Several assorted ideas mostly about parts

[madnessinmysoul]

I've made suggestions before, but here are some things I think we really need.

Info boxes.

Whether it's in the VAB/SPH while we're building so that we get information about weight and size for the vessel or information logging for flights that we can access to learn from our mistakes, we need more access to raw info. I often toss MechJeb onto projects I'm doing even if I have no intention of using any of its autopilot functions just for this.

Part tweaking

I know we're getting more of this with each update, but I have some suggestions on things I'd like to be able to tweak:

Materials. This will be a lot more important in later releases when the tycoon style play becomes a factor. If I'm making a plane and I put a wing on, I should be able to choose what material it's made of. The materials would impact the weight, cost, heat tolerance, and durability of a part. Hell, for some parts we should be able to tweak the materials for individuals components of parts.

Part customization. With some parts it would be great to have more flexibility in changing features without having to use an entirely new part. Having some method to customize things like the number of seats put in a pod, additional resource tanks, heat tiling, and much more would allow us to keep a somewhat more uniform aesthetic with more flexible usage. You could even make it so that there are additions you have to research. Like an internal science unit that takes up the space of 1 seat. It would also be great it we could use this feature to put landing gear as something that folds into another part.

Tools

This would be great for diversifying the science experience. If you want Jeb to take a surface sample, there should be a prerequisite tool you have to have him bring. You could also toss in a golf club and ball for observations of gravity. I'm sure your crazy awesome minds will come up with more individual tools to allow Kerbals to make a wider array of observations for science.

[peadar1987]

I like the idea of tweakables for the "quality" of parts.

It could be as simple as having a slider from "low" to "high", low gives you a cheaper, heavier, part. High gives you a lighter, more expensive one. Balanced properly, it could add another mechanic to the game for when contracts come in.

And then heat resistance, durability, etc. could be taken into account if environment ever becomes a factor.

[Wahgineer]

Personally, I think parts should stay the same. What you should be able to tweak is what type of fuel tanks can hold. For example, switching a Jumbo 64 from LH2/O2 to Xenon or just LH2. This would allow some engines to run more realistically (LV-N only uses LH2 instead of LH2/O2.).

[madnessinmysoul]

I like your basic idea, making it a lot easier than my more complex one. Though maybe simply 'quality' is a bit too simple. Maybe some parts would be 'quality' and other parts would have a slider with basic variants. Like 'high durability' or 'fragile' or 'high strength/low weight'. Light doesn't always have to mean expensive, it can also mean kind of crappy.

[peadar1987]

Maybe there could be two or three sliders (or more, or less, depending on the part)

So you have "quality", "durability", and "heat resistance". Increasing quality reduces weight, but increases cost. If you want it to be cheaper (light and crappy), you can leave the "quality" slider where it is, and slide the "durability" and "heat resistance" sliders all the way to the left.

If that was combined with dynamically updating the display of the weight, heat and impact tolerances (and someday a stock Kerbal Engineer), it would be great

[wasmic]

I don't think the amount of seats in a pod could be made tweakable. Think about the IVA's.