Staged abort and Safe staging.

[Leszek]

I have come across two main pains in the game that have some simple solutions. I wonder what you guys think of these:

Staged Abort

Most aborts take 2 or 3 steps and sometimes more. However you just have one button, the backspace. This leads to action grouping. Besides wasting action groups, we now have more buttons that end the mission instantly if accidentally pressed. In addition these buttons are near other action groups like deploy solar panels. There are other things we can do in the stock game but they all are clunky and have downsides. If we could stage aborts just like regular staging this would be great. Example: First press dumps fairing, second press fires LES, third press jettisons LES, fourth press opens parachutes.

Safe Staging

Currently we have the largest easiest to reach button on the keyboard do the staging. This button is next to some throttle controls, time skip controls, and the modifier key. It is surprising I don't ditch more capsules in orbit around Kerbol. There is a stage lock, modifier + L will lock the stage. It will also fire your RCS, is clunky, and the alt key is next to the space bar sometimes defeating the purpose. If you forgot you have it set you might lithobrake when you didn't intend to. These don't happen often but they are thoroughly upsetting when they do. Just back from Jool with a million science? Oops. I suggest that there be an option to set staging to modifier + space. The double key press required is not hard and the staging is normally safe instead of normally armed.

Thoughts?

[bakanando]

I normally have engine toggle/shutdown in my action groups (mostly spaceplanes), these help in situations like uneven engine cutoff. With quick reflexes you can also cut all throtle with x before activating the abort sequence. but I've seen that with a good escape pod design you don't need to turn them off.

Also, often times were having an emergency needed mission abort was while using solid boosters that unbalanced the rocket. And you can't shut those down, which leads to focusing on better escape sequences. Or just watch the fireworks.

I agree with the stage lock being somewhat clunky. I haven't had problems when locking as I normally have RCS off so SAS won't drain it. I think that having a more obvious stage lock display would be nice though. The little purple blinking light is a good start, but it's too far from normal focus to work efficiently. Adding a display in the navball might help.

As for the double key staging, I don't think it's a good solution. Staging is so critical to the game that having it on the most reachable (and natural) key is a good idea. It could be enter, but it's too far away from normal control keys to be effective.

Having a stage lock bypass with the mod+spacebar combination might be something else though. Using mod+key to do an similar/alternate action is somewhat intuitive design.

Try remapping your stage key to mod+space and see how it works.

[Leszek]

"Try remapping your stage key to mod+space and see how it works."

You can't. The game doesn't let you. However I have done that mod with the silent hunter series. Ctrl+Enter to fire torpedoes. I find it most useful.