What is this and what does it do?

[code99]

I recently reinstalled ksp to give it another go after a long hiatus and i added a bunch of mods as well.

 

I noticed this thing here:

Is this from base game or some addon i added?

What is it and what does it do and how should i best set this?

By default its set to 50% but from the description it gives, shouldnt it be 100 for best burn time results? Unless im reading it wrong ...

[jimmymcgoochie]

That appears to be a burn time indicator adjuster, which at a guess will change what proportion of the burn you do before the node time itself- in your case it changes the ‘start burn in’ time so that you start the 30 second burn with 30 seconds until the node and finish the burn at 0, but the most optimal way of doing it tends to be making the burn evenly on both sides of the node, hence the default 50%. I think it’s a stock feature called ‘advanced burn information’ or something similar, buried in the main menu settings.

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

53 minutes ago, code99 said:

Is this from base game or some addon i added?

What is it and what does it do and how should i best set this?

By default its set to 50% but from the description it gives, shouldnt it be 100 for best burn time results? Unless im reading it wrong ...

It's from the base game, and is a feature that got added a few KSP versions ago.

What it does is exactly what @jimmymcgoochie
said.

And yes, the default setting of 50% is, in general, the best choice. It means that the countdown timer will be arranged so that half the burn happens before the node and half is after.

[code99]

Right, so what we used to do manually, start burning when time to node is half the time of the burn, now is done somewhat automatically by the game via this setting.

 

Thats nice. Thank you for clearing this up for me

EDIT: Does it take into account stage switching? Say i have a little bit of my current stage but not enough ... ?

And sorry for posting in the wrong place

Edited November 25, 2020 by code99

[jimmymcgoochie]

@code99 to clarify- it doesn't actually control the engines/throttle or anything else,  only the start timer. Don't expect it to make your burns for you, for that you'll need MechJeb or some other automation tool.

[code99]

Yes, i know

[AHHans]

8 minutes ago, code99 said:

EDIT: Does it take into account stage switching? Say i have a little bit of my current stage but not enough ... ?

In the KSPedia (page 35) it says that you set the percentage of dV that you want to have done before the maneuver node. So I would assume that it does  take different accelerations of different stages into account. But I haven't actually tested that.

[code99]

18 minutes ago, AHHans said:

In the KSPedia (page 35) it says that you set the percentage of dV that you want to have done before the maneuver node. So I would assume that it does  take different accelerations of different stages into account. But I haven't actually tested that.

I think it does, i've experimented a bit after posting this thread and my burn times and results after burn were quite ok.

 

Thank you all for your help!

[Snark]

1 hour ago, code99 said:

I think it does, i've experimented a bit after posting this thread and my burn times and results after burn were quite ok.

Yes, it does take staging into account.

Another new feature of the burn indicator, which came in at the same time as the "percentage" control that you started this thread with, is that if the burn will extend across more than one stage, then the "dV meter" will have a little line drawn on it at the point where staging needs to happen.  So, one more indicator of "stage awareness".