Any maneuvers that are past due will be colored red, or otherwise highlighted in some fashion that draws the eye to them. (Plus, of course, they'll just naturally be sorted to the top of the list due to the chronological sorting-- the ones furthest past due will be at the top of the list.)

Another cool feature would be if notifications or reminders were added to remind someone of a manoeuvre.

Next, instead of requiring to be on the ship screen, warp to next manoeuvre would be great in the tracking station if you want to just execute all planned manoeuvres one by one without choosing the next ship.

Finally a useful feature is to start naming manoeuvres from this proposed screen.

[Warzouz]

It feels like a more user friendly KAC-like feature ?

That GUI would be efficient and quite easy to integrate in existing KSP.

[AbacusWizard]

I've been wanting a sortable Tracking Station for quite a while--and this would be one of the most useful ways to sort it. I'd also love to be able to sort by "next to experience a SoI change."

 

As it is, I've been prefixing asterisks (and sometimes suffixing destination information) to the name of any ship with a maneuver coming up (for instance Wayfarer Probe becomes ***Wayfarer Probe (to Duna) ) so that I can at least easily pick out anything that may need attention in the near future. Sortable lists would make that so much easier.

[krisdestruction]

16 hours ago, AbacusWizard said:

I've been wanting a sortable Tracking Station for quite a while--and this would be one of the most useful ways to sort it. I'd also love to be able to sort by "next to experience a SoI change."

 

As it is, I've been prefixing asterisks (and sometimes suffixing destination information) to the name of any ship with a maneuver coming up (for instance Wayfarer Probe becomes ***Wayfarer Probe (to Duna) ) so that I can at least easily pick out anything that may need attention in the near future. Sortable lists would make that so much easier.

I think prefixing is quite a hack as it's hard to define a good "coming up" timeframe for all user's needs. A new tab would be better IMO. If a threshold is needed to filter out times, a dropdown menu could help to do that but sorting should fit all user's needs.

[pandaman]

I'm all for improvements like this to the tracking station.  With a lot of stuff in there the current system just doesn't give us the flexibility we need.

[Alshain]

On 11/8/2015 at 3:22 PM, Snark said:

I assume you're talking about this:

...Why the caveat? Seems like it would work just fine now, since every maneuver has a specific time associated with it, and "soonest first" is what people care about, yes? Since they want to know "when is the next time I have to do something"?

Yes, burn time can make a difference as to "when exactly do I have to start my burn." But that doesn't seem important here. If I have one burn coming up 30 minutes from now, and another coming up 1 hour from now, and another 3 days from now, I want to see them in that order. I can't think of an occasion when I've ever scheduled maneuvers for different ships so close together that errors relating to burn-time calculation would have an effect on which one comes first.

Would it be better if they had good burn-time estimation? Sure... but I don't think it's a gating factor for the feature, it would work just fine with the current system of just list them according to the scheduled maneuver time. Fixing burn time estimation is an orthogonal feature to this one.

Because sometimes my burns happen right after one another.  Quite often actually.  The in-game burn time estimation is so bad it can be off by minutes and without that being corrected it can make a difference which one is shown first.  So if the game says "this one first" and the game is wrong, that doesn't help any at all and in fact could cause additional confusion.  If they can't estimate burn time correctly, it would be better to be alphabetical by ship so you aren't expecting anything to be correct.

Edited January 15, 2016 by Alshain

[mattinoz]

I don't see bad burn time estimation as a reason not to support this. Indeed if this feature existed it would add incentive to fix that problem. 

I think this would be a great first move to fixing a lot of roadblocks in the game.

[krisdestruction]

On January 15, 2016 at 6:58 PM, mattinoz said:

I don't see bad burn time estimation as a reason not to support this. Indeed if this feature existed it would add incentive to fix that problem. 

I think this would be a great first move to fixing a lot of roadblocks in the game.

