lighting up my crew quarters

[Clear Air Turbulence]

When I switch on lights in my space station, the outside lights up like a christmas tree.  But the crew quarters stay dark.  What's with that? Do Kerbals have night vision? How do I get the insides of my crew modules to be illuminated?  Mods? Or am I missing something?

[swjr-swis]

I'm not sure which part you mean by 'crew quarters', stock doesn't use that name on any of them.

3 of the 4 stock crew cabins/containers have a right-click 'Lights on/off', the Hitchhiker doesn't have lights at all. for those that have the rightclick, you can add the 'Toggle Lights' option to the Lights action in the Action editor; that will make the lights go on and off together with any external lights when you press the mapped key.

[Snark]

You can turn on the cabin lights for all the crewed "spaceplane" parts:  command pods, crew cabins.

The other crewed parts (hitchhiker, science lab, Mk1 pod, Mk1-2 pod, lander cans) don't have any cabin lights to turn on.  Yes, they have "windows", but they don't light up.  This is a historical artifact:  those are the older parts, they've been around since forever, and pre-date all the @Porkjet goodness (including cabin lights) that's happened for spaceplane parts in the last few patches.  (Here's crossing my fingers and really hoping that Porkjet will get around to re-doing those other crew parts so they have working lights.  Pretty please?)

One thing that's a bit confusing about the ones that do have lights:  the default lights on/off action (i.e. hitting the U key) doesn't toggle them.  You have to actually go in and right-click on them and choose "toggle lights".  If you have your VAB upgraded to at least the first level, then you can finagle them so that they do come on when you turn on your lights:  just go to the "action groups" tab of the vehicle editor, choose the "Lights" group, click on the part, and add its "toggle lights" action to that group.

Now, since that's so nice and looks so cool, you might wonder "why the dickens doesn't it do that by default, so I don't have to go in and fiddle it every time I build a ship?"

That's a good question, and I don't know the answer.  Would be great if they fixed it.  In the mean time, it bugged me sufficiently that I wrote a mod to fix it so that they're added to the "lights" action group by default whenever you build a ship.

Edited December 22, 2015 by Snark

[swjr-swis]

7 minutes ago, Snark said:

Now, since that's so nice and looks so cool, you might wonder "why the dickens doesn't it do that by default, so I don't have to go in and fiddle it every time I build a ship?"

Because not everyone (read: well, moi at least) wants the cabin lights to always toggle on and off with external lights. I am quite content with leaving them separate so in the odd circumstance that I do want them to toggle together, I can do it so myself.

[Snark]

11 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

Because not everyone (read: well, moi at least) wants the cabin lights to always toggle on and off with external lights. I am quite content with leaving them separate so in the odd circumstance that I do want them to toggle together, I can do it so myself.

Yah, that's a good point-- but the issue here is not "everyone" but "most people", i.e. what would the majority of players prefer?  Should the default be together, or not-together?  Whichever way you make it, people can always make it go the other way by tinkering with action groups.

I expect that any given KSP player will fall into one of the following categories:

1. "Wait, what?  You can turn on the cabin lights?  Cool!"
2. doesn't really care what the cabin lights do
3. strongly prefers that the cabin lights should toggle with the light switch
4. strongly prefers that the cabin lights should not toggle with the light switch

As for picking "what should the default behavior be?":

I suspect that most KSP players (not necessarily most forum posters here, but I mean all players-- there's a large silent majority) fall into category #1.  I would argue that making the cabin lights toggle with other lights by default would be good for this group, because it gives them a way of discovering the cabin lights that they might not otherwise notice.  In any case, the first time it happens, they then know about the lights and will thereafter be one of #2, #3, or #4.

Once we take the #1 folks out of the picture, I suspect that #2 will be the next biggest category, and for those folks it doesn't really matter which way it's set up.

That leaves #3 vs. #4, i.e. which category is more numerous.  Personally, I would guess that #3 is more common than #4, but I have no data whatsoever to back that up and it could just be a reflection of my personal biases.  Clearly I'm a #3 and you're a #4.

The reason I like to have the cabin lights act the same as external lights:  the only reason to have any lights at all in the game is, first, "because it's dark and therefore hard to see", and, second, "because it looks cool."  For me, I turn on the lights because I can't see what the heck I'm doing.  Cabin lights provide a very helpful visual clue about the position and orientation of the ship, even aside from external lights.  And I just think it looks cool when everything switches on.  I'm having trouble thinking of a counterexample where I would find activating cabin lights to be somehow inconvenient or irritating.

What's your reason for preferring that they be separate?

