Please let us lock pieces in place.

[Geoclasm]

Love the game. Has totally consumed my life in spite of my short temper and lack of patience.

May have already been suggested but nothing sets me off quicker than going to click on anything and the game registering (either by mistake or because I clicked on something else) that I clicked on what I wasn't trying to click on.

Please give us an option during designing our space ships and space planes that enables us to, maybe through a right-click context menu option, lock an item (and by extension all it's mirrored components) in place so that it can't be interacted with any further.

[Andem]

I desperately need this! I don't want my ladders to be innaccesible because of a small hitbox, why isn't this a thing???

[swjr-swis]

53 minutes ago, Geoclasm said:

Please give us an option during designing our space ships and space planes that enables us to, maybe through a right-click context menu option, lock an item (and by extension all it's mirrored components) in place so that it can't be interacted with any further.

I've become a master at clipping, even at small and large extremes of size and part counts... but I still want this! Simple idea that would do away with a lot of frustrating 'misclicks' and unnecessary reloads.

[cantab]

Fix the UI "clickthrough" bugs and the delayed-click-registering bug first, then see if this is still needed.

[swjr-swis]

53 minutes ago, cantab said:

Fix the UI "clickthrough" bugs and the delayed-click-registering bug first, then see if this is still needed.

Without waiting for that I can already tell I would want it anyway. KSP has conditioned me into avoiding the clickthrough and delayed-click issues, I almost never have trouble with either of those while building. I tend to hover my cursor a lot, deciding on clicks only after I see the highlight I expect, rotate or zoom out camera to ensure menus are not over parts, etc etc, all without much conscious thought anymore. (not to say that I do absolutely want those issues fixed too, yes please).

I do however still regularly have trouble with the wrong parts reacting to a click, or having to go to great lengths in angling/zooming/clipping the camera to be able to click the part I want, just because KSP and my eyes constantly disagree on which part appears to be 'on top' or the 'closest' to my cursor.

Much of this I do to myself because I use a lot of gizmo and clipping to get a specific look or build, I build crazy huge or really tiny a lot, but the fact remains that KSP is very annoying in that it appears to decide on 'clickable' based on the invisible collider mesh instead of the visible textured mesh (pure conjecture from my part, but that's what it feels like), and will consistently 'hide' a perfectly visible part 'behind' or 'under' a part that is visibly occluded at the spot I hover my cursor.

Letting parts on a craft have a toggleable rightclick variable 'EditLock = true' or somesuch would remove a big annoyance from the building process.

Edited January 8, 2016 by swjr-swis

[AlamoVampire]

Coulda sworn someone fixed click thru alrdy but that would explain why I've seen it recently lol

[MKI]

What keeps ctrl+z from being an adequate solution?

With this change you would need to individually lock every single part you don't want to interact with EVERY TIME. You can say to use the part hierarchy but the same problem can still exist if you haven't finished the hierarchy and miss click. You also would need to undo the hierarchy every time you wanted to edit 1 part down the chain. You could also get confused about the unseen hierarchy, especially when it comes to parts that are difficult to tell where they are connected IE wings, and find yourself trying to edit a locked part.

 

Or just redo the mess up that occurs ONCE IN A WHILE with ctrl+z and throw away the part your holding. (causes lag if build is huge, but nothing game breaking)

 

 

[swjr-swis]

4 minutes ago, MKI said:

What keeps ctrl+z from being an adequate solution?

With this change you would need to individually lock every single part you don't want to interact with EVERY TIME. You can say to use the part hierarchy but the same problem can still exist if you haven't finished the hierarchy and miss click. You also would need to undo the hierarchy every time you wanted to edit 1 part down the chain. You could also get confused about the unseen hierarchy, especially when it comes to parts that are difficult to tell where they are connected IE wings, and find yourself trying to edit a locked part.

Or just redo the mess up that occurs ONCE IN A WHILE with ctrl+z and throw away the part your holding. (causes lag if build is huge, but nothing game breaking)

I have bad experiences with Ctrl-Z reverting of changes. I remember symmetry in particular being an unintended and silent victim that would only become apparent much later in a build. Also when doing a lot of gizmo work on a build, Ctrl-Z likes (liked?) to screw things up. So I learned to avoid it completely, and saved often and reloaded my last save instead. Perhaps no longer entirely warranted, but I don't remember release notes specifically mentioning this being resolved.

