Suggestion: Everything in the Game that I Would Like to be Changed || 0.1.x

[Suppise]

Hello all,

I have a little over 150 hours in the game now, and while this has been a mostly positive experience, I have been slowly accumulating a list of things that I would like to see changed/tweaked before 0.2/1.0.

These items will be split into two parts, the first half being things that are annoying to me, and having them tweaked would improve my user experience, while the second half are things that I think would improve immersion, and contain some minor nitpicks. I have tried to keep this post containing only things that are already in the game, which should remove accidental bug reports, and requests to add new features.

 

USER EXPERIENCE:

• FLIGHT UI:

The flight UI imo, is lacking a lot of key information, that would make flight both easier, and also allow for more complex mission profiles. It needs a TWR indicator for each stage, as well as burn time left for the dV in the stage. Orbital inclination under the AP/PE values would also make precise orbits possible like they were in KSP 1, with its 'advanced orbital info' tab. Another key piece of information that can be very useful for most missions, is suicide burn information; like a countdown, distance, and dV required. I used that info from K.E.R in KSP 1 for pretty much all landing missions, which allowed for thrilling, cool to look at, and efficient missions. One last piece of information that I found useful in landing, was horizonal and vertical speed read outs, which made precision landings a little bit easier (something that could be very valuable with colonies). (Also the trajectories mod made precision landings on atmospheric bodies significantly easier, but that gets well into the realm of additional new features to the game, which this whole section is already bordering on). TL;DR: port KER to the flight UI lol 

The other part of the flight UI that I think needs to be changed, is the tapes on the navball, and specifically the units they're in. Currently, they're both in km and km/s, which is not particularly useful in any scenario. The times I would look at the tapes for info, is for landing and sometimes taking off. With the units in km, the tapes move very slowly, to the point where they don't provide useful information to the flight. Most landing speeds will range from 2000-0 m/s from orbit to the surface, and with them in km/s, they barely move two units, often less. The tapes should either match the readout units (i.e. the same way the speedometer/altimeter units adjust depending on how large/small the value is), or it should be a log scale. That way, the tapes can provide useful information during critical parts of a mission, like they were intended to do.

• MANOUVRE NODES: 

The big one with this point is the 'out of fuel' message that prevents the player from making manouvers past their ship's dV. This design choice has always baffled me, as the old system worked perfectly fine. Especially with the buggy dV readout, which can often read zero despite a fully fueled ship, this change unnecessarily limits the player. Other applications of plotting past a ships capabilities could be to determine how much dV a rescue vessel would need to successfully return to Kerbin, if the readout breaks after rendezvous (happens frequently, even in KSP 1, after rearranging a ship), or simply if the player has infinite fuel turned on. The bar going to read to show that the player was going past the ships dV capabilities informed them well, and could even be improved if it still displayed the 'out of fuel' message. Returning to the old system, the same system KSP 1 used, is what I and most others would certainly appreciate.

The other thing I would like to see is the return of the 'plot to next orbit' feature from KSP 1,  which was useful for checking for chance encounters (very useful at Jool), or seeing if the next orbit would have a closer approach with rendezvous.

• TIMEWARP:

For timewarp, allowing the player to access all levels of timewarp once in a stable orbit (out of the atmosphere, or 10km above all surface terrain) seems like a no brainer. Waiting for rendezvous transfers for 15 minutes irl, or having to go through a craft switching frenzy to get higher warp for interplanetary transfers, makes interplanetary missions more painful than they ever need to be. With mods already doing this a few weeks after launch, I hope this gets fixed soon.

The other thing that needs a return is the ability to switch to physics warp when holding alt. For larger crafts, waiting whole minutes for them to slowly turn around is not fun. Physics warp exists already in the game, but being able to hold alt to access it at any point in flight, perhaps turning the timewarp bar red to indicate this, would be a great improvement.

• QUICKSAVING/LOADING:

I don't like how making f5 saves creates a new quicksave. It should override the previous f5 save if one exists. Currently, manually made saves get lost in the swarms of f5 saves, which makes it difficult to pinpoint critical points of the mission. It's annoying to find the quicksave titled 'orbit', amongst the sea of quicksaves 1-57.

The other thing I don't like is the lack of option to load a game save to the KSC. Currently, the only option is to load to a quicksave made, which prevents the player from opening the game to the KSC unless they made a save for it. If the player forgets to make such a save, or perhaps ended their last play-through not at the KSC (stations/bases/rage-quits), then they have to load the game to that point, and then load back to the KSC. Fixing this would reduce the time from opening the game to entering the VAB, which the load times already do so well.