If anything bad burn time estimation is another issue altogether requiring another mechanic. Eg. flagging manoeuvres that require changing after a burn. Let's focus on the issue at hand and I suggest starting another thread addressing that one.

 

It'd be great if Squad opened the game up to a public feature request system.

[Snark]

3 hours ago, krisdestruction said:

If anything bad burn time estimation is another issue altogether requiring another mechanic.

Like this one? 

 

3 hours ago, krisdestruction said:

It'd be great if Squad opened the game up to a public feature request system.

They do!  It's this.  Right here.  This forum.  It's what it's for.

We're not just talking to hear ourselves talk-- the Squad developers can and do read these forums and see what folks are talking about.  The fact that they often jump in to personally respond to various threads in various forums demonstrates that.

So yes, they know what we're talking about, and if there's a major pain point that everyone is complaining about, you can bet it's on their radar.  And if you really want to get the attention of a particular developer, you just refer to them with a tag, like this, @krisdestruction, and they'll get a notification that someone mentioned them.

(Though I try to do that sparingly, I don't like to pester people.  And I find that it's usually not necessary.  If there's a thread that's in an area belonging to NathanKell or RoverDude or Arsonide or Porkjet, there's a good chance they're already reading it anyway and will often jump in even without anybody explicitly tagging them.  I'll generally only do this if it's something I think that the developer would like to see, not because I want attention.)

Edited January 19, 2016 by Snark

[Hannu2]

It seems to be a poor man's version of Kerbal Alarm Clock mod. I know that SQUAD loves that kind of deficient functionality, but why should anybody intentionally ask for such instead of fully functional tools to manage flights?

But basically I agree. I will certainly not stop use KAC before stock management tools give more options but probably overhaul of tracking station would give something useful.

[krisdestruction]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

Like this one? 

No, like pinging you with a notification and a "Update Manoeuvre" call to action button when manoeuvres  change after a dependent burn.

1 hour ago, Snark said:

They do!  It's this.  Right here.  This forum.  It's what it's for.

We're not just talking to hear ourselves talk-- the Squad developers can and do read these forums and see what folks are talking about.  The fact that they often jump in to personally respond to various threads in various forums demonstrates that.

So yes, they know what we're talking about, and if there's a major pain point that everyone is complaining about, you can bet it's on their radar.  And if you really want to get the attention of a particular developer, you just refer to them with a tag, like this, @krisdestruction, and they'll get a notification that someone mentioned them.

(Though I try to do that sparingly, I don't like to pester people.  And I find that it's usually not necessary.  If there's a thread that's in an area belonging to NathanKell or RoverDude or Arsonide or Porkjet, there's a good chance they're already reading it anyway and will often jump in even without anybody explicitly tagging them.  I'll generally only do this if it's something I think that the developer would like to see, not because I want attention.)

As a software engineer, I can attest forums are a terrible way to get jobs done. You can discuss repeatedly without any action towards accomplishing a goal. A ticket system is much more effective in allowing a planning discussion and an implementation decision to be made. Most public bug tracking systems have a +1 button or voting to support a feature request.

34 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

It seems to be a poor man's version of Kerbal Alarm Clock mod. I know that SQUAD loves that kind of deficient functionality, but why should anybody intentionally ask for such instead of fully functional tools to manage flights?

But basically I agree. I will certainly not stop use KAC before stock management tools give more options but probably overhaul of tracking station would give something useful.

Because if it's that useful that everyone should install the mod, it should be incorporated into the actual game. I for one don't believe good mods should stay mods for long. If it's an "essential" mod that it's tried and true, it should be incorporated into the vanilla game. Mods should be a sandbox for experimentation, not supplementing missing features.

Edited January 19, 2016 by krisdestruction

[Snark]

26 minutes ago, krisdestruction said:

As a software engineer, I can attest forums are a terrible way to get jobs done. You can discuss repeatedly without any action towards accomplishing a goal. A ticket system is much more effective in allowing a planning discussion and an implementation decision to be made. Most public bug tracking systems have a +1 button or voting to support a feature request.

