LES tower action group

[EVA_Reentry]

Hey y'all! I had an idea and couldn't find it elsewhere. I think that the LES should be automatically connected with the 'abort' ag, just like lights are with the light ag. What think?

[GluttonyReaper]

I'm not sure ... unlike lights and stuff, they're kinda useless on their own. Having lights in the lights action group is fairly harmless, but having a solid rocket that's unlikely to be beneficial without additional input could be unnecessarily dangerous. 

[rudi1291]

Wasnt it autobound in some version and removed later? Could be wrong though...

Wouldnt have a problem with it, but since the abort needs manual tweaking anyway, its not beneficial

[Andem]

I need this! I always forget to bind it and I permanently lose my kerbals. It's depressing.

[moogoob]

I use abort for popping fairings, mostly. My actual "abort" action group is 10 (aka zero), followed by 9 to pop the chutes and abort to pop the nosecone off (if used).

All of this only counts in the three or four launches that I have crew abort engineered in, of course. Most craft just have to wing it in an emergency. (Actually, that"s the official Nastybird abort mode: Wing it. :p)

[acc]

I'm not a fan of auto-assignment in general.

[StrandedonEarth]

The abort group would need to have kill engines, pop the (correct) decoupler, and activate the LES.  Then you need a separate action group to decouple and jettison the LES when it is not needed. Unless you can find the right spot in the staging list for it.

But the most popular abort option is labelled "Revert"

[Dman979]

While I understand where you're coming from, I don't think it's a good idea. The A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S were originally assigned to the "Brakes" AG, and we all saw the problems that it caused. I think something similar could happen with the LES, too, and we wouldn't be able to use that AG for anything else.

[Temeter]

29 minutes ago, Dman979 said:

While I understand where you're coming from, I don't think it's a good idea. The A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S were originally assigned to the "Brakes" AG, and we all saw the problems that it caused. I think something similar could happen with the LES, too, and we wouldn't be able to use that AG for anything else.

Well, you usually stage the LES away after ascent, so you still could assing some other stuff to abort. Idk, airbrakes are better not to be auto-assigned, but the LES is a border case. It's such a simplistic, dedicated part that I can't really see any other way to use it.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Temeter

[moogoob]

18 hours ago, Dman979 said:

While I understand where you're coming from, I don't think it's a good idea. The A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S were originally assigned to the "Brakes" AG, and we all saw the problems that it caused. I think something similar could happen with the LES, too, and we wouldn't be able to use that AG for anything else.

The Airbrakes still do auto add under brakes - what they took out is the pitch/yaw input.

EDIT: What's bad with the airbrakes activating when I hold down "b"?

Edited March 28, 2016 by moogoob

[Snark]

On 3/27/2016 at 8:23 AM, acc said:

I'm not a fan of auto-assignment in general.

Yeah, the problem with auto-assignment as part of the stock game is that it will do it for everyone, all the time, and different people have different play styles with different requirements.  Adding something to a certain action group by default may seem like a great, obvious idea to one player-- but totally break someone else.

For example, cockpit lights aren't part of the "lights" action group by default.  It seemed like a total no-brainer to me that they should be (they're lights, right?)... but when I posted a thread about it in this forum way-back-when, there were actually quite a few folks who strongly preferred that they not be part of the group, for various good reasons having to deal with their own play style, which was different from mine in ways that I hadn't anticipated.

TL;DR:  it can be very hard to find a one-size-fits-all solution for this sort of thing.

If you'd like to customize the default action group assignment for your own game, though, here's a little mod I wrote that can help you do that:

...By default, all it does is hook up cockpit lights to the "Lights" action group, because that's what I really wanted it for and why I wrote the mod.    However, it also puts the necessary plumbing in place that you can then customize pretty much any part you want, as long as you're willing to create a snippet of ModuleManager config  for it.

The mod includes an optionally-installable config file that hooks up the extend/retract action of all solar panels to Custom1, if you need an example of how it's done.  Other instructions are in the forum thread for the mod, linked above.

[Temeter]

3 hours ago, moogoob said:

EDIT: What's bad with the airbrakes activating when I hold down "b"?

Because it overlaps with wheel brakes, and you usually want to keep up the air brakes.

Especially important by the usual suspects relying on airbreaks, aka heavy, wheeled craft like space shuttles and spaceplanes.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Temeter

[Dman979]

3 hours ago, moogoob said:

The Airbrakes still do auto add under brakes - what they took out is the pitch/yaw input.

EDIT: What's bad with the airbrakes activating when I hold down "b"?

Because then you can't build stuff like this:

 

[moogoob]

Nice looking plane! That seems to be the exception to the rule - most folk use them to slow down while landing etc, correct? Anyways, I think what I'm saying is that I, who sometimes forgets to make good action groups, appreciate that airbrakes get auto-added to the "B" button on my keyboard 99% of the time.