Pet peeves

[HafCoJoe]

I've always been annoyed when you follow retrograde down to gilly/bop/anywhere and at about 500 ish meters the retrograde icon moves about 45 degrees on the navbal and then isn't even accurate to retrograde! Had this problem a couple times.

Capsules which are meant to be empty because I'm testing a new spacecraft, and always fill up...

THIS.

[Red Iron Crown]

I've always been annoyed when you follow retrograde down to gilly/bop/anywhere and at about 500 ish meters the retrograde icon moves about 45 degrees on the navbal and then isn't even accurate to retrograde! Had this problem a couple times.

Are you sure that you're not just reducing your vertical speed so low that the horizontal component makes up more of the vector?

Protip: Don't use MechJeb's Smart A.S.S. set to retrograde when landing, it goes from "Gee, this works swimmingly" to "Why are you turning on your side when we're almost down?! NonononoNONO!" in very short order.

[michaelhester07]

I have 3:

1. That VAB glitch when trying to duplicate custom built radial engines

2. After I dock ships it doesn't switch control to the pod whose prograde matches the largest thrust angle (I've screwed up so many burns because what I thought was the pod burning prograde for the transfer stage was something else. So much wasted delta V).

3. The information presented by Kerbal Engineer isn't available in Stock otherwise.

[KvickFlygarn87]

Structural plate placement logic. It's weird.

[ImaSpaceJunk]

Half built and test rockets saved on the same list as ready-to-fly rockets.

[NecroBones]

I can't remember if I contributed in this thread.

Some of my pet peeves:

1. Maneuver node handles collapsing, particularly while I'm zoomed out to do planetary transfers. They need to stop doing this, or have a hot-key or something I can use to re-open the maneuver.

2. Fuel bar-graphs in the staging list on the left side don't take into account shared fuel sources. For instance, let's say you have a tank in the center with no engine on it, and 4 radial tanks of the same size as the center one, each of which has an engine, all drawing fuel from the center with fuel lines. When the center tank is depleted, all 4 engines show as having 50% fuel left, when you've only consumed 20% of your fuel supply. It doesn't take into account that the 4 active engines will only each get a quarter of that center tank's fuel, and instead shows the bar graph as though all 4 engines get 100% of it, each. So they don't give you an accurate representation of capacity/duration.

3. Micro-freezes in the VAB while working on larger ships. Often results in clicking on the wrong thing, because the click is registered after the fact, after you may have started moving the mouse again.

4. Nav ball and resource panel reset back to being stowed away. I would like for their state to be persistent in the save files. Personally, I want them open all the time, so once opened, I'd like them to stay that way unless I choose to close them.

5. The "control surface" parts always default to connecting perpendicular to the wing you place them on. WHY?

6. The textures for the "Rockomax X200-32 Fuel Tank" look dated and out of place. The "steel drum" look doesn't match the more NASA-like appearance for most of the other parts. I don't mind it as much on the "Rockomax X200-8 Fuel Tank" since that one tends to be only useful for landers and the like, but on rocket stages, the riveted steel look doesn't match.

7. The black areas of the textures on the new 3.75m parts don't align with snap-positions. I always try to use the textures to help me place struts and fuel lines evenly, but they're slightly rotated off center on these larger tanks.

8. The "small hardpoint" looks like it's floating above what it's connected to. The part's model doesn't fully extend into what it's attached to.

9. Now that we have 3.75m parts, with a lot more mass, I feel like we need a double-sized RCS block, so we don't have to spam lots of little ones to make a large ship turn. Probably also a double-sized Sepratron, for the same reason.

10. When colorizing lights, the lit front panel on the light doesn't change color to match.

11. Why is the 2.5m SAS module hollow? No actual wheels inside?

12. I feel like we need 3.75m versions of some of the things we enjoy in the smaller sizes currently: A low-profile (flat) adapter (in addition to the cone adapter); RCS tank; bi/tri/quad adapters; etc

13. I would love to see some conical adapters that are also fuel tanks, so we have a choice between lightweight, or more fuel.

14. in the VAB/SPH, the parts lists are not sorted in any meaningful way. Some related things are grouped together, others not. Once you memorize where everything is, it's not a huge deal, but shouldn't this make more sense?

15. Sub-assemblies still leave struts and fuel lines disconnected (only the origin point exists, not the target point) upon placement on a new ship. GRRRRR.

... I'm sure more will come to mind later.

Edited May 20, 2014 by NecroBones

[Dizzle]

Sorting out the staging. It's such a chore.