[Geschosskopf]

9 minutes ago, Snark said:

I expect that any given KSP player will fall into one of the following categories:

1. "Wait, what?  You can turn on the cabin lights?  Cool!"
2. doesn't really care what the cabin lights do
3. strongly prefers that the cabin lights should toggle with the light switch
4. strongly prefers that the cabin lights should not toggle with the light switch

..........

The reason I like to have the cabin lights act the same as external lights:  the only reason to have any lights at all in the game is, first, "because it's dark and therefore hard to see", and, second, "because it looks cool."  For me, I turn on the lights because I can't see what the heck I'm doing.  Cabin lights provide a very helpful visual clue about the position and orientation of the ship, even aside from external lights.  And I just think it looks cool when everything switches on.  I'm having trouble thinking of a counterexample where I would find activating cabin lights to be somehow inconvenient or irritating.

What's your reason for preferring that they be separate?

I'm in group #4.  I like to turn cabin lights on and off independently of the external lights because the external lights usually remain on constantly but I toggle the cabin lights to designate whether they're occupied or not.  It helps me quickly determine which hatch to click on.  Also, it's a style thing.  I build all my planes with probe cores so sometimes they fly by themselves, and I think it more appropriate for them to have dark windows when they do.  So in the SPH/VAB, I turn the lights on or not depending on whether the thing will start with a crew or not.

Also, I tend to make multi-rescue ships out of clusters of Mk1 inline cockpits, so turning on their lights individually as I pick up Kerbals lets me know which cockpit to EVA the next Kerbal to, which saves a lot of time and trouble.

[swjr-swis]

33 minutes ago, Snark said:

and you're a #4.

Snark thinks I'm a #4! <beams> This one goes into the annals.

 

34 minutes ago, Snark said:

For me, I turn on the lights because I can't see what the heck I'm doing.  Cabin lights provide a very helpful visual clue about the position and orientation of the ship, even aside from external lights.  And I just think it looks cool when everything switches on.  I'm having trouble thinking of a counterexample where I would find activating cabin lights to be somehow inconvenient or irritating.

What's your reason for preferring that they be separate?

Funny how we have similar reasoning and yet arrive to a different conclusion, heh.

I like the lights for seeing what's up in the dark too, and cause lights are cool. But that for me is a reason that I almost always toggle my cabin lights on right in the VAB/SPH, with the intention of them staying on for the lifetime of the craft (and it disappoints me every time when I picked a part with windows that doesn't have the lights toggle). It's rare for me to leave the cabin lights off.

Whereas at least half of the external lights I place on craft are usually meant to be used only on specific moments: eg. as spotlights to light a still faraway landing spot or docking port. Those spots tend to wash out the scenery when nearer, so I have the wider softer beams for ambient light, but the spots get turned off. Also helps to keep the electricity usage down.

I can work with it either way, really. As long as I keep the option to toggle or not toggle with the action groups.

[Snark]

5 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

I'm in group #4.  I like to turn cabin lights on and off independently of the external lights because the external lights usually remain on constantly but I toggle the cabin lights to designate whether they're occupied or not.  It helps me quickly determine which hatch to click on.  Also, it's a style thing.  I build all my planes with probe cores so sometimes they fly by themselves, and I think it more appropriate for them to have dark windows when they do.  So in the SPH/VAB, I turn the lights on or not depending on whether the thing will start with a crew or not.

Also, I tend to make multi-rescue ships out of clusters of Mk1 inline cockpits, so turning on their lights individually as I pick up Kerbals lets me know which cockpit to EVA the next Kerbal to, which saves a lot of time and trouble.

Ah, okay, makes sense.  The latter situation is one that hadn't occurred to me-- when I have a situation like that (ship that gradually fills up with crew), I tend to handle it by having one particular pod that's the "entry point" that all kerbals go to, then I transfer them to another pod.  The "crew transfer" UI conveniently lights things up automatically to indicate which parts have capacity, so that takes care of it for me.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

OK, thanks.   There I am building all my space station with hitchhiker modules and cupola modules.  My Kerbals will have to feel around in the dark, I guess.  

 

I know! Candles.  I will pack candles. That should work.

Edited December 23, 2015 by Clear Air Turbulence

[Geschosskopf]

Just now, Clear Air Turbulence said:

OK, thanks.   There I am building all my space station with hitchhiker modules and cupola modules.  My Kerbals will have to feel around in the dark, I guess.  

Well, maybe that will change in 1.1.  The pods that have interior lights now are all ones that Porkjet either made from scratch or has recently revised.  It may be that Squad will have him revise the rocket/station parts next.  If that happens, I'm sure he'll put lights in all the pods.