And so there I was... (Tales from the Unexpected)

[inigma]

About to dock with my first station... perfect intercept, perfect everything, 100 meters from the docking port, went to align the vertical approach.... and accidentally hit the spacebar, instead of thrusters... and my orbiter exploded into a dozen pieces as the clipped parts torqued away as my separator ripped the helpless and unpowered command module with three Kerbals inside into an uncontrolled spin amid a cloud of debris headed for the station. So I took the station to chase after the floating command module figuring I could dock with it, only to realize I would eat up all remaining station RCS doing so if I even got lucky. I figured I could launch a rescue mission, so I gave up, hit reload to try again (contrary to the rules on the wiki for the wiki Campaigns) and tried again.

My second attempt I docked, but then I wanted to fix my station's altitude since my chase from the previous episode left it in an elliptical. I wanted 140km circularized. So I circularized it. Then I must have left the darn engine running (the low rumble should have been a clue). I turned off the engine and checked my periap which was on the otherside of Kerbin from my view point. I thought I read 140km. Whew close call. No need to worry. I left my two Kerbals on board, and returned one Kerbal home. And on the way home I was wondering why the station was at a lower altitude from my returning spacecraft... so I toggled back to the station and checked the altitude 40km!!. It was burnin' in the darned atmosphere! *Smack Head Here* the station left said atmosphere but next time around, I knew the station would die. There was no hope of a rescue... so I figured I'd just quit the game for the evening and come back to it when I have a plan. Only I hit end mission.

Realizing my mistake I went to the Tracking Station. All that remained of my escapade was the debris from my ripped up Command Module.

argh.

Not sure if I'd count that as losing a Kerbal yet in my ribbons, as I am sure I could have mounted a successful rescue mission, but instead I lost my save with nothing to show for it except debris.

Edited July 17, 2013 by inigma

[Johnno]

Probably more suited for the Mission Reports subforum.

So what'd we learn from this?

Alt-L to lock staging. (or modifier-L if you're not on windows)

Instead of chasing a pod with a station, EVA your kerbals and use their eva packs.

Keep an eye on your orbit while doing manouvers.

Use X to turn off engines rather than lowering with Ctrl.

Think twice once you click escape so you don't end flight the wrong stuff.

[inigma]

EVAing the Kerbals... now why didn't I think of that?

[Motokid600]

Problem with end flight is ( I think there changing it in .21 ) there is no "Are you sure?" Prompt. And if your like me you stay up into the wee hours of the night ( I've seen the sun come up twice now while playing KSP ) building/flying your next mission. Now I'm tired at this point so when I'm done I apparently like to hit end flight and not even realise it until the next time I play only to see 6 hours of my life is gone like a fart in the wind. .........****! ****! ****!!! *frizbes keyboard across the room*

[AfailingHORSE]

This is why I like to use docking mode when I dock, not because of the key layout, but because space bar doesnt stage, and shift doesnt turn on engines.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I moved the staging button in the config from spacebar to enter a long time ago. I had the annoying habit of resting my thumb on it and sometimes I would push down a little too hard without realizing. Even using enter, it's still dangerous and I sometimes forget to lock staging.

Never hit end flight by accident though, you do have to hit two buttons to do it...... just sayin' - you have to hit escape, hit end flight then hit end flight again - should there be a third button press required?

[DChurchill]

This is why I like to use docking mode when I dock, not because of the key layout, but because space bar doesnt stage, and shift doesnt turn on engines.

A lot of wisdom, there. I've borked missions too many times by doing both.

[Johnno]

Problem with end flight is ( I think there changing it in .21 ) there is no "Are you sure?" Prompt. And if your like me you stay up into the wee hours of the night ( I've seen the sun come up twice now while playing KSP ) building/flying your next mission.

This is the ageold excuse. There IS a prompt. First of all you have to press escape to even get a menu up, you don't just accidentally click end flight while trying to click your ship in orbit. After pressing escape you have to press end flight and THEN you get a End flight/cancel prompt saying End flight at the top and 'are you sure you want to end this flight?'.

And I too stay up into the wee hours of night, and beyond. When I first bought the game, after playing the demo from 8pm to midnight, I played two days straight. Within a week of owning the game I had pulled 3 allnighters. As a fresh newbie, having just bought the game, I pulled 3 allnighters in a week and never once ended a flight I didn't intend to end. And I still haven't.

How many prompts do you need before you're happy?

End flight

Are you sure you want to end this flight?

Are you really sure you want to end this flight? It will remove the current flight.

Are you sure you want to remove the current flight? Removing it means it will not be saved.

