UI discoverability tweak for fuel transfer

[Snark]

If you're playing in career mode, fuel transfer between tanks doesn't get enabled until you upgrade the science facility.  My concern is not with the gameplay mechanic, but rather with the way it's implemented in the UI.

Right now, the way the game tells you that you can't transfer fuel is simply to omit the "In" and "Out" buttons when you select multiple tanks.

I spend a lot of time in the "Gameplay Questions" forums, and I've seen new players get very confused by this a few times.  "Why can't I transfer fuel?"  They find some instructions somewhere, they right-click the tanks, they have no way to transfer.  The instructions they're working from often don't mention the "only available in career if you've upgraded R&D"... and sometimes don't even mention the "in" and "out" buttons explicitly, assuming it'll be obvious once you get the UI displayed!

A suggestion to improve the usability / discoverability of this feature:  Always render the In/Out buttons when multiple tanks are selected.  In other words, don't leave them out when you can't do fuel transfer due to not having upgraded the science facility.  If fuel transfer isn't enabled yet, just show the buttons as disabled / grayed-out ... and show a "you have to upgrade R&D" tooltip if the user mouses over them.

Or, alternatively, don't show the buttons themselves, but rather a placeholder message, e.g. "Upgrade R&D facility to enable fuel transfer" or something.

Would be a lot more obvious and less confusing that way.

[pandaman]

Good call!

It's areas like this that can make using any software so much less irritating.   Hopefully thing like this will be in a better position to get looked at now.

[Snark]

16 minutes ago, pandaman said:

It's areas like this that can make using any software so much less irritating.   Hopefully thing like this will be in a better position to get looked at now.

A generally good UI principle is "don't make UI change around dynamically too much"-- it's one of those things that sounds good in concept but ends up confusing people in practice.

There's already one good example that Squad has announced they're fixing in 1.1:  you know how when you are reviewing science results, and you have a science lab present, some of the results will have the yellow "research" button present and others won't?  The button-there-or-not causes the vertical size of the dialog to bounce up and down, so a user who's just automatically click-click-clicking through the list could end up accidentally transmitting a hard-won science result (AAAAAAARRRGHHH!) because the "transmit" button jumped under his mouse due to a dialog resize.  I seem to recall reading somewhere that Squad's fixing that, so that the dialog will stay the same size regardless of whether you can research the result or not.

That's a great improvement, glad to see that they're doing it.    Just would like to see the same sort of thing applied elsewhere.  I just brought it up here because I've seen two new users in the last week get bitten by this problem.  Given how many things in KSP are legitimately hard, it seems to me that we don't need to add cryptic UI issues on top of them.

[Francois424]

6 hours ago, Snark said:

If you're playing in career mode, fuel transfer between tanks doesn't get enabled until you upgrade the science facility.  My concern is not with the gameplay mechanic, but rather with the way it's implemented in the UI.

Right now, the way the game tells you that you can't transfer fuel is simply to omit the "In" and "Out" buttons when you select multiple tanks.

I spend a lot of time in the "Gameplay Questions" forums, and I've seen new players get very confused by this a few times.  "Why can't I transfer fuel?"  They find some instructions somewhere, they right-click the tanks, they have no way to transfer.  The instructions they're working from often don't mention the "only available in career if you've upgraded R&D"... and sometimes don't even mention the "in" and "out" buttons explicitly, assuming it'll be obvious once you get the UI displayed!

A suggestion to improve the usability / discoverability of this feature:  Always render the In/Out buttons when multiple tanks are selected.  In other words, don't leave them out when you can't do fuel transfer due to not having upgraded the science facility.  If fuel transfer isn't enabled yet, just show the buttons as disabled / grayed-out ... and show a "you have to upgrade R&D" tooltip if the user mouses over them.

Or, alternatively, don't show the buttons themselves, but rather a placeholder message, e.g. "Upgrade R&D facility to enable fuel transfer" or something.

Would be a lot more obvious and less confusing that way.

 

The best thing for fuel transfer is that mod @5thHorseman used to used in his latests careers, that allows you set a number on each tank on the ships.
When 2 ships dock together the fuel flows automatically, and without button pressing to fill the smallest number first (or the largest, I forgot).
It's better than TAC fuel balancing as it makes use of the stock gui or some look-alike.

If it's still supported in 1.1, I am installing that one.   I really don't wanna mess with 10-25 small tanks on some of my landers.  Consumes too much time and is boring to do, lol.
A stock function like this would be most welcomed.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Francois424

[jwbrase]

What I'd really like is some UI element showing COM coordinates and the ability to bind "fuel transfer forward" and "fuel transfer aft" to action groups. I have spaceplanes that require a COM behind the main gear to maintain proper attitude during reentry, but then, naturally, need a COM slightly forward of the main gear on the ground. Transferring fuel during atmospheric flight is annoying.