Some suggestions

[Mimi]

Heyo.

I'm a long time Kerbal Space Program player and honestly this game is pretty close to surpassing it already.
Here are a few suggestions which I think would make it better - which I really hope for, because unlike KSP, SimpleRockets 2 physics are stable

Of course I'm not saying that KSP isn't fun and I will still play it, but I would really like to change my default space building & exploration sim to SimpleRockets 2, because of no deep space kraken (good stability, even in edge cases), procedural parts and the game being developed in a less "hardcoded" way (which means easier modding and faster development).

Ah, and please don't get me wrong - the game is awesome already and I love it. I'm just listing possible improvements to make it even better and to fix some issues which are currently present.

So here goes the list (sorry for its length):

• Better fuel flow management (or easier to get the grasp of). Currently it's a bit hard to deduce which tanks are used and in what order, if you have side boosters attached. Adding some sort of invisible (to not ruin the visuals) fuel ducts would make it easy to make more complex rockets designs (I know asparagus staging isn't really realistic, but well, we KSP players got used to it and love it). Currently, if you add side boosters, you can't easily make the main rocket's engine (which is bigger and uses more fuel) to use fuel from them too, so that they will run out of fuel first. I had to work around this by making the side boosters' engines stronger, which emptied them before the main rocket got emptied by its huge engine. Also, I haven't tested it yet, but if fuel weight affects physics (like, airplane getting heavier in front after fuel from its back is burned), then being able to customize fuel drainage priority would make it easier to make stable designs. Honestly, if I were to pick one suggestion which is really a must-have, it's this one.
  
• This one has already been requested a lot I guess: please add an option to disable navsphere reactions to middle mouse button, it's very easy to send your rocket flying into random direction, if you accidentally grab the navsphere while rotating the view.
  
• Another thing already requested: please add an option to stop camera gliding when rotating the view. It looks really cool and it's worth keeping for gameplay videos recording, but in normal gameplay it's inconvenient.
  
• Rings for planets Also, having visible atmospheric storms and an option to make them affect flights would be cool (think giant red spot on Jupiter).
  
• It would be nice, if planets had some stuff to discover (both interesting places and just easter eggs) and maybe some vegetation (terraforming or something would also be cool). Maybe even underwater features?
  
• Toggleable flags on the fuselages, command pods, etc. and flag planting. I guess they shouldn't be shared with craft or in multiplayer (if there will be any), because of game rating (I mean, it's not possible to control what people will use as their flag images), but being able to use our own flags (different per mission) in singleplayer may be cool.
  
• External fuel tanks, which would make it possible to easily replicate those cool lookings RCS belts like in the Vostok spacecraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Spacecraft_Diagram.svg
  It would also be cool to have external batteries and radioisotope generators.
  
• Please make it easier to see planned maneuvers and their time/delta-v even without turning map view on.
  
• It would be nice to have a navball with surface and orbital modes. And of course proper markers in the orbital mode: prograde & retrograde (orbital, maneuver, target), normal & anti-normal, radial in & out.
  
• It would be nice, if we could check periapsis and apoapsis information easier - both for spacecraft and celestial bodies.
  
• It would be nice, if we could check atmospheric height of celestial bodies and have some atmospheric density gauge.
  
• Some resources panel may be useful (like, currently we only see overall fuel percentage).
  
• It would be nice, if we could toggle some part properties mid-flight and disable fuel drainage from some of them (during the design too, of course).
  
• Being able to see all the stages and reorder things mid-flight would also be really useful.
  
• More customizable command pods visuals. In KSP there are many command pod designs and it's really cool.
  
• Flat fuselages for high speed planes, like this one: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/File:Mk2_LF%2BO_Fuselage_Short.png
  
• It would be nice, if we could set rotators/pistons rotation/state during the design. Or is it already possible, but I somehow missed that? It would also be cool to have rotators, which can rotate more than 360 degrees - so they could actually spin and we could model fake gravity space stations. I guess it wouldn't support making fake propellers using them and wings (I mean, too complex to implement and no gain from it), but it's a small tradeoff and most people probably won't notice such a small physics discrepancy.
  
