Option to Display Remaining Number of Seconds of Burn Time in Stage

[Davidian1024]

I've often wished the game would display the number of seconds remaining in a given stage as opposed to Delta V.

I imagine the interface could work like this.  Click on the Delta V number to switch to the number of seconds remaining.  Basically click on that number to cycle between Delta V and seconds.

[Gargamel]

Moved to suggestions 

[EvelynThe Dragon]

10 hours ago, Davidian1024 said:

I've often wished the game would display the number of seconds remaining in a given stage as opposed to Delta V.

I imagine the interface could work like this.  Click on the Delta V number to switch to the number of seconds remaining.  Basically click on that number to cycle between Delta V and seconds.

To be honest, I am not sure why you would want that. Delta V is the important thing, all orbital maneuvers are really dependent solely on Delta V. 

Can you explain to me what value this would have?

[TheOrbitalMechanic]

I suspect this would lead to some very confusing readouts, as the number of seconds remaining in a given stage is dependent on throttle levels. If you turn the throttle down, the seconds remaining increase, and vice versa.

[Bej Kerman]

8 hours ago, EvelynThe Dragon said:

To be honest, I am not sure why you would want that. Delta V is the important thing, all orbital maneuvers are really dependent solely on Delta V. 

Can you explain to me what value this would have?

3 hours ago, TheOrbitalMechanic said:

I suspect this would lead to some very confusing readouts, as the number of seconds remaining in a given stage is dependent on throttle levels. If you turn the throttle down, the seconds remaining increase, and vice versa.

It helps with guesstimating landing burns when you know how many seconds your dV is spread over. KSP 1 had this and it was sometimes helpful.

[EvelynThe Dragon]

11 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

It helps with guesstimating landing burns when you know how many seconds your dV is spread over. KSP 1 had this and it was sometimes helpful.

Interesting. I have never approached landings like that. I do make sure that I have more than enough TWR to ensure I can lift off the target body. And I try hard to make sure I bring enough fuel, but have always used Delta V to assess that. At least on KSP1, there are Delta V tree maps for getting to and from each body that are really helpful. I used MechJeb in KSP1 and am using Micro Engineer in KSP2 to give me my horizontal surface velocity and vertical velocity then work at killing those as I near the surface. Sometimes I come in a bit hot, but I have never really needed to see fuel supply in seconds. It's just a different way of looking at it, I have always understood things in terms of change in velocity and acceleration.

BTW, Happy Pride Month from a fellow queer and trans woman.

[Davidian1024]

I posted this somewhat hastily.  I kept having this thought as I played that it shouldn't be too hard for the game to tell me how many second I have left in my stage as opposed to how much DeltaV.  But I didn't know exactly how to articulate it.  Now, I don't think I had a totally clear idea of what I wanted.  Part of why I posted it was to see if others had ever wanted something similar.

Since then I've been trying to make mental notes of when I wanted something like this.  And I'm realizing it's more than just how many seconds of burn time I have left in a given stage.  I think it's basically anywhere there's a velocity shown in m/s, I'd like a way to be able to toggle that to be expressed in terms of the amount time it would take my craft to make that change in velocity.

You can get this number with the maneuver planner.  But there are at least two ways where I think you wouldn't want that.  The maneuver planner does alot more than just tell you how long to burn.  If all you want is that amount of time, it's overkill and feels tedious.  Not enough time to setup the maneuver plan.  As a simple example, say you're coming up on a moment where you need to perform a burn, but it's important that you don't start too early.  Bej's example of guesstimating landing burns is a good one.  One recent situation was when I was trying to synchronize an orbit with my station.  Instead of m/s difference in velocity between me and the target, I would've likes seconds it would take to cancel that difference.

To TheOrbitalMechanic's point.  Yes, I can definitely see this making the readouts more confusing.  But at the same time, I think if done right, it could be a big help.  Making it so the user is unlikely to accidentally switch the display away from the m/s number to seconds could be done by holding alt and clicking on the number perhaps.

But then Evelyn's comments about mods make me wonder if this would be better in a mod than in the stock game.

Oh, and I also want to say Happy Pride Month as a straight white cis male ally.