have that new com dish point towards kerbin

[mattig89ch]

Hello all,

I just wanted to suggest that having that new com dish pointing towards kerbin (as best as possible ofc). It auto rotates horizontally towards kerbin, or as near as possible.

[Tex]

Sure, it could be easy to implement, much like the auto-tracking solar panels, but if you have even a few units of RCS fuel, why not just rotate the probe/capsule manually?

[ManTrelk]

Sure, it could be easy to implement, much like the auto-tracking solar panels, but if you have even a few units of RCS fuel, why not just rotate the probe/capsule manually?

Because when you're orbiting another planet it's difficult to find Kerbin's exact position. Also, that argument doesn't really hold water anyway, I mean, why not just imagine you're playing a space sim instead of ACTUALLY playing a space sim?

[mattig89ch]

I was thinking more along the lines of, when your landed. so it looks like your sending the information to the ksc rather then just up into space, or down at the ground (or w/e direction your pointing the dish at)

[AncientAstronaut]

Good idea. They should implement this in .22.1 or something, since .22 is already in EXP mode and they probably won't change anything other than to fix bugs, I imagine.

[allmappedout]

I was thinking more along the lines of, when your landed. so it looks like your sending the information to the ksc rather then just up into space, or down at the ground (or w/e direction your pointing the dish at)

Of course, the issue with being landed of course, is that there is a significant amount of time you may not be pointing at Kerbin, which begs the question as to whether you then build in a mechanic about when you can send data. At least whilst in orbit you're going round fast enough that you're going to have direct LoS with Kerbin at least once every few hours or so, whereas if you're landed you could be waiting days or weeks (particularly if you landed on a tidally locked body which had its parent in the way, for example).

Still, the idea itself isn't bad, and since something like this already appears with the tracking station (it apparently points at objects in space and realigns to others once it drifts out of range), sounds like it should be possible.

[softweir]

Because when you're orbiting another planet it's difficult to find Kerbin's exact position. Also, that argument doesn't really hold water anyway, I mean, why not just imagine you're playing a space sim instead of ACTUALLY playing a space sim?

Actually it's easy to point towards Kerbin - go to the map screen, set Kerbin as your target, return to the map screen and point to the purple Target marker on the HUD!

But I rather like the idea of the antenna doing an automatic point. We had that tech as far back as the Apollo missions.

[pizzaoverhead]

I agree with this. One of the pre-release videos showed a Minmus landing. The antenna pointed to the ground the entire time. It was immersion-breaking.