Battery-Light indication

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Hi Guys,

I am concerned about this part:

How about the little green light changes the color to red when the charge is locked and cannot be used up by a probecore.

In that way you could make one battery out of a cluster of (lets say) 4 a back-up battery and you would always know which one it is just by looking at your craft.

You also could make the light fade out when a battery loses charge until it runs out.

Let me know what you think

Edited October 4, 2014 by MalfunctionM1Ke

[Vaporo]

Here's what I think:

Green: Full charge

Flashing green: Locked

Red: Low charge

Flashing red: Locked but with low charge

Off: No charge

Yellow: Damaged

[Tex_NL]

This should definitely be possible. The light on the AR202 MechJeb controller already changes color depending on whether it is active or not. It should not be too hard to do something similar based on electric charge.

[Iodizon]

Here's what I think:

Green: Full charge

Flashing green: Locked

Red: Low charge

Flashing red: Locked but with low charge

Off: No charge

Yellow: Damaged

I don't understand what "damaged" means. In KSP, a battery should either be functional or destroyed so what does "damaged" mean?

[EvilotionCR2]

Yep, that sounds good.

[Vaporo]

I don't understand what "damaged" means. In KSP, a battery should either be functional or destroyed so what does "damaged" mean?

If you look in the flight events window, it will sometimes say "X was damaged by engine exhaust from Y." I don't think being damaged actually changes anything right now, but I'm pretty sure better damage effects are planned.

[madbadger2742]

+1 with Vaporo's modifications.

[Giggleplex777]

That was what it was supposed to do, but Nova couldn't figure out how (or he didn't have time to).

[Alshain]

This is more what I would envision. Who locks a battery with low charge? Let's not over complicate it.

Green: Full charge

Yellow: Locked

Red: Empty

Also, a toggle to turn it off would be nice.

[MGyver]

Also, a toggle to turn it off would be nice.

Yes, toggle would be great for setting up back-up batteries. Access through VAB would be important for setting this up. Would toggle affect charging? For colors I suggest:

Green: >50% power

Yellow: >25% power

Red: >5% power

Off: 0% power

[NovaSilisko]

That was what it was supposed to do, but Nova couldn't figure out how (or he didn't have time to).

It was the time, alas. I have a general idea how it would be done - set up an animation for the battery light going from green to red and have a specific module that looks at the part's ElectricCharge resource every 1/10 second or so and updates the light based on it. Or perhaps just have a simple lerp to avoid the overhead of an animation... hmm...

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

It was the time, alas. I have a general idea how it would be done - set up an animation for the battery light going from green to red and have a specific module that looks at the part's ElectricCharge resource every 1/10 second or so and updates the light based on it. Or perhaps just have a simple lerp to avoid the overhead of an animation... hmm...

Thanks for the deeper look, Nova. I really appreciated it

[John FX]

Here's what I think:

Green: Full charge

Flashing green: Locked

Red: Low charge

Flashing red: Locked but with low charge

Off: No charge

Yellow: Damaged

I`d say green/amber/red for 75%+/25-75%/25%- charge, flashing if locked and no light at all for completely broken

For `damaged`, which may come soon from the sounds of it (maybe a damaged battery has a reduced capacity, in RL they would suck power from all the other batteries until they were at the maximum charge for the damaged one) I`d say have it do that `broken neon light flicker`