Well, I'm a software engineer, too, so here's my two cents. 

Your point about ticketing systems is well taken, but I view it as complementary to, not "better than", a forum.

The fact is, Squad does have a ticketing system.  It's open, anyone can use it.  You can create tickets there, and you can also mark them as either a "bug" or a "suggestion".

If you have a specific suggestion, then you can certainly post it there. Or you could post it here.  Which one of them makes more sense will depend on what you're trying to accomplish.

If you post it in the ticketing system, then you're pretty much guaranteeing that somebody at Squad will look at it and triage it appropriately (i.e. decide what, if anything, to do about it).  However:  if you do that, the likelihood that other KSP players will see it goes way down (how many of us are in the habit of browsing Squad's ticket database?), and it's much less likely to have a freewheeling discussion on the matter.  And if Squad happens to decide "nah, we're not doing that" when they see the ticket, then it'll basically just die right there without any further discussion.

If you post it in the forums, you're not forcing anybody at Squad to look at it (though they probably do)... but it's a lot more visible to the players, and if it's a topic that really speaks to people, then many participants will join in and the feature's appeal and need will become much more apparent to anyone reading (including Squad).  And you're likely to hear feedback from lots of people who may propose additional refinements that didn't occur to the OP.

I agree that forums can be a terrible way to get things done.  It completely depends on the attitude of whoever's running the forum.  If a company just views the forums as a place for users to spout off, and never bothers reading what's in them, and never addresses the content, then yeah, nothing's going to happen and you're basically just shouting down a hole.

However, my observation has been that in the particular case of Squad and the KSP forums, it's not like that.  The actual developers are actually reading this, and demonstrate this frequently by jumping into discussions, answering questions, etc.  I'm frankly astonished.  I've been in the software industry a very long time, and I've never seen that level of responsiveness of developers to end users anywhere else.  Heck, I've lost count of how many times this has happened:  I post a comment or question about ISRU somewhere, and RoverDude himself jumps in to respond.  Or it'll be about aerodynamics, and there's NathanKell.  Or contracts, and there's Arsonide.  And this happens even if I never mentioned the developer by name, which means that they're actively reading these forums for topics relevant to them.

Try getting that level of response, straight from the original author of the feature, from anywhere else.  Not gonna see that from EA.

The fact of the matter is, as an input mechanism from the general public, the actual form of the input (forum or ticketing system) doesn't matter much.  What matters is the attitude of the operator.  A company that routinely ignores the forums could just as easily routinely ignore the ticketing system by summarily triaging user-generated tickets as "by design."  Or by closing it to public input and only letting a few chosen ones participate.  Or by just getting into the habit of ignoring all such tickets completely and filtering them out of their ticket queries.  What really matters is, does the company pay attention to its users, and my impression over the past year or two has been that Squad really does.  To an amazing (and refreshing) degree.

That said:  It's also not an either/or, you can have your cake and eat it, too.  For example, suppose you propose something in the forums, and it turns out to be very "successful" (i.e. lots of users weigh in, there's a lot of commentary, and general acclamation that "yes, we really need this"), then you can go ahead and create a ticket in Squad's ticketing system, with a link to the forum thread for context.  (And add the ticket link to the original forum post).  Best of both worlds.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Snark

[Hannu2]

12 hours ago, krisdestruction said:

I for one don't believe good mods should stay mods for long. If it's an "essential" mod that it's tried and true, it should be incorporated into the vanilla game. Mods should be a sandbox for experimentation, not supplementing missing features.

Of course I understand and agree that. But why inspire Squad to make another half baked function, which is far from functional and easy to use and too annoying to replace a mod. Why not implement all functions of alarm clock mod and even more mission management tools? If somebody (for example I have never used all functions of KAC) does not want all stuff he simply do not use and care them. Basic things, like maneuver alarms, are at least as easy than Snark suggested.

