Feedback on Orbital Maneuvers and UI

[Zethan]

I am a KSP 1 player with over 1700 hours clocked. I am now 45 hours into KSP 2 with the entire tech tree unlocked. Here are the biggest points of friction I've faced in regards to orbital maneuvers along with some feedback.

The maneuver burn remaining bar indicator lacks precision. The pixelated UI makes it impossible to hit a burn dead on. Place a numerical indicator with decimal points of DeltaV remaining to the left of the bar.

//SoI = Sphere of Influence, not Sol as in our Solar system
There is no easy way to tell where the AN/DN points between two planets are, which is useful to know when you want to plan when to leave to avoid requiring an inclination change burn. I've been working around this by planning a maneuver that exits the current SoI then retracting from hyperbolic. This leaves behind AN/DN lines along with markers that will respectively bug out when moving or zooming the camera, but is sufficient to momentarily show where the interplanetary AN/DN points are. The easy fix for this is to just show those points to start with, then transfer them to the orbital path when it enters the SoI.

When on an intercept trajectory into a SoI, maneuver nodes cannot be created or edited within the SoI “preview bubble”, only on the actual orbit line around the main body you are in orbit of. You see the SoI bubble around your target, you’re shown your point of entry/exit, trajectory, and periapsis within it. Players will intuitively attempt to create their next maneuver node within that sphere and find that they are unable to do so. If players discover that maneuver nodes are meant to be created along the main orbit line (apart from a PE marker, nothing points players to this action; it took me over 40 hours of gameplay to discover this) they run into a second problem - You cannot see a maneuver node within the SoI preview bubble or edit one from there, where it is most useful. This leads to the awkward wrangling of the camera to include both the node and what you need to see of your target. From that perspective, some sliders may be difficult/impossible to interact with and you cannot move the maneuver node from that vantage point with any degree of usable precision. This exact same problem also and more often manifests itself in planning a precise interplanetary intercept burn, where what you need to see and what you need to interact with come into conflict with each other in terms of where they are.

Here are my suggestions:

1. Allow the creation and manipulation of maneuver nodes within the bubble itself, slaved both ways with the one on the main orbit line. If this is not possible or desirable, then desaturate the trajectory line within the preview bubble or use other visual language to indicate lack of interactability.

2. A maneuver node editor window with the following functions:
-Maneuver sliders/pull tabs for Prograde/Retrograde, Radial In/Radial Out, Normal/Antinormal
-Maneuver vector values display text boxes that are editable by text input
-Move Node slider for Forwards/Backwards
-Move Node button for Next Orbit/Previous Orbit
-Slider Sensitivity slider
-Select Maneuver Node buttons for Previous/Next
-Snap Node To buttons for AP/PE, AN/DN, Target Intercept Points. This can swap to a "Create Node At" interface when no node exists.

Having a maneuver node editor resolves the friction of controlling nodes from within a target focus SoI preview bubble that's on the opposite end of the Kerbolar system from your node. It would also permit greater precision and ease in node manipulation/creation which would be a QoL improvement.

Here's a mockup, albeit not in the design language of KSP 2.

Edited January 25 by Zethan
precision of language

[byaafacehead]

This is exactly a frustration I have. Well summarized, especially the SOI bubble.

Completely agree precision maneuver needs a detached editor. Hopefully Tuesday's 2.1.0 update helps a little