Suggestion: A few UI improvements

[lBoBl]

We all knew that Early Access wouldn't be perfect from the start and that it would need improvements, however after hearing Nate talking time and time again about how great the new UI was going to be and how proud they were of it, I really expected it to be better than it is. However it's not unsalvageable, there are some good elements, and I have a few suggestions on how to make it better.

First thing probably won't be a surprise, many people have talked about it, and it's the retro-style font. Yes it looks kind of funny but it is unreadable, especially in 1080p which is the resolution many of us are limited to (I used to play KSP 1 in 4K so it's a bit of a downer here). I'm not even talking about 1080p after stream compression... Maybe you could give us an option to change it? The Navball also is very hard to read in 1080p.

Second is probably my biggest grief with the UI in its current state. In KSP 1 you could choose to display patched conics in relative or absolute mode, it was set to relative by default because that is the most useful mode and I have never seen anyone use them in absolute mode. However in KSP 2 they are set to absolute and there is nothing you can do about it. Concretely what that means is that for example if you plan a burn towards the Mun, you can't see what your trajectory over the Mun will be relative to the Mun, you can only see what your trajectory over the Mun will look like relative to Kerbin. Who cares about that? I just want to be able to plan a burn that will give me a 15km periapsis over the Mun, and on the correct side of the Mun to orbit it eastwards after my capture burn. This really hurts gameplay and it's kind of baffling coming from a dev team that claims to be comprised of many KSP 1 veterans with thousands of hours of playtime each.

I also think the maneuver interface has to be revised. In KSP 1 you could see how much dV was left on your maneuver during the burn, now you can only see seconds left which is not relevant if you aren't going to do the full maneuver at 100% burn. It is very hard to be precise on maneuver execution for that reason. You don't even need to add a new line, just make the Required dV value dynamic and update it as the burn is underway. As for maneuver planning  I think it would be much better if there was a way to input numerical values for each vector (prograde, radial, normal) instead of having to drag the little arrows like in KSP 1. Ever since I installed Precise Maneuver on KSP 1 I have been simply unable to play without it and I have used in in every playthrough these last few years. I think the devs could draw inspiration from it. 

For some reason I can't see the future Pe and Ap values after a planned burn when I hover over it. I don't know if this is a bug or just a missing feature but it makes something as simple as  a Keostationary orbit impossible to plan ahead, you just have to eyeball it using the current Pe and Ap display. Same thing when you're trying to set your Pe at a precise altitude for aerobraking, you have to eyeball it and can't use the maneuver planer.

In KSP 1 you could set the orbit line fade (which indicates which way your craft is orbiting) to normal or reversed. I always thought that the normal mode made more sense, perhaps this is just a question of habit, however the fact that in KSP 2 it is set to reversed and you can't change it is slightly confusing for KSP 1 veterans. It would also be nice to add an orbit line fade to planet and moons, especially moons. This is not a very important feature but I feel like it would be an easy one to implement.

When hovering over a planet with moons in map view, priority should be given to the planet name's. When I hover over Jool for instance, it always says Bop. This has no impact on gameplay however, and I like saying "Bop", it's a cool name. Bop.

Finally in the VAB, I think there should be a way to save your workspace in less than 3 mouse clicks. Like having a quicksave option that doesn't require you to open the save menu and confirm that you want to overwrite your workspace every time you want to save. Very seldom have I accidentally deleted crafts in KSP 1 by accidentally overwriting them and I feel like it would be even rarer in KSP 2 with the new (and fantastic) workspace system.

 

Outside of bugs the UI is probably the biggest grief I have with the current Early Access build, and definitely the biggest letdown given that Nate really did hype it a lot. It has a lot of good elements, in fact it would probably take me longer to list the good things than it did to list the bad things, but some of the things I mention really do hurt gameplay, and are sometimes really surprising coming from a dev team who played and loved KSP 1.

Hope this helps, cheers.

[Klapaucius]

I agree on the workspace saving in the VAB.