• LIGHTS:

This is just a minor one, but I think that the range of most of the lights should be increased. often lights don't light up the ground early enough for them to be useful, and this is one of their main uses. In my experience, most of the time I see the dust kicked up by the engine exhaust before I see lights illuminating the ground.

IMMERSION/MINOR NIT-PICKS:

• ENGINE PLUMES:

This is my biggest issue with the game, that doesn't directly impact my user experience. The atmospheric engine plumes for methalox engines don't look good. I honestly think stock KSP 1 plumes look better, and waterfall plumes look orders better, which I found surprising for obvious reasons. they appear as an almost solid colour, with variations being hard to see, even when zoomed right in. The plumes should be much more transparent, and show those beautiful shock-diamonds, like those in the waterfall mod. They don't look 'powerful' compared to waterfall, and the jarring differences in beauty from all the other fuel types' plumes is very strange. They look stunning in a vacuum, so I just hope that someday the atmospheric plumes can match it.

The other issue is that some of the vac plumes appear to be more concave than convex, contrary to irl. The poodle engine is the worst offender of this that I've seen. most of the other engines get it right, but it sticks out like a sore thumb for those that don't.

• KSC:

This point is quite nit-picky, I'll admit, but I'm just not a fan of the KSC. I think having it downrange of the launchpads and runway was a very odd choice, and having it crammed in between the runways and launch pads limits the size of the buildings. It feels like the runways and launch pads were added first, and then the rest of it was added after. Having it on the other side of the runway (west side) would give it all the room it could need, which could let it have have a much larger R&D and tracking station buildings, which I think would match that of an interstellar species well. I think having 1 major, and 3 minor dishes for the tracking station like in KSP 1 would be neat, and buildings like wind tunnels, and engine test stands added onto the R&D would make the KSC feel more alive, while giving even  more opportunities for some challenging-to-fly under bridges.

• VAB:

Being able to past in hex codes for colours would be very nice to keep a consistent colour pallet across saves, or if the user wants to return to the colour they made at a later point in their build.

Also we need a return of the TWR for each stage, and the ability for it to be calculate it on different celestial bodies (and the same for dV).

• TERRAIN:

Not sure if the coming CBT system will fix this (I really hope it does), but I'll put it here anyway. The terrain in some places is very flat/boring. Obviously most of the terrain is really beautiful, but in some places its just not, specifically on the dark patches of the Mun, and large patches of terrain on Duna. I'm not saying that terrain can't be flat, I'm saying it shouldn't be Minmus Flats II. Just some rolling hills or even the odd minor crafter to break up the land to make it more interesting to look at, while still remaining 'flat'. I think the large craters on the mun in KSP 1 do this really well, as in they look flat from orbit, and are still generally flat on the surface, but the rolling hills and craters bresk up the terrain enough so that it doesn't look jarringly flat.

• ACTION GROUPS:

Group communication deployment with the solar panel action group. every single time i use them, in both games, I've always put them in the same action group, so putting them together just makes sense to me.

• REFLECTIONS:

Reflections are too strong. At some angles, I can hardly even see the craft, because its all white from reflections.

Also having stars 'fade' away/lowering their exposer when next to the light side of planets (like what they do in the 'distant object enhancer' mod/irl) would improve my immersion a lot.

• CLOUDS:

Increased cloud coverage, and multiple layers of clouds (instead of them all being at 2 km (i think theyre this high?)). I've always found clouds to be far more beautiful than any clear sky, both irl and in (both) game(s).

 

That is all for now. I hope this post gets heard and at least some of the points are acted upon amongst the bug fixing and new content. Might make another one of these for each milestone, depending on what they're like.  Thanks for reading allat.

Yours truly,

Suppise

[DoCDoC]

Hard Agree on the Lights...

 

This is just a minor one, but I think that the range of most of the lights should be increased. often lights don't light up the ground early enough for them to be useful, and this is one of their main uses. In my experience, most of the time I see the dust kicked up by the engine exhaust before I see lights illuminating the ground."

[Skystorm]

Lights also do not seem to shine on other objects in the VAB which can make adjusting things like spot lights hit and miss and/or need to be adjusted in flight.  When using things like dome lights or light strips to illuminate an area it is impossible to tell whether the light/strip is sufficient to provide the desired illumination.