I wouldn't want this lock switch to be based on hierarchy, no. Rightclick menu accessible per part would be fine by me, so I can consciously choose which parts I am satisfied with when it comes to placement and no longer need to react to being 'picked up'.

Also, in my workflow I make a lot of use of subassemblies. Big subassemblies at times, with lots of parts and lots of gizmo work. Many of my subassemblies hardly ever need editing anymore once saved, and all I need to be able to do at that point is place the entire assembly where I want and act pretty much as a single piece. Yet what happens often enough is that subassemblies once placed on a new craft, will get disassembled again in unintended misclicks. Being able to set all parts of those subassemblies as 'unclickable' would in one fell swoop solve .. around 50-75% of the misclicks is probably not far from the truth. For the odd times I need to edit the actual subassembly, I'll gladly reach for the rightclick menu for the specific part that I premeditatedly wish to pick up right then.

[sedman]

There should be a text list box to select parts with, having to manage the camera so I can select parts I've clipped in is tedious.

[Alshain]

Yeah, I kind of agree this would be neat but if the click through issues are fix it may not be necessary.  I would almost suggest reversing the click and shift+click functionality though.  I.e. hold Shift to remove a part or don't hold shift to move the ship around.  I say 'almost' because I'm so accustomed to the way it is now I may or may not like that lol.

[Motokid600]

I could've sworn Squad said this was going to be a feature awhile back. To be able to lock parts after placement. Why is this not a thing? Just last night I caused a mess just trying configure staging. Ctrl-z is not a solution with a several hundred part craft. There needs to be an option to lock parts via the right click menu. ( and a lock/unlock all button ). 

Again Squad said this was to be a feature. 

Edited January 10, 2016 by Motokid600

[Geoclasm]

On 1/9/2016 at 6:30 PM, MKI said:

With this change you would need to individually lock every single part you don't want to interact with EVERY TIME.

 

 

No. I said that the feature would lock the piece in place along with all it's symmetry siblings (didn't word it like that).

The feature should lock the following : 

• Selected Piece
• Selected Pieces Symmetry Siblings
• Selected Pieces Child Components
• Selected Pieces Symmetry Siblings Child Components

With the option to unlock (with a single action) the pieces child components and the pieces symmetry siblings child components.

Implementing some sort of visual feedback (A red semi-opaque closed lock icon, for example) when hovering over locked components would aid the user, er player, in making good use of the feature.

And of course if you don't want to use it you don't have to.

Sorry to move the goal posts to invalidate your argument but... well, there you go. That's why Ctrl-Z doesn't fulfill this need. Besides that, Ctrl-Z can take a significant amount of time (and processing power) that would not be necessary were this feature implemented.

Edited January 10, 2016 by Geoclasm

[Alshain]

That would be backward though.  I would venture a guess most people build their rocket top down, you want to lock the parents back to the root, not the children.

[Geoclasm]

On 1/10/2016 at 3:16 PM, Alshain said:

That would be backward though.  I would venture a guess most people build their rocket top down, you want to lock the parents back to the root, not the children.

No, what I mean is that if you had a rocket with a ladder on it and locked the rocket, the rocket and the ladder would both be locked...

[_Astra_]

On ‎09‎.‎01‎.‎2016 at 3:30 AM, MKI said:

What keeps ctrl+z from being an adequate solution?

 

Severe bugs.

Broken struts, broken action groups, strange rerooting, ghost parts hanging around the main ship. Undoing can result even a broken save with no symptoms.

[Alshain]

3 hours ago, Geoclasm said:

No, what I mean is that if you had a rocket with a ladder on it and locked the rocket, the rocket and the ladder would both be locked...

But that feels backward to me.  I don't put my ladders on till near last so I know if they have clearance and I can adjust their angle over obstacles.  So what use would there be locking the ladder I haven't placed yet?  More likely is I'm going to accidentally grab part of the core of the rocket while moving the rocket to get a better view of where to place the ladder.  That means the parent part up to the root should be locked.

