Failure points overlaid onto trajectory- remove the guesswork

[EchoLima]

One of the things I dislike about KSP is the trial and error. I don't mean the type that makes you improve your vehicle designs, but the type that means you have do an aerobrake three different times to find out which trajectory doesn't result in your craft exploding. Forcing the player to rely on reverting to figure this out reduces the immersion of the game, and the repetition quickly becomes annoying.

The solution to this, IMO, is to provide more information in game to allow the player to do what they want without having to guess.

Specially, I would suggest having an overlay over the trajectory line that shows "failure points" like:

-time of EC loss

-time of signal loss

-destruction in atmosphere

In the concept image above, red represents a permanent failure (e.g. batteries run out with no solar panels), while orange represents when the craft is temporarily uncontrollable (e.g. signal blocked by Minmus).

This way, you'd be reminded to deploy your antenna and solar panels before its too late. You'd know to adjust your flyby trajectory so you're always in range of the DSN, and you'd know to change your periapsis so you don't burn up in the atmosphere. And if the problem isn't fixable, you could end the mission right there without wasting any more time.

What do you think?

Edited June 22, 2020 by EchoLima

[Cavscout74]

It's a good idea, but is KSP even calculating things like that ahead of time to show that?  And if not, considering how much it is already calculating each second, how much more will it have to calculate to achieve that?   My concern is based on my assumption KSP isn't looking at anything like that in the future, and the added calculations will quickly start to bog down even fairly small craft.  Other than that, yes I think it would be helpful

[EchoLima]

1 minute ago, Cavscout74 said:

It's a good idea, but is KSP even calculating things like that ahead of time to show that?  And if not, considering how much it is already calculating each second, how much more will it have to calculate to achieve that?   My concern is based on my assumption KSP isn't looking at anything like that in the future, and the added calculations will quickly start to bog down even fairly small craft.  Other than that, yes I think it would be helpful

Hopefully some info can be provided by doing simple calculations on available numbers: rate of EC discharge, distance from DSN antennas, etc. This would only have to be updated when the trajectory changes. Otherwise KSP can assume the craft is on rails, like when calculating the apoapsis or time to SOI.

It doesn't have to be perfect- its just a prediction.

I agree that some things, like predicting the trajectory in atmosphere, might be too difficult (and there's always Trajectories for that anyways).