[brianorca]

I've always been annoyed when you follow retrograde down to gilly/bop/anywhere and at about 500 ish meters the retrograde icon moves about 45 degrees on the navbal and then isn't even accurate to retrograde! Had this problem a couple times.

THIS.

That's what happens when the navball switches from orbital to surface. You can click the speed indicator to switch it manually. You should manually select surface when preparing to land.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

The entirety of the VAB.

Entirety.

[Superfluous J]

The entirety of the VAB.

Entirety.

Even the cars that skid by almost crashing into each other? I love that.

And Ctrl-Z. When it works.

[bawr]

I really hated how the navball is disabled on the map by default. So I fixed it.

I present to you:

MapShowNavBall v1.1

[NecroBones]

I really hated how the navball is disabled on the map by default. So I fixed it.

I present to you:

MapShowNavBall v1.1

Awesome. 'Nuff said.

[Felsmak]

If you botch a save file edit and teleport your craft into your destination planet, you can no longer reload the scene without restarting the game.

[cantab]

3. Micro-freezes in the VAB while working on larger ships. Often results in clicking on the wrong thing, because the click is registered after the fact, after you may have started moving the mouse again.

Dang I only just noticed this post! I've had it happen so often, and always just assumed I was misclicking.

11. Why is the 2.5m SAS module hollow? No actual wheels inside?

I think this is because when it was introduced it was meant as an SAS unit, ie the control assistance, rather than a reaction wheel. The design appears similar to the Saturn V's Instrument Unit.

My peeve with it though is that it has a 1.25m node size, which I believe accounts for its annoying lack of rigidity.

[problemecium]

My pet peeve is when I switch to a ship that's orbiting and the orbit changes slightly when Physics is re-enabled, which in some cases screws up a carefully planned rendezvous. It doesn't help that when KAC kills warp it kills warp all the way and causes this thing to happen. I keep wishing for a setting to "mostly kill warp" down to 5x so I can cruise in without PhysX messing up my trajectory.

[enki]

The navball hiding

Chase Camera

No loading in background

Floating point in general

Part configs are willy-nilly. Everything should be based on MODEL{} nodes

[Duke23]

When I zoom out or hit map view for a second and hear a "poof," then zoom back to a spray of debris wondering what just happened. *grumbles about Minmus*

[Wallygator]

Cannot switch vessels while moving over the surface... when i am a piece of debris sinking toward the centre of a planet... AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!

[Luis]

I'm generally happy to use mods to overcome peeves, where possible (PreciseNode, KER etc). This takes care of the most egregious stuff, but I'm still left with:

1. Lag in the VAB when moving large subassemblies around.

2. The irregular placement of windows on the Mk1-2 pod that makes symmetrical placement of radial chutes pretty much impossible.

3. Camera gimbal lock.

4. Not being able to set up manoeuvre nodes for a ship before launch. We really ought to be able to right click a landed ship in map view and generate a launch manoeuvre that includes adjustment handles for apoapsis and start of gravity turn. This would give you a suborbital parabolic trajectory that you could add regular M nodes to, for circularisation etc.

[blspblackdeath]

Every pet peeves already mentioned here plus.

- The Squad-devs not showing up in the forums between the updates anymore to communitcate with the community about pet peeves.

[IcarusBen]

1. The Mk1-2 pod being at a strange rotation.

2. EVA and docking almost never work for me, because of mostly the same reasons.

3. Not enough command pods or structural parts.

[Wallace]

I hate having to press G twice for landing gear. It's such a dumb and annoying little thing Squad did messed up that causes that.

There's actually a good reason for that, if you have a ship with landing gear in both positions, first press raises gear that is down.

[Luis]

That's not an especially good reason, because it's entirely possible that you wanted the first press to lower any landing gear that was still up instead. It's also not the reason for this behaviour, because it predates being able to set the starting state of the gear in the VAB. When this bug first appeared, somewhere around .21 I think, landing gear always started raised but you still had to pointlessly press G twice to get it to lower the first time. This is a bug, plain and simple.

[Wallygator]

Only having square structural panels - how about a couple of triangular sizes?

Not being able to set the sensitivity on the CLAW capture mechanism

always having to go to the space centre to then select the tracking centre

the general inaccuracy of the trajectory path line where it intersects the surface - and the same in relation to the actual location of landed assets

zoom limitations in map mode not consistent with different sized planets/moons

strange fuel transfer rates depending on tank sizes

Still, I love the game!

[aman608]

having 4 time symmetry ladders because i forgot to turn it off