better crew management in the VAB

[Helix935]

Ok i may have phrased the title incorrectly but here is my suggestion...

there have been many times where people have meant to start a ship empty and thanks to recent updates, we can now do such a thing through customizing crew but there is one problem...

many times many players have accidentally left crew in the wrong place or left it filled with crew instead of empty so i offer a solution.

i ask that Squad would in the future work to improve the crew customization and provide settings that will allow us to start ships empty of crew instead of having to empty it of crew every time and to select which part for them to start in instead of having to change it every single time so that it would be more convenient.

just a suggestion.

if anyone as a better title post on this thread.

[MKI]

I feel some sort of choice memory would suffiece. So say you remove everyone but Jebidiah in the ship and you go fly and revert. Your previous choice would stay, it would be JUST jebidiah in the ship and seat you choose for him. Keeping it even after choosing a number of other ship designs or leaving the VAB, essetually making the "crew" selection be part of the craft instead of a tacked on thing per flight and instance.

It doesn't seem like a very difficult change, or something that needs to be highlighted. One of those hidden changes that a lot of people would love

[Claw]

So there was a thread in Gameplay Questions about this earlier and I came to see if this suggestion was up here. I see you already started one so here's my idea...

CREW MANAGEMENT WINDOW IDEA:

From the VAB/SPH, make the "Launch" button sensitive to single and double-clicking.

- If you single click, a window pops up where you can selectively load your crew. The window can either be the existing crew tab, or some sort of window like what pops up when clicking on the launch pad.

- If you double-click, the ship launches without the window popup but uses the last settings selected.

- Every time you enter the VAB from other than a revert, the window would probably need to pop up to prevent errors with crew assignment. (You can't have it auto-select Jeb if you just sent Jeb to space.)

This would allow you to specify how many and who rides.

TWEAKABLE IDEA:

- Make it so crew modules have a tweakable setting that allows you to specify how many kerbals should be in that pod during launch.

This would specify how many, but not necessarily who...

[Twreed87]

I think it should just keep your setting when you revert, or even save and load a ship. I can't tell you how many times I've taken 2 Kerbals out of a 3-man pod (for a rescue mission or some-such), launched, realized i forgot something so i revert, launched again, got halfway to orbit and realized DAMNIT!!! Bob and Bill!?!? What are you doing there?!?! It's mostly on me for not looking in the bottom corner, but sometimes I just forget. It'd be nice if the game helped with that.

[Claw]

Having it tied to the save state of the ship introduces its own set of problems too. What do you do if you saved the ship with three random kerbals? Do you replace them with Jeb, Bill, and Bob on the next load? Or with the original save crew? What if they aren't available?

The only way to be sure to get what the player wants is to force-ably interrupt and ask. But you have to ask in a way that isn't overly annoying. Having a pop-up window forces another click, but then you'll have the right crew. Double-click and you bypass that nonsense and take the last setting you had (before the revert if that's what just happened).

[BudgetHedgehog]

TWEAKABLE IDEA:

- Make it so crew modules have a tweakable setting that allows you to specify how many kerbals should be in that pod during launch.

This would specify how many, but not necessarily who...

Toadicus of TweakableEverything tried this out. Turns out crew selection is powered by dark matter and tweaking the crew setting in editor changed all future instances of that pod. Here:

CrewCapacity is tracked in each partPrefab (the set of "master" information read in from the GameData folder when the game is loaded used to create each Part instance during play), in each Part (the combination of prototype and prefab information that makes up a unique instance of a part as represented during play), and in the Internal model.

In flight, the latter two are used. If the part reports a small crew capacity, Kerbals will be refused admittance even if the internal model is filled. On the other hand, if the part reports a larger capacity, the internal's seat count will dictate the refusal. This is straightforward to deal with, if it's what I cared about. I can tweak the part's field directly, and can remove and add seats from the internal model's data structure.

Unfortunately, in the editor, automatic crew filling is governed by the prefab data. This means that in order to change the way the crew filler behaves, I have to change the prefab. This is undesirable: because the prefab is the "master" data for all future instances of the part, and because the editor does not entirely start parts up the way flight does, changing the prefab has very extensive interactions with future instances of parts. I've found suitable places to reset the prefab value, but it still produces behavior that IMO users will find confusing or unacceptable. Just because I can do something doesn't mean I should.

The more I think about it, the more I think that the right way to do this is to use a partless plugin that just gives a "Disable automatic crew assignment" toggle in the editor; on the Toolbar or near the crew assignment button, perhaps. From there the process should be simpler; if I don't care about assigning specific values, I ought to be able to deal with the problem from a different perspective.

[Kruleworld]

... Your previous choice would stay, ...

yes, saving the crew roster to the ship's file would be a good idea, since it doesn't remember who's was in the pod last launch.

[Claw]

Toadicus of TweakableEverything tried this out. Turns out crew selection is powered by dark matter and tweaking the crew setting in editor changed all future instances of that pod. Here:

I suppose that's why I offer it as a suggestion of something for Squad to add. The way the part is handled probably needs to be modified just like a fuel tank to allow tweaking of load and not just capacity. Tweakable isn't my favorite option. I think I prefer the popup idea.

I'm also still not a fan of saving a specific roster in the save file. What do you do then if one of those kerbals isn't available? Now you're back to a list of rules that may or may not fit what the user wants. Leave it empty? Put somone random in? Flag it for popup?