• Ore extraction and production of fuel would be cool. Oh, and of course some drilling parts, converters (maybe some more complex production chain, that would be awesome) and maybe pipelines (I mean, for fuel, not for continuous integration ). This may be another way of making game deeper without that much of an engineering effort.
  
• Maybe we could also produce other resources and then use them to build bases and spacecraft on other celestial bodies? Each part could have its material cost. Seems like an easy way to add a lot of additional depth to the game.
  
• Side-mounted engines, like this one: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/24-77_%22Twitch%22_Liquid_Fuel_Engine
  
• Jet engines (air intakes and jet fuel too, of course) and propellers. Maybe some propellers for liquids? Would be cool to be able to make ships with real engines or maybe even submarines.
  
• Solid fuel tanks and engines (of course only being able to be supplied from the adjacent tanks).
  
• Bigger reaction wheel parts, not only command pod ones.
  
• Vernier thrusters.
  
• Some part to make it easy to mount things to sides of the fuselages in a visually pleasant way would be useful.
  
• Griders, because they look beautiful (although they are troublesome for graphics performance ).
  
• Launch clamps, which could hold rockets before launch, instead of making them weirdly stand on their engines' nozzles.
  
• Some small thrusters which could help redirect detached radial stages would be pretty useful. They stuck in my ship a few times
  
• I'm not sure about this one, because maybe it is already possible to do it without much hackery: inline docking ports, which would stick out from side of the fuselage (like in the NASA Space Shuttles).
  
• Flat cargo bays, like the flat fuselages I mentioned earlier. Also cargo ramps for planes and some extendable platforms for landers (so that if one keeps a rover in cargo bay, it won't just fall down after it exits the cargo bay ).
  
• Some measurment parts (like temperature, air pressure, etc.). Would also be cool to graph that data, send it back to the space center and build some sort of encyclopedia. Another simple way to add more activities for the players to do in game I guess. Searching for ore could be also done using those.
  
• Airbrakes and thrust reversing for jet engines/propellers.
  
• Retractable and not plane landing gears.
  
• Some way of static mounting for bases on moons/planets. Like landing legs, but with the ability to disable springs after landing and use some screws or something to mount the base to the ground. It would also be cool, if they would allow height manipulation (in a synchronized manner of course, if there are many of them) and maybe have some small deployable wheels (with engines) to make docking multiple base modules easy.
  
• External radiators.
  
• Some way to generate energy out of rocket/jet fuel would be cool.
  
• Antennas. Maybe some communication system? I don't really like the idea of not being able to control things without radio connection (so I think it should be toggleable), but it would be cool, if we could embark on a quest of covering our planetary system with radio network. Also, antennas just look cool, especially dish ones
  
• Maybe some telescopes and stars/other celestial bodies we could discover? In KSP it's possible to detect asteroids, but I think it would be cool to actually discover distant stars and planets in a realistic way instead (like, by putting better telescopes further and further away). Seems like another easy to implement way of making the game richer in content.
  
• Side-mounted parachutes.
  
• Currently the spacecraft don't have any crew, but if there will be any in the future - I guess it would be nice, if we could transfer the crew members through the docking ports, have some crew modules for space stations (and planes) and get some retractable ladders for landers. Maybe the crew members could alter ships on orbit, if they had enough material delivered?
  
• Lights (omnidirectional, directed, spotlights).
  
• Landing airbags would be cool.
  
• Ground effect vehicles and autogyros might be an interesting additions (though they are not popular, I know ). Hydrofoils and hovercraft may be interesting machines as well. Honestly the game physics engine is really good, which means that it may be possible to easily add much more vehicle types to it.
  
• I had no time to test it yet, but if we lock velocity retrograde and then brake too much (and start going in the opposite direction), does it make our vehicle turn? If that's the case, it may be dangerous during landings.
  
• Another thing that I couldn't test yet, but is the Oberth effect simulated? Would be cool if it did. Same with basic gravity assists themselves, but I'm pretty sure they are (kinda hard to make any orbital mechanics sim without them).
  
