[Breaking Ground] Explicit settings for motor engaged/locked

[Guest]

Currently motor engaged and locked are only toggles. Moreover, they aren't 100% reliable as there are conditions in which locks can't engage, and it's not possible to set the locked property in the SPH/VAB, it can only be set in flight. Therefore it's currently really difficult to reliably set up device configurations that depend on the locked/unlocked or engaged/disengaged status of parts. 

It would be excellent if we could explicitly set these values in action groups: "Engage motor," "Disengage motor," "Lock part," "Unlock part," the same way we can do for deploying aero surfaces and such.

Secondary improvements: 

- Make it possible to set "Locked" status of a part in the SPH/VAB
- Make Lock more reliable (it shouldn't be blocked by movement due to minor vibration or similar)

My use case is a submarine bay in a helicopter. I want to have two settings for it: stowed and deployed. Stowed has the pistons and servos locked and unpowered. Deployed has them unlocked and powered. Since lock is a bit dodgy and can't be set in the hangar, toggling is unreliable, and moreover I can't start out in stowed mode since lock can't be set in the hangar.

[Vl3d]

I know this topic is necro, but it is still relevant. Although now there are explicit settings to lock / unlock, engage / disengage.. locking a servo is still bugged / unreliable / unpredictable because of very small vibrations or movements in the parts that prevent locking. This is a big problem especially when using toggle lock and trying to synchronize multiple servos.

Edited March 20, 2022 by Vl3d