Part Menu Overhaul

[Windspren]

As we all know, the part menu easily becomes cluttered with even a few part mods. With the upcoming release of 1.1 and 64 bit KSP, people will be able to use many more mods than before, especially mods containing many, many parts. But even in the stock game, some part placements make no sense and are confusing, such as the location of crew cabins in the Utilities tab. My suggestion aims to fix that, without adding dozens of extra menus; it instead adds subcategories for each tab.

When you selected a tab like "Utilities," a drop down menu would appear under the Utilities menu with the subcategories' tabs.

This is how my idea of the perfect part menu would be organized:
The "^" symbol designates a tab as a subcategory.

Command
^ Crewed Control - Crewed parts with command capability like the Mk 3 cockpit or the Mk 1-2 pod
^ Crew Storage - Crewed parts without command capability like the science lab, crew cabins and the Hitchhiker
^ Probes - Various probe cores, as well as the avionics nosecone
^ Remote Communication - Transmitters, antennae, and resource scanners

Propulsion
^ Aircraft Tanks - Aircraft fuel tanks (Aircraft adapters not included)
^ General Fuel Tanks - General rocket fuel tanks
^ Monopropellent Tanks - Various monopropellent tanks
^ Rocket Engines - Rocket engines (duh)
^ Solid Rockets - SRBs (duh)
^ Nuclear Engines - The only one in this category is the LV-N (This is mostly here for the mods that add several nuclear engines)
^ Electric Engines - Just the Dawn (This is again mostly here for mods that add a ton electrical engines [Nertea, I'm looking at you ] )
^ Jet Engines and Intakes - Jet engines and air intakes (duh)

Structural
^ Adapters - Stack adapters, as well as aircraft adapters
^ Construction - Struts, girder segments, docking ports, the launch stability enhancer and other structural bits. (Also, KAS parts would go nicely in this category)
^ Decouplers and Separators - This should be easy to figure out
^ Storage - Cargo bays, service bays, and the Mk3 ramp

Utilities (This needed major reorganization)
^ Electrical - Solar panels, batteries, fuel cells, lights and the RTG (Basically anything having to do with electricity)
^ Heat Management - Radiators and heatsinks, as well as heat shields
^ Resource Collection - ISRU equipment and surface scanner, but not the orbital scanners
^ Surface Utilities - Ladders, landing legs, landing gear and rover wheels as well as the command chair
^ Precision Control - RCS thrusters and reaction wheels are found
^ Science! - Science stuff

Aerodynamics (Also needed major reorganization)
^ Wings - Wing segments (duh5)
^ Aerodynamic Control - Winglets and control surfaces
^ Nose Cones and Fairings - Self-explanatory
^ Velocity Management - Parachutes and AIRBRAKES

 

This is what I would like to see in a part menu in KSP. It would also be nice if we could change the part tabs more easily with config files, which I know Filter Extension already allows.

Let me know what you think!

[Pthigrivi]

Yeah as a bit of an organization freak I'd love this. I could probably quibble over your lineup but as a general sentiment +1. 

[Alshain]

Nose cones and fairings don't belong in the same group.  Fairings and Cargo Bays and Service Bays belong in the same group... they are inherently for Cargo.  I have on several occasions posted my list, I won't post the list again but here it is in custom categories form if you like.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oeu44a0q8t6wrpt/PartCategories.cfg?dl=0

 

[Hupf]

Specifically I'd like a filter for fuel tanks that only contain LF (currently filtering by resource also shows LF+Ox tanks), maybe also possibility to combine filters (Size Mk2 + Resource type LF, for example)

[Hobbes Novakoff]

They are adding a search function in 1.1, so that will fix some problems with ridiculous amounts of parts in the menu.

Also, my friend suggested to add the ability to search by mod the part is in. You could implement this by having a "name.cfg" file in the folder, so that you could define a name for the mod.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Hobbes Novakoff

[Crzyrndm]

+1 For atleast one more layer of categorisation. Two forces there to either be too many parts in a selection, or too many categories to find what you need