• Maybe we could have clouds?
  
• I saw a few tiny shiny spots in space. I'm not sure if they are glare effect artifacts or asteroids, but maybe we could have asteroids/comets and asteroid belts/Kuiper belt/Oort cloud and could actually dock to asteroids/comets with some sort of grabbing tool?
  
• Some way to easily time warp to the next noon would be cool.
  
• I haven't tested it yet, but do moons properly reflect light and have phases? Would be cool, if they did.
  
• Maybe we could have gravity anomalies and Van Allen belts, so that we could measure them? It may be another way of adding more content to the game pretty easily
  
• If we could timewarp by many years and have nuclear engines, maybe we could have many planetary systems in some sort of galaxy and actually do interstellar trips? The lowest estimate I found was around 50 years for unmanned Project Daedalus spacecraft, so it's not as impossibly long as it may seem. Here are some references (sorry for using Wikipedia as a source, but I didn't have time to search for scientific articles on this):
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket
  Anyway, it would be really cool to do interstellar travel in an actually scientifically correct way and the combination of huge timewarps and nuclear propulsion makes it possible
  
• I'm really happy that unlike in KSP, parts don't go crazy under stress. I haven't tested yet whether the mechanical stress is simulated - but if it is or will be, it would be nice to have an option to turn it off and to see parts stress tolerance in the designer. I personally think it's better, if it's not simulated and we just try not to make impossibly-looking designs, than if it is simulated the KSP way (add more than x parts and physics engine goes crazy). Anyway, I'm really glad there are no such problems in SimpleRockets 2.
  
• Some toggleable overlays to display heat/aerodynamics stress/mechanical stress on parts may be useful.
  
• It would be nice to have some information on the maximum collision speed tolerance for every part (visible in the designer).
  
• It would be useful to see the delta-v and thrust-to-weight ratio of the vehicle in the designer.
  
• KSP has this cool ribbons website, where you can generate ribbons based on your achievements: http://www.kerbaltek.com/ribbons
  Maybe SimpleRockets 2 could have one too? If there will ever be a multiplayer mode, maybe we could show them off on our profiles?

Sorry, this list of course contains a lot of suggestions and, obviously, not all of them are equally important. But I guess this game is really amazing and because it seems (judging from stability and procedural parts) to be programmed with good architecture in mind, adding new features is probably not that hard, so I figured listing some cool ideas on how to make it even better may be useful.

Anyway, I'm really impressed by how amazing SimpleRockets 2 already is (especially since it's just the first version of an Early Acces!) and I'm really glad I finally have a choice to do things in more than one space sim. I think that while some features may still be missing (hence the huge list above ), the overall design of the game makes it possible to easily improve it way beyond what its competitors (KSP, Orbiter) may be capable of.

So well, sorry for the lenghty post, good luck improving the game, congratulations on the amazing work and thanks for doing it for the space nerds community

[JundrooGames]

Thank you for the feedback! You have a lot of great suggestions! Please, make sure you visit our Suggestions[www.simplerockets.com] page and upvote any you like. I know that some of these are already in the system. Of course, please add any suggestions that you don't see.

"Please make it easier to see planned maneuvers and their time/delta-v even without turning map view on."

I did want to mention that you can do this by pinning the Map View panel so it remains visible in the Flight View.

Thanks for playing our game!

[Max Sprin]

Hello. I'm big fan of space games and I have almost 900 hours game experience in KSP. I know career mod is not implemented into the game yet and I can't compare it with KSP but there is something I'd love to see in KSP and in your game. I'd love to play a competitive game. It comes with the history of Space Race in the last century. I'd love to be first in space and on the Moon. And sure research and science needs to be involved to do so. In this case designing of a ship would make literal sense. Spending 2 hours for ship design is boring if it comes to decorative pleasure for no missions etc. This mod would make multiplayer game very interesting as well.

[Max Sprin]

Ah, and for sure we need cosmonauts/astronauts to be able to play with them like Kerbals in SKP )))