Tweakables, contextual parts, and fuel selection.

[Puzzlemaker]

Hey all, I had just downloaded the B9 aerospace mod and holy crap that's a lot of parts. It seems almost silly, and honestly it's horribly organized by default.

So I have a suggestion to go with the tweakables in the upcoming .23:

Contextual parts. Allowing a generic part to take on the width of the part you attach it to, because it's annoying to look for that one part in the huge list that you want to stick on. Also allowing you to choose what type of fuel you want to store in any given part (Fuel, Fuel/oxy, Empty, RCS, Etc)

I noticed there was a pattern for fuel tanks. You can have: Extra Short, Short, Normal, Long. You can see that in the medium sized fuel tanks: The FLT-100, FLT-200, FLT-400, FLT-800. The Rockomax tanks follow the same pattern. Each one is double length, starting from the "Extra Short" length.

RCS tanks and SAS modules are basically both Extra Short length as well.

Ideally you could organize it like like a collapsible tree. You can select at the top level a Short Fuselage piece, or you can expand the node to select something more specific. If you select the generic top level piece, it contextualizes based on what part you connect it to. Then you can select the type of fuel you want for that part. It's hard to explain, so let me try some ASCII art.

Fuselage+
        |- Very Short
        |- Short
        |- Normal
        |- Long

Selecting Very Short would give you a generic short piece. If you connected it to an Orange Tank, it would become a Large Very Short piece, the Rockomax X200-8 Fuel Tank. If you open the tweakable menu on it, you can switch it to hold just Liquid fuel, Liquid/oxidizer fuel, RCS, and maybe even make it an SAS module.

However, if you want to be more specific, expand the Very Short option:

Fuselage+
        |- Very Short+
                     | - Small
                     | - Medium
                     | - Large
                     | - MK2
        |- Short
        |- Normal
        |- Long

This way you could specify specifically what kind of part you want, if you don't want it contextualized. Additionally having another level that lets you select what type of fuel you want it to hold (Or if you want it to be an inline docking port, or SAS module, depending on the size). Allowing any part to hold any type of fuel would really open up possibilities (Although it may take a few new textures...)

Doing the contextual parts and fuel selection would make it much easier to add new types of parts without it being overwhelming, like in the B9 aerospace mod. I noticed a ton of repeat parts that just had different fuels, it was rather silly.

One last thing: Instead of having the length, if the parts are made to be "Stretchable" where you can select the length, it would make the menu easier. You could just select a top level Fuselage piece, place it, then stretch it to however long you want. Or something like that.

[UberFuber]

I like the stretchable/procedural fuel tank idea (there's a mod for that, btw). Also perhaps an ability to select different texture for the tanks.

As for tech-tree integration, perhaps the tech-tree would simply place an upper/lower limit on the "stretchability" of the tank (so, for example, in lower tech level, your tanks can only be 0.5 ~ 1 meters long. Higher tech level allows you 0.25 ~ 5 meters long. On highest tech level, 0.1 ~ unlimited meters long)

[Dun Kirk]

I'd say the same for engines, I've designed a inter-planet design and modded a nuke engine so its 1/3 the normal. It'd be nice to have that function in game. We're currently playing NASA with lego.