I've found setting up precision maneuvers to be a bit of a pain, limited by the way burns nodes are set up and carried out. A few simple changes would make the process MASSIVELY easier and this game so much more enjoyable for those interested in utilizing the power of orbital mechanics such as gravity assists.

  1. Burn nodes should be able to be edited in a window or any other way not involving the gizmo. The gizmo is great but a massive pain to use when you want to center your view on the map to some far-off planet as you carefully tweak how your craft will intercept and travel through its sphere of influence. For instance: if you are fine-tuning your path to graze the atmosphere of a body you are not yet within the sphere of influence of. You are forced to manually drag the camera to the target body to view your trajectory, and can only edit the burn by using the widget which is now across the solar system and viewed at a very troubling angle. Adding the 3 axis sliders into an on-screen window as a part of the UI would fix this.

  2. Make burn nodes editable after centing on another object. This is simple: currently if you are editing a maneuver node around Droo and want to center your view on Cylero for planing your entry into the system, middle clicking on Cylero will deselect the burn node making it impossible to tweak. It would be nice if it were not the case, as the only workaround is right-clicking and dragging your way over to the system, AFAIK.

  3. Add the option to manually orient your craft in the vector of a burn node. The computer does this, and the direction is indicated by a purple marker on the nav ball. But for those of us who don't want the computer to carry out every burn, which may not be as simple as prograde or normal but a mix of the two, it would be nice to have our craft point itself in the right direction with greater precision than simply eyeballing the nav ball marker.

  4. More consistent displays of future orbital trajectories that will occur or would occur after a burn. This ties into #1 and 2, but is more vague so I thought I'd leave it at the end. When you focus on a planet you are planning to intercept, your trajectory within it's sphere of influence is not always visible like it would be in KSP. Not sure if this is a bug or it pertains to the conditions under which this element is shown, but it would be nice for this to show up more consistently. Ie, when I middle click on a planet which I am on course to or will be on course to after a burn, my trajectory within that system should be visible always.

I know this has been very wordy and probably vague at times. But overall these are the only things I've had trouble with in the game that keeps it from surpassing KSP as an aerospace sim. The flexibility of design in the game, both in the design of craft and the ability to edit solar systems, makes it the perfect sandbox for putting your engineering and physics skills to the test. The only thing working against you is, I feel, the control you have over maneuvers!

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    1,159 YaMomzBox420

    Message error. 404 page not found

    2.6 years ago
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    @AR3SZX Yes, I wrote #1 on there too but didn't want to spam with 3 or 4 posts all at once!

    2.6 years ago
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    3,490 ReyzXlol

    Man,can you write all this again here instead

    2.6 years ago

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