More informative fuel indicators in staging display

[LethalDose]

So, I've been playing with spaceplanes lately and hence watching my fuel gauges way more than I typically do with rockets. I think that the green fuel indicators by the engines in the "staging" display just show the "LiquidFuel" resource for all LF burning engines (either air-breathing or OX). I think it would be useful to have another bar for typical LF/OX engines that indicated remaining oxidizer in the staging display as well.

The OX bars should be in a different color than the LF bars so you can easily tell which is which.

The bars could be shown in series (OX to the right of LF) or in parallel (OX below or above LF). I think in parallel would make more sense so so levels could be compared at a glance.

Alternatively, only one bar could be shown for each LF/OX engine, and the bar would display the "limiting" reactant type, e.g. green if LF will run out first, or blue if OX will run out first (or whatever color is selected for oxidizer). It may already show the limiting reactant, I'm not sure, but both display in the same color.

Even better would be to provide several of these options in the game menu.

Anyway, it's a small UI tweak that could be useful IMO, given we have engines and designs that can upset the LF:OX ratio in vessels.

[Guest]

It may already show the limiting reactant, I'm not sure, but both display in the same color.

The way fuel shown is pretty weird at times, but IIRC it basically shows the amount of available, usable fuel for the given engine, like you say here. That means that LiquidFuel/Oxidizer mix, whether it only shows LiquidFuel or not, has the correct available fuel for the engine. even if the Oxidizer or LiquidFuel is low.

I agree with you in general, having played with Real Fuels where the mixture ratios can be all over the place compared to KSP's across-the-board 45/55 mix. Sometimes you end up with the mix off and you end up carrying a bunch of useless fuel (of whatever sort) into orbit. IMO, it would be nice to have a split bar for fuel, where it looks exactly like it does now if the ratios work out perfectly but changes so that the non-gauge resource (you can set what resource is in the bar within the engine config) shows as a different color and takes up half the height of the other resource bar if the mixture is off. Certainly the resource panel takes up some of the slack but it's not ideal.

[LethalDose]

The way fuel shown is pretty weird at times, but IIRC it basically shows the amount of available, usable fuel for the given engine, like you say here. That means that LiquidFuel/Oxidizer mix, whether it only shows LiquidFuel or not, has the correct available fuel for the engine. even if the Oxidizer or LiquidFuel is low.

I agree with you in general, having played with Real Fuels where the mixture ratios can be all over the place compared to KSP's across-the-board 45/55 mix. Sometimes you end up with the mix off and you end up carrying a bunch of useless fuel (of whatever sort) into orbit. IMO, it would be nice to have a split bar for fuel, where it looks exactly like it does now if the ratios work out perfectly but changes so that the non-gauge resource (you can set what resource is in the bar within the engine config) shows as a different color and takes up half the height of the other resource bar if the mixture is off. Certainly the resource panel takes up some of the slack but it's not ideal.

Yep, agreed, especially on the last point RE: the resource panel, which shows the overall craft resources while the staging display shows what's available to each engine. They can be wildly different.

[Kasuha]

You can "hack" your engines to show both. The matter is, in most normal situations they show the same value.

	PROPELLANT
	{
		name = LiquidFuel
       	        ratio = 0.9
		DrawGauge = True
	}
	PROPELLANT
	{
		name = Oxidizer
		ratio = 1.1
                [COLOR="#FF0000"]DrawGauge = True[/COLOR]
	}

[LethalDose]

You can "hack" your engines to show both. The matter is, in most normal situations they show the same value.

	PROPELLANT
	{
		name = LiquidFuel
       	        ratio = 0.9
		DrawGauge = True
	}
	PROPELLANT
	{
		name = Oxidizer
		ratio = 1.1
                [COLOR="#FF0000"]DrawGauge = True[/COLOR]
	}

http://i.imgur.com/rKHWxj4.jpg

Okay, then this should be even easier to implement in stock. What's above would be the "series" implementation I was talking about in the original post. As I said before, "parallel" would be more useful, and I'd love to see different colors. But this is at least would be a step in the right direction.

I get that in "normal" situations, yes, they show the same value. However, Spaceplanes.

[Guest]

You can "hack" your engines to show both. The matter is, in most normal situations they show the same value.

The question then being, do they show the fuel amount even if the mix is off or do they show the amount of usable fuel?

[Kasuha]

The question then being, do they show the fuel amount even if the mix is off or do they show the amount of usable fuel?

They both show ratio of fuel accessible by the engine to fuel storage capacity accessible by the engine.

If there is something in both gauges, the engine can run. But neither gauge is guaranteed to be linear in any sense. A good example is the design below. Each engine sees 90+360=450 units of fuel storage. But since all engines are drawing from the central tank, each engine (assuming they run all at once) can only use 30 units from it.

So 4/5 of the gauge is depleted in 1/4 of the burn and remaining 1/5 is depleted in remaining 3/4 of burn time.

Edited June 17, 2014 by Kasuha

[ialdabaoth]

Super-easy suggestion:

Add a 'GaugeColor' string to RESOURCE_DEFINITION, which determines the fuel gauge bar color for engines, and the right-click amount bar color for fuel tanks.