Draw lines to make staging easier when building rockets

[Pedro29]

Hello All,

I'm quite new to KSP (and I already got tons of fun with it, great stuff here I particularly like the career mode with "missions" and progressive access to technology) and I couldn't find this suggestion using the sticky threads or the search engine.

For now I struggle a bit when building rockets since the staging isn't very obvious and requires a lot of tweaking to put in correct order.

The only thing I can do so far is hover the mouse cursor and look for the faint highlight for each part.

I suggest that there would be a toggle in the hangar that will enable drawing bright thin lines (1 pixel) between the staging sequence on the right and the parts on the rocket itself.

This would allow a very quick and visual way to check that the staging is correct, since the lines would match the order of the stages and this would not require to hover the mouse on every item.

Lines crossing would be a hint that a stage is set to be enabled out of sequence.

Here is a picture of what I had in mind:

http://postimg.org/image/sszwq3ddx/

Cheers, P.

[Sirrobert]

That's actually a really good idea, I like it

[r4pt0r]

I agree. sometimes it is hard to see the light-green glow that they currently use.

[Seshins]

So simple yet so overlooked. I like.

[Frank_G]

I second that. But all at once could get messy, once you use complex staging setups. So at best, the line shows up, when you hover over the part with the mouse, or select multiple parts with shift click.

[Red Iron Crown]

Interesting idea. How would you envision it handling radial stages? Say I have a ring of six boosters tightly packed around a core stage, how would the stage line show up?

[Pedro29]

Thanks for the replies!

To answer Red Iron Crown's question, radial stages would only one line tied to one of the N items (as shown on the screenshot I made).

There could be also a color coding to help differentiate the lines (the symbols on the right also help by showing the type of decoupler already).

[Red Iron Crown]

Sorry, I both misunderstood your suggestion and didn't see the screenshot. I was thinking you meant a line to separate one stage from another, but your idea is better still (I think it's been suggested by others, too).

[regex]

I imagine this, for stacks anyway, to be a circular plane drawn between the attach nodes of the parts. Instead of the lines always being drawn they show when you highlight a part in the staging diagram on the right. You could also do the same for surface attach parts, but maybe make it a bent rectangle or something.

[Kasuha]

Personally I'd be happy if the highlight was changed into something more obvious, such as bright cyan highlight used when setting up action groups. These lines are not bad idea either if they could be toggled between all, off, and only for the part under the mouse.

[regex]

Personally I'd be happy if the highlight was changed into something more obvious, such as bright cyan highlight used when setting up action groups.

Also having parts show through others if they're being highlighted.

[Paul Kingtiger]

I like the idea, but rather than lines, I'd do a better job of highlighting the part with glowing.

[Pedro29]

I like the idea, but rather than lines, I'd do a better job of highlighting the part with glowing.

What I liked with the lines is that they allowed to get an overview of the whole sequence without having to hover the mouse.

Highlighting is ok for me too, as long as it is REALLY glowing hard and very reactive then a quick hover of the mouse from top to bottom on the stage sequence would allow to check it as well.

Anyway, whatever the way it is done, this aspect of the contruction really needs a better visual.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Pedro29

[impyre]

I really like this idea, but I think toggling it is unnecessary. Your idea would make it really easy to see every stage, so hovering would actually work just fine. Just over over the "show all stages" icon, and then all the lines and everything pops up, once you go to do something else it automatically vanishes (clicking could still be optional toggle though).

[sumghai]

I like the idea, but rather than lines, I'd do a better job of highlighting the part with glowing.

I too would prefer this as well.

[petros_a_l]

Personally I'd be happy if the highlight was changed into something more obvious, such as bright cyan highlight used when setting up action groups. These lines are not bad idea either if they could be toggled between all, off, and only for the part under the mouse.

Also having parts show through others if they're being highlighted.

I like the idea, but rather than lines, I'd do a better job of highlighting the part with glowing.

There is already a mod for this Editor Part Highlighter

[regex]

There is already a mod for this Editor Part Highlighter

Awesome. It should be stock.