If they were going to lock all the children I would say don't add the feature at all.

Edited January 12, 2016 by Alshain

[Geoclasm]

1 hour ago, Alshain said:

But that feels backward to me.  I don't put my ladders on till near last so I know if they have clearance and I can adjust their angle over obstacles.  So what use would there be locking the ladder I haven't placed yet?  More likely is I'm going to accidentally grab part of the core of the rocket while moving the rocket to get a better view of where to place the ladder.  That means the parent part up to the root should be locked.

If they were going to lock all the children I would say don't add the feature at all.

Okay I see what you are saying and yes that makes more sense to me...

So basically instead you flip what I said on it's head and if you lock a Child (The ladder, in this case), the ladder, the rocket, and everything else up to the Root node gets locked.

 

Yes, that makes a lot more sense.

[MKI]

6 hours ago, _Astra_ said:

Severe bugs.

Broken struts, broken action groups, strange rerooting, ghost parts hanging around the main ship. Undoing can result even a broken save with no symptoms.

Then fix the bugs and make more efficient part loading for if you drag out a huge portion of parts.

If the implementation is buggy it doesn't mean the implementation is the wrong one. If it doesn't work properly or optimally then it needs work, but that doesn't mean the concept isn't the actual answer.

 

I ultimately thing this sort of feature needs to be quick and easy, efficient and logical.

Currently Ctrl+Z is mainly not efficient(for those large crafts). Logically it makes the most sense, and is SUPER quick(in terms of how quick the player can use it). Any realistic change to this needs to overcome at least the efficiency part. Locked part sub-assemblies come to mind, but that is bulky and not that easy to use. In-edit mode lock parts seems easy but building a logical tree structure to lock down parts how you want it is a pretty significant problem. (what is mainly proposed here)

Now lets say we have a bunch of geniuses and they find a realistic solution to this problem of how to build a logical tree structure to lock down the parts we want quickly and easily. How would we implement this so it stays easy to use and still logical as @alshain said we need to still pay attention to what players actually do.

We also do not want bugs that lock parts that we can't unlock that would be basically game breaking. So implementation needs to be almost fool proof, as permanently locked parts would ruin anyones craft entirely. Which is far worse than a session crash from Ctrl+Z. So in this case it would be FAR WORSE having an almost perfect but craft ruining bug in this part locking, than having an inefficient ctrl+Z.

 

But lets say we get a perfect running system and theres no bugs. Now we would have to optimally allow attachments onto locked parts. As there is no way to get around players wanting to put on the small stuff last. Thats not that hard, but for the proposition of adding 4 different ways to lock parts means 4 more buttons to add onto a menu somewhere. Since its based off clicks you need to add it to the r-click menu for every part in the game there would have to be a base tweak-able class. This isn't hard to implement, but it means instant window clutter, or another window ontop of the current tweakables. We can add it to some key shortcut combo but we can't get around either multiple different hidden key combos(emacs anyone?) or a popup window which adds to clutter. This can be acceptable, but defiantly not something forced upon the masses who generally have no problem hitting Ctrl+Z for their non 500 part machines to fix their part grab through a window(the father bug).

 

So we can have a perfect setup to lock parts that will intrinsically be more efficient than Ctrl+Z, but be far more complicated, and automatically forced upon everyone, just for a select few people where Ctrl+Z is to inefficient. We could hide it by default, but this sort of code isn't simple. Ctrl+Z undos something, by redoing what was done. Simple easy, and straight foward to code. Locking down parts selectively is complicated, which is why this post is LONG as hell. So putting something is complicated, mandatorially perfect and only ends up an option that few will need? That sounds like something left to mods, not stock.

I'm just not sold that locking pieces into place is something to add that is inherently better than Ctrl+Z for the masses. If its a mod I see its usages for huge craft builders, but not for the masses who can Ctrl+Z their way out of problems, rather than working through menus to prevent them. Too many people can deal with their craft issues, rather than the few who need this feature. As such, it would be a useful Mod, but not a good implementation to stock.

 

Edited January 12, 2016 by MKI