Better Fuel Management

[datubaman]

At the current moment, managing your fuel is a time consuming and tedious process in the BEST of situations. The Fuel Management system currently in place needs improvement. Here are some things that can be done that I believe would make it much easier to manage fuel.

1. Make it possible to open and close fuel tanks through Action Groups.

Having this option would be a major time-saver for us. There are times where we don't want certain fuel tanks being used at certain times. Currently, if you want to open or close a tank, you have to manually select it and hit the icon to do so. This is nice and all, but that becomes a hassle when you have a large number of tanks that you need to close off, or if the tank is obscured from view. So, having the ability to put them in Action groups would greatly improve the Fuel Management System.

2. Change how Fuel Transfer works.

This one needs a bit of explaining. Currently, when you want to transfer fuel between tanks, you have to select both tanks and then select which tank you want to send fuel to/from upon which the fuel immediately begins being transferred. Again, this would be fine, except when you want to transfer fuel from one tank to six tanks, or six tanks into one, or five tanks into four. There are also those occasions where you want to transfer one tank into eight, but there isn't enough fuel to go around. So, how can it be improved? First, instead of the current system, you would select all the tanks you want involved in the transfer, then you would designate which tanks are going to be sending/receiving through the UI (if it is not designated as one, it will automatically set itself to the other), then, to begin the transfer, you would select a Begin Transfer icon on the UI, whereupon the fuel will transfer into each of the receiving tanks equally. There would also be an Equalize icon on the UI that would equalize the fuel levels in all the tanks to the same level proportionate to their capacity.

[Kilmeister]

There are mods that do this now, (I Use TAC fuel balancer), but I agree that the current stock fuel transfer system could use some improvements. Refueling a ship in orbit can become a bit tedious, and balancing multiple tanks is impossible.

[Alistone]

Bump. I'd be happy if I could select multiple tanks and select in or out on one of them and it would pull or send evenly from the tank I click the button on to all the other tanks I had selected.

I often want to tranfer fuel to or from radial tanks to/from a center tank and have to suffer some imbalance because I can't do it simultaneously.

[Lysius]

I would also like to have:

1. an "all" button next to the "stop" button during transfer, to transfer all possible fuel immediately
   
2. do transfers from one to multiple tanks or from multiple to one tank simultaneously (in the way Alistone suggested)
   
3. a "balance" button that equalizes the fuel levels in all selected tanks
   
4. have both fuel components transfered together instead of one-by-one. They can't be used separately anyways.
   

[boomerdog2000]

1. I don't think you can do this because the instantaneous change of the center of mass like that screws with the physics.

2,3,4 would all be nice to have.

[Lysius]

But at least it should be possible to speed up the transfer. Especially when transferring between a small and a large tank, it can be really slow.

An other idea is the possibility to link multiple tanks into one virtual tank. This would be especially useful for refueling space stations.

[Captain Sierra]

This idea is part of something I am working on. I want there to be no confusion when I suggest it and tank grouping was something that I thought about. All these really need to happen, bad. Update .22, fuel dynamics.

[boomerdog2000]

But at least it should be possible to speed up the transfer. Especially when transferring between a small and a large tank, it can be really slow.

I believe you can speed this up based on which tank is doing the transferring. I think the smaller tanks transfer fuel at a slower rate so it is easier to mange how much fuel you want in them. Try transferring into the big tank instead of out of the small tank if you see what I mean.