Maintain target and control points when switching between nearby craft

[zarakon]

One method for docking involves switching between the two craft to keep them both pointed at each other.

The annoying part about this is that each time you switch, you have to set your target and "control from here" points again.

It would be really nice if the game would remember those two things for each craft, as long as you're just switching between other nearby craft.

[PetWolverine]

Maybe it's one of the mods I'm using, but the game already does this for me, as long as the ships I'm switching between are within physics load range (2.5 km I think). Very helpful when I'm doing a docking dance, rearranging parts on a big station.

[Matt56]

It doesn't do it for me, and i would find that very helpful. Thumbs up.

[Dave Kerbin]

Thumbs up. I can understand when doing 'far' switching that the target is lost for the time being, as you're basically unloading one instance and loading up another, but when doing close range [ ] instant switching the target should be retained.

[Dunbaratu]

Yes, yes yes yes.

And implementing would simply be a matter of saving "controllingPart: ...." and "targetThing: ...." as two settings saved per vessel. Each vessel would remember what those two settings were set to the previous time it was the primary vessel.

[zarakon]

Ok, so I did some quick checks..

It seems that the "control from here" setting IS already remembered for each craft when switching

Target is also saved, except it's a global thing and not a per-craft target. So if you have 3 craft, A B and C, you can target C while controlling A, and when you switch to B you'll still be targeting C. However as soon as you switch to C, that target will be cleared. There's currently no way to keep two craft targeting each other