Developer Suggestion Thread

[Linky]

I thought it might be nice to have a place to flush out some suggestions we have. Not necessarily bugs, but missing features. Any ideas?

Just something I noticed was the adapters, such as the “small” to “MK2” adapter. Why don’t they make a version without oxidizer, or make it so you can choose between methane or methalox?

[Vl3d]

My suggestions for the initial Early Access release version of the game (have also been sent through the Feedback system in the Game Launcher):

• [Tracking Station] Physical characteristics like semi-major axis and circumference are large values in meters. It would be great to either have separators for groups of 3 digits (because large numbers are hard to parse) or use greater units like Km.
• [Tutorial videos] allow seeking with arrow keys and space to pause while watching a tutorial video
• [Tutorials] the Time Warp tutorial could use some extra explanations of physics warp and on-rails warp or the speed-limits of warp depending where the vessel is
• I don't know how to change my agency name. Can this be made more obvious?
• [VAB] in the staging list, the icon for engines looks like a sports Winners Cup. I think it should be changed to something easier to visually parse. Why not use the same icon as in the Parts Catalogue? That one is better.
• [Settings] have a setting to select between 5 seconds and 10 seconds launch countdown
• [Parts Manager] integrate the Parts Menu icons in the Parts Manager (as vertical icons to the left of the list) - so the parts are grouped and we can easily find what we're looking for
• [Flight] Pressing ESC should pause the game.
• [Map View] the (ship/debris) icons should be less pixelated
• [Game Launcher] please add an option to not close the launcher when the game is started (in order to easily send feedback while the game is running)
   
• [Flight Mode] Close the Parts Manager window when middle clicking away from it or when pressing tilde '~'.
• [Flight Report Window] should stay hidden while a crash is taking place and appear on-click.
• [VAB] Make double (right or middle)-clicking reset the camera like pressing the Home button does.

Edited February 25, 2023 by Vl3d

[EngineeringWaffle]

• ability to see how much fuel is in a tank
• Ability to click on a part and see details without it opening the huge menu of all the parts. 
• Ability to customize UI scale
• Creating a maneuver mode should automatically start editing the maneuver node. I didn't created it for nothing, lol.
• shift + scroll to change viewport height in VAB please
• Just make the launch countdown 5 seconds. 10 seconds is way too long.
• cockpit view! It was such a fun feature before!
• show us what our orbit of a body will look like. e.g. show us our mun trajectory from the reference frame of the mun. It was in the old game, but now it just shows the circles.

Edited February 25, 2023 by EngineeringWaffle

[Linky]

54 minutes ago, EngineeringWaffle said:

• ability to see how much fuel is in a tank
• Ability to click on a part and see details without it opening the huge menu of all the parts. 
• Ability to customize UI scale
• Creating a maneuver mode should automatically start editing the maneuver node. I didn't created it for nothing, lol.
• shift + scroll to change viewport height in VAB please
• Just make the launch countdown 5 seconds. 10 seconds is way too long.
• cockpit view! It was such a fun feature before!
• show us what our orbit of a body will look like. e.g. show us our mun trajectory from the reference frame of the mun. It was in the old game, but now it just shows the circles.

They’re all great, but I especially like those last 3.  Something ‘easy’ to add would be a countdown in the launch button. The sound is cool, but backwards Spanish isn’t easy to understand.

[Vl3d]

• [Flight UI] Please make the round borders (Pause Button, SAS/RCS toggles, and SAS buttons) and icons (Vessel Actions, Game View, App Bar, disables SAS controls, location bar on top, Map View icons) look less pixelated. For example the Vessel Resources icons look nice and smooth. I like the idea of a pixelated Kerbal Operating System overlay on top of the realistic game, but please be careful with pixelated curves and fonts. It looks good in some places, but not with round graphic elements.
• [Flight UI] The Gear icon in the Vessel Actions bar is not intuitive to understand. I look at it and think of a grenade icon. I recommend changing the icon to something similar to landing legs or a gear with 3 smaller wheels (the large landing gear).
• [Flight Mode / Map View] Eve's terrain should be completely hidden under the cloud layer. It's part of the fun of needing to scan the planet to know its topography.

Edited February 27, 2023 by Vl3d

[Snark]

• [Flight UI / VAB]  The staging icon for the parachute is extremely confusing, at least for me.  My first launch, I spent many frustrating minutes trying to understand "why the heck is there no staging icon for my parachute!?!?!"  Turns out it's right there, but the way they've drawn it-- with a stylized capsule under a poofy fat chute cartoon-- looks to me like an engine:  The capsule is the engine bell, the chute is the mounting hardware.  My eyeballs saw that icon and immediately went "yeah that's an engine" and skated right over it.

Even now, when I look at it, my eye is drawn more to the capsule than the chute.  If the icon is for a parachute, don't include stuff-that-isn't-a-parachute in the drawing.   Make the icon look more obviously and definitely like a parachute-and-nothing-but.  Get rid of the capsule, draw obvious shrouds, something like that.  For example, I always found the KSP1 parachute icon very easily recognizable.  For example, something like this:  (please excuse my crappy "art" skills)

[Superluminaut]

On 2/24/2023 at 10:39 AM, Linky said:

I thought it might be nice to have a place to flush out some suggestions we have. Not necessarily bugs, but missing features. Any ideas?

Just something I noticed was the adapters, such as the “small” to “MK2” adapter. Why don’t they make a version without oxidizer, or make it so you can choose between methane or methalox?

The bug report forum is a subsection of the suggestions forum.

You've posted a suggestion thread in a suggestion forum.

[Linky]

On 3/7/2023 at 9:14 PM, Superluminaut said:

The bug report forum is a subsection of the suggestions forum.

You've posted a suggestion thread in a suggestion forum.

I intended for this to be for smaller ideas. Big ideas should definitely have their own thread.