Are you sure you don't want to save the current flight? Not saving means you have to launch it again if you do want it.

Click End Flight if you want to end this flight, removing it permanently and not saving it.

And then put up 10 buttons where only one says Yes End Flight and 9 say Don't End Flight, all in different colours and randomized locations.

THEN would you be happy?

No, then you'd cry it's too complicated and you want to end flight quickly.

So really, how many prompts? Two? Three?

Are you sure?

Really really sure?

I don't believe you... honestly sure?

And that's all I have to say about the end flight debate.

[Moon Goddess]

Don't worry, end flight won't be there in about a week or 2.

[inigma]

Problem with end flight is ( I think there changing it in .21 ) there is no "Are you sure?" Prompt. And if your like me you stay up into the wee hours of the night ( I've seen the sun come up twice now while playing KSP ) building/flying your next mission. Now I'm tired at this point so when I'm done I apparently like to hit end flight and not even realise it until the next time I play only to see 6 hours of my life is gone like a fart in the wind. .........****! ****! ****!!! *frizbes keyboard across the room*

2am here in when I did this. heh i relate.

[Motokid600]

This is the ageold excuse. There IS a prompt. First of all you have to press escape to even get a menu up, you don't just accidentally click end flight while trying to click your ship in orbit. After pressing escape you have to press end flight and THEN you get a End flight/cancel prompt saying End flight at the top and 'are you sure you want to end this flight?'.

And I too stay up into the wee hours of night, and beyond. When I first bought the game, after playing the demo from 8pm to midnight, I played two days straight. Within a week of owning the game I had pulled 3 allnighters. As a fresh newbie, having just bought the game, I pulled 3 allnighters in a week and never once ended a flight I didn't intend to end. And I still haven't.

How many prompts do you need before you're happy?

End flight

Are you sure you want to end this flight?

Are you really sure you want to end this flight? It will remove the current flight.

Are you sure you want to remove the current flight? Removing it means it will not be saved.

Are you sure you don't want to save the current flight? Not saving means you have to launch it again if you do want it.

Click End Flight if you want to end this flight, removing it permanently and not saving it.

And then put up 10 buttons where only one says Yes End Flight and 9 say Don't End Flight, all in different colours and randomized locations.

THEN would you be happy?

No, then you'd cry it's too complicated and you want to end flight quickly.

So really, how many prompts? Two? Three?

Are you sure?

Really really sure?

I don't believe you... honestly sure?

And that's all I have to say about the end flight debate.

How many prompts do I want? Well one would've been nice. Idk we must be playing different games because if I hit escape then end flight the flight ENDS with zero warning.

O and for the future there Johnno. You came on a little strong...

Edited July 17, 2013 by Motokid600

[Johnno]

How many prompts do I want? Well one would've been nice. Idk we must be playing different games because if I hit escape then end flight the flight ENDS with zero warning.

Guess we must be.

[Motokid600]

Guess we must be.

Uhm.. wow. That's actually messed up. I swear I do NOT have that option. End Flight for me ends the flight there and then. W..t..f

[-Velocity-]

Even with "Are you sure" options, people will still hit "End flight" accidentally every now and then. The problem is, over the years, most of us have been conditioned to just spam click any "OK", "Yes I'm sure" etc. buttons that pop up, because most of the time, we DID really mean to hit those options. So when the "Are you sure"? option pops up, it often won't stop us from clicking "yes", because we are actually letting our trained and conditioned subconscious minds operate the computer menus while we think about something else.

This is simply how the human brain works- it offloads common repetitive tasks to the subconscious so that the conscious mind can pay attention to more important things. So if you don't have any problem at all with the current implementation, then you either are denying who you really are, or you have unusual brain functions (not necessarily bad, maybe you're just better at policing your subconscious actions than the rest of us are).

It's kind of a moot point since the "End Flight" button is going to go away soon, but in answer to the question of "How many 'Are you sure?' prompts do there need to be?", the answer is that it's probably not a good idea to use the "Are you sure?" option in the first place. It would be better to require the user to do something unusual, such as type in the word "yes", or click a moving spaceship, or something like that. That way, in order to end a flight, you would have to do something would force your conscious mind to focus its attention on whether you really want to end the flight or not. Otherwise, it would probably take two or three "Are you sure?" prompts before the conscious mind would be guaranteed to notice them.

Edited July 17, 2013 by |Velocity|

[softweir]

Turn on your webcam and set it to record - I think I'd like to see your reaction when you do so!

There isn't an option in the Settings to disable the confirm dialog is there? I don't remember ever seeing one...