[krisdestruction]

@Snark It didn't come up when I googled "KSP feature request", but I'll start using that instead. It must liquid you off when you rant and I give one sentence responses haha...

On January 20, 2016 at 1:21 AM, Hannu2 said:

Of course I understand and agree that. But why inspire Squad to make another half baked function, which is far from functional and easy to use and too annoying to replace a mod. Why not implement all functions of alarm clock mod and even more mission management tools? If somebody (for example I have never used all functions of KAC) does not want all stuff he simply do not use and care them. Basic things, like maneuver alarms, are at least as easy than Snark suggested.

Perhaps, I haven't used it to be familiar with the system. All I'm saying is that something should be implemented in this direction.

Edited February 1, 2016 by krisdestruction

[Warzouz]

On 20/1/2016 at 7:21 AM, Hannu2 said:

Of course I understand and agree that. But why inspire Squad to make another half baked function, which is far from functional and easy to use and too annoying to replace a mod. Why not implement all functions of alarm clock mod and even more mission management tools? If somebody (for example I have never used all functions of KAC) does not want all stuff he simply do not use and care them. Basic things, like maneuver alarms, are at least as easy than Snark suggested.

KAC is a quite complex mod, if you really list all features, with multiple options and data display. KAC wouldn't be needed if OP's idea would be implemented. We could lay nodes to manage events. Very easy, very user friendly. Sure it wouldn't have ALL  KAC mod features, but only the most important : Node alarms

It seems SQUAD don't like complex windows and displays. I agree with that, even I find their point of view maybe too extreme (really, no TWR or dV display ? Not general Heat gauge, no drag indicator ? no window alert ?

If you want more that stock, you will always have KAC. But this single OP's idea would make KSP a real SPACE PROGRAM game and not a SPACE FLIGHT game.

[Snark]

On 1/14/2016 at 2:40 PM, AbacusWizard said:

I've been wanting a sortable Tracking Station for quite a while--and this would be one of the most useful ways to sort it. I'd also love to be able to sort by "next to experience a SoI change."

Just now happened to be going back and re-reading this thread (made TOTM!  Woohoo! thanks for the props, @Warzouz), and Wiz's comment here struck me afresh.

Actually, the idea for a "Maneuvers" tab could be made to seamlessly include SoI changes, as well.

Instead of it being a "Maneuvers" tab, it could be an "Events" tab, where "event" could be:  maneuver node; SoI change; closest approach to target; perhaps other categories, if of interest.  Part of the UI could be some checkboxes for filtering which types of events I'm interested in.

Make sure it's moddable, so that mod authors can easily add their own event types to the list.  (For example, if I'm writing a life-support mod, "run out of life support" would be a pretty important event, and adding it to the events tab would be a natural thing to do.)

Just a thought.

Edited February 3, 2016 by Snark

[StarManta]

On February 2, 2016 at 10:19 AM, Snark said:

Instead of it being a "Maneuvers" tab, it could be an "Events" tab, where "event" could be:  maneuver node; SoI change; closest approach to target; perhaps other categories, if of interest.  Part of the UI could be some checkboxes for filtering which types of events I'm interested in.

 

"Collision with surface" and "entry into planet's atmosphere" come to mind.

Perhaps "Resource mining vessel's ore tank becomes full"

I love this idea.

[Nich]

I'm sorry kerbal alarm system already does this and so much more this just feels like a stock implementation of something a mod does perfectly fine or better

[Warzouz]

22 hours ago, Nich said:

I'm sorry kerbal alarm system already does this and so much more this just feels like a stock implementation of something a mod does perfectly fine or better

True, KAC does that and much more. But the only thing you really need from KAC to run a real "SPACE PROGRAM" is only a list of nodes ordered by time. I use KAC, it's probably the most useful mod I use. but @Snark, got the essence of it which should be integrated into KSP is a very simple way.

Remember that SQUAD doesn't like intrusive GUI windows. It's KSP not Excel.