Better Action Groups

[JerryIRacer]

I love the game! Been playing about 2 months. Recently I run into a problem which does not seem to have any solution. Action groups of two or more crafts are getting combined after docking. I would like to have them separate. In my opinion action groups should be associated with command pod or core. That way after choosing "Control from here" only that action group list gets executed.

Now, why do I think it is important? Lets think through certain popular scenario.

Lets say I want to explore Laythe. After establishing a base, sending rovers and men, next natural step is sending in airplanes. I happened to build two VTOLs which will do great. Each of them has its own action groups - you know to rotate engines for VTOL, turn on/off Jet engine, Turn on/off Nuke as the other VTOL is SSTO. I had info part with short description added to each one so I do not get lost in my own engineering ( people on this forum pointed me to that, thank you! ) . Now, after lifting airplanes to orbit I docked them with my interplanetary tug. It has its own action group to turn on and off its engines. Two of them are aerospikes and are meant to increase TWR in expense of Isp. It is crucial to burn only with Tug's engines. But since all three action groups are combined, trying to turn something on operates two other things unintentionally! So VTOLS are moving, Props are running out of breath, jet fuel is dumped, and four unbalanced engines on payload are messing things up. Only solution is to manually tend each engine.

I know its not really a deal breaker. It is small unintended consequence of the design rather than a bug. It would be nice if at some point it could be looked at and resolved. Thank you for your time.

[allmhuran]

I do like the idea of having the action groups depend on which control module you're using, a simple and elegant solution. I tend to build big and so have to plan the action groups in advance... for example, you can safely put your "toggle steering" action in the same group as your "toggle engines" for retro thrusters, and various other combinations. But it is certainly easy to get it wrong, and even with this technique there still aren't really enough action groups for really complex, multi-docked ships.

[Bessy]

id just love to be able to see and edit action groups in flight .... never really thought about have the command control action groups only so u have to control dif modules to use there command groups

only 1 issue i have is when i build stations i often only have 1 command mod on the station the rest are undocked deorbited leaving the sol panels etc behind

[JerryIRacer]

id just love to be able to see and edit action groups in flight .... never really thought about have the command control action groups only so u have to control dif modules to use there command groups

only 1 issue i have is when i build stations i often only have 1 command mod on the station the rest are undocked deorbited leaving the sol panels etc behind

HA, never occurred to me! Also my idea has some issues of its own, like when you switch to control from docking port for docking. Should action groups be off, or inherited form command core? If inheritance is possible then you can safely dock bits without any control parts. But then to operate them would need to control from associated docking port. Thats far from elegant or useful.

Other solution would be to have stock Info Part allowing for action groups. No Info Part on Vessel means no action groups at all. And then just implement cycling through all Info Parts to activate different action groups. Now that is radical surgery...

I leave it to Squad as it seems to be more complex than I thought.

[Bessy]

there is a little solution to have i play an MMORPG call anarchy online you have similar things to action groups for things from casting nanos attacking with spec moves or if your clever creating macro's

but it has a interface with drag and drop with [1][2][3]etc but it has 10 selectable lists so i can press shift 1 and get a second list that do dif things press 1 to heal then shift 2 then press 1 again but it attacks with a nano etc etc

1 thing i def would like is timers on things so i have sepatrons that fire on jettison and a second set fire 1 second after like they do in RL

[Dart980]

Action Groups improvements are in What Not To Suggest list

[UbioZur]

As Dart said it's on what not to suggest list, because improving them have been suggested a lot of time at the moment. I am sure the dev will have a look at improving them later on when most of the big features of the game is implemented.

2 ways to do it for now:

- Use a mod like Action on the Fly

- Generalize your action group (like 0 for solar panel, 9 for wheels, 8 for ladders), and you should end with less problem.