Timeskip

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

So I've gotten back into KSP recently, and I launched a test mission to Duna. The alignment wasn't right, so I changed course and went to Eve. It'll take several hundred days to get there, an annoying amount of time to do in even the fastest timewarp. So I'm proposing being able to skip time to certain points. Like, say, skip to Eve encounter. Or skip to the closest approach with your space station, or whatever. Is that something that can be done in-game, and something you'd want to see? 

[pandaman]

I can see some merit in this, especially for those players that tend to do one mission at a time, and I'd probably use it myself on occasion.

As for whether it's doable or what effects/bugs it might create I have no idea, but I suspect it's nowhere near as straightforward as it may appear, as it would still have to deal with all existing flights.

[swjr-swis]

I would be in support of such a thing. I have left a few missions behind on old saves due to the time required to sit through even a max time warp making it take more time than I had available.

The game can already calculate the on-rails trajectories and even show how much time it will take to get to a certain point in the orbit (maneuver nodes do this). So the code could simply assume its projection accurate and simply skip all craft ahead x time on their respective projected orbits even correcting across any SoI changes. Of course if any of the craft have a projected periapsis too near a planetary body before the chosen time, there should be a message and it should disallow, just like the existing time warp slows or stops when that happens.

Even if we accept that such a time skip would come with some inevitable loss of accuracy compared to regular time warp, it could be an acceptable trade off in some circumstances (and would make testing and 'simulating' certain interplanetary missions a lot easier/less off-putting).

Edited October 1, 2016 by swjr-swis
my typing accuracy also decreases when it goes faster...